Misunderstandings from past discussions need clearing up, and here, we emphasize that our choices are not judgments on others but reflections of our evolving values. Personal growth often means moving past certain phases and people, and our dialogue aims to make listeners feel less isolated in their own struggles.
The pressure to conform, especially around lifestyle choices like quitting drinking, can be immense. Yet, the power of saying "no" and staying true to one's values is profound. We also address the discomfort of navigating social norms and the realization that reactions from others often stem from their own insecurities. This candid conversation is designed to empower you to embrace personal growth, set boundaries, and confidently prioritize self-alignment over people-pleasing. Tune in for a heartfelt exploration of change, loss, and the journey toward intentional living.
Misunderstandings from past discussions need clearing up, and here, we emphasize that our choices are not judgments on others but reflections of our evolving values. Personal growth often means moving past certain phases and people, and our dialogue aims to make listeners feel less isolated in their own struggles.
The pressure to conform, especially around lifestyle choices like quitting drinking, can be immense. Yet, the power of saying "no" and staying true to one's values is profound. We also address the discomfort of navigating social norms and the realization that reactions from others often stem from their own insecurities. This candid conversation is designed to empower you to embrace personal growth, set boundaries, and confidently prioritize self-alignment over people-pleasing. Tune in for a heartfelt exploration of change, loss, and the journey toward intentional living.
Hello and welcome to the Cameo Show. I'm your host, cameo, and welcome my trusty, beloved co-host and husband, mr Greg Braun. Today we have some things we're going to clear the air on with regard to, like, some conversations that we've had in the past and things that we feel like we should address just to kind of further and deepen the conversation around those things. But before we get into all that, y'all know when Greg's here he has a dad joke for us. Did you bring one?
Speaker 2:
Yes, so actually this one is about a dad joke. So when does a joke become a dad joke? I don't know when it's apparent.
Speaker 1:
Total dad joke. He's always bringing the heat with the dad jokes. So the first thing I want to dive into is kind of recapping that Greg and I have been married almost 20 years. We've been through some really turbulent times. We run a business together, we have two teenagers, so for those of you who maybe are new here, you know who we are a little bit more as we dive into this episode.
Speaker 1:
Often we share what we're going through as a couple, as business owners, as parents, what we've been through and how we've kind of clawed our way out of those spots and what we've learned along the way, in an effort to help people feel like they're not alone.
Speaker 1:
Ten years ago we were in a really, really low spot in our marriage and just in our lives individually, and there was a time when what I was searching for wasn't available and I could find kind of like one article that made me feel like there was hope, and that's why we do what we do now is that if you're someone who's seeking to make meaningful change in your life and you feel like you can't find any information that makes you feel hopeful or makes you feel normal for what you're going through, that's why we're here, sharing what we've been through in a pretty transparent way sometimes a little bit scary. Transparent so that you don't feel alone. One of the things that we also talk a lot about is that we haven't had alcohol as part of our life for. I'm nine years and Greg is coming up on 10. And prior to that we were party animals.
Speaker 1:
We were wild asses. Not just have a drink with dinner, I mean every once in a while, but usually like we're going to, we're going to take it to the next level with anything that we do, and that included drinking a decade ago. And we've done a couple of episodes, um, about how our life has changed since we stopped drinking. I've done some solo episodes about the impact that alcohol has on our life that maybe we don't recognize and those tend to ruffle some feathers, because drinking is a very socially accepted activity. It's something that most people do. Some people do better than others. Some people, you know, don't have the tendency to go overboard. Some people are very protective of the fact that you know I drink and it doesn't impact my life. That episode definitely ruffled some feathers because the point was talking about the silent impact, so to our health and different things that we don't see as immediately impacted, and I wasn't coming for anyone's alcohol. I was trying to illustrate some of those things that we don't see, that are subtle, that are not so in our faces about deciding not to drink alcohol. So that was a long winded way of saying like we have some things that we want to say as a follow up to some of the things that we've shared in the past. So if you're all caught up to speed now on who we are and why we do what we do, let's get into it. So, with regard to the alcohol, I want to start there. Things about subtle impacts and how it affects our life was not an attack on anyone who has a good relationship or finds balance in their life with alcohol. It was an opportunity to understand that there are things that, like I said, maybe you don't see creeping in that are long-term health consequences. It was an opportunity to explore. You know, how is alcohol serving you? What does it add to your life? And long-term, you know, is the cost of that, of what the long-term consequences could be that studies show are apparent. Is it worth it? I was not and am never coming after anyone's alcohol. I am never saying that you are a bad person if you decide to continue to have alcohol as a part of your life.
