Dianne WhitfordIn this episode, both of us talk about 20 life lessons we wish we’d listened to when we were younger. From “he’s just not that interested” to “stay hydrated” to “that cigarette is a dumb idea”, we’ve got lots to share from our years of experience (cough, cough, ahem) on this earth. Tune in and maybe get inspired!
Referenced in this episode:
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Transcript
Dianne: Welcome to the show! Heather is here with us today. So we’re super excited. Wait, the topic we have for today is prompted a little bit by, because we’re parents and we give advice to our kids and it’s very rarely listened to.
Heather: Yeah, they don’t take it.
Dianne: They don’t. And so we thought, what if we were able to travel back in time and give our 25 year old selves, not that our kids are 25 years old, but you know, 25 year old selves advice and what would that advice be? And we recognize that our 25 year old selves would not listen to us. Even though we’re our older and wiser selves, they still won’t. But we thought it would be a fun exercise cause you know, maybe there’s other people that are willing to listen, that some of the stuff might ring true for you.
Dianne: So we’re going to go through our list. We each have 10 and we’ll talk a little bit about it. And then that’ll be it. So first one, this one’s mine and my, uh, the first one here – and these aren’t in any particular order but – presentation matters. When I was younger, I loved to think that I should be valued for my work and how, you know, I work really hard and so I should, you know, get all the rewards and things and it didn’t matter what I look like or that I, you know, had white blonde hair and sometimes with orange in it. And, you know, I…
Heather: Flip flops!
Dianne: …Or other things to work and, uh, I just thought, you know, they should be, they should, they should still give me promotions because I’m working really hard. And the reality is that working really hard is great, but presentation does matter, especially as you get older. It’s something, it sucks, but it’s the reality. So that’s my first one.
Heather: I think that it has a lot to do with when you’re working, you’re a product and when you’re a product, you need to be packaged aesthetically.
Dianne: Yes.
Heather: Um, when you’re wearing flip flops with white blond hair, and piercings or whatever, you know, the thing that you want to do. Um, kind of detracts.
Dianne: Yup. Yup. It’s a shame but it’s true.
Heather: Okay. My first one is staying in your lane. It sounds really weird, but staying in your lane really has to do with me minding my own business and not getting other people’s business because my deal was if somebody had something going on with them, I needed to solve it. Like it was my problem to fix the world. And I had people staying at my house, I had people borrow my car…
Dianne: People wrecking your car…
Heather: And it just – stay in your lane and mind your business, take care of yourself and get yourself together. That’s basically what that has to do with.
Dianne: I think it comes from a good place. You know, people are trying to help take care of other people and so, and it’s a lot easier to take care of somebody else than it is to take care of yourself. And if you are able to fix someone else, then you can say to yourself, well I, I fixed that person and now I…
Heather: Achieve!
Dianne: Yeah, achieve. But then you not only are fixing that person, you’re taking on all their drama.
Heather: Right.
Dianne: And there’s just more than, that’s more than you need to deal with. Yeah. All right. My next one is, if he’s not calling, he’s not interested. I can’t tell you how many times I sat by the phone wondering when this guy was going to call and “Oh, but maybe I could like maybe I could like text his friend and then his friend might mention to him that he talked to me and then that might remind him of me and then he might call me” and I’m just here to tell you that if he’s not calling, he’s not interested.
Dianne: And yes, it sucks. It’s like, “Well, but maybe he just got busy or maybe he had some other stuff he needed…” No, no. If he’s not calling, he is not interested. And that is literally all there is to it. When my husband was interested in me, he did everything that he could do to bring himself to my attention. And not that I’m, you know, thinking that guys have to do that all the time because I’m just fine making a move with a guy. But what I’m saying is that if he’s interested, he’ll go to that extra effort and if he’s not, he won’t. And that’s all there is to it. And as much as it hurts your heart and as much as you wish, it could be different, it just isn’t.
Heather: Well and not just that, but like why are you interested in a guy who’s so lazy that he can’t even try to pursue you in any fashion, then he’s not for you.
Dianne: And that’s not to say that guys always have to make the first move.
Heather: No not at all.
Dianne: If someone is interested in you, they’ll show it.
Heather: Yeah.
Dianne: And that’s really all there is to that.
Heather: The next one I have is, “Healthy eating is for you, too”. Now, I know that when I was young,
Dianne: I’m only just now learning this.
