The Lives We've Lived

Jess and Lisa explore life's big questions about identity, personal growth, and whether our younger selves would be proud of who we've become. This thoughtful conversation weaves through personal turning points and the wisdom that comes from seeing life as a series of chapters.

• Reflecting on how our 14-year-old selves would view our adult lives
• Finding peace with life's unexpected turns and the different "lifetimes" we've lived
• Understanding how our stories change depending on where we choose to start and end them
• Recognizing decision fatigue and what we offload first when we're overwhelmed
• Exploring our personal "superpowers" like intuition and reading people
• Appreciating the perspective that comes with middle age and looking back across life chapters
• Considering the "what ifs" of paths not taken without regret

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Share with us whether your younger self would be surprised by your life today, and what lessons you've learned from navigating your own life chapters!

Chapters

• 0:00 Episode Introduction
• 8:33 Decision Fatigue and Self-Care
• 17:21 Would Past You Be Proud?
• 30:05 Navigating Life's Chapters
• 42:22 Superpowers: Intuition and Reading People
• 54:10 Wrapping Up and Final Thoughts

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey, it's Jess and Lisa. We've got stories to share From our hearts to your ears. Lots to unpack there. Tune in every week you won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa.

Jess: 0:21

We're Jess and Lisa, two best friends in our forties living in Maryland. This podcast is about life, motherhood, leadership and everything in between.

Lisa: 0:30

We're navigating the messy middle of personal and professional life and have learned that having someone along the way who just gets it makes the journey less hard.

Jess: 0:39

So each week we'll share something from our own lives and unpack it together in real time. Our hope is that, as we process and reflect, it'll inspire you to do the same wherever you are. Hello Lisa, happy Friday, hi.

Lisa: 0:55

Jess, happy Friday to you. How's it going? Well? It's good now, because I just drank a coffee the size of my face. I got home after having a delicious donut snack and felt like I was going to just take a big old nap. And I couldn't take a big old nap because it's the middle of the day and I'm not a cat. So I got a really big container I don't know what is this, 36 ounces, 32 ounces, whatever it is and poured myself a extra, extra large coffee, and it was very nice. So I'm still you know, the chemicals are still trying to figure themselves out, but you know, doing well I'm so impressed with people, and namely, namely you, who can metabolize that much caffeine.

Lisa: 1:46

Oh, my tolerance is pretty good, I cannot.

Jess: 1:51

I think the last time I drank that much coffee I was in high school and I was so tired. And we've talked a lot about my high school and so our listeners will probably remember that it was a little bit intense and it must have been sophomore year. I had to write a paper involving hubris, which was a very big topic in my high school English class for multiple years in a row Because of Shakespeare no more the Odyssey and Homer.

Lisa: 2:22

Oh, okay, well, okay, I guess it is a theme in a lot of our, you know, authors work. Yeah, go ahead.

Jess: 2:31

So I had to write some sort of paper and we had this paragraph style that I'm now forgetting, but it was very formulaic way to write a paragraph.

Lisa: 2:42

Okay, you had an opening sentence or yeah, topic sentence, three supporting sentences and a closing sentence or something like that.

Jess: 2:50

It was like yeah sort of it was the first sentence and kind of the theme or the thesis, yep, and then you had a statement, and then supporting argument, supporting argument, then another statement, then supporting argument, supporting argument, and then a conclusion, and so I had to write. I was writing it in that format which the name of that format I cannot remember for the life of me, probably because when it went into my brain I was caffeinated out of my mind. I had just, I just kept, it was like instant coffee, it wasn't even good coffee.

Jess: 3:24

I just kept drinking it. And then I was super over-caffeinated. And then I kid you, not one of my supporting arguments. And after I got the paper back, like I remember reading it and being like, how did that get in there? And then the memories started piecing themselves together and I remember sitting at my computer being like heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, as I was typing. So the sentence was like and thus he proved it was not just his super girl attitude towards whatever that made him a good student or something like that, it was like a nonsense sentence. Yeah, so I think that was the last time I drank that much coffee.

Lisa: 4:07

So you were essentially like drunk on caffeine.

Jess: 4:12

Yeah, some combination of caffeine and sleep deprivation.

Lisa: 4:15

I thought you were going to say some combination of caffeine and alcohol. I was like, yeah, that would do it.

Jess: 4:21

No, no, though I, I mean it read as though I had been right intoxicated, I mean yeah but?

Lisa: 4:29

but sleep deprivation does register as appearing to be intoxicated in a lot of cases. If it's extreme, people who have insomnia can vouch for this. You know where you're, you know you're three or four days in and you you act like you're just stumbling out of a bar because your brain does not do so well with no sleep.

Jess: 4:48

It does not. It does not. So, yeah, wow, no.

Lisa: 4:53

I don't get. I don't get over caffeinated like that. I get over caffeinated in like I can feel it kind of in my shoulders. I feel like like my body is kind of being wrung out, sort of like if you like take a rag and you like wring it up. That's kind of how I feel. I feel like all tense, but because of my superhuman tolerance it does not happen very often right.

