Beauty in the Break
Beauty in the Break is a new podcast that explores the powerful moments when life shatters—and the unexpected beauty that follows.
Hosted by public speaker Cesar Cardona & filmmaker and poet Foster Wilson, each episode dives into conversations of healing, transformation and resilience through self-awareness, storytelling and mindfulness. Whether you’re navigating change or seeking inspiration, this series uncovers the common threads that connect us all, to help you achieve personal or professional growth.
Beauty in the Break
What We Learned in Therapy That Everyone Should Know (Revisting)
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode of Beauty in the Break, Foster and Cesar bring you 12 unforgettable therapy lessons that reshaped their lives. Drawing from years of individual therapy, couples therapy, Jungian analysis, and parts work, they share tangible wisdom that listeners can apply to their own healing and communication journeys. Whether you’re navigating family dynamics, learning to self-regulate, or trying to let go of old stories, this episode is full of relatable and transformative moments.
They also discuss powerful therapeutic tools like Internal Family Systems (IFS), the importance of repair in relationships, and how to show up truthfully without controlling the outcome. If you’re craving real talk about mental health, personal responsibility, emotional intelligence, and how to actually change, this episode is one to bookmark and revisit.
In this episode they explore:
- The parenting mindset shift that changes everything after a mistake
- What to do instead of chasing “balance” — and why it rarely works
- A surprising truth about how you judge others (and what it says about you)
- The communication formula that protects relationships from resentment
- The healing magic of writing — and the 5-day practice that builds confidence
- Why trying to “be right” might be making you miserable
- How to work with your inner child using IFS-style parts work
Cesar mentions his accident, which is detailed in Cesar’s Accident: The Scars of Rebirth.
If this episode spoke to you, you may enjoy How to Feel Seen in Love, where therapist JJ Brake leads our hosts in a live couples session. You can also watch the episodes on YouTube.
If you enjoyed this episode, take a moment to follow Beauty in the Break on your favorite podcast app and leave a review—it really helps!
Reach out to the show—send an email or voice note to beautyinthebreakpod@gmail.com and be sure to follow on Instagram.
Cesar Cardona:
- Attend his upcoming speaking engagements
- Listen to music from Cesar + The Clew on Apple Music and Spotify
- Receive his monthly newsletter Insights That Matter
Foster Wilson:
- Buy her poetry book Afternoon Abundance
- Learn about her postpartum services
- Receive her monthly newsletter Foster’s Village
Created & Hosted by: Cesar Cardona and Foster Wilson
Executive Producer: Glenn Milley
This episode is brought to you by Jamaal Pittman. You can donate to his scholarship at wheelerscholarship.com, supporting college enrollment.
Hello, beloved. Welcome back to Beauty in the Break. In anticipation of our brand new episodes
coming up on February 3rd, we are revisiting this fan favorite episode that has had the most plays
of all of our episodes so far. We're really glad that it resonated for you. Even if you've heard
this episode before, it is worth revisiting because there are so many nuggets in here from
which to choose. Cesar and I go through all the best things that we learned from our combined years
of therapy. And even I have gone back to it just to remind myself of this wisdom that I've taken in
over the years. And so here's your cheat sheet right here. If you want it, please enjoy. We will see you
back here on February 3rd with all new episodes. Oh my goodness. When I tell you this work is magic,
it's phenomenal. I thank her for the rest of my life. I saw the beauty in who I was and I didn't
see him before and she got me there. Think back to any time a parent or a loved one has ever repaired
something. That is what you remember. I could tell this guy I'm going to space. He'd be like,
watch out for asteroids. Would you rather be right or happy? Hello and welcome to Beauty in the Break.
I'm Foster. And I'm Cesar. This is the podcast where we explore the moments that break us open
and how we find beauty on the other side. So whatever you're carrying today, you don't have
to carry it alone. We are here with you. Thanks for being here and enjoy the show.
Hello, beautiful and welcome back to Beauty in the Break. Hello, hello, everybody. We're so excited to
have you here today. We have an amazing show today. I'm so excited. I've been excited for this episode
for a long, long time. We are going to talk about shit our therapists taught us. We both have had so
much therapy in our lives. Well, I'll speak for myself. I have had all kinds of therapy, individual
therapy, couples counseling, group therapy of all different varieties. I actually grew up in a
therapist household. My dad's a psychologist, multiple members of my family. I think there's
four PhDs and a marriage and family counselor. Like my family is full of therapists. So you all are just
completely sane, grounded, rooted, healthy, no problem. But it really, it made me open to therapy
from a very young age. Yeah. I had the other effect to it. Actually, I grew up in the more common way in the
90s where if you were in therapy, there was like something wrong with you. So it was kind of a
stigma to it. And then when I was about 18, I found the internet and Wikipedia and all that. I started
reading about evolution into evolutionary biology into evolutionary psychology. And then I was like,
this is dope. By that time, I wanted to find a therapist. I found Carl Jung and I wanted to find a
Jungian analyst. And I kind of went on by myself, but I didn't share it so often because there was still a
stigma to it. This was like 2007 or eight. Well, yeah. I mean, the, it used to be that having a
therapist was a, something was wrong with you. And then as you've mentioned before, millennials really
broke that through and made it something that everybody today is like, do you have a therapist?
You know, you should be in therapy. Everyone should have a therapist, but there's a great barrier of
entry here. And that's so vital to recognize that therapy is really expensive. It's also in high demand.
And there are unfortunately a lot of really bad therapists out there.
