S3 E36 When Baby Steps Become Giant Leaps

SPEAKER_01 0:14

Good evening and welcome to the Comforting Voice podcast. I'm your host Chester, and I'm joined in the studio tonight by Emmy the Minimacum and the giant dog, who is laying on the floor completely out cold, and that will be your Darth Vader sound effects in the background. I will do my best to edit them out. It's easier than picking up a 140-pound dog. Anyway, how are you? How has your week been? I hope everything is going your way, and I hope that your week is just rockin'. Oh my gosh. I do apologize again for last Friday. I just was not feeling well. I got a very good night's sleep three nights in a row, and that helped tremendously. So I've got a little bit better energy back, I'm feeling better, and I'm ready to roll. So we will absolutely continue where we left off on our Friday night vintage bedtime story with Alice through the looking glass. Oh my gosh. As a gentle reminder, Humpty Dumpty will be in the house. It's like a celebrity will be here. Well, not really, because it's a storybook, but you know, hey, it sounded good, right? I've got to give you something to look forward to, and it really is a fun chapter with the exchange with Humpty Dumpty. He's quite the character. So I hope you're looking forward to Friday night. Let's get you comfortable and ready to relax here before we start our episode. I've got some really, really, really fun stuff for you to listen to, doze off to, relax to, hang out with me, whatever it is that you're here for. Get comfortable, get cozy, put your feet up. Are you are you here to fall asleep? Make sure you've got your pillow all squished up in that perfect shape so that you fall asleep without any worries, without having to flop around, make adjustments, all of that nonsense. Get that out of the way now and make sure everything you need is at your fingertips so you don't have to worry about that either. Bottle of water, hot cup of tea. Maybe this time of year you need to have a fan running so the air circulates and you stay a little bit cooler. Whatever it is you need, get that all done right now. Once you're ready, engage in a really awesome, productive stretch. Really reach through your arms, your legs, engage those muscles through the hands, flex your fingers and toes, wiggle your fingers and toes, and then release that stretch. You're gonna feel that relaxation just kind of take hold and melt into your body. It's wonderful. After that, take at least one or two really good deep productive breaths of air, inhale to about the count of four, hold it to about the count of three, top it off with another quick little inhale, hold it for about two more counts, and then exhale very slowly to about the count of six, eight if you can make that happen. And you're gonna feel wonderful, you're gonna just have that relaxation take hold. You're probably gonna wake up tomorrow, never know what hit ya. Oh my gosh, it's a beautiful thing. Now, as for Emmy the pickle chicken here, she came down to the studio with me. She saw the cigar box across the room where I have to keep it now, and she still went bonkers. So we had a very short argument. She had to sit across the room while I did the tea tag and fortune cookie slip draw. I'm gonna have to figure this out, folks. I gotta figure it out. She goes bonkers, absolutely out of her mind now when she sees that cigar box. Once they lay claim on something, they can't really comprehend anything else. Parrots are very strange creatures that way. So we got that argument out of the way before you had to listen to it as the listener base, and we're gonna read those to you right now. So your tea tag for the night no you cannot have the tea tag. Joy is the Well you stopped walking on everything. Okay. Joy is the essence of success and your fortune cookie slip. You will enjoy doing something different this coming weekend. Well that's wonderful news. Congratulations No you can't have that either. The lucky numbers off the back of the fortune cookie slip three, eighteen, twenty-one three, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty, thirty-seven, and forty with added effect from the pickle chicken. Good luck if you play number games like the lottery. I hope you win big, or at least win something. Maybe your money back. We're gonna rapidly put the tea tag and the fortune cookie slip in the archive receptacle. Which Emmy seems to equate with the same passion as she feels about the cigar box. We got problems here. You gonna steal my card? She was trying to throw my phone on the floor earlier. She is out of control, I swear. Okay. Emmy, don't come here. Okay, enough about the bird. Let's see what you guys are up to. This is a segment I call join the fun, and each Tuesday I feature three countries from our listener base. I give you some fun and sometimes little known facts about those countries, and it's my way that we can all get to know each other from afar. So tonight we have a wonderful lineup. Starting off with French Polynesia. French Polynesia is made up of 118 islands and atolls scattered across the South Pacific, covering an area of ocean about the size of Western Europe. Wow. French Polynesia is one