رونوشت 🔗
WEBVTT
00:00:00.285 --> 00:00:01.006
Mira, mira, mira.
00:00:01.475 --> 00:00:08.564
We're gonna get comfortable with being uncomfortable in this episode, and I challenge you to stay till the end.
00:00:11.404 --> 00:00:15.426
Buen día, mi gente, and welcome back to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas.
00:00:16.006 --> 00:00:18.285
Welcome back to Healing Girl Summer.
00:00:19.045 --> 00:00:26.326
I'm your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato, and we are on the very last lesson in the book and of this summer series.
00:00:26.865 --> 00:00:33.545
We skipped around a bit in that little book called Benchmarks Are Bullshit, so to catch you up, lesson one was about failure.
00:00:33.865 --> 00:00:35.746
Lesson three was about decisions.
00:00:36.146 --> 00:00:37.865
Lesson four was about bullshit.
00:00:38.426 --> 00:00:43.896
And today we're wrapping it up with lesson six, which is about curiosity.
00:00:44.545 --> 00:00:51.106
Because the most interesting version of you, mija, is hiding behind all the doors you're too comfortable to open.
00:00:51.746 --> 00:00:52.725
So let's get into it.
00:00:53.655 --> 00:00:57.485
The next few years of your life are ripe for exploration.
00:00:57.985 --> 00:01:02.685
You get to reinvent yourself multiple times until you figure out who you are.
00:01:02.765 --> 00:01:06.686
Take advantage of it! Explore the larger world around you.
00:01:06.725 --> 00:01:09.725
It's huge, and fascinating.
00:01:10.206 --> 00:01:12.225
You never know what you might find.
00:01:12.846 --> 00:01:15.126
And what you might love.
00:01:16.546 --> 00:01:21.385
When my husband first moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, he did not like spicy food.
00:01:21.686 --> 00:01:22.566
Like at all.
00:01:23.225 --> 00:01:24.646
He hated it.
00:01:25.146 --> 00:01:27.525
I don't know why he got with a Latina, but anyway.
00:01:28.245 --> 00:01:28.665
Now?
00:01:29.245 --> 00:01:31.305
Now he can't do without his habanero salsa.
00:01:32.046 --> 00:01:34.986
Do you even know how spicy habanero peppers are?
00:01:35.206 --> 00:01:35.876
I don't eat them.
00:01:36.945 --> 00:01:39.846
But he loves them, can't do without them.
00:01:40.906 --> 00:01:44.665
Now, of course, he hasn't given up his love of ranch dressing.
00:01:44.885 --> 00:01:46.865
You're never gonna take the Midwesterner out of him.
00:01:47.325 --> 00:01:51.986
But he can appreciate the bolder flavors now, too, thankfully.
00:01:53.165 --> 00:01:55.876
The point is to try everything.
00:01:56.805 --> 00:01:57.936
Okay, except cocaine.
00:01:57.986 --> 00:01:59.365
That's just a stupid drug.
00:01:59.406 --> 00:02:00.665
It's one of the worst parts of the '80s.
00:02:01.126 --> 00:02:14.465
But spicy food, a semester abroad, taking up a new language, befriending people from a different culture, all of those will broaden your horizons and make you a better and more interesting person.
00:02:14.566 --> 00:02:18.185
And I know anything different can seem scary at first.
00:02:18.445 --> 00:02:21.465
Life in general is scary, period.
00:02:22.534 --> 00:02:25.245
That doesn't mean it isn't worth living.
00:02:25.425 --> 00:02:33.506
One of the worst things that can happen to you in the next five years is that you'll have learned nothing and remained sheltered in a bubble.
00:02:34.625 --> 00:02:38.685
And mi amor, you deserve better than a life unlived.
00:02:40.622 --> 00:02:45.192
The takeaway here is to be curious and evolve constantly.
00:02:46.882 --> 00:02:54.290
Let's talk about that "unlived life" thing for a second because I think we mistranslate what our comfort zone actually is.
00:02:54.991 --> 00:02:59.162
We call it a comfort zone like it's a nice place, like it's a safe place to be.