Jess: 5:17

It happens to me more often if I drink a combination of coffee and tea kind of strangely okay so I can have a cup of coffee and tea. Kind of strangely Okay so I can have a cup of coffee and then I can have a latte. But if I have a cup of coffee and then I have a cup of tea and like I mean, my cups are, you know, 16 ounce cups, so I'll have two tea bags in there, I will feel nauseated, like I'll feel a little bit shaky. It's not a good feeling.

Lisa: 5:47

Yeah, I know the shaky and the nausea that happened to me when I was younger. It doesn't really happen to me now. Wow, caffeine man. What a wonder, what a wonder.

Jess: 5:59

It's my favorite drug. Yeah, same One of my kids was like what is caffeine? I said oh, it's a chemical substance. They're like oh, okay, can I have some? Like no, no, not quite yet. As my three-year-old says coffees for grown-ups I just go with everything being spicy.

Lisa: 6:26

It's all spicy. You wouldn't like it if it's spicy.

Jess: 6:29

We tried that with our youngest and now he likes spicy food, like actual spicy food.

Lisa: 6:35

Well, that shine wore off quick. Yeah, oof. Yeah, that's tough. It does, yeah, no, all of my kids eschew spiciness stuff. It does, yeah, no, all of my kids eschew spiciness. My oldest, my eight, almost nine year old, is he's kind of coming around to the idea of spiciness. I'll add like little bits and pieces here and there. He can tolerate it. But I kind of want him to be into spicy food because then we can go have good spicy food, and by spicy spicy I mean flavorful and lots of spices, not necessarily like burn your mouth kind of spicy.

Jess: 7:12

Yes, that's an important distinction we've had to make in our house. Yeah, especially when sharing meals with my siblings, my kids will say, oh, that's so spicy, but they don't mean like caliente.

Lisa: 7:26

Yeah, it's because the English language is lacking. Another word Right, right. We can't like spicy and spicy. Both mean spicy, but like there should be two different words for it, right yeah?

Jess: 7:39

It's like. What they mean is it has many spices in it and is thus full of spice. Yes, not spicy hot.

Lisa: 7:48

It should be maybe spiceful and spicy Spiceful Spiceful, although that's really close to spiteful and I don't know.

Jess: 7:55

Yeah, that is what just came to mind, and then that made me think that seems like a really fun restaurant name, spiceful, uh-huh. Well, there you go. Maybe when we start our Indian Thai tapas place Indian Thai thali.

Lisa: 8:14

That's what we said Called Spiceful Mm-hmm, I kind of like it. I'm into the idea. Yeah, same Verbal trademark.

Jess: 8:23

Yeah, right of first use it. Verbal trademark Right A first use, it's here.

Lisa: 8:30

Yep Got to do that?

Jess: 8:32

Oh geez, I'm doing okay over here, are you? Yeah, okay.

Lisa: 8:37

Good, it's been a really busy week. Thank you for asking yourself, since I didn't ask you, you're welcome.

Jess: 8:45

Well, I've been. I've been thinking about what I want to unpack, and it has been one of those weeks where I just have zero capacity for decision making.

Lisa: 8:56

Oh, and so wait, does that mean you can't decide what to unpack, or that's the unpack? Is that you've lost your ability to decide things because you're decided out? I know the proper term is decision fatigue, but I'm going to go with decided out.

Jess: 9:12

Right, I don't think I'm experiencing Well. No, so initially that was not what I was intending to unpack, but it is kind of an interesting idea to think of. When we are at capacity, what are the things that go away, that we offload first?

Lisa: 9:34

I mean self-care, for sure is like the top of that list For me at least.

Jess: 9:40

I think pretty commonly it is yeah.

Lisa: 9:42

But I think the desire to decide things I don't know whether or not your actual decision-making capability is lowered in those circumstances or if your desire to make decisions on things I would say for me it's the desire to decide that goes away almost entirely. Decide that goes away almost entirely Because if I've had an, you know, overstimulating week and like there's a choice on dinner and it's a choice between me getting what I want or me not deciding anything at all, I'm going to go with deciding nothing at all and have someone else take that off my plate, even if it means giving up the thing that I want, which maybe I don't even know what I want, because that would be a decision in and of itself.

Jess: 10:27

Yeah, I thankfully do not encounter that because we meal plan every week. Yes, I think I would be very lost without that practice. But yeah, I mean even just picking a restaurant to go out to eat. I'm like I just don't have capacity to think about that, right?

Lisa: 10:49

Exactly you would rather someone else just put forward the best possible option that they can think of and then deal with the consequences, than actually like sitting down to do the mental calculus of figuring out well, you know, there's five of us and this one doesn't eat this and this one really prefers this restaurant, but I know the other one doesn't really like that and I don't feel like that because I'm going to have that next week, like that whole gymnastics that we have to go through. No, I'd rather not, I'd rather just everyone be grouchy.

Jess: 11:23

Yeah, same.

Jess: 11:24

I remember a conversation where sometimes you know, stuff hits the fan before I realize that I need to verbalize it or get it off my plate.