Tons of them. A few things that come up for me when I think about therapy right now is I personally have
gone through therapists that weren't great and I'm so pro therapy. So there's a reality there. And to take it
back to the thing you said about millennials, I thought I was the only one just enjoying this. And then I
start turning to my friends in their twenties and they're like, yeah, I'm in therapy too. I'm like,
oh great. And I will always wave this flag. Us millennials single-handedly de-stigmatized
therapy because from 1997 to 2017, the direct to consumer advertising rose 8,000%.
Holy shit.
From holy shit things our therapist said. From 2 million to 162 million advertisement. Now that's
supply and demand, of course, but we still have so much stress in the world, maybe more stress now
than before. So the question I think for you and I that we're kind of working out a lot is how can we
share as much information as possible out in the world?
Look, we should be having mental health covered by insurance companies. A lot of insurance plans
don't cover mental health. And then when they do, because of how insurance works, there's not a lot
of great therapists that you can find in your network. And that's the common issue I hear over and over and
over again from people who are seeking therapy, who are looking for somebody for years. So because of all
that, we wanted to share all of the great lessons we've learned from not only my personal therapist,
but people who have been therapeutic to me in my life. And so that kind of spans quite a few people.
Yeah, same. I think my very first therapist was a Jungian analyst. He was great. And also there
were some like moments that I was like, this is not helping me enough. And then the one after that was
only five sessions and she was phenomenal. And then I had a pocket of them that weren't so great. And I
think we're getting to a place where the fact that it's all rising up, we can start to see, oh,
good and bad. Let's start pulling some of these things out. And then you add things like social
media in here and you're able to share some of these cool nuggets and we want to be a part of that.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. I think you're going to want to save this episode and come back to it multiple times
because we got a lot packed in here and we'll go into each thing briefly. But man, I'm excited.
I'm excited to share it. Also a disclaimer, this is not a substitute for your therapy. So if you need
a therapist and you need to figure that out, please do that. But we just want to share what we've learned
and what we have found that we have taken with us beyond that room. Yeah. I live with some of these
mantras in my life and I find that once they were given to me, I practiced them. They brought me more
peace inward and outward. So then I started to talk about it, right? See one, do one, teach one,
that sort of thing. And then I know, okay, this stays in my pocket. This is an arrow
in the quiver of my life. Yeah. All right. Let's get into it. Great. All right. So I love this one.
In parenthood, repair is everything. You can take this to all of life as well. But I think that's
so important for the parents to remember that you're going to make mistakes, you're going to screw up,
you're going to just fall flat, you're going to yell, you're going to do something you don't like.
What the children remember is that you repaired. Not even when you repaired, but that you repaired at
all. My therapist taught me this and it just opened me up and it was such a forgiving thought
for myself. I have a hard time forgiving myself and I feel shame. And that was so freeing to remember
because she said, you can come back to something from years ago and apologize and make it right and
repair and hear them out. And that's the new memory that they have about whatever it is you did that you
didn't care for. Yeah. I love that line. I love that thought. You said this to me. I only heard that
from you. And then I look back at my past in life and I realized, oh, that's true. That's totally true.
My mother sent me a card. She wrote me all the things thanking me for. Thank you for being the
man you are. Thank you for being my son. Thank you for being so helpful in the world. And in the center
of it all, she said, thank you for forgiving me. And that hit me deeply. We can't change what our parents
did or didn't do. And them being accountable for it is one of the most healing things that a child can feel.
Mm-hmm. Think back to any time a parent or a loved one has ever repaired something. It doesn't even
have to be an apology, but just repaired something that was a rupture. You're going to have rupture
and you're going to have repair. It's true in partnership as well. Let's come together and
repair something. That is what you remember. I also now, I use that as like cleaning out the cobwebs
in my relationship with my children. I have times when I'm not with them and I use that time to really
reflect on the week before. Was there anything I did that I wish I'd done better? And I don't have
to feel guilt about that. And of course, I'm going to try to do it differently the next time. But if
there's something that stands out to me, I can then go to one of my children and have a little moment.
This happened to me with one of the kids. Recently, we happened to be just the two of us at a coffee shop
and I said to them, do you think I'm too hard on you? And of course, their answer was no, but I did feel
like I was being too hard on them. So I really wanted to make that right. And I said, I feel that
way. And so I apologize for that. Having done this enough, I know that it sunk in for them. That's
going to be remembered. And I'm really happy that I did that. That's really precious. What you got?
One of the best therapists I ever had told me, as long as you're speaking in a way that's true and kind,
you're doing the right thing. And I had to work through that a lot. Very often, we have people in the
world who will say, I'm just being real. Okay, fair. That might be the case. I'm going to disagree,
but that's beside the point. True is different from just being nasty or cynical or whatever.
If you're speaking truth and you're saying kindly, you're doing the two sides of the world, the logical
and the emotional. And you're serving that to somebody in the best way possible. And because
you've done that, you can give yourself space. You can relieve yourself and say, I have done everything
I need to do here because I've given them the reality of what's working with me. And I'm doing
it in a way that is nothing but kind. Not nice, by the way. Kind. It's a huge difference between kind
and nice. Yes. What is the difference between nice and kind?
Nice is just patting the top of the person's head. Kind is how you say something to somebody because you
want them to understand the situation of what's going on. Nice is the person who does a poor job
at cleaning something. And you go, oh, it's great. Yeah, it looks good. Thank you so much. I appreciate
that. A fakeness to it. And there's a little bit of a politeness. And polite is different than kind.
