Your Own Worst Enemy

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Start your week smiling with your friends Kathy Zant and Michelle Frichette. It's time to get ready for some weekly motivation with WP motivate. Happy Friday, Kathy. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Happy Friday, Michelle. [00:00:18] Speaker A: Friday. [00:00:18] Speaker B: Bad hair day around here, isn't it? [00:00:20] Speaker A: Yes. Made each other laughing just before we hit record about our hair. So if you are one of those people that just listens and doesn't watch, we love you. Because today I have this little alfalfa thing sticking up behind my head and Kathy's going with a wind blown sexy look. [00:00:37] Speaker B: Oh, I'm going with the ponytail because I didn't brush my hair this morning. I was just like, ponytail, get to work. Boom. [00:00:45] Speaker A: That's what Barbie does. Barbie uses. Barbie wears ponytails. [00:00:50] Speaker B: Your Barbie does everything. Claire told me that she's got all these career plans. She's like going to join the army, maybe the marines, just to go through the boot camp. And then she's going to be a fire person, a firefighter person. [00:01:03] Speaker A: And she's got all these things and. [00:01:04] Speaker B: She'S like, well, Barbie can do it. I can. I'm like, well, I guess we're going to have many career choices. You go, girl. [00:01:12] Speaker A: I was talking with somebody about the Barbie movie the other day and how I love the fact that there know a trans woman is one of the Barbies and they don't comment on her transition. There's a Barbie in a wheelchair and they don't comment on her wheelchair. There's a plus size Barbie and they don't comment on her weight. They just exist. These are women who just exist. [00:01:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:01:33] Speaker A: No, I want to live in that world. [00:01:37] Speaker B: I'm trying every day to live in that world. [00:01:41] Speaker A: I understand. Which actually brings me to the topic that you wanted to talk about today is sometimes we are our own worst enemies. My tailbone is killing me, but I'm sitting at my desk in a chair because here's my setup and everything's great. And when we're done recording, I will still probably sit here for the next 2 hours working here instead of detaching the laptop and going sitting on my bed where my tailbone is not going to hurt because I'm my own worst enemy. [00:02:13] Speaker B: I'm my own worst enemy, too. I make my life harder than it needs to be. I don't push the easy button enough. And I think it's because I kind of have a little bit of that perfectionistic overachiever in me where I'm just like, and I've just started a new job. I love my boss. I love the job. I love my team, and I've put. [00:02:36] Speaker A: It. [00:02:41] Speaker B: And I've kind of just learned that, you know what? Just showing up as me and just telling it like I see it and writing it how I see it and recording videos like I do like I see it. And just being me is good enough. And my boss has been trying to tell me that for, like, weeks where. [00:03:01] Speaker A: I'm just like, I'm trying so hard and it just doesn't flow. And I'm just like, just kick that. [00:03:06] Speaker B: Boulder right out of the stream. And it's like my creative faucet is just running like crazy because I have been my own worst enemy. [00:03:15] Speaker A: I understand just in the hour prior to this was in stellar sessions, which you know what they are. But for anybody who doesn't know is our internal, like, I can't think of that word. Professional development. Professional development, brown bag lunch kind of thing online every month. And I usually find an internal person to stellar to talk about something that we've had people talk about how to pitch a. Talk. People talk about how to write your bio. We've had people give demonstrations. You gave a demonstration on cadence once. Those kinds of things. Today I had an external person come in and talk about AI, and I was talking about how one of the questions I said is, we used to use this phrase a lot, garbage in, garbage out. Remember that? It was a would say, garbage in, garbage out. And that Chat GPT is like that. Right? The more specific and the better you can write your request, the more specific and better the output is. And I got to thinking about how my brain is like that, too. [00:04:16] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:04:20] Speaker A: And what you rely on, I don't know, for moving things forward. Right. And so if I'm being lazy, I am my own worst enemy, even if I'm using tools that should combat that because I'm still not using them. [00:04:37] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. We are our own worst enemy. I don't know what it is about that. I think it comes down to just, like, not accepting ourselves or not having belief in ourselves. It's like this self esteem thing. But