Jess: 11:35

I'm sure that that happens to other people too but where I was trying to meal plan with my husband, this was years ago and he said something like I don't care, everything you make is good. And this was when I was making dinner every night for our family Classic trap it was and I think I was like no, I need to not decide what we are going to have for dinner. I need somebody else to make that decision. I am happy to think through it and put the stuff on the grocery list, but I just cannot. I cannot do all of those things where I am deciding what to eat for dinner, what to put on the grocery list, doing the grocery shopping and also doing the cooking, what to put on the grocery list, doing the grocery shopping and also doing the cooking. And that was absolutely never the intent. But I just had never thought about what it takes for my family to eat every night. I never thought about all of those different decision points.

Lisa: 12:37

Well and for, you in particular because you guys do a sit down dinner every single night, literally seven days a week. Even if you go out or take, do like order in, it's still a sit-down dinner for all of you every single night, which is impressive actually, because I think my family does that like twice a month maybe. Yeah, it's very rare.

Jess: 13:03

So, interesting?

Lisa: 13:04

Yeah, we'll do. The kids will eat together mostly, and then the adults eat whenever the adults eat. Yeah, and occasionally I will make one thing that everyone is bold to eat because there's no other option.

Jess: 13:24

Yeah, that feels like more work to me.

Lisa: 13:27

It's possible that it is, but it's the type of work that, for whatever reason, I'm more comfortable doing than the meal prepping, planning, grocery shopping, listing all like food shopping in advance, kind of stuff. That to me it might be less work if you've got a rhythm to it, of stuff that to me it might be less work if you've got a rhythm to it, which you guys definitely do and I definitely definitely don't. But to your point, I would say, one of the more infuriating questions I can be asked is so what's put in there tonight? That is a good way to like get on me nerves.

Jess: 14:03

My children ask that question of us every single day. Yeah, and thankfully two of them can read now, so we just point them to the menu. You say today is friday. What does it say?

Lisa: 14:16

you know, yeah, that does cut down on the amount of discussion you have to have on it it doesn't't really work.

Jess: 14:24

I mean that menu has been in the same place on the fridge for years.

Lisa: 14:31

What will you feel like the day that, rather than asking you, one of your older kids goes to the fridge, looks at the menu, finds the day and goes sausage and peppers Cool and walks away?

Jess: 14:44

Well, what's so weird about it is they also help plan the week, and so I try to involve them, give them each a chance to say what is one thing that mom makes for dinner that you really want this week, and then what is one thing that dad makes for dinner that you really want this week. So everybody kind of gets a say in what that is, and most of the time when they're asking that question, I think what they're really saying is I'm hungry because they're seeing us make it Like they can see the ingredients that are out on the counter that we're actively cooking or preparing.

Jess: 15:23

And so then it's like how many, how many things do we have that have sausage and pepper and linguine, and I can't have tomato sauce, you know it's, it's right there.

Lisa: 15:38

The story writes itself If you just look yeah exactly so.

Jess: 15:44

So, yeah, I uh I'm not really that is, I don't want to like cop out of unpacking this week, but I it has been, I've thought about it and then I've put it kind of in the back of my mind Cause I'm like I just can't, I can't decide. It's like there's simultaneously too much and not enough things to unpack.

Lisa: 16:03

Wow, simultaneously too much and not enough. It's a tricky space to be in, but I empathize. I have been in those spaces before where it feels like everything is kind of piling up and also nothing's rising to the top. Yeah, you've got a big pile, it's got a lot of stuff in it, but nothing is like weighing on you any more heavily than any other one thing.

Jess: 16:29

It's just an accumulation it's in service to this bigger goal that I have. That it's. I have so much stuff for working on the business that eventually I'll get to and be able to prioritize, but right now it's it's almost like things are starting to come at me and then bounce off it. Just it bounces off because I can't even let it in to think about.

Lisa: 17:01

Well, can I ask you maybe a thought provoking question? I would love that. Okay, I have ongoing dialogue about whether or not my younger self would be proud of me. If my younger self was looking at not my career, not my family, not my you know choices or whatever, like all of it together, would she be impressed, would she be disappointed, would she be intrigued, would she be dismayed? You know all of these things and I know that you, in particular you from from the point of college, let's just say. Let's just say younger self is below college, anything, anything.

Lisa: 17:57

But before college, you went into college with a certain expectation of what your degree was going to be in. You had, you know, all of that. Going in, you changed your mind. You got different degree. You moved far, far away from both where you went to school and where you grew up. And now, like, looking at the big milestones in your life and the place that you've gotten to as a business owner, I mean that seems like a cheat to say that right, like I'm calling you a business owner and a CEO and we can inflame it or we can like downplay it however we want to, right, yeah, but like everything that you have and everything that you've done would your I'm going to go with 14-year-old self. Look at Jess and think blank.

Jess: 18:51

That is a really interesting question and I'm loving it, and so thank you for asking it. You're so welcome. It reminds me of another question that I came across at some point I don't know if it was a table topic. Love table topics.

