← Brutally Anna
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- [00:00]
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- [01:12]
Monday.com Representative
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- [01:42]
Anna
Hi biddies. Welcome back to this week's solo episode of Brutally Anna. I hope this episode finds you doing well, but as always, if it doesn't find you doing well, I hope it finds you trying to be at least a little bit better. And I want to start off by talking about the title of this episode, why you want a man but you don't need a man. And I was thinking about this today because obviously we are moving and I am handling a lot of the move. No shade to Dave. He is a wonderful husband, but let's just be honest, some jobs are just better for women. Women just know how to get shit done in the domicile, and I don't know if that's because that's been conditioned into us, but I certainly know that that's how it's been conditioned into me and not into my husband. We might try to change that with the next generation depending on the gender of the child we have, but that is tbd. And I remember in college specifically thinking that I needed a man. Not just I wanted a little sugar pie honey bunch to be next to me, but I needed a man because I felt very powerless and I felt like I did not understand how the world worked, and that finding a husband was going to alleviate the need for me to figure out how the world works. And at the time, I was dating a guy who knew very rudimentary skills about personal finance. And as a woman who grew up in a Chinese American household where we had no money to invest, we were just trying to have enough money to live investing. And personal finance was not something that I grew up knowing. I grew up being afraid of the stock market because I always felt like, well, if you put money into the stock market, it's like gambling. It could just go away in a second. Because I lived through two stock market crashes by the time I graduated college. The dot com crash of 01 and then the housing crash of 08. So all I knew about the housing market was my kind of headline stories about how people who invested lost everything. But I also knew that cash depreciates and that if you keep all of your cash as cash, eventually you will have very little money. And so I found myself in this predicament where I was afraid of the stock market, but I was also afraid of keeping my money in cash. Well, let's be real, my theoretical money in cash. And so I thought, you know what? I've hitched my wagon to this guy who knows a lot about personal finance. He is going to lead the way. And I tried to learn a little bit from him, and it all seemed really complicated. And he mostly just preached rich dad, poor dad. And I read that book, and I left feeling no more confident about my own ability to invest this hypothetical future money that I was going to make as a struggling actress with no stable employment. I am the queen of putting the cart before the horse, in case you didn't realize from that story. And when he left me this college boyfriend, I not only was heartbroken, but I felt like my world was crashing down around me, that I didn't know what to do because I didn't know what to do with this hypothetical money. I mean, I didn't know how to make money. And then on top of that, I didn't even know how to invest it afterwards. Because honestly, I read that book, and maybe if I went back and read it now, I would feel less confused. But reading Robert Kiyosaki's book, I was like, I do not know how to invest. I. This is just so confusing to me. I need a man. And I. I kept that thinking throughout most of my 20s. And I think I dated a lot of men in finance because I was like, they understand personal finance, how to not only make money, but make your money work for you. You know that buzz phrase like whatever that means. And during this time, while I was freaking out about finding a man, finding employment, finding an acting gig in my 20s, my mom, my at the time 50 something year old Chinese immigrant mother, where English was language, decided to take it upon herself to teach herself how to manage our family's money. Because it wasn't until after I graduated college did they start doing well enough that they could start saving some of that money. And by the grace of God, no, by the grace of my mother, she taught herself personal finance. And in turn she taught me personal finance. And it's very basic. She's not trading individual stocks, she's not researching different companies. You know, she didn't invest in Amazon or Apple or Microsoft early on, but she just said, look, you don't really have the time or the interest to dedicate to picking stocks to day trading or anything the safest way. And look, it's not foolproof, nothing is. 100% investing involves risk, she said, is just to put your money in the s and P500 in an index fund. And what that is for those of you have no idea, because I had no idea what an index fund was. The S&P 500 is just a conglomeration of 500 of the country's best performing companies. And so in that it automatically diversifies what you're invested in. And historically, very few private money managers that you have to pay have beaten the S and P. So if you just park your money there, you will be okay eventually, as long as you're not trying to take that money out in a down market. Now, caveat here. I am clearly not a personal finance expert and this is just my very subjective opinion. But