of the few places in the world where black pearls are naturally cultivated, making them one of the region's most treasured exports. French Polynesia was home to some of history's greatest ocean navigators who crossed thousands of miles of open sea using only the stars, ocean swells, winds, and wildlife to guide them. So if you're joining the fun from French Polynesia, you represent exploration, remarkable skill, and the confidence to find your way even across the wildest of oceans. That's so cool. Next on our list is Costa Rica. Costa Rica has no standing army. It abolished its military in 1948 and has invested those resources in education, health care, and conservation instead. Costa Rica protects more than a quarter of its land in national parks and nature reserves, making it a world leader in conservation. Costa Rica is home to about 5% of all the plant and animal species on Earth, despite covering only about 0.03% of the planet's land area. So if you're joining the fund from Costa Rica, you represent peace, stewardship, and the understanding that protecting something precious is one of life's greatest strengths. And last on our listener base list for this week is Thailand. Thailand is the only country in Southeast Asia that was never colonized by a European power, allowing it to preserve its own monarchy, traditions, and national identity. Thailand is home to the world's smallest mammal by skull size, and that would be the Kitty's hog-nosed bat, often called the Bumblebee bat. Thailand celebrates Loi Kretong. Did I say that right? Loi Ketrong, a beautiful festival where thousands of floating lanterns and decorated baskets are released into the water as a symbol of gratitude and new beginnings. So if you're joining the fun from Thailand, you represent independence, wonder, and the beautiful tradition of celebrating hope and fresh beginnings. Oh my goodness. And the bat. I love bumblebee bats. They're so tiny and they're so cute. Oh my gosh. That's if you find bats cute, at any rate. Okay, let's just take a minute and see what Lawn sent in for this week's Got A Minute.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

And now for something really different. Just some lawnisms that I've gathered throughout the last month or so. I've had dirt on my boots and on my name. I've also had dirt under my nails and in the cracks of calluses. Though wallet thin, I am very heart wealthy from honest work, from offering a hand up whenever able, from leaving a trail of people and animals better off having known me. I have abundance of soul-filled moments, and I can take all of the above with me. Coins, precious trinkets, and gathered things all remain here. And make sure to acknowledge that every new light is a new chance to get it right. Another day to be able to say I love you to those walking in your soul. Thrive.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Thank you so much, Lon. That was awesome, and it was almost right at exactly one minute. Okay. So what do I have for you this week? Wow, it is our first Tuesday of the month. You know what that means. We're gonna talk about our ongoing you do you project. Do a better you project, uh whatever. I don't know what it is. It's the non New Year's resolution, New Year's resolutions. Pick a project of self-improvement, even if it's a couple tiny little things, it doesn't have to be mind-blowingly large, and do ongoing self-improvement work in some way to make your own life better or easier or more enjoyable, or whatever your goals are. And it doesn't need to be too crazy or too impressive or huge or anything. It just needs to be something that you want to do to make life better for yourself in some way. And I've talked about my per my personal projects, and you know, a couple things to keep in mind so you don't get off track or you don't get frustrated, that sort of thing. Good mindset to make changes, right? So I think what's important to keep in mind right now is the magic of audio editing. And I'm gonna take the bird up to the bird room because she's attacking all my ballpoint pens now. Okie dokie, so Emmy is now back up in the bird room. When I was up there, Baxter was sitting there looking very innocent, so I knew something was up, and Murray was nowhere to be seen. I heard a noise. He's in a box, just tearing stuff up for fun. Then he chased me away from the box. Oh my goodness. Um anyway. So we got that problem wrangled, everyone is normalized now and back to being non-aggressive, boxes safely out of reach, so it's no longer territory, and the giant dog is in the hallway having a snack. I think we're set. Oh my gosh. One thing I forgot to mention at the beginning of this episode, if anyone out there is following the Aspen Acres fire in Colorado, I don't live very far from there. Now I'm safe, I'm in an area that's not really anticipated to get hit by that fire, thank goodness. But it did allow me yesterday to go down to the Pueblo Reservoir and get some amazing, amazing video footage of the firefighter planes, the super scoopers that come into the lake. They scoop up, I think it's like six tons of water, and then they have to take off with all of that weight sloshing around inside