Jess: 19:11

Shout out table topics we would happily have you as sponsors, but it was like what's the most surprising thing that past you would think about the last 10 years or something like that, okay, that past you would think about the last 10 years or something like that, okay. And when I saw the question, I was like literally everything in my life right now, me from 10 years ago would find surprising and I think that that has just continued. I probably answered that question 10 years ago and it's all surprising, I think, when on the podcast we, I would never have a family where I would never feel like that had been my chance at love. Yeah, and it was gone. Yeah, what a sad, sad place that was. And at the same time, I knew that even in light of that, getting divorced and moving forward was better than staying where I was, like what I had was not going to. It was also never going to give me the life and family and love that I wanted.

Lisa: 20:44

Right, you had a better shot at leaving than you did at staying.

Jess: 20:50

Yeah, I think so, and I mean that with I have no ounce of ill regard to my ex-husband or the life that we started to build or anything like that Like it. It just wasn't I I. I don't think we were right for each other, but I genuinely I have no ill feelings towards that time or where I am, you know what, how, who I became as a result of that. And so I think if I were to think about 14-year-old me, I think the life that I have now would be surprising in some ways, but also very true in other ways to the things that mattered most. I think 14-year-old me probably had a lot of fears that, no matter what I do would never be enough, that I had to do it all, that I had to do more and progress and I don't know, climb the corporate ladder and get to a there there, and now I don't really feel like there is a there there. And now I don't. I don't really feel like there is a there there.

Lisa: 22:07

For me, it's so easy to think that way as a kid, though, isn't it? To think that there's a destination and, like as an adult, at some point we get disabused of this notion that there's a destination because there isn't, it's literally just there isn't, it's literally just it's endless until it ends.

Jess: 22:32

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I don't know. I think I've started to wrap my mind around that that I'll probably always feel kind of similar in my head to how I did when I was 14. You know, when I was 14, you know, like the the me that I embody is still me and I feel connected to who I am, and so that that part, I mean, I think if 14 year old me could wrap her mind around that, I think she would be really, really happy about what's to come Like, and so maybe that's another way to think about it too. Like, if I were writing a letter to my 14 year old self, would I tell my 14 year old self not to do something, or to do this other thing or to to take a different path, and I don't know that I would.

Lisa: 23:18

Well, that's a different question too. That's about you know regrets and about you know where your life leads you, even the bad, the bad stuff, which you know. There are very few people in this world who don't have anything that sticks out. That would be that, but. But I think it goes to show you that if, if your 14 year old self had a cross section of time that was the few months before your divorce to the few months after your divorce, that would look really, really different to maybe a year later. Yeah, it would look completely different, and that's I don't know. I feel like I'm getting this piece of wisdom or whatever from this conversation, that is, I don't know. Don't judge a period of time Like, think of it for what it is, which is just a slice.

Jess: 24:13

It is just a slice, I think, if you okay. So let me take a step back.

Jess: 24:19

There's this idea about where you start and where you stop the story that changes, how, whether it's a hero's journey or whether it's a tragedy, or whether it's a love story.

Jess: 24:31

And I think, if you were to, if one of those stopping points was to be the moment I realized that my marriage was falling apart and that I was going to be divorced and there was this possibility of being alone by myself for the rest of my life, I think I would have been really disappointed.

Jess: 24:56

I had all of these stories about divorce and what it means.

Jess: 25:04

I felt so much shame at that time because it was a failure, because it wasn't one big thing.

Jess: 25:15

It was all of these tiny little things that added up that just wedged us farther and farther apart, and I felt like I needed to own all of those parts that were mine and say I remember thinking I want closure from this other person and recognizing that that person has no responsibility to give me closure, that all of the things I need closure on or I need forgiveness on, all of those things are for me to close myself or to give myself forgiveness for, and so, but I think if that's where the story ended, that's a tragedy.

Jess: 26:10

Ended, that's a tragedy. And then I think, if you even pick up the story six weeks later or two months later, it would be a completely different story. It felt like very much a rebirth in a lot of ways, which is just wild to think about, because I also I have many friendships that span, you know, from high school through marriage the first marriage into my marriage now, into my life now, and I kind of wonder, maybe I'll have to ask those people the same question, like when you think back to 14-year-old Jess what do you think she would think about life now?

Lisa: 26:47

I don't know, I don't feel like a reliable witness in that way important and poignant and and you know saying that your ex doesn't have responsibility for the closure for you. That is true and applicable in pretty much every scenario that we encounter with another person. We are responsible for our story and I know that might seem quite obvious, but I think a lot of times we like to outsource responsibility of things like closure or forgiveness or I don't know. Even the good and yummy stuff too, we like to outsource to other people that are involved in that situation. But truly all of it starts and stops with us. All of it starts and stops with us, and we are responsible for how we interpret and how we draw conclusions about scenarios. I mean, and maybe even especially the hard stuff, the stuff that feels yucky and gross and maybe even dark in our memories Right, it's up to us, and gross and maybe even dark in our memories right, it's up to us. No one else is going to change how we see that time except for maybe just time itself.