I just watched this video last week. I mean, when I'm doing stuff around the house, whatever, I've got the headphones in, I pop on a video and just listen to it. And this guy was talking about self esteem and all of the things that we try to do in order to improve our self esteem, whether it's affirmations or anything that you try to do. Self worth and self esteem is just like a misnomer. There's no measurement for it. You are who you are. There's no one who can come and say that you're worthless because you are who you are. So there's no objective measurement. It's just this subjective lie that you tell yourself inside your head about whatever it is or just even judging things that happen in our lives. It's just like we put this subjective spin on things when it just is what it is. So you can't have negative self esteem because you are who you are. It's a lie you're telling yourself. And you can't be over inflated with your self esteem and just tell yourself that you're perfect. Well, I guess you are perfect, though, because you are who you are and you're in process. Anyway, I thought it was interesting. [00:06:11] Speaker A: It was very interesting. I think that there's a lot that goes inside of our heads. Thinking back to the wolf story we had a couple of weeks ago, where it depends on how you're feeding it, that negative self talk or that positive self talk. It's just talk. Like you said, you still are who you are. It's just how you view yourself and the lens that you're looking at your own life and even others through can be cloudy, maybe is the right way to say that. [00:06:38] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:40] Speaker A: But how you view yourself doesn't actually change your worth, which is what you were saying. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Exactly. And I think a lot of times people have an emotional reaction to something. Something bad happens in life, whatever, and so they start assigning that event meaning, and then that meaning then leads them down this emotional trail, and they start making judgments based on those emotions. And I've seen situations where people just fly off the seat of their pants in terms of the emotion that they're feeling. And then they just like, well, I'm feeling this, and it's so intense, and I don't know what to do with it. So, Twitter here you like? Maybe not everything needs to go on social media. That's what journaling is for. Your private journal locked with a password on it. No one needs to know. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Right? [00:07:35] Speaker B: That's where it goes. Not on public. [00:07:38] Speaker A: Somebody needs to tell Elon Musk that. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Oh, he's been spicy lately. [00:07:45] Speaker A: What? Isn't he, though? Seriously. [00:07:47] Speaker B: He's spicy, man. Somebody's got hot. He's just drowning in the hot sauce lately. Always got something to say. [00:07:57] Speaker A: I've been working on the beginnings of a course and a talk that I've submitted to wordcamp about building your personal brand and how you still need to be authentic. Right. So there's still authenticity in your personal brand. But that doesn't mean you have to walk out the front door naked and show everybody warts and. All right. I mean, literally, you can put on your. Be your authentic self, but with the Persona that you have, a work Persona, a Persona that you have, a volunteer Persona, family Persona, self Persona. Like all of those things, right? Which means that you can be who you are authentically, but you can censor what you put out into the world. So let me give you a little. For example. So years ago, I was on the school board in my hometown, and I try to remember. Oh, yeah. So I remember now. Donald Trump had just won the election. And if you're out there and you're listening and you were happy about that, I'm sorry, this was not a happy story. So I was being very like, I woke up in the middle of the night expecting that Hillary Clinton had won. I turned on the news. When I went to the bathroom, it was like three in the morning. And they had called the election, but not for her. And I just sat there like, dumbfounded, right? And so the next morning, I'm on socials and mostly in my own town. I was looking at things on Facebook, et cetera. And the gloating that was happening in this redneck town that I live in was a little over the top. So I took to Twitter, and all I tweeted was, rednecks are not gracious winners. And a fellow school board member messaged me and said, take that tweet down. And I said, excuse me, take that tweet down. I said, no, I'm not taking the tweet down. I said, why would I take it down? It's so derogatory. I said, I don't see it that way, but thank you for your opinion. He then called the school board president to tattle on me, I guess. And so she called me and we had a phone conversation. And I said to