Speaker 1:
I was simply illustrating that you don't have to be an ass and an over-the-top drinker or an addict to decide that alcohol doesn't fit in your life anymore and the things associated with alcohol do not fit in your life anymore, and so I just want to be very clear on that right out of the gate which is a perfect segue to what we were talking about a little while ago is that in the episodes where we share how our life has changed, we talk a lot about moving past phases in our life. That, along with that decision to stop drinking or any decision to make meaningful change in your life, you often change the people and the places and the things that you align yourself with. And it has been brought to our attention a couple of different times in a couple of different ways that that feels hurtful to the people that were a part of our past life, and I can see why. I mean we definitely are understanding and compassionate of that. So I want to dig into that a little bit further.
Speaker 1:
When we say that if you're making meaningful change in your life, you're going to lose people, you're going to change the people that you're around. What I'm not saying is that that comes from a place of judgment, or that you're better than them, or that you're around. What I'm not saying is that that comes from a place of judgment, or that you're better than them, or that you're no longer meaningful to me in any way, shape or form, and that doesn't just have to be with drinking. That could be with different phases in your adult life. We all change.
Speaker 1:
We're seeking change that could have to do with like you change your career, or maybe your kids have grown up and so what you once shared when your kids were little is different now that they're doing their own things. What we don't want is for it to feel like it's insensitive to the people who have been a part of our story, because, although they are not necessarily a part of our story or the places or the things are not a part of our story at this time they were and still are an important part of who we were, an important part of who we've become, and always a part of the story, and so I feel like, after that's been brought to our attention, this is all about being transparent and honest and learning as we go. That was never the intention. It may have come across that way, and for that I want to make sure that we're very clear that we didn't want to make anyone from our past feel that way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I mean I would just add that as you grow and you evolve and you change, you're going to have new relationships. You're not going to maybe nurture the relationships that you had in the past when your things in common aren't the same anymore. So, as much as you would like to still be friends with all of your high school football buddies you were all together because you were playing football together and you had a common thing together that you were doing. But as life goes on, maybe you're not playing in a band with certain people anymore, maybe you're doing different things for hobbies, different things for enjoyment. So those people, those places, those things will naturally change. And I think what we're talking about is like when you say we're not going to drink.
Speaker 2:
That's a pretty big line in the sand, Because if you look at your life when you were a drinker, your life revolved around drinking.
Speaker 1:
Where's the party?
Speaker 2:
So it was very easy to be around people that were doing the same thing, and the one thing that we've noticed when we've moved to Florida 10 years ago is we didn't really know anybody when we moved here and so basically it was like we're basically starting over with a, with a social circle, and that it was almost impossible to do if you're not drinking, because the drinking would have been easy. You know, there was lots of happy hours and things that were going on where you just get together and drink and then you know, an hour into that you're just kind of everyone's loosey, goosey and you're and you're loosened up. But if you're a non-drinker it's hard to socialize like that, because who are my people? When you're drinking? It's just you grab a beer and we're part of the party.
Speaker 1:
Anybody's, your people. I look back through pictures I was actually just doing this a few days ago of a time in our life when we were out a lot. You were playing in a band. I was not in the band, but I thought I was the lead.
Speaker 2:
The lead party starter.
Speaker 1:
The main event.
Speaker 2:
And.
Speaker 1:
I was drinking a lot. I took a lot of pride in being the life of the party and the social butterfly, and where I'm going with that is that there are so many pictures of me with like people I don't even know who they are Like. If you said I'll give you a million dollars if you can tell me who that person is, why you're taking a picture with them, why it looks like you have been friends since you were in kindergarten, I would not be given a million dollars because I would have no clue, and those were moments where, like in retrospect, I was spending nights out away from our young children, not connecting with you, waking up the next day not feeling good, and that's not really what this is about. That's just kind of what you were saying. Like anybody fits into that setting.
Speaker 1:
There were people, though, that we shared a lot of really great times with, who were meaningful people in our life, who even I mean not just due to the distance because of our move, but even if we were still in Ohio, maybe wouldn't still be as close with, because the activities change, and that's where clearing the air on that is important to me as a human, and I know, to you too, because we don't want anyone to feel like it was from a place of judgment.
Speaker 1:
Now, for you, if you're making changes in your life, be it a career change, a move, that you've decided to stop drinking, that you've decided to make different choices about the activities that you participate in from an athletic standpoint or from a health standpoint you're going to feel isolated. You're going to feel distance from the people who have been a part of your life if they're not making those same changes and you will feel likely the same way I'm talking about. We're feeling that maybe it comes across as oh, I'm now, I'm better than you, so our relationship means nothing. And just remember that wherever your place of intention is from is all that matters. Now, if you say things that are rude and disrespectful and judgmental, then you know you have to kind of reevaluate where you maybe were coming from or how that came across. But in this journey of change, you are not responsible for how other people feel or view your changes.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, there's a saying that says what you think of me is none of my business, and I think that's huge. And someone close to me gave me that bullet when I stopped drinking because that was one of my biggest concerns. Isn't that funny? Like grown man, one of my biggest concerns was the people pleasing element of it, of like well, what am I going to say? Because at that time I was working at the bank, there was happy hours. I needed to go to, you know, real estate events. There's alcohol all around, you know, to do those social things and I was so concerned about letting people down because that was my whole social identity. Up to that point, you drink and have fun and make sure everyone else is having fun, and it's almost like I felt like it was my responsibility to make sure there was a party happening, that people had a good time and remembered me.
