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Emotional Badass
Positive Masculinity: Why Real Men Cry
00:55:33
Chris shares the raw reality of losing his father suddenly at 72 and how grief reveals the power of positive masculinity.
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- [00:00]
A
Hello, welcome to the show. This is Emotional Badass, where moxie meets mindful. I'm your host, Nikki Eisenhower, life coach and psychotherapist.
- [00:10]
B
And I'm your co host, Chris Iacono, producer.
- [00:13]
A
And on today's episode, we're discussing positive masculinity. So when we both greenlit you being on the show, we expected it to be sort of a slow ramp up into you discussing difficult emotional things. And then we've had a rough month of your father all of a sudden dying. Yes, yes.
- [00:48]
B
He just died.
- [00:49]
A
He did.
- [00:50]
B
He was like, hey, I'm gonna die now. And he died.
- [00:54]
A
Yep. And before we get into this, I want the listeners to know, I think a lot. It's part of why we're slow to release call in show episodes too. I think a lot about protecting people. I know what it is to share your story online and open up to that. But I want the listeners to know Chris has more experience than I do being a full time comedian in his youth, sharing everything, the good, the bad and the ugly about his family. So he actually has more experience being. Being public with who he is than I have had. So he does have a lot of comfort there. So we have taken that into consideration and account and we both feel very comfortable talking about this, even though it's still raw and very real.
- [01:42]
B
Yes, it is. It is raw and very real. It's. Yeah, he passed on August 8th. 1, 2, 3. Yeah, we're almost at a month. I'm cracking jokes. I'm trying to be positive about it. We're. The name of the show is Positive Masculinity. This is the hardest thing I've ever dealt with in my life. And I have spent a whole lot of time crying and a whole lot of time thinking about them. And I'm going to keep it together here, but I'm not. But also I'm moving into the phase of it where I'm able to actually speak about it in a reasonable way without having a total breakdown. And that wasn't really possible, like the first week or two. So it's been hard. It's been very hard. My dad and I had a very interesting relationship. He became a friend later on in life and yeah, he died. He died suddenly. He. Look, he wasn't the healthiest guy at all. He wasn't healthy at all. Let me phrase that a different way. He wasn't healthy at all. My dad's health regimen was contained two key elements. Smoking cigarettes and taking vitamins. So I think he somehow figured out how to have those two balance each other out. And he made it to 72, which, honestly, I looked up the average age for a guy in the US it's like 74. So he did it. He got. He basically got there. He had a pretty good life. It wasn't great. It wasn't awful by any means. So I'm happy he didn't die at 50. I have friends who lost their fathers at 50, and that's tough. My dad lost his dad at 50, and I got to enjoy my life with him till he was 72. And I'm grateful for that. But, yeah, it was a sudden death. He had basically been feeling off that day. And he said he had a headache and, like, feverish and sweaty. Sweaty and breaking out into a cold sweat. And he seemed to be getting worse and worse throughout the day. And my mother asked him if he. Do you want me to call an ambulance? And he said, no, absolutely not. And my mother knows that when he says it like that, that's. It. It's. He doesn't want anything like that. So he didn't call an ambulance. He just felt a little off.
- [04:07]
A
Well, and in her own right, what she said to me was, I felt conflicted because I know I could have called, but also I pictured if I called, he just would have had a heart attack faster and died faster in front of me.
- [04:19]
B
Exactly.
- [04:20]
A
And shouldn't I give him what he wants if he is dying?
- [04:22]
B
Yeah.
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A
Type of thing. And so it's hard.
- [04:24]
B
Yeah. There's no right answer in that situation. So, yeah, she helped him change his shirt, like he had sweated through his shirt. And he said something to her like, I'm sorry for being a jerk. Like, he apologized to her for being a jerk, like, how to fight or anything. And he said he was going to bed and that if he was going to die, he wanted to die in his bed. He went up to his bed around midnight, and my mother had fallen asleep on the couch, and she woke up a couple hours later and with a feeling. And she went upstairs to check on him and he had passed. Yeah, just like that. And she called 91 1. They came and they tried to revive him, and he was gone. And they pronounced him dead.
- [05:06]
A
So.
- [05:06]
B
So we believe it was a heart attack. That's what everything kind of points to. And we'll know more soon. But that's. That's how he went. So he was quick. I spoke to him about a month ago. We spoke to him about a month ago before he passed. But, yeah, I got a phone call at midnight or two in the morning that he had died. And it was heartbreaking and horrible, and we had to fly out to New York for the funeral and dealing with it right now. But I'd love you to tell the story about our last conversation with him, because this is one of those kind of otherworldly moments that is going to stick with me for the rest of my life.
- [05:41]
A
Yeah. So 30 days to the minute. 30 days before we got the phone call that he passed, I had taken a week off for my birthday, like I do every July. And we were backpacking in the mountains, like we like to do, and it was just me and Chris. Sometimes we have other people with us, but this time it was just me and Chris and Gusto. And we were at 11, almost 12,000ft. We had no service on our phones at all in any way, shape, or form. Nothing had come through.
- [06:15]
B
We were, like, at least 10, 15 miles from a cell tower, and the.