Jess: 28:17

Time itself is pretty good at doing that. Yeah, I think time softens the edges a lot on a lot of these things. I like to come back to this. I think I said I felt in some ways like I was returning to myself, and that, for me, is, of course, values related. I think in the middle there was a middle period there where I don't think I was particularly aligned with my values and I didn't really know it, right.

Lisa: 28:54

Probably because I don't know that I had time to work. Yeah, you couldn't like spout off what your values were at that time?

Jess: 28:59

Sure, yeah, exactly, which is why I think it's probably really great to start working with my kids now on what are your values?

Jess: 29:16

Yeah, it's so important, I know, but I think a huge part of who I am and how I think of myself is in my relationships with my family and my kids especially, and I think so much of the way that I have become a parent to my kids is to become the parent I needed when I was a kid and that whole reparenting thing. And so from that perspective my oldest is not 14 yet. So I don't know, I don't know yet if I've, if I've reparented my 14 year old self yet, because it kind of happens in parallel to the age of my children and being that person. But I think nine-year-old me would be so glad that I am exactly the way I am.

Speaker 1: 30:16

Yeah.

Lisa: 30:19

I think that's important.

Jess: 30:21

Yeah, I see some of the stuff my kids do and say and think about and I just I don't know. I don't think I could have imagined all of the different lifetimes. I feel like I've lived.

Speaker 1: 30:37

Hmm.

Jess: 30:39

But that is like really freaking cool.

Lisa: 30:55

I'm really glad that I've gotten to live so many lifetimes and when you are through that thing, whatever that dark forest is, and you're through it, it feels like, okay, that chapter has concluded. And I mean, we even use some of these analogies in our everyday lexicon when we're talking about, you know, chapters opening and closing and all that kind of stuff.

Jess: 31:22

My high school girls made fun of me because I was like don't be sad, it's just the end of this chapter Exactly, but then you get to like I think, the real, the real, oh my gosh.

Lisa: 31:31

I mean, I think there are so many gifts in being middle age, which I guess we are, because the average lifespan is like in the 60s and we're in the 40s, so we are well past middle age by those standards?

Jess: 31:42

yeah, it was in the 80s uh life expectancy yeah no, ma'am I'm. I want citations. Did this come from chat?

Lisa: 31:52

gpt no that feels made up no um. Unfortunately, middle age based on life expectancy is earlier than we are oh geez, yeah, okay, not sure I needed that today.

Lisa: 32:06

Sorry about that, but sure Go on One of the benefits and I think there are a lot of benefits, but one of them is this incredible concept of looking back, and I don't love to look back. I generally like to stay in the present, but being able to look back and see these discrete timeframes and all of these lives that we've lived, I don't know. I think that's a major benefit and I kind of feel badly for 20 year olds and teenagers for not being able to do that. Year olds and teenagers for not being able to do that. They don't have that benefit.

Lisa: 32:46

And I know that's like, okay, the wisdom of age and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. But I think it's less postcard-y for me and more I don't know. I get to have lived many lives and, from an anthropological, sociological standpoint, pretty freaking cool that we have been alive as long as we have, because, from a biological standpoint, we have done very, very well from the beginning on, as in you and I as 40-year-old people, we get. You know, we won the initial race. Good for us.

Jess: 33:25

In that we were born and that we and that we were conceived, even like that's a big hurdle yeah then we got born and we didn't die good for us.

Jess: 33:33

And then we got you know through the, the difficult years which, as a human, the first 10 years of your life, like everything's up against you for survival, and then teenagers and 20s and 30s and pretty successful biologically, I would say, you and I I did an exercise once where it asked you to go back to divide your life into chunks, Okay, and think about some of the key lessons you learned in each of those chunks Okay, and this again kind of evokes that, or it's an invitation, really to figure out where you want to put your start and stop.

Lisa: 34:18

Yeah, oh, so there was no prescription as to when these chunks occurred.

Jess: 34:23

Roughly even amounts of time.

Lisa: 34:25

Okay, okay, and so I think, when I did- it I was Curds or quarters or whatever you wanted to do.

Jess: 34:30

Okay, I think I was 38 when I did it.

Jess: 34:33

And so I looked at like nine-year chunks or you know, but the times you can remember. So one was kind of early childhood, one was teenage years, 20s, 30s and I think that exercise really impacted me profoundly in a way that I didn't see initially. But I think really helps in this context because I'm like, oh yeah, I can see how these things that happened in childhood that felt really dark, scary, hard. However, you, whatever difficult, whatever adjective you want to put in there, I can see how those things shaped me and prepared me for the next nine years. And what happened in that time was also, you know, there were, there were difficult parts of that too.

Jess: 35:29

There was heartbreak and then there was but there was also learning how to love and be loved, and and so how that then shaped the next eight or nine years and so on eight or nine years and so on.

Lisa: 35:47

So, yeah, it's interesting to think about. Yeah, it really is, because to me, I feel like part of love is heartbreak. But there are plenty of people that have loved without heartbreak. Never having gotten their heart broken, they have been able to love deeply. And so for every person, that story and that domino effect is a bit different. I think there's probably a lot of overlap between people, but you know, I can't imagine my life story, the way that is unfolded without heartbreak. It was so defining Same, yeah.