And kind is, could you by chance clean it a little more this way? Because I use this more often. I love
it if you could clean that. Thank you so much. Thank you. There's a whole different energy going
on there. Kind, not nice. I think when you and I first started dating and I was in your space a lot,
there were times when you like things in a certain way. You liked certain elements of your house to be
a certain way. You want that light off when I leave the bathroom, you know, da, da, da. I'm not as good at
remembering those things, but you didn't let it go and ignore the things that were important to you.
From the very beginning, even though we were in a new relationship, you would say, hey, babe,
do you think that you could turn that light off when you leave? That would be really great.
And even if I forgot multiple times, you would still say it in the same true and kind way.
I think that is challenging to do over and over again when somebody is doing something that's not
maybe a little bit of a pet peeve of some kind, right?
It definitely is a pet peeve of mine. And thank you for acknowledging that, by the way,
because that's exactly my intention. Because every time, and we've all done this,
the partner you are living with or spending time with does something. And in a way in your house
or your living space, that's like, what are you doing? Right? Everybody has that. And soon as I
think that thought, my next step, and I've trained my mind to do this is, okay, how can we be true and
kind? I'm always going to bring it up to you. You could not turn that light off for the next 20 years.
I will kindly remind you the same way every time.
It's very much appreciated. And it allowed me to then think about, is there anything I'm brushing
under the rug that seems small that I'm not mentioning that is important to me and getting
that out in the open right away. It was very formative. It was very surprising that you were
doing that. And also we'll say, it's very easy to go, Hey, could you turn that light off? And then the
next time be like, I said, could you turn that light off, please? And then like the more times
it happens to get more irritated by it, but that's actually strategy. That's actually like if I'm doing
something repetitive, that is bothersome to you, we've got to strategize what's going on for me.
Am I moving too quickly? Which sometimes is the case moving around the apartment too quickly. And
my mind is elsewhere. You know, we have to kind of like work together to figure out what's going on
and try to fix that. But it's not about being annoyed. It's not about being expressing that.
The moment I get annoyed is the moment that whoever I'm speaking to is not going to understand the point
that I'm making because they're going to feel my rigidity and it's going to make them lock up as well.
So if I'm kind and get that across to that person and give them space to absorb whatever,
then we've done so much better as a team. And because you and I are a partnership and a team,
I know that nothing you do is out of malice to me.
So if I feel angered because of it, then that's a me thing.
There's a huge difference there. And I take responsibility for that.
That's where the kindness can come in.
Yeah, that's good.
I will say very similar to that, but a little different.
My uncle had this phrase and it came up recently and I just,
I'm holding onto it again anew.
And it is show up, speak your truth, let go of the outcome.
Yeah.
It's pretty similar. It's got a little extra bit there of letting go.
That I've known for the last like 15 years.
Show up, don't ignore it, don't ignore the problem, but show up, speak your truth.
And maybe adding in speak your truth kindly and letting go of the outcome.
I used it recently with one of our kids had a pizza party that was happening at school
and they were very nervous about the pizza party and whether there was going to be something that they could eat
because there's a lot they don't eat.
And they were nervous about approaching the teacher.
They wanted me to approach the teacher and talk about it.
They said, well, what will happen if they serve me the pizza anyway and I don't eat it?
Well, all we know is that we can show up.
We speak our truth.
No, thank you.
I don't want any.
And we let go of the outcome.
Could your teacher be mad?
Sure.
Could she be upset at you?
Sure.
Could she also go, great, no problem?
Sure.
All of those things are possible and we don't know.
And trying to control what we don't know is going to lead to problems.
We're not avoiding it.
We're showing up.
We're telling her our truth, which is I don't want to eat this.
And then letting go of however she reacts.
Yeah.
That's precious.
That's really beautiful.
I love that you've been saying that a lot lately because it does feel on track with what
true and kind feels like.
Yeah.
This phrase also gives me a lot of bravery.
And I've used it in situations that I was really terrified to speak my truth,
but I knew it had to be done.
And one of them was when I was requesting a divorce.
And I was so terrified to go in and I kept saying to myself, show up, speak your truth
and let go of the outcome.
And that was the most brave I've ever felt in doing something like that.
The letting go of the outcome was the really hard part.
Letting go of how everybody else in that room is going to feel and react.
They're entitled to all of that.
They're entitled to express how they're feeling with my truth.
My truth might make other people feel a certain way.
And I still have to express my truth.
That's true.
Your outcome, by the way, is filled.
The outcome is filled with immeasurable unknowns.
And that's where that real fear comes in.
Right.
There was a time where I was so annoyed because people didn't want to hear something that could benefit them.
And it would stress me out.
I would get stressed about their stress.
Like you have a piece of advice for them and they don't want to hear it?
They wouldn't take it.
And their stress would stress me out because they're coming to me with their stresses.
I'm responding and they're not listening to it.
And then therefore more stress occurs.
It stressed me out and it got me to my therapist.
I'm talking to my therapist and she says to me, if you want to convince them, show them.
Stop trying to convince somebody how they should think, how they whatever.
You do the thing in your life and they'll see.
And they'll say, what's going on here with this person?
He's changed.
He's doing totally different things.
And they're going to want to know what you're doing.
That's how you help people change is by changing your own self first.
That line was great for me.
If you want to convince them how to change, show them yourself.
That's great.
And you have to let go of whether or not they do.
And if you're doing it for you, then that should be enough.
That's it.
It reminds me of the modeling in parenting that is required because you can talk at kids all
day long.
They're going to watch you and do what you do.
If you tell them that they need to not be texting their friends all afternoon, you also
need to not be texting your friends all afternoon.
I say that about myself.
Yeah.
Let's talk about all the things that kids will see rather than what they'll hear.
