You are listening to the Overthinkers Guide to Joy episode 39. This is the one
where I talk about the three pieces of advice I would give to my teenage self.
Let's dive in. This is a podcast for overthinkers, overdoers, and overachievers who
are tired of feeling over anxious and just want to feel better. I'm your host
certified life coach, Jackie de Crinis. Hey there and welcome back.
So it's been a busy couple of weeks in my house. My youngest daughter is getting
prepared to graduate high school and we have a bunch of family flying in for the
event. It's gonna be all of her aunts, uncles, sisters, and even one of her
cousins. So it's gonna be kind of a combination, graduation, family reunion. And I'm
really looking forward to it, although there's and like a lot of angst around it.
Weirdly, this milestone has brought up a ton of emotion for me. And maybe it's
obvious because it's like my last little bird getting ready to leave the proverbial
nest at the end of the summer. But something about having one or more children live
under my roof for the last 28 years, I am now experiencing like true preemptive
empty nest syndrome, and I have a ton of conflicting feelings. Somewhere between like
wistful and elated and uncertain, but excited, nervous,
but celebratory, and mostly grateful and proud.
But something about this particular graduation, again, because she's my youngest has
got me feeling a little bit more introspective than even with my other two girls,
which was also emotional, but different. And maybe because it falls like on the
heels of my own 40th high school reunion just a few weeks ago. But I was thinking
about my own high school graduation day. And the truth is, other than a few blurry
photos, I can't say I remember a single thing about it. I don't remember if I felt
relieved or proud or happy or sad. I just remember that I was very eager to go
away to college and start my adult life. Now, the interesting thing was, the biggest
surprise for me was that when I graduated college four years later, none of the
things that I had planned for actually happened. I didn't stay at the college I
originally applied to. I transferred after two years to a different university. I
changed my major. I changed my plans for graduate school. I didn't end up going to
graduate school. I changed my career path goal. I wanted to be a doctor. I became
a television executive. And the point was that I had it all planned out when I was
17 years old. And at 21, I was starting from scratch.
So instead of, like I said, pursuing my lifelong dream of going to medical school,
I ended up taking an entry -level job in the entertainment business, working as an
assistant for a film producer. And I was fired after six weeks. Well, technically I
quit, but potato -potato. The producer I worked for was a classic,
arrogant Hollywood producer and a bit of a bully, not unusual at that time.
Probably still is not unusual, but it was the 80s. And he was the kind of guy who
would come in every morning, almost like he was in a bad mood. It's like, how do
you show up in a bad mood every day? You run your own company, you know, your
producer, three blocks from the ocean in Santa Monica, you just got nominated for an
Oscar, maybe even won an Oscar, I can't However, but he was just always in a bad
mood and he would like walk by my desk and grunt at me to get his herbal tea and
then he would sit down and do the New York Times cross -reposal every morning. And
I wasn't his primary assistant. I was what's called a second assistant. So
technically I really worked for his assistant, not for him. But that was my job,
was to get him his herbal tea when he grunted for it and to read scripts And then
write what's called coverage, which is basically just the synopsis of the script and
what I thought of the script. And it was one morning, about six weeks into the
job, when he finally had a meeting in his office. He rarely did. He usually went
out for meetings, didn't stay in. But some people came to his office and they were
seated in the living area of his office, so on sofas and chairs around this glass
coffee table. And of course, he bellowed for his herbal tea. And as I came in with
his hot herbal tea, I saw that the table was glass and I said, "Do you need a
coaster?" And he's like, "It's a glass coffee table. What do you think?" And I
looked around for coasters and I didn't see one. So, and I thought, "Well, at my
house, we use coasters on a glass coffee table, but he didn't have any his office."
So I figured he thought that was okay. So I put down the tea. But I remember my
cheeks turning like bright red in front of all these writers and producers that he
was sitting with and feeling stupid and embarrassed. And after the meeting,
he later told his assistant, his primary assistant, that I needed to step up my
game and do better. And so the other assistant, who was like a few years older
than me, but he looked much older because he was so beaten down by his thankless
job and this obnoxious producer. He was sort of waiting for me to say, oh,
I'm sorry, you know, absolutely I will do better next time. But I was so
embarrassed and confused and annoyed. And I just kept thinking, I worked so hard for
16 years in school and took all these really hard classes. And now I'm the second
assistant to this lame producer barks at me to get his herbal tea and he wants me
to do better because I wasn't sure if I should use a coaster or not. And I took
a long pause and I said to the primary assistant, I don't know how to do better.
So I think I'm just going to quit. And I did. And by the way, this was the only
time I ever quit a job in 30 plus years in my entertainment career. But right
Afterwards, I thought it was surely the end of my Hollywood career. Like there would
be some kind of permanent blacklist that would be passed around and nobody would
ever hire me for another assistant position again. And then that would be it. I had
a six -week career and it was over. But as a side note, that producer who fired me
or who I quit with, he came into pitch to me many years later when I was a
television executive at two different networks. And I was in a position to either
buy his idea or not. And it was so much fun to pass on his projects.
And here's the thing, he never recognized me. I mean, I had a different last name,
but it wasn't that many years since I had worked for him. But he was so self
-involved to remember the six weeks that he would grunt past my desk every morning.