- [06:20]
A
Phone rang all of a sudden. We were actually in our little teeny, tiny backpacking tent. We actually bring some games so that if it's raining, we can play in the tent. And so we were hunkered down in the tent, relaxing, and the phone rang, and Chris looked at it and said, oh, it's my mother. And then we answered it, and it was his father, and he sounded happier. We put it on speaker, and we said, hey, how you doing? We shouldn't be getting this call right now. Nothing should be coming through on our phones. And he says, oh, y' all are up there in the mountains. We said. And we told him, yeah, we're up here. We're by a beautiful mountain lake. It's so good to hear your voice. We had sent him a package for Father's Day that had been laid. It had finally got there. He was very happy with the gift we had sent him. He was thanking us for it. And then he said, hey, y', all, look for a spot to spread my ashes while you're up there. And Chris got really quiet, and I looked at him, and I saw Chris take a gulp and process. And I spoke up, because grief is one of my specialties. It has been for 19 years, since I began being a therapist. I have a lot of comfortability, not shying away from grief. That's what this career has given me. So when there is grief, I tend to lean in where most people will lean out. And so I took the moment, I took a deep breath, and I smiled. He couldn't see me. And I said, is that what you want? Because we'll find a spot and I, I will definitely make that happen. We will make that happen. We will spread your ashes in a beautiful spot that we can visit.
- [08:00]
B
And my dad has a. Had a dark sense of humor. Like he's got that. He's got it. He's a very personable, funny, talkative, magnetic, extrovert type guy. And he would tell you about, I'm going to die soon, of course, yeah, fine. Spread my ashes with the birds. He would make jokes like that in a lighthearted way. And I even said something on the phone, don't joke around like that. But honestly, he had been making more and more jokes like that recently.
- [08:30]
A
Yeah.
- [08:30]
B
As if he knew and felt it in his body that something was changing and he was going to go soon.
- [08:36]
A
I mean, honestly, I felt a dilemma when we got off of that call because I had that feeling of. And I wondered, should I say this out loud to Chris or just zip my lip and wait? And I didn't say anything till after we were off the mountain, but I thought, that's it. That call came through. He said that he, his spirit felt so light. He had a hard life. I don't know if I've said this on any other episode where I've mentioned him, but your father, my father in law is really one of the big reasons why I wanted to do Emotional Badass in the first place. The idea that there are so many people who are born into families where their sensitivity and their depth isn't acknowledged, it's not encouraged, it's not seen as an asset, it's not made to help that child flourish. Is what I think about when I think about listeners finding our show that they can get some validation and get some of what you get the therapy of clients who have worked with me by just connecting some dots and getting some relief. And when you connect some dots, then you connect more dots. And when we figure ourselves out as sensitive people, we feel better on the inside. We feel lighter. And so since the first moments I've met you and learned about your family, I knew, oh, your father is one of those empaths that just got lost to the era. To the era of being a man that was told not to emote and not to cry and to suck it up, get married and do the thing, have the kids work and not really given permission or encouragement to explore who he really was. And I think that's part of why your father had an affinity for me.
- [10:18]
B
Yeah. The conversations that he had with you over the kitchen table when we were out to Eat. The one time they came to visit, those conversations, even though they were just regular daughter in law, father in law conversations, that was the closest thing to therapy he had ever gotten in his life.
- [10:37]
A
Yeah.
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B
And that's the. One of the core things of this episode that I would love to hit on is positive masculinity, because he's of that generation. Was of that generation where you don't talk about your problems.
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A
Yeah.
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B
You don't go see a therapist. You don't vent to your friends. You always put on the right facade.
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A
You stuff it all.
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B
Stuff it all. And it comes out sideways when you do that. So I'm grateful that he got to meet you, and I'm grateful that we got to speak with him that last time on the phone call while we were backpacking, but I really thought we.
- [11:16]
A
Were going to get off the mountain, Our phones were going to hit service and we were going to have find out that he died from your mother. That was it.
- [11:23]
B
Or that was the ghost call that he had died.
- [11:26]
A
He had already passed.
- [11:27]
B
And this was some weird. Yes, next level thing that we experienced.
- [11:31]
A
So I had that feeling very strongly. And when we got off the mountain and our phones didn't blow up, that's when I said to you, I thought we were going to get off the mountain and we were going to find out that he was dead. So when we got the call a month later, it was just another one of those moments for me that I don't always get my intuitions, like, clearly, oh, it's going to happen today at this hour. I'm not psychic in that way, but there were signs and he knew, and that was his way of telling us and letting us know. And something about that is very soothing to me. I can't imagine us not getting that last call.
- [12:08]
B
Oh, yeah, that's. I'm grateful for that.
- [12:10]
A
He said I love you to both of us. So I really love you.
- [12:14]
B
It felt to me like the last time I was going to talk to him and I didn't say anything because I didn't want to put that out there.
- [12:19]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
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B
And it sucks, but it happened, and there's no going back from it. And I will say to you and to the audience that this is the hardest thing that I've ever had to deal with in my life. I've had hard situations in the past. I've never lost anyone this close. Like, I've lost a grandmother and I've lost two grandmas and a grandfather when I was four. And even though I had some close Relationships with my grandmothers, they weren't like. They weren't my father. They weren't like this. I'm grateful we had that. I'm grateful you got to meet him. And I really want. I just want to talk about how that generation is and what the funeral was like. Being a guy like me from this generation where I definitely don't agree with the whole. I'm going to keep it all inside. I'm. I called my friends who knew him and cried on the phone to them. I cried with my brothers. I cried with my mother. I cried with everybody. I cried at the funeral, which was, man, like Catholics. Oh, boy.
- [13:23]
A
No, it's not all Catholics because I was raised Catholic.