her, I said, you know, it's my personal Twitter account. I don't represent the school in everything that I do. We're not a paid position. We're elected officials. I said, and I'm not going to take that down. I said, this is a hill I will die on. I said, if one of our students was practicing free speech, would we tell them they had to change that, that kind of thing? And she said, well, no. I said, let me put it to you in incredible terminologies. At the beginning of every school board session, we stand up and we say the pledge of allegiance. I could be like, Colin, I can't say his last name, copernic. And I could just sit with my hands folded instead of turning, standing and saying the pledge of allegiance. I said, but I won't do that because that's not how I actually believe about that. But I could, and that would be my right. I said, what I'm willing to do is put in my bio, all thoughts are my own and represent nobody else. And she said, well, that will work. Fast forward to the next Tuesday. We're a private session before the school board meeting, and the same guy who texted me to take my tweet down says, I want to talk about Michelle's tweet behind closed doors. And I was like, oh, my God, are you kidding me? And he says, saying redneck is the same as saying the n word. I said, then why didn't you call it the r word? I said, redneck is a terminology. It's not a particular person. It isn't an ethnicity of people. It is not a derogatory term that way. And so one of the other school board members says, did she tweet it from an official school account? He says, no, it was her own personal account. And the superintendent goes, then why are we having this discussion? And that was the end of the discussion. But that's when I really started to think about the fact that what I put out into the world doesn't just represent me, it represents other people as well, within contexts, and how do I want to be seen within those contexts? So I don't really post things that are. That. I mean, that wasn't controversial, in my opinion. But I think about those kinds of things before I put them out publicly, before I write a blog post, before I tweet, before I post something on Facebook, because I realize that I represent my family, I represent the places that I work, I represent the people that I keep company with, and that if I really want to have that public Persona be something that those people want to interact with, I censor myself sometimes, and I don't think that's a bad thing. Yeah, long story. I know. [00:13:04] Speaker B: It was definitely a monumental time in history. I try to consider my audience with everything I post. Is this going to help them, or is it for me to just vent now? Sometimes, like when I was having major, want to punch a wall, frustration with elementor, our friends at Elementor. But sometimes elementor is a little clinicky. And I was very. And they were like, such good sports. [00:13:42] Speaker A: Just like, remember that tweet liked it. [00:13:45] Speaker B: And they tweeted back and they were. [00:13:46] Speaker A: Like, everybody kind of like, keep you cool, engagement to engagement. [00:13:51] Speaker B: That was not about me being of service to the WordPress community. That was definitely me in a state of frustration. I rarely do that, but every once in a while, I just wanted to just like. And I did not expect that to get any traction whatsoever. That wasn't one of my proudest moments, but it was kind of funny, especially all the. I did not expect that at all. But, yeah, I try to think about, am I tweeting for myself? Sometimes I have to, or am I tweeting to be of service? And sometimes I'm tweeting for myself because something is funny and I want to share and share the laughter, like something goofy that my daughter says or does, of course, really good at. Lately she's been slaying me with the comedy. [00:14:42] Speaker A: I was recording videos yesterday. [00:14:44] Speaker B: She's at the gym. [00:14:45] Speaker A: She texts me, and she think Joe. [00:14:48] Speaker B: Rogan does leg day. His legs. [00:14:50] Speaker A: Look. [00:14:56] Speaker B: My evaluation of Joe Rogan's legs, that would be a funny tweet. But I try to make it funny, useful of service, rather than all about me. But I know a lot of people. Maybe they just need to journal some. [00:15:18] Speaker A: People or take a beat. Take a beat? [00:15:23] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:23] Speaker A: Just walk. [00:15:24] Speaker B: Touch grass. [00:15:27] Speaker A: Touch grass. I first heard that for the first time last fall, and I was like, what does that mean? Until I realized it was like, come out of your mother's basement and experience nature. [00:15:39] Speaker B: Yes. I like that whole idea, touch grass. Because it's so simple, right? It's so simple. Grass is weeds. They're everywhere. Just be careful. If you touch grass in Texas, you might get bit by fire ants or