But when that happened, I would always think about that great quote that somebody
told me on my first day in Hollywood, which is, "Be nice to the people on the way
up because you will see them on the way down." And it just really resonated with
me because I finally was in a power to be like, "Nope, no thanks. I'll pass on
that." But anyway, I digress. The point of this story was about how 40 years ago
when I was graduating from high school, I thought I had figured it all out. I
thought I had a life plan and my plan took a big detour, in fact,
many detours. But as John Kabat -Zinn says, you cannot stop the waves,
but you can learn to surf. So I learned to metaphorically surf. I'm still a
terrible surfer, but I did it many times in my career and in my personal life too.
But unfortunately, what I didn't learn even though I was adaptable and I learned to
pivot and I learned to work hard and I was successful, I didn't realize that I had
attracted or developed a very bad pattern. I made a habit, unconsciously of course,
of always attracting very difficult people into my life, mostly bosses,
but it showed up with some friends too. I must have been so traumatized by quitting
my first job in entertainment and so fearful that nobody would ever hire me again
that I overcompensated by staying in really toxic environments much longer than I
should have. And I didn't recognize the pattern, nor at the time did I have the
skill set to break the pattern. I just continued to tolerate bad behavior after bad
behavior and it was Hollywood so there was a lot of it. And I overcompensated by
overworking, walking on eggshells, and becoming a people pleaser, which maybe I always
was, but I think it got worse. And life has a funny way of showing you the same
lesson over and over again until you learn it. So on the precipice of my daughter
graduating high school, I keep thinking about what advice would I give her, or my
younger self, if I could do it all over again. Well, I think I'd probably have a
laundry list of things, but I thought for the purpose of this podcast episode, I
would identify three big ones. The first is, stop taking everything personally.
This is such a common mistake made by so many people, especially women and
especially me. I was always the first to assume someone's bad mood or mean -spirited
behavior had something to do with me. And I have a habit of thinking that
everything is in my power to make people feel better, happier, or just fix
everything. And it wasn't until I had my first coach that I learned this valuable
lesson. Most things are not about me, which means they're probably not about you
either. So if you have this habit of taking things personally,
check yourself and recognize before you start taking that on their bad mood,
their bad behavior, their bad habits, and step out of your own ego and notice that
it's probably a reflection of the person who is misbehaving, not what you are
clearly doing or not doing. But if you indulge that bad behavior by normalizing it,
cow -towing to it, or not setting a boundary, you're perpetuating it, and then you
keep attracting it. Yep, that was me. If only my 18 -year -old self had learned that
when she graduated high school, that would have been super valuable. Certainly, in
selecting my boyfriends, my friends, and later on, tolerating the bad behavior from
so many bosses in the workplace, I would have saved myself a ton of drama and
angst. So here's the second piece of advice. Learn to reframe your thoughts. You've
heard me say this on multiple podcasts. It's the work of Brooke Castillo from the
Life Coach school who talks about your thoughts create your results. Thoughts are
powerful weapons, but they're also powerful gifts. So if your brain is wired to
assume the worst and you think it's protecting you by doing this, think again.
Teaching yourself to find a different thought about a circumstance can liberate you,
it can empower you, and it can stop your overthinking, over -worrying brain. Now the
third one, learn to put on your own oxygen mask first. That is, if you don't learn
to take care of yourself, that's mind and body first. You cannot successfully help
others. Many of us think by always helping others, we will build up good credit
with our friends and family. We think that in turn, they will take care of us.
But I know from my own experience, as well as from clients and other friends, when
we're always running around trying to meet everyone else's needs, we are invariably
left feeling depleted. Or even worse, resentful. Because when others don't reciprocate
or show gratitude for all that we've done for them, we feel marginalized. We feel
resentful. Now, how do you recognize this person? And maybe you recognize it in
yourself. But this is the person who volunteers for everything. This is the person
who's the one to always offers to take you to the airport even during rush hour.
They're the ones who pick up your kid from school, even though they always pick up
your kid from school or they plan parties. And I don't just mean because they're
social, but they're just the one who's like, oh, I'll plan it. They're the one who
organizes all the group activities, buys the group gifts, make sure that everybody
signed the card. Now, if this sounds like you, just recognize you might be a people
pleaser. I am definitely a recovering people pleaser. And people pleasing is a habit
we established when we're little because it was probably a coping mechanism for
something else going on in our childhood. And I'm going to do a whole other podcast
on that later. But at some point, people pleasers start to feel like everyone
expects them to always be that person. And ultimately, it makes them feel taken for
granted, often left out or even invisible. So just to recap,
here are the three things I wish I could have told my younger self at my high
school graduation. It's not personal. Learn to reframe your thoughts and put on your
own oxygen mask first. Here's the funny thing. I know all of this now.
I coach on this every single day and yet I even still have to remind myself when
the pattern shows up again and again. So if you want to change the habit of
attracting difficult people or overcompensating by trying to please everyone,
just be aware of it. Just be on to yourself and be patient because here's the
thing, it's a practice. So prioritize yourself, Practice your good daily habits and
you will start attracting the right people and the right opportunities in your life.
Alright friends, I look forward to talking to you next time. Have a great week and
bye for now. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Overthinker's Guide to
Joy. If you're enjoying these episodes, please subscribe or follow this podcast so
you can always be in the know when the next episode drops. If you would like to
learn more about working with me as a coach, you can connect with me through my
website at jackiedecrinis.com. That's J -A -C -K -I -E -D -E -C -R -I -N -I -S .com.