- [13:25]
B
It's New York. Hold on. New York Catholics. Oh, boy. New York Italian Catholics. We got to get our shit straight when it comes to this whole funeral process. Can I tell you? Okay, so normally you have a day for a funeral or everyone meets at the graveyard, right. And you bury them and then you have a little. There's a. Somebody says something and you go on your way and everyone goes to Denny's and you're good. This Italian New York Catholic funeral was two full days in four and a half, five hour sprints of an open casket funeral.
- [14:07]
A
No, it was three days.
- [14:09]
B
It was.
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A
You were there.
- [14:10]
B
It was three days. Yeah, you're right. But the third day wasn't technically supposed to be an open casket day. It wasn't. That wasn't the day when people were going to be there. So a four hour day, one of open casket, five hours because we had to be there early because we were the immediate family. Day two, another full five hours open casket.
- [14:26]
A
That's when I rolled in.
- [14:27]
B
That's when Nikki rolled in. Day three, met at the funeral home again for an hour. For an hour and casket, open casket. Then they packed the casket closed while we all just sat there and cried watching them pack it closed.
- [14:41]
A
No, it's a thing that you watch. It's from olden days where you actually wanted to watch the coffin closed to make sure your law. Make sure it's actually in there.
- [14:51]
B
My mother was very specific about this. She's. Somebody has to be there to make sure he's in the casket. I'm like, oh, what? What is he gonna. He's gonna run away, he's gonna escape. Where's he going to keep him? In the basement? Nobody wants him anymore. That's it, he's done.
- [15:03]
A
She didn't want to do that part, so we stayed in that part.
- [15:06]
B
Yeah, it was a Whole thing. But that was probably the hardest part. Watching them close it, knowing, okay, I'm never going to see him in the flesh again. I will say mad props to Scarpachi's Funeral Home on Staten Island. They made my dad look better dead than he did alive.
- [15:22]
A
He looked amazing. He looked great, which was great. Awesome, and also eerie because he definitely looked like he could just stand up and walk out and say hello.
- [15:31]
B
It was. It was wild. Holy wow. Three days of basically in the room, watching my dad in this box, sit there, do nothing. What got me was they made a video. We went through all these old photo albums and found like 300 pictures of him through his entire life. Like from when he was a newborn toddler kid, teenager, young adult, 30s, 40. We had photos from every single period of his life. And we put him together in the funeral home, put him together in a slideshow with some of his favorite music. And that thing was playing on a loop the entire time. And that just had me going because in a real emotional way, because you get to see, you know, him when he was young and him, it was all smiles and all the good times and it reminded me of all the memories I had with him. And that was awful. Just to. Just awful, but good. Like, you know, I need to deal with this and I'm going to get through it type of way. So, yeah, then they closed the casket, then we went to the church. And we had the church service after that for an hour and an hour and a half, where I got up and gave the eulogy at the church. And it ended up being half a eulogy, half a roast with a little bit of stand up thrown in, which.
- [16:51]
A
Not all of the Catholics loved.
- [16:52]
B
No, there were a couple. I created a couple of frumpy Catholics that day in the back row.
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A
But your father would have appreciated.
- [16:59]
B
You would have loved it. You would have loved it. Yeah, he could have given me a standing ovation. He would have, but he couldn't. So, yeah, I cracked some jokes. The priest, I think, liked it. Every. I got a couple of laughs. And at this, I. I said to myself, going in, I'm like, if I can get one or two laughs out of this, I did my job. So, yeah, I delivered the eulogy, crack some jokes, roasted him a little bit, and we got into the limo and they took us to the cremation. And we had to watch as the casket went into a giant oven and then shut the doors behind and for the finality of it all. And, yeah, it was wild.
- [17:36]
A
And then we went to Eat Italian food.
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B
And.
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A
And I will tell you that we don't do that in the south, to my knowledge or my family system, maybe some other people do, but we don't go all the way to the crematorium and watch them put the body. So it was like a marathon of grieving Olympics.
- [17:54]
B
Yeah.
- [17:55]
A
And while we were doing it, I was ready to be done the entire time, like just ready to be done yesterday, the entire time. It felt so drawn out to me. But after, when we were done, it did feel better. I mean, that's part of why the grief. So technically, the grief is the private grieving that we do. And mourning is the word for what we do publicly, together and publicly and as a family. Those pictures you're talking about were the public mourning. And we do that as a tribe of people to celebrate the life and to actually face and look at all of it. In modern society, we're so avoidant with the realness of death and what it means and what we're doing there. And we're saying goodbye to someone's entire life. When you force yourself to face all of that, it does make the grieve that the grief move through you. You all have heard me say a million times, you have to move through the emotion to get to the other side. That marathon of forced grieving, really forced. I don't want to speak for you, but us to get to the other side of a lot of that heartache and pain, as hard as those three days were.
- [19:16]
B
1,000%. 1,000% it was. And it's almost to the degree of, to put it in practical terms, you say to yourself, or I said to myself after, I almost can't cry anymore. And even though it was awful emotionally to have to go into that open casket funeral room with his body in there, every time I walked in, it hurt a teeny, tiny bit less.
- [19:42]
A
Yeah.
- [19:43]
B
And a teeny, tiny bit less. And a teeny tiny bit less. And I got to go from that to seeing it closed, to the church service, to watching the casket go in. And that was a progression of closure. And I don't think that without. That would be where I am at it right now. Even though it's only a month later. I haven't cried in, like a couple of days. And that's pretty good so far. It's pretty good. So it was like every couple of hours for the first stretch of this. And it's definitely. I've adapted to it. And that grieving process and having to look at the body is one and get It. I'm grateful that I was able to do that. Some people get into accidents and they're not able to do an open casket funeral and they're not able. Or some people get lost in the woods and they never get to see the person's body again. And so I'm grateful that I got to do that. I understand the closure around it. And I just want to say that for anybody out there who experiences this, especially guys like you, don't. You don't screw that super macho. I'm gonna keep everything in. I'm gonna be the masculine guy.