I will say it's worked out for me because I don't want to pick stocks, I don't want to research the market, but I do want to ensure that my money grows along with inflation and beats inflation. And over the past 10 years, any little bit I could save away has actually grown. And my mother taught me that. And now as I've grown up, I've realized that in comparing my portfolio with some of my other friends portfolios who have managed their funds a little bit more actively, my portfolio has actually done better in so many instances. And women should talk more about their money because men talk about their money all the time. There should not be a stigma around talking about how much you make about what you're investing in, because that's how we learn and if I had any piece of wisdom to impart upon you all, it's that you don't have to be an expert in money and personal finance in order to take parts in the markets. I am certainly not an expert, but I've done pretty well over the last however many years that I have been invested in the market. And you don't need a man to explain that to you. I'm explaining it to you, Viddy. If you are going to listen to a completely unqualified Chad and give him some level of qualification or respect when it comes to your money, just because he's a man and he says something with confidence, you can believe me, some random ass influencer who is telling you that you can manage your own money and all you have to do is put it into a fucking index fund and just do nothing with it. When I put my money into the markets, I never touch it. I have never drawn money out because that's how it works for you, hopefully. We all live long, healthy lives and by the end of it, or, you know, by retirement, by your golden years, your money will have compounded. It will have worked for you. That is just how historically, over this last several decades, this market has performed. And it is likely, knock on all the wood, unless I'm jinxing it with this episode, how it's going to perform in the future. And so when I tell you that you don't need a man, but you want a man, that's what I mean. You don't need a man to explain to you historically manly, quote unquote things. You want a man because we're hardwired for companionship. And before the trolls come at me and say, oh my God, like, how disrespectful to your husband that you don't need him. Men are not taught that they need women. They're taught that they want women, but they don't think that they need them to survive. Look, all of our lives are generally happier when we are partnered up in a healthy relationship and we find companionship and community. A lot of us don't find that in a man. For my LGBTQ biddies listening, you find it in a woman or a man if you're a man or if you're non binary in a non binary person. The point is, is that you can want a man without feeling like you need one. And I think once you understand that concept, you free yourself from thinking that your life is going to be fucked if you don't marry a guy who can lead the way. And the longer I'm married, the more I realize that, at least in our relationship, there are so many things where the house would just fall apart if I wasn't around. And Dave and I joke about this all the time because he is very good at a lot of things, math and numbers being one of them. My Lord, I still cannot do tip on a bill. If we are going out to dinner and we're splitting the bill, I'm going to ask you what you are tipping, because that is the exact number I'm going to put down. I cannot do basic arithmetic. It's scary, and I've accepted it. There are just some things I'm not going to be good at. Thank God for the iPhone calculators. I kind of don't have to be good at basic arithmetic these days, and especially in what I do. Like, nobody is asking me to crunch numbers for a living. Dave is very good at numbers. He's very good at a lot of things. He's really detail oriented when it comes to reading documents, and he's great at his job and he's so patient and so kind. But there are so many things that he just doesn't get around the house, like how the thermostats work. For example, we have the ecobee Smart thermostats. This is not an ad. I just absolutely love these damn things so much because I can control the temperature of our house from my phone. So that means if we're going away for a weekend, I don't have to, like, run around turning down all the thermostats. We have eight thermostats. It's a lot of running around. Okay, so that means I can get into my car, open my ecobee app, and. And just turn down all the thermostats. And that means whatever. 12 hours before we get back home, I can turn up all the thermostats to the right temperature. And I don't want to say that there's a learning curve to these thermostats. If you've ever operated a thermostat, they're pretty intuitive, minus a few quirks here and there. But at our old house, when we first moved in, I had our H Vac guy install these thermostats. And then I went away on a bachelorette party, and it was like the hot weekend of the year. And I'm at this bachelorette party and Dave calls me. And I know if he's calling me while I'm on a trip, it's an emergency. If it's just something menial or if it's just something like, hey, how are you doing? He'll just text. So I pick up, and he's like, the AC is broken. And I'm like, oh, my God. I'm like, five hours away from the house. It's a Saturday. Nothing's open. You know, no service person is open. And I check my app and, oh, my