the airplane, make it back to the fire to drop their load, and they're making round trips in about 12 minutes. So every 12 minutes or so the planes come in, they get a load of water, they skim the surface of the lake. It is amazing to see. Those pilots have incredible, incredible skills. They are very, very specialized, and um wow, it was so impressive to see those firefighters just working so hard. They can go for about four hours before they have to refuel, and they are just going constantly. So they also have helicopters, they're bringing in a Chinook, and we've got countless, countless amounts of firefighters that have come in from everywhere, not to mention the ground crew that's helping everyone. So thanks to everyone out there fighting, and if you would like to see some of that video footage, down in the show notes, I've got a link for the Voice of the Parrot YouTube channel. That's my bird YouTube channel, and I have them posted there so you can take a look. I had a very, very good vantage point to watch, and I got to see them come in a number of times. Got some really, really good video. All right, moving right along, let's jump into our New Year's resolutions that are not New Year's resolutions, they're just success stories. Personal success efforts. I don't know. I always change the name of this. It can be whatever you call it. So anyway, you know, I've been doing pretty good. I've been keeping things tidy as I go, trying to, you know, try to clean, uh put things away, not let things build up and clutter accumulate. And then I have much more time on the weekends. I don't have to worry about, oh, and I'm just gonna do house housework all day. It keeps it more balanced and I'm happier. Um some days get away from me, and then I have to play ketchup, you know, a little while later, and that's okay. I don't try to bust my own chops. I've been eating healthier, a little bit better choices, but some days I bomb out. I don't bust my own chops. I have been cooking more, and I've been keeping it simple. That's been the key to my success with that. I find healthy stuff to eat, and I don't make huge complicated meals out of it. I keep it simple and within my uh this is really doable with all the stress levels I'm experiencing, kind of boundaries. Works great. Make stuff I like, and uh I have cookbooks to inspire me. We're gonna do some more of that in the future. I've been moving more, I've been more active, not crazy levels of it, but I make sure that I'm active around the house, and when the weather allows and the temperatures allow, the dog and I are taking walks, even if they're short walks, and I'm just trying to make a point of not sitting, right? It's really bad for you to do that. Not going crazy on any one particular type of exercise. I'm just being more active, doing a little bit of stretching in between, uh, nothing radical, and being very mindful of myself. But the one thing I wanted to talk about that was a decision I made at the very beginning of the year, and I mentioned it recently. I had a career change, partially out of necessity, partially because I wanted to. I just I didn't want to settle for just finding a minimum wage job or something that was going to be miserable to work at. Been there, done that, we've discussed it. Wow, nope, no more. So I picked an exciting career in the back-end office angle of mortgages. And I'm telling you what, at 58 years old, I want to talk about this because I know there's people out there who can be inspired by this, and maybe it'll help push you into greatness. So let's talk about being pushed into greatness, even if you're kicking and screaming the whole way. So this is my ongoing self-betterment effort of a better attitude, embracing new things. That's another thing I've been doing is just trying to have a more positive outlook, see things from a different angle, find new ways, learn something, etc. This all fits into that. But it's not without its challenges when you're my age. I would say this would apply to probably anyone over maybe 45, especially. Wow, there's just a new set of challenges involved, and it's something nobody tells you about, you can't anticipate it, you don't know, you're in the middle of it, you find out then. And wow, that can be weird and brutal in its own capacity. So these are some of my humorous observations of things I've had to navigate, and you don't read about this. You see all these inspiring things online about, oh, I'm gonna start over. I'm this age, and I'm taking on a new career, and you can do it too. And you know, you see other people out there and they give you the success stories, but they don't tell you the experience of how they got to the success part. And that's what throws you, that's what blindsides you. Holy cow, that's all I can say. Just it there's stuff nobody talks about, so I'm gonna talk about it. Maybe it will inspire you, maybe you'll realize that what you're going through isn't so unusual after all, you're gonna survive it. Maybe it'll make you laugh in some capacity. There's gotta be some use for it for someone out there. As an old person, trying to do young people things, this is what nobody warned me about. Everything