- [20:47]
A
Fine.
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B
I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm not. I'm not fine. I wasn't fine. And I won't be fine for a while. And to me, that's the element of the positive masculinity that I think men now have more freedom to experience and show others in a. In a meaningful way. Like you. You can have those feelings. You can ball your eyes out, it's okay. And it's good because you need to do that to purge those feelings sometimes because they will build up. I feel a weight lifted off me that I was able to do that.
- [21:21]
A
In that capacity as your wife. I have been so proud of you. And I had no idea that I would find myself proud of you. But proud of you for riding the waves of grief, for going in and out, watching you not squish down your tears and letting yourself emote has been powerful for me. It's been healing for me, and it's been impressive. I wouldn't have said it before because you're one of the most mature men that I've known, but I think it's true of anyone, even in the ways that I lost my parents, not to death, but because of trauma and had to process them, essentially. Being dead in my life, it has made me realize how much of a maturation process it is. And it's not a maturation process that we decide to have and go through. It's when you meet yourself in the real. The real hard emotion and pain of it, that is what matures us. So watching you step into it, and this is why it's so hard. It's when you have your parents, you're still their kid. And once one or both parents dies, it is a real psychological teaching of, hey, you're your own person on this planet and you have to take care of yourself. And it matures. Someone just watching you move through it, even watching you at the funeral festivities, if you will, Watching your cousin's little boy who's 13, watching him watch you cry, watching that give him permission to cry. He was watching you comfort people.
- [23:09]
B
Yeah.
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A
And then he was comforting people.
- [23:11]
B
Yeah.
- [23:12]
A
Watching that exchange of masculine energy, watching you connect with some of your dad's old buddies from the old neighborhood who were missing him, who were so delighted to connect with you. It. For me, sitting back, it was just. It was such a. Almost a festival of masculine emoting and acknowledging of men feel just as much as women do.
- [23:37]
B
You Italians, we know how to funeral.
- [23:39]
A
They. I know.
- [23:40]
B
We really know.
- [23:41]
A
Have that one down. Y' all win. Y' all win. So any of you need pointers out there?
- [23:45]
B
Yep.
- [23:46]
A
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- [26:17]
B
So it was quite an experience and it was a lot of fun connecting with some of his old friends, seeing all these old photos that some of them I haven't even seen and showing other people like, yeah, you, you can feel this way, but not a lot of people do. I get his generation has probably been through more funerals. His friends aren't going to be as upset as I am. His best friends were my cousins, his nieces and nephews that he's. He only saw once every year or once every couple of years. They weren't as.
- [26:46]
A
No, nothing's as primal as your relationship, your relationship with.
- [26:49]
B
Yeah. And it, it really does. I think you said this in one of the other episodes that it's one of those situations where you lose one of the people in your life who knew you the most.
- [26:59]
A
Yeah. Knew all the things.
- [27:00]
B
Knew all the things about you. And I guess that's more true for when you're a child than when you're an adult because there's a lot he doesn't know about me over the last probably 20 years. But yeah, he does. As a kid and high school and all that, he knew me very well and my mother too. And it's one of those things that is a stark reality, slap in the face. And I think that's why I've. I don't know, I don't know how to say this, but I felt simultaneously sad but more positive.
- [27:32]
A
Are you talking about. Because I think losing someone is, especially as a deep feeling person, is a very complex emotional experience.
- [27:43]
B
So part of it is relief because obviously, like my dad was not a healthy guy.
- [27:48]
A
Well, not only that, he, as a pride point, he had not been to a doctor in 30 years.
- [27:53]
B
30 years.
- [27:53]
A
He did not want any interventions.
- [27:55]
B
No interventions.
- [27:56]
A
He did not want to know what was wrong with him in any way. And even if you're of the idea that all of that is wrong, we are of the idea that each person is allowed to go out the way that they want to go out. And for him to go quickly, he said to your mother, I want to go in my bed. If I'm going to die, I want to go on my bed and die there. And that's what he did. And so for me, not having him be my dad all of my life, I have such a gratefulness that it shook out that way for him because if he would have had some kind of extended health care issue where doctors were poking and prodding, he would have hated. I mean, hated with a veracity of the sun, he would have hated it and it would have made him miserable and bitter and hard on your mother, like all of it. And so I feel a lot of relief for him having had the swift death that he really wanted.
- [28:57]
B
Yes, there, there is this sense of relief that he, he went fast and he went the way he wanted to go and he didn't suffer. I'm sure the last couple of minutes, I don't. I'm pretty positive a heart attack isn't completely pain free, but it's a lot better than withering away over three to five years while you hate the fact that you're withering away and you can't do anything about it and you become a burden on everyone around. My dad had taken care of his mother when she had passed and it was two years of, of that and.
- [29:29]
A
He never wanted that, does not want that very strongly.