You are moving 24 hours of the day, eight hours of them with kids.
You are constantly moving.
How many times are you speaking during that eight hours?
Less than what your movements are.
So they're going to see how you talk about other people when they're not around.
Your kids are going to see how you text, how you talk to yourself, how you are with your
partner, how you are in traffic, the music you listen to, how you show up every single
day.
They're going to track every single thing consciously and subconsciously.
I picked up on that as a kid.
I remember more of what my parents did than what they said.
And then what they did say got compared to what they did.
Yeah.
Dr. Lynn Lyons says, talk 85% less.
Hell yeah.
To your kids.
Hell yeah.
Say so much less.
Now we say, say more, but in terms of your kids, say less.
Keep it really simple and model what you need to do.
Yeah.
And I would turn to them and tell them to say more.
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
We spend all this time talking, talking, talking about rules and authority and what life is and
blah, blah, blah.
All this temporary stuff that we made up.
These kids are just getting here and they got real emotions that are beyond bills and stats
and taxes and all that stuff that we've temporarily made up.
Right.
They got real emotions going on here.
So I'll say, say more to them.
And I'm always working on saying less.
Except for on the show.
Except for on the episodes of say more.
Okay.
Good.
All right.
So this one is like hearsay therapy.
Like I heard someone else's therapist said it to them and then they passed it along to
me.
So I'm keeping it.
But groovy.
Meet them where they are.
Golly man.
That was so good.
That's everything.
That is everything.
Meet them where they are.
So everybody's operating in the world with their own perspective and their own point of view.
And if you're coming to them, again, trying to make them see what you're doing, you got
to come to where they are to be able to speak to them.
Not trying to get something that they can't give you.
Could not agree more.
Meeting somebody right where they are is going to help you walk them to the middle ground.
Not to your side.
Because if you want to go on your side, that's just ego.
But you have to understand where they're coming from.
And that does not mean agreeing with them either.
Right.
But to meet them where they are is to understand who they are, how they see the world.
What circumstances got them to that point of thought, belief, action, whatever.
Saying something like meet somebody right where they are involves compassion.
Right.
It involves putting your own ego aside.
And it involves understanding somebody else.
Those are the human traits that maybe right now we're seeing less of in this world.
And I think that once we start doing that, we can get further with it.
Somebody that I adore, I love very much, is a conspiracy theorist and a Republican.
And I adore this man.
I think he's fantastic.
Imagine if I didn't meet him where he was.
How could I learn how gentle he is?
How could I learn how great he is when he hugs every person he sees?
I told him about my accident and he cried.
Because I met him where he was first.
And then our dialogue got more and more healthy.
That matters more than anything else.
Yeah.
Okay.
Take a beat before speaking.
Two things.
One, very first, before your brain starts activating and taking information in,
the back of your brain, the amygdala starts taking in and making assessments.
That's your fear, your flight or fight response.
So if you take a beat before speaking, your prefrontal cortex activates.
That is your rational thinking.
That's understanding what's going on here.
And now you're not speaking from emotion.
You're speaking from a more calm, balanced reality.
Taking a beat before speaking has given me so much.
People do not like silence.
I am learning to be great with it.
Because it's a life hack.
Because how many times have you walked away from a situation and said, I should have said that.
This is what I should have said instead.
Oh, I forgot to mention that part.
That's typically because you are making the initial first thought for yourself.
But if you give yourself just a nice beat before speaking, you've now separated from that back of the brain amygdala.
And you've been able to speak from a real place with all the information you have.
Yeah, I think it's important to note how much of a beat you need to regulate your system.
Because you might be able to take a beat and find yourself back in a regulated way of speaking.
Whereas if somebody is heated or triggered and they take a small beat and then they just are still operating from that place of trigger, fight or flight.
It's not going to be met any differently.
So how much of a beat do you need?
Give me a minute.
Let me walk outside.
What calms me?
I heard my therapist say in couples counseling, in couples therapy, if somebody gets heated, there's absolutely no therapeutic work that can be done from that place.
So if somebody's flooded, they need to tell the room what they need.
And for some people that is going outside and walking.
And there's something in the act of walking, the bilateral movement of your legs that will regulate some things in your brain.
So you might say, I need five minutes.
I need 10 minutes.
I need a minute to cool myself.
I did this with the kids the other day.
I got flooded about something.
There were just too many things that had spilled and whatnot.
I don't remember what it was.
And I said, I'm going to take a minute.
I'm going to come back when I'm calm.
And I went and I opened the back door and I sat in the sunlight and I meditated for a minute or two.
It takes me longer than a beat.
So that's like a part two of the take a beat before you speak.
Yeah.
Some people probably need like a beat boxers.
I live just staring at you holding on to that stupid joke.
You're so proud of yourself.
I'm just staring at me.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Wrap it up because I got a great one for you.
This dad joke is going to light it up.
All right.
I would agree.
Yeah.
I also, I want to say something that I think people are not picking up on.
Almost nothing in your life is urgent.
Yeah.
Almost nothing in your life is urgent.
Running that yellow light, that's urgent.
The register when your car declined, that feels urgent.
It's not urgent.
There is time.
You can give yourself so much more time.
So many times the kids run up to us and they're flooded with information.
And we feel like we have to make a decision right then and there.
No, we don't.
No, we don't.
Someone sends you that text message.
Oh, right.
And you want to respond.
No, you don't.
You don't have to respond immediately.
Right.
Give yourself a beat, a longer beat, a symphony's worth of beat, a day.
You can give yourself as much time as you need.