Heather: I know! I have the same problem because I’m like pizza pocket. But the problem with that is, is that I’m getting older now and all the pizza pockets are gaining up. In my heart it feels every pizza pocket, every time I exercise and it’s just, it’s not okay anymore. And when you’re younger, it’s easier to eat.
Dianne: Well and you think you’re like, like, what some of the other stuff you got on your list, you think you’re invincible. You’re sure you’re like, I don’t need to do any of that stuff because that’s, whoops, that’s way, way in the future before I need to worry about those things. And there’s, you can never start too soon.
Heather: It’s really not that far in the future. I promise you. It’s really looming.
Dianne: We’re not old. No, we’re not old. No, I refuse to admit it.
Heather: But the pizza pockets will make you old.
Dianne: My next one is things that are worth it are hard. And I, and I say this because lot of times when I was a kid, I thought to myself, and I think I talked about this in another podcast, it shouldn’t be this hard. Love shouldn’t be this hard. If it was meant to be, it would just be easy and everything would just fall into place and I shouldn’t have to work this hard at something if I was meant to do it. Yeah, it just happened. And that is not true. That is not true. If something is worth it, it’s going to take effort. It’s going to be hard. You’re going to have to work your ass off. You may not succeed, you may fail, but if it’s worth it, it’s going to be hard. And you should put a lot of hard work into it.
Heather: Yeah, really. And not just that, but if something is worth anything that it is hard, like, do you know what I mean? Like that’s what brings the value into the thing that you’re trying to achieve is the hard work that you put into it.
Dianne: Something that’s hard is worth way more than something that was easy.
Heather: Yeah. Now, this one, cigarettes are just not cool. I know your parents don’t want you to smoke and that’s why you want to smoke, but they’re just not cool. You don’t look cool. Lung cancer’s not cool.
Dianne: And you stink.
Heather: Yes. Just stop. I totally had a love affair with cigarettes. It’s, it’s time to stop this madness.
Dianne: That was my number – what are we on – four that was my number four also is, “That cigarette is a dumb idea”. And so – when did I start? So when I was 17 I had my first cigarette and if I could go back and slap the shit out of myself, I would. Honestly.
Heather: I thought it was so sophisticated.
Dianne: I thought I was so smart and I was just like, Oh mm mm. And then pretty soon I’m like selling stuff so that I can actually buy a pack of cigarettes and I get on a plane, you know, when I’m 30 years old and I’m embarrassed because I smell like smoke and I, my teeth are yellow and my fingers are gross and all I’m, you know, I’m freaking out because I don’t have that…
Heather: Wub.
Dianne: But I don’t have that thing. Yeah. And I can’t go take a break. And there’s just a lot of myriad reasons. And I think it goes without saying. I think everybody knows, cigarette smoking is bad for you. And if you haven’t started, don’t.
Heather: Mhm. The next one is, um, once you start something, it sets precedent. So what that means is that once you start engaging in a behavior, you’re telling yourself and other people around you that that behavior is acceptable from you. And that will get you into a lot of trouble because once you do something, you can’t undo it. It’s done. It’s forever, it’s past. So I’ve gotten myself into a lot of situations where I just feel like, I wish I hadn’t done this in the first place. Why? What motivated me to make this decision?
Dianne: That’s always so hard because I really think that people need to try something to learn, right? That it’s bad. But the problem is, is once you do something, it’s really easy to keep doing it and do it again and again and again. And it’s, you know, the first time you tell a lie, the first time you skip out from work, the first time you skip school, all of that kind of stuff is easier to keep doing it, you know?
Heather: Well, it’s hard to break like a reputation of that behavior too is, is what I’m saying also is because once you behave in a certain way for a certain amount of time, people say that’s who you are and if that’s who you are, then certain things that they would entrust to you, they’re not going to entrust to you any longer…
Dianne: Because you have that reputation.
Heather: Because that’s who you are.
Dianne: I should have put that on my list that like people’s perception is their reality, what they, what they see and what they think about you becomes who you are for them. Right or wrong.