- [29:32]
B
Yeah. So part of the positivity that I've been feeling and been making myself feel, because it's been such a roller coaster, it's been like crying one minute and the next minute smiling at somebody and trying to make them laugh and trying to be positive, not just to create a juxtaposition to the other feeling, but because knowing how quickly he died, I know that anybody else, including myself in my life, can just go that quick. And you've said it before and I feel it now. I don't want to waste my time being. I don't want to waste my time being anything but as positive as I can possibly. So I want to call it toxic positivity, positive masculinity, however you want to word it. But I felt this need over the last month, three and a half weeks since it happened, to focus in and force myself to be more positive. And it is, it has had a profound effect on me. Just because shortness and fragility, that is life. And it was a rude wake up call to me. How quickly I could lose you, how quickly you could lose me, how quickly we could lose gusto. The cats, my cousin, my mother, my brothers, everybody, my friends, they could be gone tomorrow. So I had better smile today. And it feels different. It feels like there's something that has been jolted into me.
- [31:06]
A
It's A beautiful way to honor your father, to take the ways that he stopped certain cycles of abuse in his family line to take that even further into an even lighter place. And you're. You're doing that.
- [31:22]
B
Well, it's too bad I had to have a major death in the family.
- [31:26]
A
To get there, but you were already getting there. This just scooted.
- [31:29]
B
You scooted me along.
- [31:30]
A
Yeah.
- [31:31]
B
So, Dad, I love you. And I'm pretty sure, even though I'm not a very religious person, and I did deliver a Catholic eulogy, but it was more of a roast, even though I'm not very religious in the traditional sense, I'm. I'm pretty positive I'm going to see him again and feel him again. Something. Some higher power made that phone call come through.
- [31:53]
A
Yeah.
- [31:54]
B
And I'm grateful for that.
- [31:56]
A
So if you're out there and you're hurting, please know you can get through it. Please know that it's okay to go between sad and serious and light and funny, and you don't need a mood stabilizer. That's the journey of grieving someone. And when we grieve, we reconnect to not taking our lives for granted and to use this time as precious. Thank you for being here with us.
- [32:29]
B
All right, and on to the next segment. This is the Good for the Soul segment on Emotional Badass, where Nikki and I both discuss the current thing, show, food, hobby, what whatnot that we are engaging in that's helping us out. So I guess you want to kick it off.
- [32:50]
A
I am, but I'm gonna change what I decided to talk about.
- [32:53]
B
Oh, okay. All right. Throwing me a curveball here.
- [32:55]
A
I am. I am. What is good for my soul lately is that I decided after a year of putting it down, to pick up my memoir again. And I am reviewing it, I am editing it where it needs to be edited, and I am determined to finish it in the near future and publish it. And it feels like a. Like a taking my power back. I put it down after I had that. I'm gonna say fraudulent publisher.
- [33:25]
B
Yeah.
- [33:25]
A
Try to sign me for the book, which really in the fine print. If I would have signed that contract, they would have owned every piece of content we had ever produced. And it's gross. It's disgusting that publishing companies will do that and look for people like me with strong but little followings and try to scoop up their entire life's work under the guise of, well, make you a published author. So it left such a disgusted taste in my mouth that I cannot believe I have set it down for an Entire year. But it was last September and I finally feel ready to look at it again. I was looking at it this weekend and to pick it up and to complete it and not let that heart wrenching bummer of an experience.
- [34:15]
B
I am so excited that you're writing your book again because you feel, to me, lighter about it. It feels like there's less pressure. You feel like a writer to me, in a sense. You've said to me numerous times, I just want to write. I just want to write. I'm super excited for the memoir just to have a physical book because this is going to be our learning process into figuring out how to get a book made and published in whatever way we get it published and promoted and marketed and into people's hands and on their shelves.
- [34:49]
A
And some of it might be hard for you to read.
- [34:53]
B
Oh, I'm sure it's going to be. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. Am I ready to read your memoir? Yeah.
- [34:58]
A
Okay.
- [34:58]
B
Are you going to let me read it before it's published? I think I have to.
- [35:02]
A
Yes.
- [35:03]
B
I have to put my eyes.
- [35:04]
A
Yes, yes.
- [35:05]
B
I could punch it up. You know, I could put some punch lines in there for you. Okay. All right. Suggestions? Maybe a sticky note here?
- [35:11]
A
There's maybe.
- [35:13]
B
Okay, all right. Maybe you don't have to take any of them.
- [35:15]
A
Yeah, fair enough.
- [35:16]
B
But, yeah, no, I do want to read it. I'm super excited because you're excited about it and it just feels like the proper step to make a physical thing that you want to make and have been working on for so long.
- [35:26]
A
So thank you. So, yeah, that's my good for the soul. So if you're out there and there's something you put down that's calling you to pick it back up, maybe this is your sign.
- [35:34]
B
You don't always need to pick it up immediately. It can take a while, but it's always there for you. I think that's a good lesson to take.
- [35:40]
A
I think I'm proud of that too, that I. I definitely could have forced myself to keep going with it, but I think I needed the. I need. I really needed the break. I needed to get it right in my heart and in my gut again and have some distance from up again.
- [35:54]
B
Yeah. And for anybody out there who is in that business or is writing, just be very mindful of contracts and people reaching out of the blue to work with you. And we really dodged a bullet by not signing the paperwork from this publishing house that legit wanted to own rights to things they had no business Owning.
- [36:15]
A
And like I consulted with people that are in publishing, people that are published authors, people that are agents. Everyone in that business told me I should be excited. This was a good offer and it was really in the fine print. And that really has been our experience in signing contracts with almost anyone. Don't ever rush signing a contract in this day and age. Give yourself time and if they won't give you the time, make it be a hard no. Because anybody who is being fair with you should have no problem with you feeling a okay signing their contract. And there should be some back and forth.
- [36:54]
B
Yep.