Because if you evaluate every moment in your day and ask yourself, is this urgent?
Is this urgent?
Is this urgent?
You're going to get about 99 out of 100 times no.
Yeah.
Remind yourself of that.
And we can realize how taking a beat is necessary, helpful, beneficial, and realistic.
Yeah.
Recently, the kids have gotten stuck in their craw, if you will.
The idea that, like, I say no to everything, which were, you know, maybe not true anymore,
but one of them will say, I'm going to say this.
Don't say anything right away.
Use this head movement if it's yes.
Use this head movement if it's no.
And then do this.
If it's a maybe.
But the point is that I am, they're just looking to not have an immediate no.
They want to live in the hope a little bit, I think.
So I'm trying to say, we'll see.
Let me think about that for a minute.
Absolutely.
And then really honestly give it good thought, whether or not that is something we can do or we can't do.
Absolutely.
You telling that story about them makes me want to kiss them all over.
Little cutie.
All right.
This one's tricky.
And maybe he's going to ruffle a few feathers.
Oh, yeah.
Now we're talking.
But my therapist told me one time, and it's stuck in my brain because I still don't fully understand it.
There's no such thing as balance.
And upon lots of reflection, what I believe that is to mean is that to seek balance, work-life balance, family, personal career, love life, children, all of the things, friends, is an unattainable.
Perhaps unnecessary thing to strive for.
And that instead, we should be seeking harmony.
I don't know if I've ever had balance in my life.
So maybe the idea that we are looking for balance and that balance is something that we should have is actually going to set us up for failure and guilt and shame.
I don't know.
What do you think?
You said there's no such thing as balance to me, and it confused the daylights out of me.
Can we bring your therapist in here?
Yeah.
I think we should.
I think we should, too.
Yeah.
Because not to like grill her, but like I'm curious about that because you and I talked about it briefly, and how I see balance is just seemed maybe different from how you're seeing balance perhaps.
I liked when you said just now of harmony, of it being harmony.
That makes much more sense to me.
I'm like on my hand, on my hand.
I'm like, okay, let's go.
Let's go.
For me, the act of moving things is the balance.
If it crashes, that's not balance, right?
If you're juggling green tennis balls, one ball's way up here, one's down here.
That's not equal.
There's your balance, though.
The act of doing the thing is balance.
Yeah, maybe.
And maybe what you're saying is that if you were to freeze frame it, it's balance, but you can't actually keep all the balls in the air at all times.
Yeah, but see, this is going to turn into a real cycle because that ain't balance.
Okay, so let's go with just two things, the scales.
Yeah, yeah, okay.
To achieve balance where they're both even is not the goal, but that they're in movement and in flux and flexible, and that they're always aiming for the middle, but to land straight on balance is never going to happen.
That is correct, and that is not life.
So that's why if it's moving constantly, that's what the act of balancing is.
So balance as a noun doesn't work, but maybe balancing.
That's a verb, right?
But there's also a balanced breakfast, right?
So wait, follow me on this.
No, no, I don't got to prove myself here.
I just realized, like, I'm like, no, stay with me.
A balanced breakfast, right?
It's not the same weight of milk and cereal and banana and strawberry.
There's different parts that go with it.
That's a balanced breakfast.
Interesting.
What do you think listening?
Yeah, really.
What is balance for you?
Is it the act of things being equally leveled, or is it the act of consistently keeping things in an order, in a flow, that kind of...
I like flow.
Yeah.
I think that's what harmony is.
If you have all these different voices in one song, these different notes, they harmonize together, but they're not equal.
Yeah.
And they're not balanced in weight, and they're not singing the exact same thing.
Mm-hmm.
They're harmonizing.
They are balancing each other out in some respect.
Right.
No!
This is what I'm saying!
What's really cool is that you literally just gave me my definition to me while you were talking.
I was like, maybe I should just change the word from balance to harmony then.
Yeah.
I would probably say that instead, harmony, because humans, we like tactile imagery.
So to say harmony, it activates us in a deeper level.
I would just say this.
If you feel like you're trying to achieve balance, and you've never achieved it, and you feel bad about it, then you should listen to the words of my therapist, which is, there's no such thing as balance, or maybe that's not the goal.
Well, there is that, too.
That's actually a really good point, because what she is doing, essentially, is shattering whatever's not serving you.
There you go.
And she's using an expedient tool that speaks to you directly.
That's really cool.
We should have her on this show now.
We should.
She's a rad human being.
I would love to talk to her on the show.
All right.
This is a non-therapist quote that was given to me that became very therapeutic.
Okay.
What you think about the world is how you think the world's going to see you.
Okay.
So I was in theater school for a while, and this teacher said to a student during his notes,
after a scene he put up, he said, I can see you being rigid on stage because you judge people
on stage.
So because you judge people on stage, when you're on that stage, what are you going to think?
How people judge me.
Sure.
And that projection comes back to how you see yourself in the world.
It makes me think of social media.
Anyone who's ever been afraid to put themselves on social media, like I'm going to record a video
and post it, right?
That's a fear a lot of people have.
But if you think about it, is that because when you watch people on social media, do you
judge them?
Absolutely.
I mean, we all judge.
So it's not, you know, it's just something to look at.
I certainly had that issue when I was starting to put myself more forward facing on Instagram
and whatever.
I had to really look at why do I think people will judge me?
Is it because I've judged others?
All right.
You can't get milk from a hardware store.
Is that a therapist?
It's a group.
No, it's a group therapist.
It's a group therapy setting.
I want everyone listening to this.
If you can find that moment visibly on YouTube, please look at it.