Dianne: The next one that I have is ask for what you want. I spent a lot of time when I was a kid beating around the bush, trying to hint at people to do this thing or act this way or you know, in a relationship I might be super soft about what I was trying to say and the older I get the more I realize I’m not going to get things unless I just ask for them. “This is what I would like. This is how I’d like our relationship to happen. This is”, you know, at work “I would like a raise. I would like a promotion. I would like more responsibility.” There’s, you’re not like, just showing up every day and being like, “Oh, somebody, maybe will notice me today.” That’s just not ever going to happen. You’ve got to ask for what you want.
Heather: Well, yeah, you can’t just use your “Carrie at the Prom” powers and just be like, ah, it doesn’t work.
Dianne: It doesn’t work.
Heather: Okay. My next one is forgiveness is key. Now in your life, people are going to do horrible things to you and you’re going to do horrible things to other people. That’s just what’s going to happen. That’s how we make it through. We, we make mistakes and you have to forgive other people. You have to forgive yourself and you have to keep doing it every day.
Dianne: Every day.
Heather: Because sometimes it’s definitely a process depending on the level of crappiness of the thing that was done to you or by you.
Dianne: Forgiveness, self-forgiveness. When you can’t forgive yourself, you’re never gonna move on.
Heather: Right, right.
Dianne: You’re never going to move on. It’s going to live with you every day. In a similar vein, I guess my next one is, no matter how often he and I, I’m using, “he” because that’s my context. But it could be ‘she’. Anyone, no matter how often they apologize, if they continue to do it, they’re never going to change.
Dianne: And I say that recognizing that people can decide to change. And I’m not saying that people can’t, but they’re not going to change for you. And if they do, it won’t be a real change. So uh, I have a lot of examples of this in my life, but when I was younger, I was in, uh, you know, a bad relationship and the person would do terrible things to me and then apologize. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” And then keep doing it the next day. And I kept, every time they apologize, I think, “Oh, he really means it. Oh, he’s never going to do that again.” But uh, he does. And me leaving had no impact. He kept doing it to everybody else that he knew. And so just recognize that if someone is not treating you well or if the relationship that you’re in is not doing it for you, it most likely is never going to. Sometimes people change, but they have to do it on their own and they have to recognize the need for it on their own and not because of you, not because of anything else. So just keep that in mind as you’re getting engaged with people.
Heather: The impetus for for change always comes from within.
Dianne: Yes, it has to that otherwise it’s never going to keep.
Heather: Yeah. Uh, my next one is you are worthy of love. And what I mean by you are worthy of love is not just the love of other people. You are worthy of your love. The only person that you have to wake up with every day is you. The only person you have to go to bed with every night is you. You are worthy of love.
Dianne: It’s so hard to say that!
Heather: Really hard!
Dianne: You hear that, you want to look in the other direction and kind of like…aarrgghh!
Heather: It’s squirmy.
Dianne: But it is so true. And if you don’t recognize that, like I really believe in, you can’t love other people unless you love yourself to some degree, like you can’t really be in a healthy love relationship with somebody unless you also love yourself and to recognize that you are worthy of it. That’s a hard thing. That’s a really hard thing.
Dianne: Next one: do not get into more debt than you can handle. I know that you’re 25 years old and you’ve got all these store cards and you got all these credit cards, and you think, woo hoo! I got all this money. Well you don’t. And you’re going to have to pay that money back and if you don’t pay that money back, they’re going to come after you. So please, please, please don’t get into more debt than you can handle. Think about it before you go buy that new car. Think about it before you try to buy that house, think about it before you make these huge purchases that sound really fun and are just so exciting, but you’re not ready for it. Just really think about that.
Heather: I struggle with that still.
Dianne: I still struggle with that.
Heather: I’m so cool if I just had this thing.
Dianne: And it just doesn’t work.
Heather: No. Okay. This one is very important. It sounds really stupid and you’re not going to want to do it, but go to the dentist please. You don’t want to be toothless. It’s very important to go to the dentist. And not only is it important to go to the dentist because of how you look, it’s important to go to the dentist because it affects your heart and your health. Your health. Yeah, like bad teeth will mess you up. badly.
Dianne: You won’t be able to eat some stuff, but there’s just like lots of reasons.
Heather: Go to the dentist. It’s important.
Dianne: My next one is, give your grandparents all the love you can while you can. I have lost both – I’m fortunate enough to have both my parents still, but, but uh, I’ve lost all my grandparents except for one grandpa on my dad’s side and – probably the biggest regrets, some of the biggest regrets of my life to this point has been that I did not spend enough time with them while I had the opportunity. So take that time, and whether it’s your parents or your grandparents or whomever, take the time to be with them and spend time with them. Give them just your time. It’s not like you have to give them presents or do a lot of things for them, but just to be there, they’re going to appreciate that. And those are the things that you’ll remember after they’re gone.