God, the temperature inside the house is 85 degrees. We have a golden retriever with a thick double fur coat. I'm like, oh, my God, everybody is overheating. And so I call my H Vac guy. Of course he doesn't pick up because it's a Saturday, and he's just trying to live his life. And then I look, and I realize that the reason it's 85 degrees in the house is not because the AC is broken. It's because he didn't flip the heat to cool. Because on a thermostat, you have to tell it whether you want it to cool or heat, and then you change the temperature. And I think this was the first hot day of the year where it was like that weird time of year where we were still using heat at night, but then AC in the day. And so he was turning the temperature down. So he was, like, turning it down to, like, 65, but it was still on heat. So therefore the AC wasn't kicking on, because it was like, I'm at a commission right now. You want heat. And to me, this is common sense, but to Dave, it was clearly not so common. And so obviously, I informed him of his grave mistake. He flipped it to cool. Or rather, I flipped it to cool on my phone. I turned. I. Or honestly, I didn't even turn the temperature down. I just kept it down. And, you know, five hours later, it finally cooled the house down. And so oftentimes we joke about the fact that when I go away for work, which is more often than not these days, you know, the final famous last words are, please don't set the house on fire. I had to go to Mexico City last week, four days after we moved into this house. And my Lord, I was like, just whatever you do, just please make sure the house is still standing when I come back. So men don't need us the way we don't need them. And I almost think that God, the universe, whatever deity you believe in, made sure I did not find my husband until later in my 20s, so that I could figure out how to invest my own damn money, how to do basic handyman tasks around the house, some of which Dave has no idea how to do, many of which Dave has no idea how to do. I am the one assembling the furniture around the house. Okay? Let's be real. And I don't know if this is hyper independence or what, but there's sometimes these videos that pop up on my feed where it's an influencer and she's obviously perfectly capable on her own, but she's talking about, you know, tongue in cheek, how she is useless when they go to the airport. She just, you know, basically when she goes to the airport with her boyfriend or husband, she literally shuts off her brain and just follows him around and he does everything for her. She, he makes sure that they get through security, that they find the gate, that they're at back at the gate with enough time, and that he knows where all the bathrooms are, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just cannot encourage uselessness in a woman because men are not glorifying being useless with their wives. I know it's cute and I know it's really relaxing to be able to go somewhere or do something and not have to think because you have this built in partner in crime. But like, maybe instead of encouraging women to be useless in certain situations because their husband has it, maybe we encourage them to divvy up the tasks of being responsible for your personal being. Or maybe we teach women, I'm just thinking out loud here. Maybe we teach women that there is honor and pride in getting yourself through a damn airport. That there is honor and pride and respect in being able to manage your own money, in being able to fix your own shit. The damsel in distress. I can't get down with it, okay? If you've never looked at a fucking bill in your life, get with the program. It is 2025. We can no longer afford, as a generation of women to be ignorant about life and just assume that our husbands have it taken care of. And none of this negates from the fact that I very much wanted a boyfriend in my 20s and I wanted a husband. But as I got older, I realized that I wanted a boyfriend. I did not need a boyfriend. I wanted a husband. I don't need a husband, just like Dave doesn't need me to survive. But it's going to be really painful to do life without one another because we've completely intertwined our lives in a way that married couples should intertwine their lives. I think when you get to the mentality that, like, you need this one person to survive, you end up in a very dangerous position. You end up staying with men that you were never meant to stay with. Long term, you end up staying in, possibly violent or at least on a minimum level, verbally abusive situations. I get so many messages from women saying, I want to leave, but I can't because I don't know where to go. He's handled everything for me. And so I will shout this from the top of the rafters to the end of time. Please learn that wanting a man is not the same as needing a man. You don't need anybody, okay? You need yourself, and you need to teach yourself how to do things. And let me just say, there is great satisfaction in teaching yourself how to do something that you previously did not think you were capable of. Earlier this summer, I taught myself how to replace the light fixture. And Dave was really nervous. He was like, I don't really want you messing around with electrical. Like, you know, everything else. Sure. But, like, what if you electrocute yourself? And I was like, you know what? Like, I've seen so many people change out light fixtures themselves. Let me go on to YouTube. Ladies, YouTube is