- [36:55]
A
There's so much out there about women not being good negotiators. It's because we don't hold the line and we don't tell people to go jump if it doesn't feel right to us. We tend to take whatever's offered. We don't have to do it that way. And you get to cover your own booty and go through it with a fine tooth comb. Don't ever feel badly or like you're doing something wrong. Don't let somebody gaslight you into taking away your right to know damn good and well what you're signing.
- [37:23]
B
Yeah. And negotiate. And I'm this is one of the good things about living in this technological era, even though there's so many things that aren't great about it. But if you aren't a lawyer or you don't know a lawyer or you can't afford a lawyer, or you don't want to talk to a lawyer, copy whatever the contract is and pop it into chat, GPT or some other AI program. And that program will act like a lawyer and break down the entire contract for you or terms of service and tell you what the red flags are in it. So you can at least have a high level knowledge of what's in that contract.
- [37:59]
A
Yep.
- [38:00]
B
Sorry to enter. The lawyers out there still need lawyers. We still need them. But the ChatGPT, it's like a paralegal. It's like a paralegal in your pocket. All right.
- [38:07]
A
What's your Good for the Soul?
- [38:09]
B
My Good for the Soul is a book this month. So I have a book that's been on my shelf for a while that I pick up and read every now and then. And I've the last week or two I've been reading more. So I'm currently reading the Happiness Advantage by Sean Aker. And Happiness Advantage has like basically seven principles about positivity that are geared towards more of the workplace environment.
- [38:35]
A
Okay.
- [38:35]
B
But the general premise of the book is it challenges the idea that first you get success and then that makes you happy. That is challenged and debunked in this book. That is not how happiness works. Happiness works in the opposite way. You get happy first, and that happiness is what drives your success. And it's one of these core ideas that you just have to really experience it to understand. And, you know, it's kind of under the surface and there's hints of that being true, but you finally don't realize it until you do. And I think I finally hit the stride in my emotional growth where I can recognize and understand that when our brains are positive and thinking about positive thoughts and acting in a positive way, we perform significantly better in every single area of our lives versus if your brain is just being neutral or negative. There's a bunch of studies in here, too. They looked at like 7,500 people in the corporate workplace who considered themselves stressed out. And they found that those who had continual negative thoughts, specifically pertaining to, like, deadlines, had a 50% higher chance of having heart attacks and having coronary issues. So, yeah, it's a book of practical exercises, strategies, and other things about being positive and staying positive and how it can supercharge performance, workplace relationships. And I'll say I had a great experience with it this weekend. So this last weekend, and it wasn't even conscious. It's just I've been getting into this positive mode more recently. But we went to a farmer's market in our area, and without even realizing it, I thought about it as we were driving home. I inadvertently chatted up and complimented in a very happy, positive way, like, five or six vendors at this farmer's market and I made their day without really trying. Like, we went to a photography booth and there was this dude selling his photography, and I just told him like five or six times how beautiful it was and how amazing it was because.
- [41:03]
A
It was honestly expressing yourself. Honest holding back.
- [41:07]
B
Exactly. Honestly expressing myself in that. In that regard. And I could tell he was so happy that I don't know if he sold a lot of pictures that day because maybe people weren't buying him, but I could tell I made this guy's day. We walked up to some woman who was selling this kind of crazy invention for women instead of using toilets.
- [41:27]
A
Go ahead. Yeah, explain this. Go ahead, pee.
- [41:30]
B
Women can pee on a tap, on a fabric 100 cotton towel. It's called the pea cloth. And it's a way to save the planet and save toilet paper. And it was a. It was, honestly, it Is a good idea. This woman had this invention and she was selling them. And I told her, you got a great invention and a great pitch. You should be on Shark Tank. Oh, thank you so much. And yeah, you could save more trees with a couple of million dollar investment. And I could tell it made her happy. And she gave us like a little free gift as we were leaving and unexpected. Then we saw the bread guy who we always run into, and we complimented his bread. And you could just see he. He lit up there a little bit. Then we were walking out and we went to a place on the way out that was selling bagels. And I told the lady at the bagels. I was like, these bagels are amazing. These. I'm from New York. This is a great bagel. Oh my God, thank you so much.
- [42:25]
A
She was so happy.
- [42:26]
B
So happy. And I. But I meant it. I wasn't like trying to like, butter her up for any reason. I was like, these are really good bagels. Wow, you got it down. She even asked me for a critique. I couldn't think of any. I thought of one later and I was like, should I go back? No, I don't need to go back and tell her the bagels were small now. She doesn't need to know that these are Colorado sized bagels. They don't need to be New York sized bagels. It's positivity. Then you. We got to the car, I forgot the peppers. So I ran back to the farmer's market, went to the guy that sold the peppers, and he was like, oh, what can I get for you? And I was like, I want a shit ton of peppers. And he was like, a shit? Yes, a shit ton. My wife requested a shit ton of these peppers. These are the best peppers we've ever had. They're amazing. I love them. Oh, thank you so much. I made a farmer's week by telling him he got great peppers and it.
- [43:14]
A
Feels good to you. It's like a positivity loop and exchange.
- [43:17]
B
It felt amazing. And it. That's what I get from my dad for all the negative traits I may have inherited from him. I'm bald. I got hair coming out of my ears now. I'm loud, but I can chat a person up and make them feel good and compliment them. And yeah, I felt great for the rest of the day. And it dawned on me like an hour later. I was like, oh, wow. I just, I complimented six people at that farmer's market and I felt good. And it felt good. It felt so much better than walking around with the cloud. So the happiness advantage, that's what I'm reading right now. And I'm putting it into practice. And the power of positivity is definitely a secret that people need to hone in on.