has an app now. You cannot avoid this. You're gonna have to download apps onto your phone, and sometimes with a new career, a new job, it's the way people work. I never in my life thought, and I actually am not dealing with this, but I have, and I know other people that are. You go to a job, you start the job, you fill out some paperwork, and they hand you your schedule. You know your schedule. If it's something that changes, they post it somewhere. No, no, no, now they've got scheduling apps, you do everything through the app. Be aware of that, you're gonna be tied to apps. It's just a part of life now. Every company has its own logins, and every password requirement is gonna be designed by something like NASA, level of complicated. So you have to figure all that out. Google Password Manager is your best friend on that. Learn that. That's what I'm gonna tell you about passwords, websites, logins, all that junk. Don't stress yourself out. It needs to be secure many times. Google Password Manager, it's in your Google, it's in your Google account. And hand in hand with that, if you're having problems navigating what other people consider simple things, like your Google account, have someone that's a teenager help you. I I'm not kidding and I'm not being sarcastic. Have a young person help you and lean into it because. Even if they're in their early 20s or something, they're going to be able to just show you where to go, how to find the thing, how to do the thing, and you won't have to hunt for the answer for an you know for four hours or something. Save yourself the frustration, find a young person, ask them. Not every young person is going to know everything. Understand that too. It's not just us at an older age. There's a younger generation that they just haven't learned it. So find someone in your job or in your family or your friend circle that can help you with some of these simple things that drive us nuts when we first start trying to embrace them. It'll make it way easier. I've also noticed that software is a lot different now. Sometimes they make it so easy to navigate that it becomes very hard to navigate. I don't know how else to phrase it, but it's true. So take a minute to learn it, play with it, learn how to navigate it, and know that you're gonna get lost a little bit at first. Just happens. And then honestly, half of the technology I'm encountering assumes I know how to use that technology. So I'm having to navigate that too. Crazy, crazy confused. And I found an analogy to compare my feelings to, or if you can relate. If anyone out there has ever watched the alien movies, they started in 78, 79, something, with Sigourney Weaver playing the part of Ripley. At the very end of the first movie, she goes into hypersleep in her escape pod uh ship thing. And at the beginning of the second movie, Aliens, they find her, she's been drifting in space for like 87 years or something in hypersleep. So she gets woke up from hypersleep, all this time is passed, she found out her daughter back on Earth, who was like eight or ten years old when she went into space, already died of old age, everything looks different, and she's technically over a hundred years old, yet young, but totally obsolete. The company changed, the world passed her by, and she didn't even know how to fit in. So if you've ever seen that movie and you see the beginning of where she's just trying to figure out who she is now, um that's how I've felt taking on this new career. But also like Ripley, she does figure out a way to take her existing skills and make herself useful. And she saves the day. So find a way to save the day. And I've challenged myself to keep kind of a mindset like that, like it can't be that hard. It's not that hard. I just gotta figure out small steps and logic my way through this, and I have resources to get answers. And beyond the resources, I have people that will help me find more answers. So I've figured out how to navigate all that as a system. I get used to all the new stuff, and my attitude improves again. Sometimes it's challenging, sometimes it's hard, sometimes you want to give up. But you have to realize you didn't suddenly become unintelligent, you just walked into a situation that you're just disoriented. You're trying to get your feet up under you, you you're trying to play catch up, and that's okay. A lot of people aren't gonna bust your chops if they know you're giving at your best. But I was not expecting how awkward it was gonna be. I didn't expect how many constant questions I was gonna have. I didn't expect that I wasn't gonna know obvious stuff, and I didn't expect that I was gonna feel completely mentally exhausted from simple learning tasks and simple new tasks that's part of my new career. So I had to sort some of that out. Why is learning at my age such a challenge? Well, we get locked into ideas, and then we forget what it's like to not know stuff. We forget what it's like to be a total beginner. And I think one thing I've had to keep in mind is that as you go through a career, different jobs, you get good at that. One career maybe rolls over into another job that's similar or the same. We know the stuff. We have the