gonna be your best friend for almost all things that you think you need a man for. All right? So I get onto YouTube and I watch one or two videos, start to finish. I follow it very closely. And then I changed the vanity light in our bathroom fixture, and it was actually not that difficult. Now, what I did learn was that when you were changing a wall fixture, it's a lot easier than changing a ceiling fixture like a chandelier. And that if you're changing a chandelier, there are usually two screws that screw the chandelier into the bracket. And you want to buy chandeliers or ceiling light fixtures where the screws are on the bottom of the plate and not the side, because it's a bitch to screw a light fixture in from the side. I can't explain it. It just sucks. The angle sucks when you're that high, when you're like nine feet in the air, just pick a damn light fixture with bottom plate screws. But I think what also teaching yourself how to do something is, even if you don't do it yourself, you at least know what you're looking at so that if you hire somebody to do it for you, you can catch their mistakes. After owning a few different houses and worked with many different types of contractors, I would love to say that all of them do the right thing, but I can't. But what I can say is, a lot of them will do the easy thing. And with electrical Work that is no exception. There are a lot of professional electricians. Even that will cut corners. And that's not great. It is not great to your health. And if you don't know what you're looking at, you just assume that because they're a professional and they're licensed, they're going to do the right thing by you, and they're going to do the right thing in your house. No, baby, they're gonna do the right thing by their wallets and their time. So you should learn how to do some things, not everything. We can't learn everything, but take pride in learning how to do something. I mean, I felt so good about myself after changing that light fixture. I was so proud. So much prouder than I am about a lot of other things, you know, Like, I love it when I make a good meal. Cause, you know, I'm not really a chef, but when I really try, I can actually cook pretty damn well. But it takes some effort, you know. Cause I don't do it regularly. My God, when I changed that light fixture, I was like, I am Mrs. Fix It. I can do anything. And it just breeds confidence. People are always asking me, it's like, how do I become more confident? Well, you practice. You do the stuff that you're not confident in. And maybe you're not good at it in the beginning, but you get better. You learn first, and then you do. That is very true in the world of electrical. Guys do not just try and be bad at rewiring a light fixture or replacing a light fixture. Watch all the YouTube videos if you want to learn something. The Internet has allowed us the power to do that back in the day. When I was growing up, my dad, who couldn't afford to hire anybody, had to teach himself how to do everything. And there wasn't the Internet. This was the early 90s. So he would buy those, like, you know, whatever. The Dummies books, if you guys remember that, those yellow books, like, you know, Painting for Dummies or Electrical Work for Dummies or Plumbing for Dummies. And he would try and figure out how to do things. And now him and my mom, they hire very few people to do much of anything in their house because they can do it all on their own. I mean, sometimes I'm like, guys, you should just hire somebody because it just takes so much time for you to do everything on your own. But they know what they like and they do it the right way. And so, if anything, please learn how to do some shit around the house. Do not rely on a man to figure it out for you. I don't care if your husband is the handiest person in the house. Learn from him. You're gonna feel better about yourself. These are the little things you can do to build confidence. We build confidence when we feel capable, and we only feel capable when we give ourselves permission to go and do what it takes to become capable. We're going to get into some voicemails, but before we do, a quick word from my sponsors. While some people like to unwind at the end of the night to their favorite Netflix show, I like to unwind by opening my favorite app, the Redfin app. Because for the last year and a half, Dave and I have been searching high and low in this crazy real estate market for our forever home. And I am so happy to report that we found it finally via Redfin. We'll be moving in a few short weeks and it's all thanks to my love affair with Redfin and their easy to use app. The first step in finding our forever home was using Redfin's Open House search feature that lists all the open houses in our area for the upcoming weekend. We walked into this house's open house and voila, made an offer and here we are. So whether you're looking to buy or rent your next place, you need the Redfin app. Redfin makes it fun to search all the homes and apartments in your neighborhood. And if you find a place you love, Redfin makes it easy to go see it in person. Just schedule a tour right from the app. Plus, if you're looking to sell, Redfin agents know how to get you the best price possible because they close twice as many deals as other agents and with a listing fee as low as 1%, Redfin's fees are half of what others often charge. So whether you're looking to buy, rent or sell, download the Redfin app to get started.
