Dirty Chai with Chio - Ep 16 - The Dirty Pink Bunny

The podcast episode discusses the importance of personal and professional success through holistic growth and development. The host originally planned to talk about The Four Agreements but decided to focus on a story from a book called Untamed by Glennon Doyle. The story is about a cheetah named Tabitha who lives in a zoo and chases a pink bunny during a show. The host relates to Tabitha's longing for freedom and feeling restricted in her own life. The story resonates with the host and emphasizes the need to break free from societal expectations and embrace one's true self. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's installment of the Dirty Chai Podcast with me, your host, Chiyo. Today we focus on holistic personal and professional success by growing and developing the common denominator to all your successes, all your failures, and everything in between, you. It's about the mindset, the emotional regulation, and the intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today I thought that I was going to be talking about The Four Agreements. The Four Agreements is a book that changed my life once upon a time. And I have a very unscientific method for picking my topic for every week. And that unscientific method is trusting my feelings. And somehow I couldn't connect with The Four Agreements topic. I know that it's a topic that I have to do at some point, but it's not a topic that I'm going to do this week. And so very last minute, I was scrolling through material that I've read in the past to see if I could connect with something else. And I came across something I did a while ago called The Dirty Pink Bunny. And I connected with it again so viscerally that I knew that that was the topic for this week, that it's time for me to be reminded about The Dirty Pink Bunny and for maybe you and another reader or somebody else to be reminded about The Dirty Pink Bunny. And The Dirty Pink Bunny is from a book written by Glennon Doyle, one of my favorite authors. And the book is called Untamed. In the opening pages of the book, in the prologue, she comes out swinging and swinging hard by telling us a story about a cheetah. In the book, Glennon talks about how she and her wife took their daughters to the zoo a couple of summers before she wrote the book. And as they were walking the grounds, they saw a sign advertising the park's big event. It was called the Cheetah Run. So they headed towards the family, scouting out their viewing spots. And they found an empty stretch along the route. And their youngest daughter hopped up on her wife's shoulders for a better view. And no sooner had they found a good spot and sat down, did Pepe, blond zookeeper in a khaki vest appear. And she had a megaphone. And you know how these people are if you've been to a zoo or you've been anywhere where they run these events for children and adults alike. These people are very peppy, and they have a great attitude, motivational speaker type. So she has a megaphone, and she's holding on a leash a yellow Labrador retriever. So Glennon's confused, right? She says, you know, I don't know much about animals, but if they try to convince me that this dog is a cheetah, I want a refund, is what she's thinking. And what I love about Glennon Doyle is just how witty she is. It's not so much the subject matter, and she talks about very serious and difficult subjects. It's her delivery. So she makes me chuckle by saying, if they try to tell me that this dog is a cheetah, I want a refund. So welcome, everybody, says our peppy zookeeper. You are about to meet our resident cheetah, Tabitha. Do you think this is Tabitha? No! The kids yell. Don't you just love kids? This sweet Labrador is Minnie, she continued. This is Tabitha's best friend. We introduced them when Tabitha was a baby cheetah, and we raised Minnie alongside Tabitha to help tame her. Whatever Minnie does, Tabitha wants to do. Let's remember this for later. The zookeeper then points them towards a parked jeep that's nearby, and there's a pink-stuffed bunny that is tied to the tailgate by a fraying rope. Who has a Labrador at home, she says. Little hands shoot up in the air. Whose Labrador loves to play chase? Mine! The kids are shouting. Well, she says, Minnie loves to chase this bunny. So first, Minnie's going to do the cheetah run, while Tabitha watches to remember how it's done. Then we'll count down, I'll open Tabitha's cage, and she'll take off. At the end of the route, just a hundred meters away, there'll be a delicious steak waiting for Tabitha. So the zookeeper uncovers Tabitha's cage, and she walks Minnie, who is eager and panting to the starting line. She signals the jeep, and it takes off. She releases Minnie's leash, and the yellow Labrador does what the yellow Labrador loves to do, and joyfully chases the dirty pink bunny. The children applaud because they love these things, the adults are just like, okay. And then finally, it's time for Tabitha's big moment. I mean, it's cheetah time, and people are counting down, five, four, three, two, one. And the zookeeper slides open the cage door, and off goes the dirty pink bunny again. And Tabitha bolts out, laser focused on the bunny, a spotted blur, she's a cheetah. She crossed the