chiggers. Who knows? [00:15:56] Speaker A: Don't you have those scorpion things down there, too? We do have scorpions. [00:16:00] Speaker B: They're not as bad as the ones in Arizona, but I've had a scorpion walking across my kitchen floor. And the cool thing is cats will notice them right away and be like, oh, what the heck's this new toy? And they don't get really stung by them. And our scorpions here are like, you just step on them and kill them like a centipede. [00:16:22] Speaker A: A little side story. When Lydia was little, she had just watched fivewill goes west. Do you remember that american tale? And Fiveville goes west? That one, the Disney, it was in the early 90s. She was born. So the little mouse family that, whatever. So five will goes west. They've left New York City, and they're heading out west. And five will get separated from his family, this little mouse creature, and he's in the desert. And there are scorpions, and he's terrified of them. And I don't remember the whole thing. Right. So my daughter, who lives in western New York, suddenly had this terror about scorpions. She was terrified. I'm like, they don't live. Yeah, we would have to travel on an airplane for you to find scorpions, but she was still terrified of them. And we met a woman who lived in Texas or something, and I said, oh, would you tell her about how she doesn't need to be afraid about scorpions in New York? And the lady was like, oh, let me tell you all about. So, like, she quelled her fear, but that was just so funny when you. Fire ants and scorpions. Yeah, we don't have those here. [00:17:29] Speaker B: Yeah, nature here is. Well, right now I'm not too spiked off about it, but it's coming. The trees are still pretty bare, although it was like 80 degrees day before yesterday. I'm like, ooh, it was 50 here. [00:17:47] Speaker A: And then Monday. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Was it 50? [00:17:49] Speaker A: Yeah, it's February. It's supposed to be snowing and it's not. [00:17:54] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:17:54] Speaker A: So weird. Yeah. [00:17:56] Speaker B: Hot summer with this weird spring. It's going to be 90 on Monday. I'm like, not putting the air on, not doing it. If it says February, if it's the second month of the year, the air conditioner is not going on. I don't care where I live. [00:18:12] Speaker A: Okay, dad, you will not turn thermostat until October. We will not heat this house. I don't care how cold it gets. That's not how it's supposed to work, Kathy. I'm sorry. [00:18:27] Speaker B: Well, since my husband isn't monitoring the thermostats, I guess I have to. [00:18:33] Speaker A: Oh. In the spirit of being our own worst enemy, I will tell you what I struggle with the most as far as my own worst enemy ness is not going to bed at an earlier time every night. [00:18:46] Speaker B: Oh, really? [00:18:48] Speaker A: I think if I could force myself to actually close my eyes and let myself lay there until I fell asleep, I would probably feel better during the day. I'd have more energy. But I am my own worst enemy. I have this major fomo about what I could miss anywhere in the world while I'm asleep, and it makes it hard for me to actually not be an insomniac. So I am my own worst enemy when it comes to my sleep schedule. [00:19:15] Speaker B: See, that's one thing. Claire did not sleep. She slept in, like, 90 minutes increments, and I was in bad shape. I was in bad shape for a good three years. So sleep is like, my. And my husband was like, he night owl up until 02:00 a.m. A lot of the time. So, I mean, we didn't sleep in separate. We slept in separate rooms and have since, gosh, forever. And, yeah, no, that was my thing, like, 950. I don't want to talk to anybody else. 10:00 p.m. I am out. I'm a little more lenient now. And now that I don't have to wake up at a certain time and get the kids to school and do all of that kind of rigid schedule type of things. And work is a lot less scheduled, I give myself a break a little bit more. So, like, if it's 1030, but if I get that first couple of yawns, I really answer that. Answer the call. Answers call. That is one thing that's not negotiable for me, man. And upstairs, because that's where I found him and Max's room. I can't sleep in there because Max. [00:20:33] Speaker A: Is gone and all this stuff. [00:20:34] Speaker B: But he went through this period where it was like 230 in the morning, and he's like, vicky, vicky, what time is it? And I'm like, it's shut the f up o'clock. It's dark outside. You hear me probably snoring over here. There's a dog or two sleeping on the bed, snoring, too. It is not time to ask Vicki what time it is. [00:20:58] Speaker A: Read the room, man. Read the room. A couple hours later, what time is it? [00:21:06] Speaker B: And I'm like, this man is not sleeping on a normal schedule anymore. Like, what is going on? That just broke through it. I'm just like, all