- [26:52]
Ryan Reynolds
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- [27:10]
Shopify Representative
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- [27:24]
Listener
Hey Anna, I am recently out of a long Term relationship with someone who I thought was going to be my forever person. While looking at apartments together, I found out that there was a lot of things that he lied about in his past. So previous relationships, previous jobs, his education, all of it he lied about. And between that and ghosting me whenever I tried to talk about it with him, I ended up just breaking things off because it was clearly going nowhere and I'm a few months out from it. And it's tricky because I still remember the person I thought he was and I still care about that person, even though I know that that person doesn't exist. And he's reached out to me trying to get back together. And I've already said no because I know who he is now. But I still miss this person that I thought he was. And I don't know, I don't know how to get over someone, get over a person that doesn't actually exist. So I'd love to hear your take on it.
- [28:51]
Anna
I want to maybe rephrase this question a little bit or kind of tinker with the way you're approaching it, because I think by saying that this person that you're in love with doesn't exist, you're almost putting that person on a pedestal. And people are multifaceted. There are many different sides to people. I mean, think about Ted Bundy. He murdered women for fun, yet he had a very long term relationship and was very loving and kind to his girlfriend. And so to say that Ted Bundy didn't love his girlfriend is not true. But to say that he wasn't a serial killer is also not true. And that's a really extreme example. I'm not saying your ex boyfriend is a notorious mass murderer, but what I'm saying is, is that what you're mourning did exist. What you experienced was real. The good parts of him did exist, but they didn't exist without the horrible parts of him that were completely unacceptable. So you're not mourning an imaginary person. I think when we say, oh my gosh, like what I'm mourning isn't real, and how is it even possible to get over a person that's not real, you're making the problem maybe even bigger than it has to be. No, you're mourning your ex. You are heartbroken over the demise of a relationship that you thought was going to be the last relationship you're in. That is a very real, tangible feeling. And I think when you look at it from this point, you forgive yourself a little bit more. Because what it sounds like to me is like, you're beating yourself up right now. You're saying, well, I miss him and I wish he was still in my life, but the version of him that I was in love with doesn't exist. So how is this possible? Like, what am I doing? I know better. Like, why am I doing this? Stop beating yourself up. You're heartbroken. It's gonna take time, but you have to give yourself permission to accept the fact that what you experienced was real. What you feel is real. He wasn't imaginary. And your feelings have validity to it. I want to say, too, you're incredibly strong for not allowing this man back into your life, even though I know there's probably a part of you that wants to. That wants to believe the good parts about him could be the only parts about him. But, you know, deep down, or maybe not even deep down, you said it to me. You know in your heart of hearts that you cannot take the good without the bad. And that's true for everybody. The next person you meet is not going to be perfect either. But hopefully the next person you meet that you fall madly in love with is not going to lie to you fundamentally in a way that alters your relationship. But your job right now is to give yourself the time and the courtesy of allowing yourself to be heartbroken without questioning why you're heartbroken. I think that's what's happening right now is you're like, why am I so heartbroken over a guy that doesn't exist? Well, because he did exist in your life for a very long time until you found out the crazy truth about him. That's why you're heartbroken. We don't need to add to the devastation of a breakup by questioning why we're devastated. Just allow yourself to be devastated when you need to be, but then also allow yourself to live your life as it currently is. The more you pull yourself back into your current reality as a solo biddy rebuilding her life after a traumatic breakup. Which that phrase, traumatic breakup, feels a little bit redundant because which breakup isn't traumatic, but beside the point. Allow yourself to continue living your life while you are heartbroken and while you miss him, because eventually your present is going to start diluting the muddy waters of your past. Think about a dirty glass of water, all right? If you have a bunch of crud, a bunch of dirty water, murky water sitting in a glass, the way you get rid of that dirty water is by taking a glass of clean water and pouring into it and eventually letting the dirty water spill out from the glass to the point where there's just only clean glass left. That's how your healing process is going to work. All right, Figure out where the clean tap is. Put that dirty ass water, the glass of dirty water of your life, underneath that clean tap and let it run until it runs out. And I don't know how big your glass is. Maybe It's a tiny 12 ounce glass, maybe it's a gallon sized bucket of dirty water. But eventually, if you keep running the tap, it will clear out.