00:02:59.872 --> 00:03:02.192
But let's think about what the actual words mean for a second.
00:03:02.882 --> 00:03:05.782
Comfort zone, not safe zone.
00:03:06.230 --> 00:03:08.401
Because comfort and safety are not the same thing.
00:03:08.971 --> 00:03:12.221
A prison cell can become comfortable, too, eventually.
00:03:12.711 --> 00:03:19.510
I've never been to jail, much less prison, but I can surmise that you'd get used to it even if you never learn to like it.
00:03:19.931 --> 00:03:21.111
And that's not safety.
00:03:21.111 --> 00:03:23.860
That's just familiarity within your own walls.
00:03:24.580 --> 00:03:29.711
And I think a lot of us are doing time in a comfort zone we've mistaken for a safe house.
00:03:30.110 --> 00:03:32.901
When really it's just the prison cell we know best.
00:03:33.231 --> 00:03:37.850
Or even a gilded cage if that's a more comfortable metaphor.
00:03:38.391 --> 00:03:39.881
So actually, you know what?
00:03:40.211 --> 00:03:41.610
I'm gonna walk back some words.
00:03:41.692 --> 00:03:43.480
Let's forget about expanding your bubble.
00:03:43.480 --> 00:03:44.820
Let's just burst it.
00:03:45.271 --> 00:03:48.161
Because a bubble doesn't stretch to make room for you.
00:03:48.401 --> 00:03:56.670
It pops! And the second it does, you realize there was never anything holding you in it except the bubble itself.
00:03:57.251 --> 00:03:58.131
And I love bubbles.
00:03:58.192 --> 00:04:01.110
Making bubbles, favorite thing to do as a kid and as an adult.
00:04:01.662 --> 00:04:06.092
But on the other side of that bubble, that's where the adventures begin.
00:04:06.872 --> 00:04:08.691
Live a life of adventure.
00:04:08.731 --> 00:04:11.980
I'm not talking about the kind you find in a vacation brochure.
00:04:12.181 --> 00:04:14.861
I'm talking about the small everyday kind.
00:04:15.151 --> 00:04:27.761
Saying yes to something you'd normally talk yourself out of, trying new food like habanero salsa, taking a different class, striking up conversation with the stranger sitting next to you at the coffee shop.
00:04:28.372 --> 00:04:30.230
Adventure doesn't have to be a plane ticket.
00:04:30.860 --> 00:04:41.610
It can be the decision to stop defaulting to what's familiar, to stop
Load full transcript
thinking negatively, and just accept that you get to try something new.
00:04:43.384 --> 00:04:52.814
I'm gonna tell you a little story about myself here, because this is one of my favorite examples of how curiosity paid off for me, and not in a big way, but in a really fun way.
00:04:53.574 --> 00:04:58.473
Way back in, like, 2010 to 2012, I was a food blogger.
00:04:58.802 --> 00:05:12.403
There was a group of us called the Food Bloggers of Los Angeles, and this group was made up of people from all over the culinary world: professional chefs, caterers, food stylists, PR people, photographers, recipe testers, people who worked in restaurants.
00:05:12.963 --> 00:05:16.923
They were all professional food people, pro level all the way.
00:05:17.723 --> 00:05:23.293
And on one of our FBLA trips, we went to a local restaurant and had a little bit of a pizza-making contest.
00:05:24.043 --> 00:05:26.112
And I need to be really clear with you about something.
00:05:26.333 --> 00:05:27.932
I am not a chef.
00:05:28.053 --> 00:05:29.942
I am not classically trained.
00:05:29.952 --> 00:05:31.512
I didn't go to culinary school.
00:05:32.182 --> 00:05:38.663
I was just a little home cook turned food blogger who liked to eat, liked to experiment, and then write about it and maybe take a few crappy pictures.
00:05:38.983 --> 00:05:46.632
That was the entirety of my qualifications, and this was long before people could make a career out of being TikTok chefs, okay?
00:05:47.072 --> 00:05:50.802
We're talking me, my little food blog, surrounded by professionals.
00:05:51.204 --> 00:05:54.723
Talk about bursting a bubble and being outside of your comfort zone.