Heather: Yeah. Um, I just lost one of my grandparents here, gosh, like two years ago and just seems like it just was a little while ago. And um, those are your Genesis. Those are your people, those are the people that you come from. So it’s important to honor them and to love them and spend time with them.
Dianne: Your ancestors.
Heather: They are ancestors. This one goes with the one before – go to the doctor, don’t try to WebMD that crap.
Dianne: Oh God. We didn’t have WebMD when we were kids. It’s like, it’s fine. It’ll rub out. Rub some dirt on it.
Heather: But um, go to the doctor and just get a professional opinion because you need it.
Dianne: For all kinds of things.
Heather: All kinds of things.
Dianne: People self-diagnose all the time. I fall into that trap too.
Heather: Oh, I wait till stuff falls off. I don’t like going to the doctor.
Dianne: No. That’s also, that’s also kind of my next one. And we wrote these independently, so we didn’t know what each other was going to put on their list. But this one is pay attention to your health. I am getting older and I notice more and more parts of my body breaking down and it’s depressing. Uh, I think I’m in pretty good shape, but people my age and a little bit older are having some serious health problems, and a lot of those things start when you’re younger and you have more control over, uh, your bodily functions, which you lose as you get older, let me just tell you about that. So, uh, I would just say it’s never too early to really start being healthy, eating healthy, treating yourself well. You’re worth it. And it’ll help you live longer.
Heather: Oh, my last one or no, this wasn’t the last one. The next one is, take things as prescribed. More doesn’t equal better and not taking them because you don’t like them is not equal better either. Doctors go to school for many, many years to learn how to give you the medication that they give you. Take their advice and do what they say please.
Dianne: There’s really no reason not to.
Heather: There really isn’t, and people get into such problems. Opioid epidemic is because people not paying attention to what their doctor said, and taking the medication as prescribed, getting hooked and then pretty soon they’re off and running.
Dianne: My last one is start saving, now. I am in a position right now, Jake, Jake, my husband,and I, are trying to buy a house and we have no savings, no…If you’ve watched my goal report or anything like that on my personal blog, I’m starting off with $250 and that is the whole of my savings. And if I had started a lot sooner to do the savings, I would not be in this position now. So if I could, if there’s just one thing that I could tell my younger self that would make my current life a lot easier, that would be to start saving and just save that stuff aside. Don’t touch it, don’t spend it on the purse that you saw that you want or the set of shoes or whatever it is. Have, what’s the word I’m looking for? The self control to save and keep it in savings and do something smart with it. Put it in an interest bearing account or, I don’t know about investment, but CDs and other things where you at least get a little bit of money for what you’re putting in there. It’s only getting more and more expensive to retire. You can’t count on making a whole bunch of money that you can set aside later in life. So you start saving now.
Heather: Well, it’s scientifically proven that people who deny self-gratification are more successful. Yeah, so go without for a little bit, you’ll be fine.
Dianne: Yup. You won’t die.
Heather: No. Okay now the last one is drink some water. Ice coffee is not water. Rock star is not water. Drink actual water because you need it. Your body’s like what? 95% water? We’re all just de-hydrating.
Dianne: That’s true. I would…One thing though that I did learn is that the, the “you need to drink half your weight in ounces” is actually not necessarily true. It’s really more drink your, half of your ideal body weight in ounces because if I tried to do that right now, Oh my God, I’d be at like literally I would just…
Heather: Slosh!
Dianne: Get water sickness! Yeah, so drink water. Make sure you stay hydrated. It’s part of taking care of your health in turn part of being healthy and living longer. That’s really it.
Dianne: So those are our top, are our, top 10 life lessons that we wish we could go back and teach our 25 year old selves if our 25 year old selves would actually listen, which is highly, unlikely.
Heather: Oh, it’s not happening. I wouldn’t listen to any of those things.
Dianne: But maybe they help some of you and I hope you guys have a wonderful week. If you want to sign up for our mailing list, it’s www.coffeegritandinspiration.com/subscription. Hope to see you around. Have a wonderful week. See you next time. Bye.
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