- [34:17]
Listener
Hey Anna. This is like my eighth time recording this, so hopefully it sticks. I love your podcast and I think you're the cutest. I have made almost every mistake in the book. I'm like a big chaser, a big runner away, big moving too fast, big blamer, victim, all the really good stuff that's good for you. And I'm in this really cool period of my life. It's very expansive. I'm single for the first time. I kind of remember like what it's like to take command, but I also kind of forget what that's like. And I'm kind of looking over my past decision making through the lens of not really knowing, knowing what was my intuition and what was my anxiety and really trying to hone in on like what my inner voice sounds like and. Yeah, what advice would you have for your listeners in differentiating between anxiety and intuition? I also am like contemplating moving back to a city where I have like an ex partner living. And I'm. I loved my time there so much. I loved like the music scene and all my, like, I have so many friends there. So it's kind of, I'm kind of like on the fence whether or not it's my nostalgia for the past or genuine, authentic, like, I'm supposed to be there type of energy. So you probably can't answer that, but maybe you can help because you're, you're really good at that. Thank you.
- [36:04]
Anna
My response after a quick word from my sponsors. I think women in particular are so much stronger and smarter than they give themselves credit for. And I say that because I think our intuitions are one of the most powerful things we have. But our intuitions are often clouded by our anxieties. And then we give the anxiety the credit, not the intuition. And I'll explain what that means for me. In my 20s, every time I felt anxious around a guy, I would just say, well, you know, it's just me. It's. It's not him. Like, I'm expecting too much. I'm being Too needy or whatever. And inevitably it wouldn't work out. I mean, I dated a guy for a year and a half, almost two years, where I broke it off with him after the first or second date. I wasn't really that interested. And he kind of came back into my life, and he was like, hey, let's just be friends. And I was like, okay, I guess. And we be. We became friends, and he sort of won me over, which really, he shouldn't have done and I shouldn't have done. I mean, we were both to blame in that it's like, for him, if I was his friend, it's like, dude, pick a girl who's into you the first time. And then for me, it's like, why would you allow yourself to be convinced into a relationship with somebody that you didn't really want to be with? And so what you may be experiencing is your intuition is in fact you telling yourself that the people you are with are not the right people. Just because it hasn't worked out up until this point doesn't mean that you are totally to blame for everything. Look, it takes two to tango. And as somebody who's made a lot of mistakes in my 20s, I take equal blame for a lot of the stuff that happened. I also made a lot of mistakes. But what I'm hearing, at least in the tone of your voice and that message that you gave me, is that you are at fault for everything bad that has happened to you. And that's just not true. Because what happens to you is really only a small percentage of what you are in control of. So if you have been anxious in relationships and, you know you've pushed people away, you needed to do that even if they were great people. You need to learn what it's like to push a good man away sometimes in order to not push the next good man away, and to learn that, hey, I am not going to do this again. I always think that people learn the most from their own mistakes. You generally don't tend to fall and skin your knee in the same place. If you did it really badly the first time and you got hurt by it, your brain and your muscles have a memory to protect you. And the goal is not to continuously to make more mistakes, but it's to not live so cautiously that you don't do anything. And so in response to your question of, you know, how do I know whether it's my intuition or my anxiety? You don't. I don't. But you eventually will figure it out if you just make a Decision. The worst thing you can do for your brain is to sit there pondering whether or not the decision you make is going to be the right decision. You won't know that until after the fact. So the best thing you can do is to make a decision, go with what you want to do in the moment, and over time, you will learn if that decision was the right one. If you keep running away from good men, and over time you realize, hey, I'm the problem, not them. If you keep making excuses for bad men, over time