00:05:55.173 --> 00:06:02.713
So there we are at the restaurant making pizza, me and the professional food people, people who were trained for this very kind of contest.
00:06:03.322 --> 00:06:08.564
And when we were all done, we had a blind tasting where everyone got to vote on all of the pizzas.
00:06:09.553 --> 00:06:11.572
And guess who won the grand prize?
00:06:12.413 --> 00:06:18.452
Me, the non-professional, the person who was not trained to make pizza, who didn't know how to make pizza.
00:06:19.742 --> 00:06:28.093
The grand prize was that they put my pizza on the menu, and anybody could order it, but when I went, I would get it for free for a year, which was pretty cool.
00:06:28.173 --> 00:06:33.690
I took advantage of that a few times And I didn't win because I had a better technique.
00:06:33.690 --> 00:06:34.771
I didn't have a technique.
00:06:34.841 --> 00:06:36.701
I did not know how to make pizza.
00:06:37.641 --> 00:06:40.500
But what I had was curiosity.
00:06:41.021 --> 00:06:45.610
When most people think of pizza, you think of the classic red base, right?
00:06:45.690 --> 00:06:46.930
It's classic for a reason.
00:06:46.951 --> 00:06:47.630
It works.
00:06:48.620 --> 00:06:55.380
Now, in the contest, we could only use the ingredients the restaurant had on hand, but we were given a
lot of leeway on how to use them.
00:06:56.391 --> 00:07:07.112
So my pizza had a pesto base, salad greens with a honey balsamic drizzle, and then the ingredient that most people ignored, and this is gonna sound weird, but trust me, it worked.
00:07:08.211 --> 00:07:08.800
Breadcrumbs.
00:07:09.500 --> 00:07:10.480
Yeah, on a pizza.
00:07:10.670 --> 00:07:11.620
I know how that sounds.
00:07:12.290 --> 00:07:13.250
Weird, right?
00:07:13.430 --> 00:07:18.911
But I got curious about what that combination would actually taste like instead of just assuming it was wrong.
00:07:19.920 --> 00:07:21.541
And it worked because I won.
00:07:21.831 --> 00:07:25.290
I beat out all of these professionals, and they chose my pizza.
00:07:25.591 --> 00:07:26.072
Them.
00:07:27.170 --> 00:07:29.081
That was pretty rad I'm not gonna lie.
00:07:30.850 --> 00:07:33.130
But there's a few lessons wrapped up in this story.
00:07:33.732 --> 00:07:37.310
One is just because you're not a professional doesn't mean a damn thing.
00:07:37.600 --> 00:07:39.790
You can still produce a crowd favorite.
00:07:39.882 --> 00:07:40.810
More on this in a second.
00:07:42.021 --> 00:07:48.930
Number two is that coloring inside the lines is safe, just like using traditional pizza sauce is safe.
00:07:49.062 --> 00:07:52.180
It is, after all, what all of those professionals chose to do.
00:07:52.721 --> 00:07:55.411
But safe can also be boring.
00:07:56.670 --> 00:07:59.961
And three, curiosity won that day, not just me.
00:08:00.271 --> 00:08:01.242
Curiosity.
00:08:01.451 --> 00:08:05.100
Because being curious without judgment is what created the winning pizza.
00:08:05.610 --> 00:08:09.331
Who knew you could glean so many lessons from one afternoon of making pizza?
00:08:10.091 --> 00:08:15.211
If you want the actual recipe, I'll publish it over for the Super Cheveritas on Substack, so join up if you want to.
00:08:15.571 --> 00:08:16.521
Link's in the show notes.
00:08:17.975 --> 00:08:21.045
Who's another Latina we can point to that did something similar?
00:08:21.086 --> 00:08:29.115
Who made non-traditional choices, who wasn't a professional in her chosen field but kept going anyway, and who lived their life in an unpredictable way?
00:08:29.656 --> 00:08:36.995
Well, for one, it's every single woman I've talked about during Healing Girl Summer, real or imagined, because we also talked about the movie Encanto.
00:08:37.924 --> 00:08:47.985
But to bring it home, let's talk about a Latina who couldn't even speak Spanish when she started her singing career, recording records phonetically, doing interviews where she messed up the words all the time.