Speaker 1:
You know, isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2:
And then, like someone just said, what someone else thinks of you is none of your business, and I was like that's powerful. And then you start becoming really confident when you say no, like, when you're like no, and you don't even feel like you need to justify it. That was a huge corner for me. I mean, it was just like wow, I just said no and that was a complete sentence.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, very strong statement. It's common to feel pulled to make choices that please people, swinging to the other end of the pendulum of not wanting to be a judgmental asshole and wanting to make sure that you are very conscious of how you're making other people feel. That's not just with drinking alcohol. That's when you're making choices about anything you're going to do or not do in your life. So recently I was talking to someone who was debating whether or not to go on this retreat that they had pseudo committed to. They have young children. They haven't been away from their children.
Speaker 1:
There was a lot of trepidation, specifically on the wife's part, about leaving. It became a hard line for them that she was not going to go. But then the husband felt a level of guilt and a level of responsibility to still go on this retreat, even solo, without his wife. Even if he was slightly uncomfortable being away from his family, even if he didn't really feel like it was the right time or that maybe he wanted to go, he felt responsible for going. It was all based around the idea that he didn't want to upset the person who had invited him, he didn't want to let them down.
Speaker 1:
And so he asked me what do, I think, and it's so much easier to say as an outsider with no emotional involvement, that it doesn't sound like it's a hell yes and if it's not a hell yes, it's a no, it isn't right, there's a reason. It doesn't feel right and whatever that means to them when you tell them that that's what your decision is or that that's your boundary, is not your business. And he was like wow, you just made that so simple. And I'm like it is simple, but not when it's you.
Speaker 1:
It's really difficult because we get our emotions wrapped up and feeling concerned for other people. We get our emotions wrapped up and feeling concerned for ourselves. There's a lot of fear, there's a lot of unknowns when you're making changes and when you're setting new boundaries and making decisions that you will encounter. And so, as you become more confident in who you are and what you stand for, don't be afraid, to your point, to just let no be a complete sentence, to let your intentionality lead without concern for not how it's going to impact people, because you don't care and you are selfish and self-centered and just people don't matter, but because it's not in alignment with what you want, and that is totally okay.
Speaker 2:
It's hard because we're pack animals. Humans are evolved from living in tribes and if you are isolated and alone, that equaled death yeah so that's hardwired in you.
Speaker 2:
So that's why you don't want to, like stand out too much. You don't want to be an outlier from the, from the herd. And until you make decisions that make you stand out from the herd, you don't really feel that. Because ever since you were a little child you went to preschool and you were told what to do, and your elementary school told what to do, what to think. High school, college and then a job. I mean like you're just the whole thing is set up where you're not really an individual. You know you're part of a team and then once you make a big decision like I'm not going to drink alcohol, and that's like america's pastime you know, it's part of our, our culture you know many cultures.
Speaker 1:
What do?
Speaker 2:
You know, then that automatically makes you the weirdo at the cookout. Why aren't you drinking? That automatically makes you the weirdo at the happy hour. Why aren't you drinking? And especially if you're used to it all the time, then you're going to feel I mean, I remember the first happy hour I went to as a non-drinker, I was literally sweating, not because I was having detox from alcohol, it was just I was so hyped up on anxious nerves of like I don't know how to act around this setting not drinking. It's easy when you just slam a Jaeger bomb and grab a couple of Coors Lights and you're in the zone. But if you're not, and you're drinking soda water with lime, you're like.
Speaker 1:
Well, and I think to your point. Like when you finally make a decision that then does make you feel isolated, it's uncomfortable and you aren't really sure how to weave that into your past relationships, right, listen, or who have reached out to us with hurt emotions, understand on a deeper level that, like when you make a decision that does make you different than what you have always been or what maybe is socially acceptable or expected of you, it is challenging to know what to do and how to present it and how to weave it back in. So for a really long time we didn't even really talk about the fact that we didn't drink. Like it was quiet, it was very not a secret, but just wasn't something that we brought to the conversation because we didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. For the better part of this decade journey, we didn't want to offend anyone by saying we don't drink because they do drink and we didn't want them to feel judged. And it's only until recently and this has been almost 10 years that we feel a lot more confident talking about it, because the benefit to empowering others to explore this for themselves outweighs the consequences of possibly hurting someone's feelings. The right people will understand where we're coming from, the people from our past who have expressed that it maybe hurt their feelings the way that we were talking about that understand now and again why we're having this conversation so that if you encounter that when you're making changes in your life and you feel nervous about talking about it at the risk of hurting someone's feelings, that is a natural part of the process. That is a normal feeling. It is okay to feel that way and, honestly, if I had to do it all over again, I probably would have just addressed the elephant in the room a lot faster. But I had to get more comfortable. You had to get more comfortable and confident in our own decisions and in working through that innate or learned behavior of people pleasing first right pizza anymore.