you realize they're the problem, not me. I need to pick better. And this is something I learned the hard way, because I was attracted to a lot of unavailable men in my 20s who were tormented, who were complicated, and all of these qualities that I thought made for an exciting relationship because I. I wanted that. Notebook. Nicholas Sparks Romance. Right? And what I realized was that real love is calm. It brings you peace. And the reason I was attracted to those men was because I was broken inside. And it took a lot of therapy and being bad at life in general so that I could get good at life and feel good about myself. And so that question, the second part of your question about whether or not you should move back to the city that you loved and once loved. You're right. I can't answer that. But you can eventually. And if you want to do it, go do it. See how it is. The worst thing that could happen is that you realized you were just nostalgic. You don't actually love it that much, and you leave. Life is for living. It's not for pondering. Just do it. In the famous words of Nike, you will not know the right answer until you live into it. Maybe moving back to that city that you once lived in is going to be the greatest thing in your life. Maybe you don't get back together with your ex who lives there, but maybe you meet an amazing guy who lives there who validates your love of the city and the music scene and the culture. What if it all works out okay, and what if it doesn't all work out immediately? But what if your decision to move back to that city leads you to the next decision that does work out for you? I mean, these are all the possibilities that are available in your life, and it's so exciting. I want you to think about your life as exciting rather than formidable. Because when you think about, okay, well, maybe I'm gonna follow my instinct to go move back to the city that I loved. And I feel a lot of nostalgia for and I a lot of fond memories for. And maybe I only stay there for a few years, but then maybe I meet somebody or a job or whatever that takes me to a different city and I love that city even more. And then my life gets even better in that city. And then maybe my job or the love of my life takes me somewhere else and it just gets better and better. It can actually get better. My life is living proof of that. Your life doesn't end ever. I mean, your life does end at some point. None of us live forever. But what I'm saying is your life doesn't end until it actually physically ends. And I think most of our anxieties stem from the feeling that every decision we make is going to make or break our lives. My life is living proof of the fact that you can not know what the fuck you're doing in your 20s and your early 30s and and still get the life beyond your wildest dreams. Quite frankly, I never dreamed of this life that I have right now. I didn't dare dream of seems so far fetched. And so stop overanalyzing the situation you're in, whether it's your intuition or anxiety, because it takes you out of the present moment. Allow whether it's your intuition or your anxiety to take you somewhere and then figure out whether that somewhere is where you're supposed to be or whether that somewhere is not a mistake but a stepping stone to the next place you're supposed to be. And on an anecdotal personal level, for me, it is Wednesday, February 5th. I'm recording this at 11:45am with rollers in my hair and my makeup fully done because I'm about to go into the city for New York Fashion Week. I have a show and then two Fashion Week events and then a Chinese New Year dinner celebrating the AAPI community and some of my favorite skincare brands that I've been lucky enough to partner with. And if you had told me five years ago that I'd be here, I would have laughed at you. Because my anxiety or my intuition or whatever the fuck it was, I don't even care what it was, would have told you. Stay realistic. And so if my life can look like this after five years, which is really not that long in the grand scheme of what is hopefully a very long life for you and I, I think your life has infinite possibility and that possibility could all be wonderful beyond your wildest imagination. That's all for today, Bitties. Thanks so much for tuning in as always. If you enjoyed this podcast or are enjoying all the episodes in this podcast. Please rate review on Apple Podcasts and subscribe. Every little bit helps. And if you want to leave me a voicemail to answer on next week's episode, you can do so@speakpipe.com brutallyannapodcast that speakpipe.com brutallyannapodcast if you're a maintenance supervisor.
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