It was great.
I got so much yes from her body and so much no from her words.
It was fantastic.
It was a beauty and it was a break.
Okay.
Therapy.
It's a phrase.
Okay.
You, you've heard it before perhaps, but you can't get milk from a hardware store.
What does that mean?
It means the person you're going to for the thing you think you need.
Maybe it's a parent who's emotionally unavailable and you keep going to that person trying to get
something that they're not able to give you.
It's a variation.
I meet them where they are because I cannot keep going to that same person and expecting them
to give me something positive and they don't.
They can't do it.
They don't have it in them.
So you have to understand what they have and what they don't have.
Does that store sell milk?
No, it doesn't.
So stop going there for that.
There's grocery stores out here.
We're just going to go the metaphor all the way through.
There's grocery stores all over the place that can give you that, but you can get nails from
that hardware store.
So what is that person able to give you?
If you want any kind of relationship with them, what can they give you?
Consider the source.
And some people do not deserve your good news.
And once you've considered that source, you know exactly what they will give you and you
can go to them for those sort of things.
That's a healed.
Let me say that is like flash forward through so much healing to be able to get to the place
where you can still be in relationship with someone who can't give you any of the things
you'd hoped they could give you, but you can get this from them.
That is a part of letting go.
Yeah.
Knowing what somebody can give you and what they can't give you and still participating
in their life is a part of letting go of your wants from that person, of your expectations
from that person, and what you think they're going to take from when you say it to them.
Let that all go.
Yeah.
Certainly we can, there are people that it's important to have no contact with and that you
need to cut out of your life and not for safety and for many other reasons.
Certainly that can happen.
And I wonder if it's also possible, is there a world in which you could have that person
in your life for the things they can give you and not expect anything more from them?
And then the bonus could be that over time they change.
We can't expect that, but it does happen that they then maybe are able to give you, I don't
know, a sandwich.
Maybe the hardware store starts selling hoagies.
Hoagie it is hardware.
And if I'm not going to take that person's advice, I'm also not going to listen to their
critiques.
Right.
At all.
True.
I won't do it.
If how they go about their life is not my way, why would I want to listen to their critique
or their advice of something?
There's a person in my life that I showed them a video that made me really excited and they
went straight to giving me all the worries about it.
And I remember, why am I telling them this?
Why am I giving them my joy?
I'm not going to do this anymore.
Yeah.
I'm not.
I'm not going to do it.
And I can still be there for them and their joys without question.
But their journey is their journey.
Yeah.
And along that way, I'm not going to have my joys unthreaded because I've done a lot of
work for those joys in my life.
There are some people in my life that I can share my total dreams with.
And I don't mean dream dreams.
I mean all of the hopes I have for my life in the future.
I envision this.
I envision that they're vision holders for me.
And then there are some people who I'm very close to, they can only accept the reality.
If I give them a dream, they're going to crash it down to reality and give me, okay, well,
what about this?
What about that?
What about this?
It's like, okay, so for those folks, I'm just going to share with them when I've already
got the thing and I can give you the tangible because they really live in the tangible and
that's okay.
But the vision holders, I know who those people are, who I can be like, okay, this is the fantasy.
And they're like, oh my God, absolutely.
I see that happening for you.
Right.
And those people who maybe you don't share that with, if you do want to find the things
to worry about, you can go to them because they're going to give it to you.
Analyze this for me, please.
Absolutely.
And that's a valuable thing also in this world.
I had a friend whose uncle would always give him the like, yeah, but about conversations.
And he turns to me and says, I could tell this guy I'm going to space.
He'd be like, watch out for asteroids.
Cool.
My turn?
Yeah.
I'm going to do this as condensed as possible, but this is really helpful for people because
you can do this on your own at your house.
I had five sessions with a therapist when I lived in Jacksonville, Florida.
She was sweet.
She was kind.
She had a gentle voice.
She would let me get all of my stuff out.
And then she would quickly put it in a better order and say, you thought that you weren't
enough for this reason, but you are.
So keep that in mind.
Like that.
And I was like, oh yeah, I am.
Of course.
Listen, it was very nice the way she would serve me.
What she had me do was take a week, set a timer for 15 minutes.
You put a pen down on a piece of paper and you just start free writing.
The pen does not stop writing.
You keep going no matter what.
Don't worry about spelling.
Don't worry about grammar.
Don't just keep going.
Do not stop.
Whatever comes up, write it.
It doesn't have to make sense.
Keep going.
I did it every day.
The first two days, it was really hard.
By the third day, I felt a little more comfortable.
By the sixth day before I was going to see her again, I was solidly locked in.
What's more is that I didn't read any of them afterwards.
Then I brought them to her and read them out loud.
She started finding the healthy traits that were in my writing.
She started writing out things that she liked about who I was as that writer.
And then she read them to me afterwards.
She said, from this, I read, you are compassionate.
You care about humans.
You want the best for everybody.
And then she said, now let's put those notes, all these words that we got together, because
I gave her some after that.
She helped me work through it.
Let's put those on some sticky notes.
And you put those five characteristics, those five personality traits of you that we both
agree are in you, put them on your dashboard, your car, put them in the mirror right where
you brush your teeth, put them at your office space where you are, and leave them up there
as long as you need to.
I have never gone back below that lack of self-confidence.
It brought me up to a level of confidence that I have never gone back under.
Because it came from me.
She showed it back to me and then had me reinforce it.
I thank her for the rest of my life.
Five sessions.
That's so great.
It was beautiful.
And I saw the beauty in who I was.
Yeah.
And I didn't see him before.