answers, we've been doing it for a while. So when you try something new later in life, you're not a new person anymore. And when we're kids, we approach stuff with a different level of embracing it, wonder, we're excited about it. When we're older, we make ourselves feel dumb because we put expectations on ourselves of the past. So I've had jobs where I was very, very, very good at them, careers where I was very good at them, but I don't have anything that's in common this time. I'm starting off square one, and I've had to give myself a whole new set of understanding while still working on some of those self-improvement projects because guess what? They've made it easier for me. Staying organized, staying tidy, embracing new things, trying to keep a more positive attitude. Some of that stuff I've talked about with cleaning my digital space and being selective as to what I'm exposed to and what I reject. That's helped me tremendously. And these are all little tiny things that I put a little effort into each day. I don't put a lot of time into each one, so I might just tidy something up for a minute. I might try to eat a little bit better than just total junk food. So maybe I don't really win that day on my eating efforts, but I don't totally bomb out either. And I've just tried to figure out balance with all of it. Some days I bomb out on certain things. Some days I'm really on top of it. But all of those little tiny self-improvements have really helped set me up for success for the big change I took on with the career change. And I think it's helped me manage stress as I've done that. So I guess honestly, it seems kind of weird that I talk about taking on a new career. Not everyone's going to. Maybe it's a big project, maybe it's a big life change of another nature. If you start working on little tiny itty-bitty self-improvement projects, or life improvement, or the flow of day-to-day stuff improvements, whatever it is that you're trying to improve, you get good at one thing, take on another, take on another, and make it so that it sets you up for success in other ways. Maybe you manage stress better. Maybe you are ready for that big thing because you've organized a whole bunch of other areas of your life. Whatever the case, you might be surprised at how some of these little tiny things can add up to make your life better when some big thing occurs. And I never planned all of this out. It's just I've started having all of these aha moments that this idea I had that I started presenting on the podcast, gosh, that gave me momentum to keep working on stuff, to keep helping myself. And when I took on the big thing out of dire necessity, if you go back and listen to my story, you'll know that I had no other choice. It was either get some crappy job I was gonna absolutely hate, that won't make ends meet, burn myself into oblivion, or take on a new career change that might fit better. So I finally found something. It took a while, it took some research, it took a friend mentioning, hey, you might be good at this. Wow, it took time, planning, and organization like I've never experienced before to make it happen. And it's still not earth shattering, but to me it's earth shattering, and I'm finally able to really embrace and enjoy the gratitude moments from all the hard work now. And then that is motivating me more for everything involved in all this because I'm starting to see how much easier life is getting for me. One tiny, tiny, tiny effort at a time. And here again, you're gonna have days that you bomb out, maybe it doesn't work for you for some reason or another, but keep after it and keep putting one foot in front of the other. It really helps. And I'll tell you one other thing it's helped with. It's helped me get out of a funk thinking I'm too old to do something new. You know, it gets rid of all those self-sabotaging thoughts that's natural to hit your brain. Wow, give it a shot, people, whether you're taking on a big, exciting project or a life change, or you're moving on to the next phase, whatever it is, you can do this. Find a way, and start planning, start doing little things, start doing tiny things to make your life easier, removing stress from your life in some way or another, and call that practice as you go, and when those big things occur, you're gonna be ready for them. Or at least more ready than you would have been if you hadn't started doing all these little tiny things. I hope that makes sense to somebody. I hope it inspires someone. I hope maybe someone out there laughed at some of my woes and my struggles. Oh my gosh, I've had to laugh at myself over and over and over and over. And that's another thing I've been working on. Trying to lighten up about everything so I don't take stuff as serious. That lightens your stress loads too. Find ways to do it, treat yourself good, and keep moving forward, people. Like Juan always says, thrive. Alright, that's all I got for you tonight. I'm gonna see you Friday night for our vintage bedtime stories for everyone. We're continuing through the looking glass, and we are on the Humpty Dumpty chapter. You don't want to miss it. I'll see you then. Sleep tight, good night, and bye bye,