Lisa: 36:25

And so you're like well, I wouldn't have made this series of decisions, I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have chosen this path, I wouldn't have done this, I would have done this differently. I don't know, it's difficult. I don't really look back with a regretful viewpoint, I look back with a what if? Viewpoint and I think there's a little bit of nuance there. You could easily lump them into the same category, but for me it's it's more about like and I did this exercise with with my mom, not on purpose, but you know, we, we did this sort of thought exercise about, instead of me going to Michigan State, of me going to a small private school, because I was really on the fence between those two things and it really really would have changed the entire course of my life. And I think it feels big. It feels big as a senior in high school to decide what college you're going to go to, but it feels big in the context of I think, at least for me of like, what do I want my the feeling to be.

Lisa: 37:33

I think that was a major determining factor For me. It had nothing to do with my degree and I know that there are some very clever kids out there probably you were one of them where you're like I'm going to go to a place that has the degree that I want in the field that I want. I was not one of those. I was like I'll figure it out. Probably I just knew the feeling that I wanted to have and because of that I chose the path that I did.

Lisa: 37:58

But had I gone to one of those smaller schools, the degree that I got would not have been even available and that degree has been and this is not true for everybody, but it was true for me that degree has been what I have used for the rest of my life, since I was 21 years old. That has been the building foundation for what I have built my entire career on, building foundation for what I have built my entire career on. And had I not had that, what would have been the foundation that I would have had? So I definitely I don't see it as a regret. I think it would be easy to look back on that time of my life with a bit of regret, but instead I look at it as just a thought experiment of what could have been versus what is.

Jess: 38:43

I think the biggest thing I think when I look back, was just why were you in such a hurry? Always, you know it's like and I don't want me 10 years from now to be like why were you in such a hurry? Yeah, and I feel that that pressure sometimes I mean related to the capacity and the bigger goal that is happening right now. Yeah, move forward. And as we're talking about this, I kind of openly question if that is how it should be, but it's not like in a regretful way, but just in a like what are the things that really matter? Sort of way. I don't know. I appreciate your story because I think often about those bigger decision points and even smaller decision points, that if I had done one thing instead of another thing, like I would be in a totally different life right now. Yeah, and that would be fine.

Lisa: 39:59

I mean, I think, no matter what would be okay, and that's privilege, because we are privileged people and probably no matter what involve them. But I don't know. Well, you don't miss the kids you didn't have, the husband you didn't marry. You don't miss any of them because you don't know that any of them exist. Yeah, but in like kind of a sci-fi sort of way, Right, total parallel universes. I don't know enough about sci-fi to be in this conversation at all, and anyone who is into sci-fi is probably like Lisa shut your mouth because you don't know what you're talking about.

Jess: 40:55

No, I mean, there are so many great books and I hear there's even a movie, sliding Doors, I believe.

Lisa: 41:04

I haven sliding doors. I believe I haven't seen it. Yeah, one of my favorite movies as a child and say child I mean probably about 14 years old.

Jess: 41:08

Yeah, real peak of anglophile years for me, okay so, yeah, so you have enough sci-fi knowledge then to be in this conversation. But because I like sliding doors, well, because that's, that is the particular sci-fi, uh, topic of conversation.

Lisa: 41:24

I mean, I really do feel like sliding doors could be at the center of a lot of intelligent conversation.

Jess: 41:30

I was telling a client the other day. He was very cool. He's like we were talking about his superpower. He's like I know what people want, like I know what's going to land. I have my finger on the pulse of what is in touch with society right now and I was like that's amazing. And also you should know this about me I am not, I have no idea. What is your superpower? I think it's like probably there are many superpowers that we all have. Yeah, but that's not the question. No, I know, but if you were to ask me last week, I think I would give you a different answer than this week.

Lisa: 42:18

Oh, Is that because you learned how to fly somewhere between last week and this week?

Jess: 42:23

Unfortunately not.

Lisa: 42:24

Ah, rough yeah um. Is that because you?

Jess: 42:25

learned how to fly somewhere between last week and this week, unfortunately not rough. Yeah, I mean, I think my, I think my intuition is probably my biggest superpower. Yeah, um, it is definitely something that just in the last couple weeks it it has come, it has served me so well in different conversations where I'm like, wow, thank goodness, I listened't shake the feeling that this other thing might be more important for us to talk about today, and it was like as soon as I said those words, the shoulders loosened, the face slackened, the tears came.

Jess: 43:18

And so it yeah, so that and that just happened in, like it happened in a one week span where many of my male clients in particular were crying. So wow, yeah, I mean, which is so great. I'm like there's. They probably needed to cry and we don't have enough space for men to cry.

Lisa: 43:38

For sure not. No, you do not Especially men of a certain age, age, I would say I like to think that we are teaching gen alpha a bit differently. God I hope so yeah, yeah, I mean, time will tell, time, time will tell yeah, we can't. That's an unknowable thing at this, this exact moment, although you could maybe look at gen z, they were kind of in the middle zone there. I think for us millennials we were still a little bit too close to the old world.