- [44:05]
A
All right, we've got a little Dear Internet for you. And this is from Reddit. It looks like some kind of relationship issue. And it says, my boyfriend said, these are young ones. This is a 22 year old male. So my boyfriend ate all the jalapeno poppers I made before I even got one. She's 21, so they're in their early 20s. And she says, tonight I cooked dinner for my boyfriend of almost two years for he and myself. I made a main dish and some jalapeno poppers as an appetizer. Eight total. I was really looking forward to them because I haven't had them in a while. We sat down to watch a movie and I was still getting settled and hadn't started eating yet over about 15 minutes. He ate all eight of the poppers. When I went to grab one, the plate was completely empty. I didn't get a single one. I asked why he didn't leave me any, and he said, you didn't say you wanted any. I was surprised because I made the whole meal for both of us, so I thought it was obvious they weren't just for him. He said, I'm overreacting because they're just snacks and he was hungry. I feel annoyed because, one, I took the time to make them, and two, it didn't even occur to him to leave me one, but now I'm wondering if I'm blowing this out of proportion or if this is a sign. He can be inconsiderate sometimes. Is this maybe a sign that he doesn't consider my feelings sometimes? All right, what do you think about this?
- [45:33]
B
I've been so guilty of this in the past.
- [45:36]
A
I think this is familial cultural difference at play.
- [45:41]
B
Okay, familial. Okay, sure.
- [45:43]
A
Maybe cultural also.
- [45:45]
B
Yeah.
- [45:45]
A
But I recognize this between you and I. But part of it is I was raised to be so overly conscientious, overly conscious. If I would have eaten all of anything on a plate without offering some to everyone else in the house, I probably would have been whipped. Like, really I would have been whipped. I would have been punished for the weekend. To not be considerate and to just eat was seen as the height of selfishness, and I would have gotten in major trouble. So I think I got in too much trouble and was really shamed over that type of thing.
- [46:24]
B
Sure.
- [46:25]
A
As opposed to it being taught as a positively considerate way of you don't eat all the food on the plate without offering to other people that are there. I think that's a politeness, but I think if you're not raised with that, you have no concept of that, even if you're a generally conscientious person.
- [46:41]
B
Yeah. So I can't make a value judgment on this boyfriend's personality or how considerate he actually is because I don't know the details. I don't know if he was very hungry.
- [46:55]
A
I don't know if he was the excuse portion.
- [46:58]
B
I don't know. Yep. I don't know if he was. Was 6 foot 5 and 300 pounds and just gobbles up jalapeno poppers by the handful. I don't know if the girlfriend in question had done the whole I'm not really hungry thing beforehand and maybe he assumed wrongly that she didn't want any. I've been guilty of this in the past where sometimes I will make a side dish and you've told me numerous times in the past that you don't either want that side or you don't like it. So I'll sometimes make it and then I'll just eat it all for myself in a totally inconsiderate way, because maybe I just assumed you didn't want any. I get what you're saying and I respect that. And I do now, for the most part, always make sure everybody gets a popper.
- [47:48]
A
So I'm going to tell the audience the truth of how this goes down. Yes. Like the other day.
- [47:54]
B
What?
- [47:55]
A
When I found one BlackBerry left in the container of blackberries. One sad little dried up, pathetic BlackBerry left. Because.
- [48:09]
B
Tell them why.
- [48:10]
A
There have been so many times where I'm like, where is this food? Where are my poppers? And you've eaten all of them.
- [48:17]
B
Okay. No, no. Tell them why the fruit gets eaten. And so.
- [48:20]
A
No, that's different. And so now you will leave one measly, piddly little piece just so that I can't say you didn't leave me any.
- [48:30]
B
Yes. But I want you to tell the audience why your husband ensures that the fruit in this house gets eaten.
- [48:38]
A
Chris does get to enjoy three times the amount of fruit he would choose to eat himself.
- [48:43]
B
Yep. I don't want to eat this much fruit. I don't. You think I like eating that many bananas and apples? I'm going to turn myself into a diabetic eating all this damn fruit.
- [48:51]
A
So I really like, to buy fruit.
- [48:54]
B
Keywords, buy fruit. Nikki loves the idea of buying fruit. I think every woman out there has this fantasy of, like, riding a bicycle with a basket in the front full of fruit and a baguette in, like, the streets of France. Like, everyone in a sundress, like, every woman has this fantasy that's how they're going to live. So my wife, Nikki, loves buying fruit.
- [49:16]
A
Beautiful fruit.
- [49:17]
B
But what do you typically not like doing or forget to do with the fruit?
- [49:20]
A
I eat a lot of fruit.
- [49:23]
B
You don't.
- [49:24]
A
I ate all of the last watermelon.
- [49:27]
B
Okay. I will give you that.
- [49:28]
A
It was a giant watermelon.
- [49:29]
B
Finally found the fruit that you'll eat, and it's watermelon.
- [49:33]
A
But if you start to ride me, like, hey, why don't you go eat a banana?
- [49:39]
B
I won't eat it.
- [49:40]
A
My stubborn inner adolescent comes out, and I'm like, no, I was about to eat a banana, and now I don't want a banana, because, okay, this is one of those things, because I grew up in a household where I was forced to eat all the things that they told me to on your plate. So anytime any other adult, you included, gives me pressure to eat a food, I feel a revulsion in my body, and it's understood.
- [50:06]
B
But understand that I am never pressuring you to eat fruit just to eat the fruit. I am recognizing that there is fruit that you purchased that is on the verge of going bad and getting rotten. So we're at, like, DEFCON 5.