Speaker 1:
Whatever it is that makes you stand out from the norm, or the norm that you have been or the people that you associate with, is going to present difficult moments. The other thing that I would say to that about when you stop drinking and you weren't sure how to act and how it kind of isolated you and I'm curious to see if you think the same is that what people said to you wasn't really your business. But when you're in the moment it's hard to separate that. And then you have to remember that on the flip side so like we were hyper conscious of hurting someone's feelings, saying that we weren't drinking, and why? Because we were around people who we were drinking buddies with, or people who were drinking, and it did feel like it was from a place of judgment.
Speaker 1:
But the people who would ask us early on like, oh, you don't drink, why don't you drink? They didn't have a problem with that. They weren't super conscientious of hurting our feelings or being offensive to us. And that is just a great example of why it's not really your business what other people kind of think or how they respond to what your behavior is on both sides of the coin. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and, quite honestly, everyone is so wrapped up in their own story that if it ever would come up like I don't drink, the first thing that everyone always says is I don't drink. That much. So it's after a while, you're like I don't even, it doesn't matter, I'm not going to bring it up, because that's putting the spotlight on me.
Speaker 1:
I don't really want to do that, just like you know, just I'm fine the same thing would happen when I was bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
It would be like With food.
Speaker 1:
With food. Yeah, I would bring my stupid Tupperware of disgusting fish and broccoli to a pizza joint and it would be people showing interest in what you're doing or not doing and how they respond to. That is not necessarily from a place of judgment and being able to separate yourself from that and know, like this isn't really my business, how they're responding or reacting or judging. They're just trying to find commonality. They're just relating it to themselves in this conversation. So I would hear a lot of like well, I don't eat pizza that often or I work out not the level of bodybuilding, but I work out blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:
And it's like it's not from a place of judgment and to kind of bring it back to what we were starting to talk about in the beginning and kind of wrap this up. When we're sharing our experiences and when we're saying what has helped us progress in making changes that we've decided for ourselves and are just sharing them to maybe help someone else who finds themselves in a similar situation, it isn't from a place of judgment. It isn't from a place of oh now I'm so much better than everybody else, I'm so much better than who I used to hang out with. It's literally about sharing who I was, who I am and what has helped me along the way to inevitably help you feel more confident, convicted and less isolated in your decisions to make change and in the challenges that will present themselves as you do.
Speaker 2:
Yeah. So no matter what you're doing, whether it's trying to eat cleaner or it's trying to give up alcohol or maybe working out and you haven't been working out whatever you do, new like that is going to feel very. You'll feel very isolated because you're doing something that you haven't always done before. So it will feel very scary because you're kind of stepping out on your own and it might take a long time before you find your new tribe as you're changing, because your new tribe hasn't seen you yet, you know, hasn't connected with you yet. But it's totally normal, it's part of the process and it's part of growing is kind of feeling like you're alone on that journey.
Speaker 1:
Yeah. So stay the course and if you encounter situations like we have, where people vocalize that maybe what you're doing or what you've said hasn't landed well with them, visit it from a place of empathy and understanding. We're all human. We all interpret things differently. We all understand things differently. As it pertains to us and our own experiences, there's nothing wrong with no being a complete sentence, and there's also nothing wrong with saying you're sorry if you've hurt someone's feelings or offended someone in a way that you didn't recognize. That's what the shared human experience is about Clearing the air, making sure that everyone is on the same page, and sometimes that will land and sometimes it won't.
Speaker 1:
In sales they used to say some will, some won't. So what? Who's next? And I don't mean that in a way that like friendships or people, places and things are disposable, but just in a way that like we're all on our own journeys and sometimes we're on different places in the path and you just want to make sure that what you're doing and the changes that you're making make you a better person. And that's holistically, that's collectively, even in a situation where you maybe need to clear the air, sometimes completely normal, all normal feelings and all part of the process. There is a texting feature in the show notes. Let us know if you have questions or any topics that you'd like us to cover, or if you've encountered any of these situations that we were discussing. As you're making different choices in your life, how you've handled them or maybe want to handle them. If you need a little guidance, it can be a new conversation, and that's what this is all about. So thank you for being here on the Cameo show and until next time.