And she got me there.
Yeah, that's right.
I remember you had post-it notes up at the old place when I first met you.
Yeah.
The key is that it came from you.
And then an outside person was able to kind of mirror back what your psyche does believe
on some level.
And you're just amplifying what your psyche already had there embedded.
Just bringing it to the front.
Absolutely.
You can help somebody access the best version of who they are by meeting them where they
are first.
Not giving them what you are.
Meeting them where they are.
And someone listening could do that exercise and have a close friend read that with them.
Well said.
Yep.
Just somebody you feel safe being vulnerable with.
And I would also say write it with the intention that no one's ever going to read it.
Write it that way.
And then later make sure that it feels safe enough for you to share with someone because
then you've really got free form writing going on.
Truly.
Truly.
Good stuff.
All right.
This one I'm going to break down in very simple terms as best I can.
But this is a whole entity of what my therapist has taught me over many, many years.
This is not a catchphrase.
This is a whole method of working.
But I'm going to break it down for you.
It's called internal family systems.
If you've ever worked with this modality.
We also can call it parts work.
Sort of more casually.
This is the idea that when you get triggered, flooded, upset about something.
Anything where you're not in your best, truest self.
Capital S self.
Right?
You've got a part that's coming up.
It's not you.
I feel this way.
But this part feels this way.
So the first step is really separating out the part of you that is feeling this way.
We're going to acknowledge that part.
We're going to look at it.
We're going to talk to it.
So let's have an example.
I have a very strong shame part.
So when I start to feel shame about something, I feel bad.
I feel worried.
I'm getting in my head about it.
Let's talk to that part.
Let's take that part and separate from it a little bit.
Can we have that part sit on a park bench in front of you?
That's so beautiful.
Usually I go into like a little bit of a meditative state to kind of access this, but it can just
be done in talking.
Pull that part out and have them sit in front of you and really talk to that part.
Find out what it has to say.
What is it trying to tell you?
Because these, they're shadow selves, if you want to call it.
They're young inner child voices that are coming up, but they have something to say.
And if we shove them aside or we say they don't exist, they come right back up, right?
You know this when you're triggered by something.
So I have this shame part and I'm going to pull her out and have her sit on the bench and
I'm going to talk to her and get down on her level and treat her like I would one of my
kids.
And what she'll always ask is how old is that part?
And almost always that's going to be a young part that's speaking this way, right?
From shame, from the shame one?
I would say almost all the time.
Almost all the time?
Okay.
A lot of our wounding comes zero to seven, very formative years, ages zero to seven or zero
to 14, right?
So let's say this part is six years old.
So then I'm going to start talking with the compassion of a six-year-old child who has a
lot to say and not a lot of cognitive ability to say it well.
And she'll have me vocalize out what that part is saying and like tell her, okay, the
part says this, it says that.
It says it wants to make sure that I'm not going to get in trouble because last time I got in
trouble when I said that and it was really scary.
I felt like I wanted to cry and I wanted to go hide under the table.
We let that part just say all of what it needs to say unfiltered.
And when it's got all of the stuff out, it kind of feels quiet and calm.
There's nothing else.
Does that part have anything else?
No, I think it's good.
All right, now where does that part want to live in you?
Sometimes that could be a part of your body.
It's going to come live on the shoulder.
I've had parts say, I want to go live on a tropical island somewhere and come visit me.
You know, we always promise we're going to come back and visit, but that part gets to be
integrated into your system and have a job, maybe a more healthy job than coming out as
fear or shame.
But I'll warn you if you're getting in trouble again, I'll make a little alert sound and I'll
let you know that there's something that might get you in trouble.
But once we've let all of that part's inner voice out, it usually becomes pretty regulated
within us.
And then, as you often say, it doesn't get to drive the car, but it gets to sit in the back
seat and just remind us if we're veering off course a little bit.
Oh my goodness.
When I tell you this work is magic, it's phenomenal.
And yes, you should be with someone skilled, trained in this work to really do that.
But the idea, that framework of the voice that's speaking is not necessarily me, foster, all
of who I am.
It's just this one part.
That means when I'm in partnership with you and I feel flooded, I can speak from my part.
Hey, listen, Caesar, I have a part of me that's feeling really scared right now.
And like, I don't want to tell you this thing that I'm going to tell you, but there's a part
of me that's scared.
And then you can recognize, okay, that's not how foster feels.
There's just that part.
And it allows a lot of compassion for our inner child parts.
Yes.
I think that every demon that lives within us is just an angel that feels unheard.
So if you're calling it shame right now, your job is to turn to it and give it that space
because it's feeling unheard.
You know, your brain's got a lot of things going on.
If you don't feed your brain, it's going to mistake your heart for an apple.
And it's going to take so much of who you are because you haven't turned to listen to it.
It's great that you say that because you have to go back to the first steps, zero to seven,
zero to 14.
And typically you're giving that sort of stuff by your environment.
My previous therapist gave me the same exact message with a different line.
She would ask me, whose voice is that?
Whose voice is telling you this information that you can't do this thing or to be scared
or to have anxiety or to have shame and therefore overcompensate to stick your chest out, right?
Carl Jung had this thing called individuation.
This is all the same.
This concept of individuation says that shadow in you, where you call it shame, some will call
it the demon, some will call it the darkness.
Whatever it is, that shadow, you turn and once you hear it, you've kissed that frog,
it becomes a prince and you've amalgamized it to become a better version of yourself.
Instead of arrogance, it's now confident.
Instead of being too naive, you're now calm and peaceful, right?
Doing that side by listening to it is the first and foremost step.