Lisa: 44:07

But, Gen Z definitely was its own new beginning for people and emotions and emoting and being respectful of different emotions and all of the things that came with that. So I would be curious to see and I bet you there is some data out there to say that Gen Z males are more comfortable emoting emotions besides anger, because I would say prior to Gen Z anger a-okay, good to go, lay it on as far and wide as you feel, like that one is a perfectly acceptable emotion to have, the other ones maybe not so much. Yeah, sadness, definitely not.

Jess: 44:55

Yeah, exactly, I was thinking about being sad, mad. I mean, yeah, I just talked to a client about that. He was like I'm so angry, but it's because I'm sad and then I'm angry that I'm not more sad, and then I'm just angry.

Lisa: 45:11

You know, it's a vicious cycle, have it in the back of your mind that a certain emotion is okay and other emotions are not okay. It's very possible that you will cover up an emotion that feels unsafe with an emotion that feels safe, and so that's how you get these combo things. Sometimes you're just both angry and sad and frustrated and disappointed or whatever. You can have a combination of things. That's totally possible. But a lot of times it is also the case that people are using safe emotions over top to dampen the hurt. That is the unsafe emotion, the thing that they were taught. That is not okay to feel.

Jess: 45:58

I think you are so right about that and you said it so eloquently. I think you are so right about that and you said it so eloquently.

Jess: 46:06

You very succinctly described what my client was trying to convey, which was that there's it's like the tip of an iceberg of hurt and loss and like generational societal trauma that we just I mean, he named several examples in his own life and the way that he experienced them and none of those felt safe. And so he's he's very, very self-aware and he's like so I just pushed them into the shadow and I think I need to get back into some of that shadow work to try to make that in a safe space where I can feel those things.

Lisa: 46:40

Shadow work. Oh, yeah, oh. I love that term.

Jess: 46:45

I know.

Lisa: 46:46

Without any context, you could really take it in a bunch of different directions.

Jess: 46:49

Yeah, yeah, so I. That's kind of my next project Probably is. We had an intro to Jungian coaching practices.

Lisa: 47:01

Oh, I didn't realize that Jung was a coach considered.

Jess: 47:04

I mean, he's a very famous psychologist, but psychologist, but incorporating some of those archetypes and concepts of shadow and not shadow, to kind of pull at those threads. It seems super fascinating.

Lisa: 47:17

Well, as we all know, I'm a super nerd for psychology, so let's talk more about that sometime I will, when I start taking the class.

Jess: 47:27

I think I will tell you more about it. It is very fascinating. I also feel like it's also kind of dangerous, Like coaching and therapy have so much overlap. Yes, they do Already that. I'm like. I really just I don't want to accidentally step into something that is way out of my depth.

Lisa: 47:48

Yeah, you don't want to pull people into the emotional deep end and then, you grab onto each other and you're both drowned. You don't want that. I do not want that. Yeah, it's good to have maybe higher borders than you might normally have, if you feel like you're drifting into those categories to say like, whoops, we've hit a boundary here, we got to take it back.

Jess: 48:14

Oh man, I want to ask you what is your superpower? Because I want to know this about you too because I want to know this about you too.

Lisa: 48:31

Well, it's not dissimilar from yours, and it is my ability to read people. It has come at a cost a couple of times being able to read people who are not ready to be read, and so I have been, even recently. I can think of three or four examples of people where I'm like something's off, something's going on, and we've had a brush of interaction at best and I feel something different with them. Now it really comes in handy in my job. Yeah, it does, and I think I've had to even turn up the volume on it, because I've been in this virtual environment for now five years and what I do is analyze human behavior. So I'm analyzing human behavior without even interacting with the human themselves.

Lisa: 49:19

But I have a couple of instances back when I was an analyst and I was just strictly analyzing data of human behavior and for no particular reason, somebody's behavior would look just like somebody else's and I would zero in on them. I would say something's different with this and this person is a name on a spreadsheet. I do not know this person. I am just looking at line items of their behavior on the network and I just say no, no, something's up here, and I had that once when I was doing that job and that person ended up getting fired because they were doing lots and lots of bad stuff that they shouldn't have been. But the moment that I felt that I did not know that information, I just said there's something off with this person, that's so interesting.

Jess: 50:15

Yeah, from knowing I'm approaching this from kind of two different ways. On the one hand, there's so much that we process that does not become conscious. But it's like sometimes when I look at a Sudoku, I know where the numbers are, but I have to work it out to get there. I don't know. It's very strange. I'll be able to say this is where the nine needs to go, but I can't explain why this is where the nine needs to go. But in my brain, having seen it, I've already done the things, but I haven't yet done the things, and so all you're proving is that you're just a super genius.

Lisa: 50:52

But continue. No, no, no, no.

Jess: 50:54

But I think that's what you did with your, with your brain, like you saw all of those things and that was in this unconscious patterned place. Yeah, and at the same time, I think on the other side of that is this door opening for bias, yeah.