- [50:24]
A
No, we have different definitions of this. Because there are certain fruits that I want overly ripe.
- [50:29]
B
Oh, yeah. This whole thing about everyone's gonna make banana bread, let's let the bananas rot.
- [50:33]
A
I do make a lot of banana bread.
- [50:35]
B
Yeah, not enough rotten bananas, though. But it. So I've This. Just this last month, I found three or four pieces of citrus that get that they turn hard, and now they don't rot. They just go hard. And you're like, wow, this orange is lightweight. And it's not. There's no more juice inside, but it looked like it was fine. So, yeah, if I notice a piece of fruit is going bad, I will say, hey, you should eat this banana. And that immediately turns you off from eating the banana. So I've learned that. I've learned don't ever tell Nikki to eat any fruit, even if it's. Even if it's rotting. So what do I do? I sneakily eat them myself, and I leave her one of them, and that's that. And that's. Welcome to your Marriage. That's it. Deal with it.
- [51:18]
A
And that is how we do fruit.
- [51:19]
B
That is how we do fruit in this house. So maybe this the dude, maybe this 22 year old male boyfriend here in, in from this Reddit post, he was.
- [51:28]
A
Saving her from the jalapenos.
- [51:30]
B
The jalapeno was growing bad. Yeah, the popper were going bad after they came out of the oven seven minutes later. No, I think this was a jerk move. Let me be honest. If your partner is considerate enough to bring food to the table, then I think you need to make sure they get some. You ask, hey, do you. How many of these. How many of these do you want? Wow, I'm so hungry. I'm going to eat up all these, but how many do you want? Two. Okay, cool.
- [51:54]
A
I'm pretty sure this gal is never going to make this mistake again. And she's never going to make food and just hand it to people without saying, and I would like to eat half of that.
- [52:04]
B
Okay. Do we, we do have an update on this post. You want to read the update on the post?
- [52:08]
A
See you read it.
- [52:09]
B
So the female in the relationship in question updated her post and said, we ended up talking about it that night. And I realized he honestly wasn't trying to be rude. He thought they were just something I made for him because I know he loves them. And I did just place them down on a small plate in front of him so he didn't think twice about finishing them off. As soon as he realized how much it hurt my feelings, he felt so bad and definitely made up for it. That night he went to the store, bought everything to make more, gave me a whole plate before he touched any. The next day he made me another batch of poppers and made sure I got first pick. And for context, here's what she says for context. He's a big guy, about six two and built like a football player, so he can just put away a lot of food. He wasn't trying to be inconsiderate. He was distracted by the movie and honestly just really liked my cooking. Everything is good now.
- [53:01]
A
I'm so proud of them. I. They're. They both get an A plus. They handled that so well and so beautifully and came together and repaired.
- [53:10]
B
Yes.
- [53:10]
A
Like, I want to give him a lot of points for hearing her and putting effort towards repairing so so many people in modern life think that they can just go, sorry, didn't mean anything. And that's enough. And you have to put effort. You can't always fix it if I hit your bike with my car. I might not be able to fix that bike, but I got to get you another bike. You have to put some effort towards writing your wrong.
- [53:35]
B
It's got to be done the right way.
- [53:36]
A
And they came together beautifully and talked about it and he made her feel seen, heard and loved. And they're probably not going to have this issue ever again.
- [53:45]
B
I don't think so. I think they resolved it. And for them to be 22 and 21 and resolve something like that is great. Yeah. If you mess up, you got to make up for it and you got to make up for it the right way and you got to acknowledge it and see what you can do better about it. If you hit somebody with your car on the bike, bring them jalapeno poppers.
- [54:00]
A
That's well. And it's also the piece of the four agreements of this is why we don't make assumptions. Not about big things, not about little things like poppers. We do so much better to just open our faces and say, hey, are all these poppers for me? As opposed to just assuming they are. So it's another nail in the coffin of assumptions for me. So well played, young couple. Well played.
- [54:27]
B
Well, that's our show, everybody. Thank you for joining us. Don't forget that the boundaries intensive is starting soon in about a month, month and a half, six weeks. So make sure you head over to emotional badass.com backslash boundaries. You can use promo code badass to get 50 bucks off the course. And if you're on our patreon, you get the biggest discount. So if you're ready to finally supercharge your boundaries, Nikki will be teaching the course live for six weeks. It is the quickest and easiest way to get on a course with Nikki. And it's every year. We only do it in October. I'm super excited about it this year. It has taught me how to actually set boundaries with toxic people in my life, how to recognize toxic people in my life, how to basically say no as a guy who did grow up as a bit of a people pleaser and who has some toxic people in their vicinity sometimes. So it's been crazy helpful for me and I hope you check it out. Emotional badass.com backslash boundaries. And if you have any questions, send us a message and we're happy to answer them.
- [55:36]
A
Yes. And I cannot wait to meet you if you're going to be in the boundaries intensive this year. Those of you who have done it before, check your emails, check your spam if you want to take it a second time. You get a half price I believe discount, but it may be buried in your email. If you've already participated, you definitely have that email. If you can't find find it and you want to do the course again, just reach out to the team and we will hook you up with that code when we find out you've already done it. All right.
- [56:05]
B
Light and Love I'm an emotional badass, you're an emotional badass and together we are where Moxie meets mindful.
- [56:13]
A
Till next time. Take care of yourselves out there. Light and love. Bye bye.
- [56:20]
B
Sam Foreign.
- [56:49]
A
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