Pilot Episode - Let's Get Selfish - Where It All Began

Bryan White: you Welcome to the very first episode of Let's Get Selfish. Chances are you're tired. Tired of pouring from an empty cup. Tired of saying yes when everything inside you is screaming no. Tired of putting everyone else's needs, dreams, and emergencies ahead of your own. And wondering why you feel so burnt out, resentful, or just stuck. This show is for you. Here's the truth we're going to keep coming back to. You cannot pour from an empty bucket. And most of us have been running on fumes. way too long. So what if the most responsible, loving, and powerful thing you could do for your family, for your work, your relationships, and even the world is to finally get a little selfish. Not the ugly narcissistic kind of selfish. Not the me first, screw everyone else selfish. I'm talking about getting personally selfish. The kind that means filling your own bucket first. So you can actually have something real and sustainable to give back to the world. so that you can pour with absolute abundance. This podcast is gonna be raw, honest, and practical. We're gonna laugh, we're gonna get really uncomfortable, we're gonna get challenged, we're gonna dive into the guilt-driven beliefs that keep so many people stuck in survival mode. We're gonna walk through the hard work that it takes to really get personally selfish. And today, we're starting right at the beginning. As many of you know, recently I wrote a book called get selfish, filling your bucket first. What started as a personal wake up call during one of the hardest seasons of my life turned into something much bigger. It became a message I couldn't keep to myself. It became a motto. It became a way of living and a way for me to really do what I needed to do for myself. And then it kind of grew from there. In the pages of that book, I open up about the exact moment when everything shifted for me. The moment I realized that Constantly sacrificing myself and wearing a mask and being somebody else that wasn't noble It was slowly destroying me and the people I loved most I was not or even remotely close to living on authentic actually who I am what I needed life I was giving and giving and giving and being Someone that was fake someone that wasn't present somebody who had no idea Who the heck he was so today? Right here in the first episode, I'm going to read from the opening chapter of this book, because I think it's critical. The part where it all started. The raw unfiltered story of how I hit rock bottom, and how choosing to get selfish became the most selfish decision I've ever made. If you've ever felt guilty for wanting more you time and a little bit of yourself back, if you've ever wondered whether it's okay to put yourself first without becoming a bad person, then stay with me, because this conversation, it's just getting started. Alright. Let's open up the book together. Here's where it all began. Picture this. I was a husband, father of two beautiful daughters at the time, living a life that looked normal and happy from the outside. Cute family, decent job, always out doing something together. Yet on the inside, I was drowning in debt, in emotional numbness, in responsibilities that I was highly unprepared for and definitely unequipped to carry. Living in a giant hole, I was digging myself one blind decision at a time with one foot still on the shovel. I was digging it. ⁓ man, was I ever digging it. I didn't even know that I was digging it really. I was digging some holes hoping to hit a treasure. I was digging others and hope to bury the secrets deep enough that I wouldn't have to face them because that's what happens. You get skeletons in your closet, you dig holes and you try to bury the secrets and it just becomes a cycle. Or at least that's what it did for me. It was a bad cycle of digging holes, trying to fill them in, digging other holes, hoping to hit a treasure. It was a little nonsense. Frantically trying to fill other holes before someone saw what I was trying to bury. That was the name of my game. Every morning I woke up already exhausted. Head down, fist clenched, jaw braced for the next blow. Blinders on, head buried deep in the sand. My head was buried deep in that sand. Racing ahead. trying to run as fast as I could, while simultaneously trying to outrun each secret, each problem, everything I wasn't ready to face. If I could outrun it, I thought I could just leave it behind. Spiraling, checked out, burnt out, completely disconnected from the reality around me. I didn't see it clearly or even recognize it whatsoever. Yet I found myself crumbling slowly and quietly one day at a time without even knowing it. Like driving your car while ignoring the check engine light. Like the slow water leak in your walls that you keep saying, we'll get around to it. It's not that bad. We'll fix it eventually. How well does that work? On the outside, I to act pretty perfected. Or at least that's what I told myself. Big smile, shoulders back. I've got this. Everything's fine. Show up to work, work hard. Show up to family dinners as one big happy family. Look good on the outside. Make the outside and everything about it look like it's all good. Inside? I was having a full blown panic attack right in the grocery store parking lot because I knew that every cent had to be counted and there usually wasn't enough cents. Looking at the cashier in the eye was sometimes the hardest thing to do because I couldn't look myself in the eye. I couldn't deal with it and heck the grocery store was a really stressful place at that time. Paranoid everyone would know the secrets that I was keeping. That was a big one. You think when you've got secrets going in your life and You're trying to cover them up, you spend your life a little paranoid. We were spending more than we had. Just to lie to myself that I could find a way to balance it out later or borrow more or work harder. That worked out just so well. Wonderfully well. You'll learn later on how much debt I accumulated. If I just worked harder, moved faster, pushed longer, it would all look okay to everyone else and maybe even to myself. If I worked harder or found the next big idea, I could outrun the debt and fix all the problems. Bouncing from idea to idea, job to job, home to home. Heck, we moved at least once a year for a handful of years. Every year, we moved. It was insane. So I swung harder, brute force and speed, because slowing down meant feeling