00:08:48.565 --> 00:08:50.245
Yes, you know who I'm talking about.
00:08:50.395 --> 00:08:53.325
Selena, La Reina de Tejano.
00:08:53.395 --> 00:09:01.385
Okay, she didn't like that title, but she was recognized for being a giant success, and yet she couldn't even speak Spanish when she started.
00:09:01.985 --> 00:09:09.015
She was a no
sabo kid from Houston whose dad was teaching her Spanish syllable by syllable in the studio while they were recording.
00:09:09.395 --> 00:09:19.054
And yet she went on to become a legend, the biggest female artist in a genre that up to that point had been completely dominated by men.
00:09:19.544 --> 00:09:23.065
Man, we love to see a woman in male-populated fields.
00:09:24.014 --> 00:09:28.544
So Selena didn't grow up speaking Spanish, and yet became a legend singing it.
00:09:29.274 --> 00:09:32.166
She learned it phonetically on the way to becoming the Queen of Tejano.
00:09:32.875 --> 00:09:34.764
She didn't wait until she was comfortable.
00:09:35.335 --> 00:09:38.565
She did it messy, she did it on the go, and she succeeded.
00:09:39.264 --> 00:09:40.975
So why shouldn't you?
00:09:43.035 --> 00:09:43.697
All right, mi gente.
00:09:43.775 --> 00:09:44.275
That's it.
00:09:44.336 --> 00:09:45.216
That's lesson six.
00:09:45.297 --> 00:09:47.957
That's the last lesson of Healing Girl Summer.
00:09:48.616 --> 00:09:51.418
To recap, here were the four lessons.
00:09:52.015 --> 00:09:54.596
Failure is a data point, not a verdict.
00:09:55.236 --> 00:09:57.535
Decisions are not life sentences.
00:09:58.376 --> 00:10:00.035
Benchmarks are bullshit.
00:10:00.916 --> 00:10:06.197
And now, get curious, because your bubble was never keeping you safe.
00:10:06.275 --> 00:10:08.697
It was just making you comfortable.
00:10:09.076 --> 00:10:15.197
And no one evolves or grows or becomes a better version of themselves inside a prison of comfort.
00:10:16.817 --> 00:10:21.756
So if any of these lessons hit you the way they were supposed to, the whole book is a measly 10-page read.
00:10:22.015 --> 00:10:23.736
Benchmarks Are Bullshit, link's in the show notes.
00:10:23.756 --> 00:10:24.677
It's just a few bucks.
00:10:24.895 --> 00:10:26.697
Help support this show and get your own copy.
00:10:27.317 --> 00:10:28.197
But now it's your turn.
00:10:28.677 --> 00:10:37.856
If you've got your own lesson, the one you wish someone had taught you at 18 or 28 or 38 or 48 or beyond, please text it to me.
00:10:38.155 --> 00:10:46.817
The link's in the show notes for that, too, because I'd really like to hear from you about the life lessons you carry with you that other people can benefit from, too.
00:10:47.275 --> 00:10:48.015
I showed you mine.
00:10:48.317 --> 00:10:49.576
Why don't you show me yours?
00:10:50.236 --> 00:10:53.856
And hey, if you send me one, I'll read it on a future episode with your consent.
00:10:54.317 --> 00:11:00.216
Gracias for sticking around for this one, for sticking around for the whole summer, for being on this healing journey with me.
00:11:00.256 --> 00:11:01.557
It's been a lot.
00:11:02.155 --> 00:11:10.216
This is coming out the week we finally have the memorial for my father, so yeah, when I say it's been a lot, I mean a lot.
00:11:10.916 --> 00:11:16.357
I appreciate everyone who's reached out to send condolences, to share your love, to share funny animal memes.
00:11:16.515 --> 00:11:20.395
I can never get enough of those so thank you, thank you, thank you.
00:11:20.437 --> 00:11:26.535
I'll be sharing snack review videos with my dad in the box over on Instagram and for the Super Cheveritas, so check them out.
00:11:26.856 --> 00:11:31.895
And for now, mis amiges, that's a burrito.