Lisa: 51:17

We're like I thought that's where you were going to go with that too, because if you decide that somebody has done something wrong and you look hard enough, you might be able to find that that person has done something wrong totally and completely. And that is exactly in my line of work. What you are constantly fighting against, like let me make sure this was intuition and not bias, because confirmation bias in security work, like I do, is oof, it is a hair of a difference between those two sometimes. Yeah, exactly.

Lisa: 51:53

Yeah, and so that's why I always have someone else who's another expert in this field check my work and really like people should just do that in all lines of work anyway to decrease bias. But I always had somebody standing by to say look at what I have here. Am I reading this the way that you would read this? And usually I just let them see it cold because I don't want to influence them.

Jess: 52:14

Yeah, when I was an analyst that came up a lot. It's so funny. I was thinking about this, One of my old, old, old colleagues who I mean before. I felt like I deserved to even call them colleagues. This is like coworker territory, yeah.

Lisa: 52:33

Yeah, yeah, before you have colleagues, you have coworkers.

Jess: 52:37

Right, Exactly, and she made some comment about me jumping to conclusions and I was like what are you talking about? And I think that was like one of my first things of like I can see this playing out, where I can see the pattern and also I don't want that confirmation bias to come in and so being able to kind of still do the work is important to kind of still do the work.

Lisa: 53:08

Yeah, it was important. Yeah, one of the most famous types of this sort of thing happening in my line of work was the arrest of the very famous spy Robert Hansen, because for a very, very long time they were sure it was somebody else, not Robert Hansen, and they found all kinds of evidence to support that this completely innocent person was committing this terribly heinous crime of selling secrets to the Russians. And it was because they had jumped on this confirmation bias wagon and brought everyone in. And now it's a cautionary tale because this person almost lost his whole life, right, because he was just too close to the real thing but wasn't the real thing.

Jess: 53:52

I'm trying to remember that story. I was at the spy museum recently with my brother and his family, and didn't they then use that to like bring him in? I don't remember.

Lisa: 54:06

I don't remember if they did or not but they were very close to arresting this individual and he truly did. I mean, he even had to shake off this, the stigma of it, for years, even though he did nothing wrong. Wow, but because they were so close to believing that it was him, he had to. Then, you know, he's an employee of the fbi. You've got to make sure people trust you, and he was so close that people just didn't trust him anymore after that. So, anyway, it's a very, very good story. He actually does a lot of. He used to, several years ago, would do a lot of speeches about confirmation bias because he was the victim of it, and so it's very easy to do unfortunately.

Jess: 54:45

I kind of love it when it works out, though For sure I'll see somebody and be like oh, tell me about your face, Tell me about your face.

Lisa: 54:57

Don't tell me that that's an opening line you have with somebody when you first meet them.

Jess: 55:00

Hi, I'm Jess. Tell me about your face what's going on there. It's more like somebody that I've met a couple of times, probably not the first meeting. I'll be like are you okay, and then I'll get the. You know, actually I'm not okay. What made you say that? You know yeah.

Lisa: 55:20

Like I can't explain it, I'm just very good.

Jess: 55:24

Yeah, exactly, this is a very fast unpacking for me and I don't know, I don't know how to describe it. What did we unpack today, lisa?

Lisa: 55:37

So many things. I think this was not a singular unpacking. I think this was a multi unpacking. We had a lot of luggage, some of like the hat box was one of them, and then we had the duffel bag. We had a lot of things to unpack.

Jess: 55:52

There was lots to unpack there, there was lots to unpack there.

Lisa: 55:56

I'm glad I got to unpack it all.

Jess: 55:58

Me too. Is there anything that you want to unpack before we sign off for?

Lisa: 56:03

the day. I feel like I did unpack. I feel like we both. It was a simultaneous unpacking. Maybe that's why there was so much luggage.

Jess: 56:10

Yeah, maybe, maybe. And now I'm just imagining a girl's trip like yes, where we have, isn't there? Isn't there some movie where people get each other's luggage and then it's some sort of meet cute because they unpack their luggage?

Lisa: 56:24

Oh, I think that's a trope in a lot of movies actually. Yes, okay, I think that's one.

Jess: 56:29

I'm feeling kind of like that, like our luggage. We both, we unpacked each other's luggage, yeah, in a good way. In a good way, yeah, well, thank you. Thanks, jess, I'll see you next time.

Lisa: 56:42

Yeah, see you next time. Have a great weekend and week and life and month and everything. That was a weird way to sign off, although not.

Jess: 56:52

I'll see you next week. Well, you know before and before. Bye, jess, I love you, love you.

Speaker 1: 57:02

Lisa. We've got stories to share From our hearts to your ears. Lots to unpack there. Tune in every week you won't want to miss. Dive deep into life with Jess and Lisa getting high on our own supply of thai and indian food.

Jess: 57:46

Listen, I, I don't have the framework for that.

Lisa: 57:52

Sorry, I went too far with it.

Jess: 57:54

I know I'm getting high. That feels like a different restaurant. Basically, making grown men cry is apparently a superpower.