the avalanche I was trying to outrun finally catch up with me. And it was a pretty big avalanche. I lived with my head in the sand more than I could ever hold it high. Angry all the time, reactive, overwhelmed, completely shut down, wearing a mask. that screamed, life is great. Well, I gave every drop of myself trying to be the guy everyone else told me I should be, or being the guy that they wanted me to be, or being the person that did what they asked. I was just somebody else. I was not me. I changed jobs like outfits, changed directions every time someone said, hey, you're good at this, changed dreams depending on whose approval I was starving for that week. I was a chameleon in human skin. Whatever color made me belong, that's the color I turned. Looking back, I played the chameleon card all the way through my high school years. I think that became my safety net. The chameleon card is what I got really good at. I could be anyone. I could be anywhere. I could fit into almost any group. At least that's what I told myself. And that's the lie that I created to make myself feel better. I became a master of fitting in everywhere, yet nowhere. Somewhere within all that noise, all those mass, all those desperate color changes, I lost myself completely. If you had to ask me who I was at the time, I would have given you the answer that fit the day and space. My marriage at the time was coming apart thread by thread, two people living side by side in peer survival mode, spinning in circles, pretending the world that we were one big happy family. And don't get me wrong, there was lots of good times in there. We can dive into that later. And there was many things I took out of that relationship. But really, it was two people living in survival mode. in a very unhealthy mindset and space. Eventually the secrets and cover-ups got too heavy, the distance between us grew, the band-aids could never hold, and we turned away from each other, instead of turning inwards. We let the excuses make our decisions, the pain found places to escape, and clear thinking, it went out the door. In the wreckage, I chased validation, and fleeting emotions, and fleeting highs everywhere that they were offered or that I could grab them. Anyone willing to tell me I was still worth something. I couldn't sit still. I couldn't be alone. I couldn't love the man in the mirror. I numbed out. I zoned out. I found all the band-aids, distractions, covers up, scrolled too long, worked too long. Whole chunks of my daughter's toddler years are just blank, gone. That truth kind of sucks. There are literally portions of my daughter's younger years that if you ask me about them now, I couldn't tell you. I was so checked out. that I hardly remember. My children remember things better than I do. Let that sink in. If you ever look back and realized you were physically present for the biggest moments of your life, but mentally checked out, sleepwalking through the first steps, birthdays, bedtime stories, then you know the regret. It's regret I have to live with. The memories you wish you could recall like yesterday, the memories others talk about, they just don't exist. Nope, not there. And still, I didn't stop. You would think that I would have probably started to learn. Not yet. I didn't even know how bad it had gotten. Not right away at least. Because I only let myself see what I wanted to see. I told myself I was doing my best. I wore the provider badge, let it get made everything okay. Inside, I was a hot mess. Screaming mess. Begging for air as the dirt fell back into the hole faster than I shoveled it out. I was running on pure emotion, pure survival, doing whatever made me feel good and look good in the moment. Then, one ordinary morning, The noise I'd been shoveling then one ordinary morning, the noise I'd been shoving down for years, got a little too loud to ignore. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, really looking in the mirror for the first time in a long time. And the truth was, what I saw when I looked back, I hated. Heck, I didn't even know the stranger staring back at me. I had no idea where I was going, what I was doing, who I was, who the person looking back in the mirror even was. Like, no idea. The results of poor decisions and the lack of care for myself showed physically. I'd put on weight. I didn't look good. There was nothing that I liked looking back in the mirror. Although that moment awoke something. Something buried deep and shoved way down. That was a flicker of the spark. The rise of the burning question. That little thing inside of us all that finally asked, what the hell? The day I stopped lying to myself. The day I stopped blaming the world and everyone else for my problems that I created. The day I stopped pretending everything was just fine. The day the entire get selfish idea was born. Even though I had zero clue at the time. No idea. Every time I tried to do something for myself, set a boundary, say no, take a breath, choose something that felt right in my gut, someone told me I was being selfish or difficult. That's just what I had learned. That's just how I've been living life. They told me I was being ungrateful or that I was disappointing someone. Every time I put myself anywhere on the priority list, guilt came a running in. Every time I was doing something for myself and not someone else, it felt wrong. When I wanted to be who I thought I should be or chase what I thought I wanted in life, I was told I was being selfish, ungrateful, or ridiculous. I had spent too long being someone else for everyone else that when I tried to take off those masks or show up differently, it was met with massive pushback and disapproval. I'll admit it, I got angry. Maybe that's where it all started. I was angry at myself, I was angry at the world. Angry that taking care of myself, telling the truth, dreaming big, wanting something different, and following my own compass was treated like a character defect. That discovering and holding firm in my beliefs, my boundaries, my standards, my wants, my needs, my dreams, my goals, should all be thought of second, or exactly like someone else's? No! That saying no felt like it was wrong, or going in a different direction than someone else? was being too hard or being difficult, then the thought landed like a punch. Maybe being selfish isn't the insult they make it out to be. Hmm. Maybe my definition of selfish was all wrong and it meant something completely different to