I love that process.
I love it.
I love that.
It's all a little separation too.
It's like, give me a timeout.
Okay, let's just sit here and listen to what you want to say.
I need a few minutes, everybody.
Let me just sit here with this kid and let them express these things for me.
And the attitude towards that inner child, that part, needs to always be curiosity.
I'm just really curious what you have to say.
And stuff will, man, shit will come up.
Like, oh, that's why that part.
I couldn't logically think through why that part would feel that way.
And then some little memory will pop up where I wasn't supported or I felt shamed or the kids
at school, X, Y, Z.
And then I'm like, oh, okay, okay.
You can't fix what happened, but you can hear that part out and help that part feel more integrated.
And for me, once I had done that work on that part, it rarely would come up again.
And I got new shit to worry about next time.
It's magical work.
It takes practice.
But I can now, if I take the time, I can do this for myself now.
I'm so well-versed in it.
Definitely work through that with a therapist if you can.
But my goodness, if we can offer any bit of that to you listening, it could be so helpful.
By listening to that shame or that fear instead of running away from it, like you said, you've been able to integrate it.
It's like giving it a job in the new CEO building of who you are.
Like, Abraham Lincoln had a lawyer that he worked with before he was anybody.
And the guy was really smart, smart as a whip, and then got Lincoln kicked off the case.
But Lincoln stayed and watched him perform and said that man was great, even though he got him kicked off.
When Lincoln became president, he went back and made that man a part of his cabinet.
There's your integration of a shadow figure right there.
I had these sessions with a spiritual practitioner.
Her name is Michelle Mehta.
And I will name her because she's fantastic and she's probably listening.
And I think you're wonderful.
She had me do one of these active imaginations.
You kind of go under in this breathing state.
And she had me name two parts for me.
One side was the logical muscle.
The person who's learned how to box.
The person who understands how to be louder.
And you can be tougher and stronger.
The other side is the artist.
The one who's softer.
Who's more imaginative.
Who goes off into the world and wonders and wanders about everything.
She had me work through this imagination of me performing on a show.
And the stage and the stairs and the security and the lighting.
All that stuff was set up by the logical muscle.
He was security.
He was the one that put things in order.
Artistic side didn't do a thing.
But then when he got on stage that muscle took a seat.
And I realized in that moment all versions of me are valid and have a job.
You just got to find the ones that work for you the best.
And what they do so you can assign a particular job to them.
How do you do that is by listening to every single one of them.
You have to give them an interview.
If we're going to go back to the metaphor.
You are the CEO of your life.
Not your thoughts.
Not your emotions.
Not your actions.
So when any of those thoughts, emotions, or actions show up.
You sit it down for an interview and say.
What is a good position for you?
But you got to listen to it first.
Yeah.
That was one of the most helpful things in my life.
That's so good.
All right.
I have one last.
Great.
Little one.
That's going to really.
This messes with me.
I don't know how you're going to feel about it.
But it messes with me.
Are you about to say.
Side note by the way.
We didn't share these with each other.
So we're just dishing stuff out.
And I'm just as nervous as you are listening.
Would you rather be right or happy?
This is wrong.
Wrong episode.
That's say more.
But really and truly.
Would you rather be right or happy?
In any given situation where you're hung up on something.
In the question of whether I would rather be right or happy.
I would take happy any given day.
Right is a subjective way of looking at the world.
Nobody's incorrect.
Everybody's incomplete.
That is an implication that what you feel is right.
Is temporary and subject to change.
So let go of your rightness.
And be present with the moment of being accurate for here.
And it will change over time.
When you recognize that you feel more peaceful and calm.
And by default.
The byproduct of feeling peaceful.
Is happiness.
Well you do have the correct answer.
But I'm just going to say most people don't feel that way.
He's an anomaly everyone.
Of course.
But yeah.
You get hung up on something.
Complaining and venting about something.
It's like you're probably right in that.
But your focus on wanting to be right is making you suffer.
So that is just a question that it's important to ask yourself.
But it's a really hard one.
It's true.
Congratulations if you're right right here and right now.
Great.
When we revisit it in the next week or year or so.
Because the circumstances have changed.
If you don't change.
Then you're going to be unhappy.
I think a lot of people who are right are unhappy.
I would agree.
Especially people who think they're always right.
Yeah.
Are consistently unhappy.
I'm not interested in being right.
I'm interested in being real.
And real is what makes me a human being here.
And that connects me to the rest of the world.
Because we're social animals.
That makes me happier in a biological sense.
And a spiritual sense.
Well said.
Amazing.
Okay.
We must hear from you.
Please let us know.
What shit have your therapist taught you?
Because there's so much gold here.
And we're just getting started.
Yeah.
You can reach us on any median, by the way.
Whatever way you listen.
Any median?
You can reach us by any psychic whatsoever.
What's the word?
Medium.
Medium.
Medium.
You're just in the middle of the highway.
Call Ms. Cleo and let us know.
Whatever way you access this show, you can contact us by email, social media, and share at least one thing that your therapist has.
That you've taken with you.
It's good stuff.
I can't wait to hear it.
Thank you so much for being here.
And as always, please be kind to yourself.
If this episode spoke to you, take a moment and send it to someone else who might need it.
That's the best way to spread these conversations to the people who need them the most.
And if you want to keep exploring with us, make sure to follow Beauty in the Break wherever you get your podcasts.
We'll see you next time.
Beauty in the Break is created and hosted by Foster Wilson and Cesar Cardona.
Our executive producer is Glenn Milley.
Original music by Cesar and the Clew.