right, I sleep upstairs now. Not sleeping with him, not sleeping in the same room as him. And for a while, I just like, go and sleep on the sofa. But that's not comfortable. [00:21:22] Speaker A: You need a real sleep. You need a bed. [00:21:25] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess the anger of not getting sleep broke me through my block. I think we block ourselves, and that's how we end up being our own worst enemy, is we block ourselves from making progress or letting things go in our lives because of something we're holding on to, something that we can't just break through and own. Right now, I own that room upstairs. It's my room now. It's like, I don't care that you had a stroke in this room. I don't care. It's my room now. And just really kind of like claiming that back from something else in my head. It's just like, it's all here, all my problems, every single one of them. [00:22:07] Speaker A: Me, too. I love it. Well, I don't know what the answer is, but I think for me, it's being cognizant of those things that I'm allowing myself to do that's holding me back or making myself my worst enemy. Right. So acknowledgment is the first thing. Maybe setting some new goals for myself would be another, but also just literally taking time before I respond to things, because knee jerk reactions for me are not healthy. And so I need to maybe vent with a friend. Like, you have received more than one text when I've been like, I can't believe this is what's happening, and I just need to vent to somebody before I say the wrong thing to somebody else kind of thing. And that helps if you have somebody who's a confidante that you can kind of get that touch point with and make sure that, am I overreacting? Am I underreacting, or is just telling you that I'm frustrated enough to not tell the person that's frustrating me the wrong thing? Yeah. [00:23:17] Speaker B: I think it really comes down to, especially when you're feeling stuff like that, it's just, like, being really intentional. What's the outcome that you really want from? Sometimes it's just like, oh, I just need this off my chest. I don't want to think about it again. Other times, it's like, okay, I need to have this hard conversation with this person, and my intent in doing so is that I want to be heard. I want them to understand how their actions are affecting me, that kind of thing. But it's like, just really being intentional. What is it that you really want about it? When I wouldn't want to go upstairs, what was my intent there? Like, not replaying in my head. Guess what, Kat? You get to decide replays. The block made no sense, so I had to really just being intentional about what it is you want and going for that. [00:24:09] Speaker A: Absolutely. Focus on the positive, because even in the worst times, on the darkest days, sometimes it's hard to see that. But you can, within a few days or weeks, usually find something positive to focus on. [00:24:24] Speaker B: Yeah, definitely. [00:24:25] Speaker A: And sometimes it's dark humor. [00:24:30] Speaker B: Know that one? [00:24:33] Speaker A: I'll tell you, one of my darkest humorous is after my dad died, which was absolutely gutting. And, you know, you saw me through that period. I called my sister, and I said, knock, knock. And she said, who's there? And I said, not dad. And we both laughed hysterically. And if anybody had overheard us, they would have been like, oh, my God. But we both just needed to see a little bit of humor in the grief and so it got us through. And yes, if you all are listening now and you think I'm a horrible person, that's okay. I did what I had to get through my dad's grief. [00:25:08] Speaker B: Comedy is our coping. [00:25:11] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:25:11] Speaker B: Join us or get out of the way. [00:25:15] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Anyway, well, I hope you have a good weekend. I'm going to try to get some more sleep this weekend and get out of my own way for that, especially because I'm prepping for Asia in a week and a half. [00:25:27] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh, it's that fast? [00:25:29] Speaker A: I leave a week from Monday. So when people are hearing this, it'll be like a week from the day they listen to this. When I publish it on Monday. Yeah, I leave on the fourth. March 4. March 4. Love it. Anyway, I know. Exactly. Keep on going. Keep on trucking. Let's get out of our own ways, stop being our own worst enemies and try to see the positive things in life. It's a lot easier to deal with if you do. Thanks for being here. Thanks for always being at the other end. Kathy, I appreciate you. [00:26:03] Speaker B: Yeah, I appreciate you, too. Thanks for the fun combo. [00:26:06] Speaker A: Anytime. And to everybody else, bye bye. This has been WP motivate with Kathy Zant and Michelle freshette. To learn more or to sponsor us, go to wpmotivate.com.