me. What if I thought about it differently? What if I didn't take it the way everybody else said it should be or what they were using it towards me as? Kind of where my brain went. There was a lot of big thoughts at that point, you know, the brain's working overtime here. Maybe it's exactly what I needed to do. Maybe when someone called me selfish, it doesn't mean that I'm doing the wrong thing. It means you finally stopped doing exactly what everyone else in society told you to do or wanted you to be. The single shift made me question everything. I already was a questioner. This opened the right questions. So I went on a mission, half accidental, half deliberate. What I actually believed that nobody else was in the room. What were my boundaries? non-negotiable, why I wanted one, where I wanted to go, where my dreams and goals were going to take me, and the deep depths of my own mind, body, needed to be explored, how the figured question answered. From the outer looks of myself to my inner faith, what it all meant to me and why, and what was my why behind it all. I embarked on what I call an endless journey of seeking answers to all these questions, questioning everything I thought I knew, everything everyone told me. I finally allowed myself to slow down, take a deep breath, began to learn how to be more present in the moment, how to understand, accept, and sit with my feelings. That really sucked. Still have to work on that to this day sometimes. We'll get into that later. I had to learn how to understand, accept, and sit with my feelings instead of running from them. or exploding like some wild animal do to them. To find out who I really was when no one was looking, I wanted to find answers to every question I had, every question I could come up with. And to this day, I still ask way too many questions. I still question everything, wanting to know the deep answers behind it all. This opened the door for years of learning and continued growth, still learning, still growing today. Experimenting, discovering, and diving deep. and diving deeper than ever into relationships, communication, and financial education. Talk about that one. Heck, we're still working on that one today. Way better. Again, we'll get into that down the road. Emotional intelligence, core values, beliefs, identity, standards, and learning what boundaries even were and how to set them, keep them, and stand firm in them. To the power of forgiveness, finding grace, understanding, and embracing faith, all the way to discipline. habits, structure, and balance between wants and needs. To commitment and consistency. Discovering, uprooting, connecting to, embracing, and challenging what each of these meant to me, looked like, and how I would show up with each and every single one of them. How was I going to implement these into my everyday life? What did they feel like? What did they look like? How was this all going to work? Learning what it really means to build a life that lines up with who I was becoming instead of the version I thought I was. Learning to slow down, ask better, bigger questions and build new relationships. Discovering what it is that lights the fire in my soul, learning to embrace a life where I'm finally awake for every moment. It's been long and it's ongoing and it's probably never ending. It's messy. It's been ugly. It's been painful. It's been absolutely beautiful, surprising, loving, frustrating as all heck some days, uncomfortable as hell most days. Some days, it still is all of that. And in the middle of this mess, I recognize something that stocked me cold. There's somebody else out there, right now, feeling exactly what I felt and walking a very similar path. Waking up and looking in the mirror, seeing and feeling exactly what I felt and saw. Asking the same questions, seeking the answers as badly as I was, and continuing to do so. If that's you, if you're reading my book or listening to this podcast, and you have that Shouting ache in your gut know that I've lived these if that's you if you're reading my book or listening to this podcast Right now and you have that screaming ache in your gut know that everything that we're gonna talk about I've walked through I've lived and I'm sharing my experiences These are tested trialed and learned personally the hard way most of the time I'm not saying I have all the right answers or even close to nor am I saying this is how you should do it yet I wish someone had handed me this book or had had these lessons or got the opportunity to redo things because all of this was learned the hard way. And that tends to be how I do things. As you get to know me through here, we'll learn this together. You could say that this podcast and my book is a light I wish I had been given in the dark times. The hand I needed reaching down the friend who already walked through the fire and is turning around to say, come on, I've got you. It's time to choose you. It's your turn to get a little selfish and fill your bucket first. Because when you fill your bucket, then you can pour with absolute abundance. All right, everyone, before we wrap up today's episode, I want to leave you with this. If anything we talked about today hit home, you felt a little spark of permission to finally put yourself first, then do one small selfish thing right now for you and for everyone who needs the best version of you. Take a moment. Breathe. Decide that your bucket matters. And if this episode moved you, here's how you can help turn our conversation into real ripples. First, hit that subscribe button or follow button right now so you never miss an episode. This journey is just getting started and I don't want you to miss what's coming. Second, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. A friend who's always putting everyone else first, a family member who's always running on empty, or even that person looking in the mirror who's been feeling guilty for wanting more. The more you share, the faster we build this community of people who are done with burnout and ready to stop surviving and fully live thriving. And finally, come join the conversation. Because here's the truth. When podcasts become conversations, conversations become ripples. And those ripples, we may never get to see how far they travel, but they create real change. I'll see you in the next episode where we keep filling our buckets one selfish step at a time. Until then, go get a little selfish. I'm Brian. And this has been Let's Get Self-