finish line within seconds, so much faster than Minnie. Tabitha pins the little, she tries to pin down the pink bunny, but it's gone. They throw her a steak. She pins that to the ground, and she eats it. And people clap, they clap. And Glennon says something that I resonated with. Glennon says she didn't clap. She felt queasy. The taming of Tabitha felt familiar. Oh my God. I remember just this early in the book feeling an overwhelming sense of connection with the story that she was telling, because I had just come through a very difficult period at that time. I'd just come through my own divorce. I had just changed jobs. I had made a lot of big life changes that had been made by pushing against the current and pushing against a feeling that I was not where I was supposed to be, that something was wrong, that this was not right. And I remember many times when I would speak to other people to explain what I was going through and the difficulties that I was experiencing and the pain that I was feeling. And I would hear things like, oh, you know, I remember one time saying, is it too much for us to just want to be happy? And someone says to me, happy? No one is happy. We're all just getting by. This is all there is, right? This is all there is. There's no one who can say that they are fully happy with their life. We all just make do, and you should just make do too. Focus on praying. Focus on just being good, and you will get your reward in heaven. Please shoot me now. Glennon says, as she watched Tabitha knowing that stake in the zoo dirt, she thought, day after day, this wild, beautiful animal chases dirty pink bunnies down a well-worn, narrow path that's been cleared for her, never looking left or right, never catching that damn bunny, settling instead for a store-bought stake and for the distracted approval of sweaty strangers, obeying the zookeeper's every command, just like many, the lab she's been trained to believe that she is, unaware that if she remembered her wildness just for a moment, she could tear those zookeepers to shreds. Isn't that frighteningly, eerily accurate of how we live our lives, how we are born and domesticated immediately, how we are limited? And this may not be true of everybody, but it certainly was true of my own upbringing, and it certainly has been true of the upbringing of a lot of people that I have had the privilege of knowing or being close to. See, when Tabitha finished her stake, the zookeeper opened the gate, and that led to a small, fenced field where they kept her. And she walked through, and the gate closed behind her. The zookeeper picked up the megaphone again, and she says, you know, any questions? Any questions? And one of the children, because children are quite perceptive, they haven't been fully domesticated the way that adults have been domesticated. One of them asks the question, is Tabitha sad? Doesn't she miss the wild? I'm sorry, I can't hear you, said the zookeeper. Can you ask that again? The mother says, this is the child's mother, she wants to know if Tabitha misses the wild. The zookeeper smiles and says, no, Tabitha was born here. She doesn't know any different. She's never even seen the wild. This is a good life for Tabitha. She's much safer here than she would be out there in the wild anyway. These words always feel like a punch in the gut to me, even though I've read them multiple times. And then while the zookeeper began sharing facts about cheetahs born into captivity, Glennon's oldest daughter, Tish, nudged her and she pointed to Tabitha. Somewhere in that open field, away from Minnie, away from the zookeepers, away from the audience, Tabitha's posture had changed. Her head was held high. She was stalking the periphery. She was tracing the boundaries the fence created, back and forth, back and forth, stopping only to stare somewhere beyond the fence. It was like she was remembering something. She looked regal and a little scary. Tish whispered to Glennon, Mommy. She turned wild again. And Glennon nodded at her daughter, and she kept her eyes on Tabitha as she stalked. And she wished she could ask Tabitha, What's happening inside you right now? But she already knew what Tabitha would say. Tabitha would say, Something's off about my life. I feel restless and frustrated. I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this. I imagined fenceless, wide-open savannas. I want to run and hunt and kill. I want to sleep under an ink-black, silent sky filled with stars. It's all so real. I can taste it. Then Tabitha would look back at her cage, the only home she's ever known. She would look at the smiling zookeepers, the bored spectators, her panting, bouncing, begging best friends a Labrador. She would sigh and she would say, I should be grateful. I have a good enough life here. It's crazy to long for what doesn't even exist. And Glennon thought, but I would say to her, I would say to Tabitha, Tabitha, you're not crazy. You're a goddamn cheater. This story moves me beyond words every time I hear it. It moves me because it is a simple story, and yet it is a complex story. It is a story of the human existence. It's the story of how so many of us are living our lives and questioning, blind to who we truly are, blind to the depth of the calling that has been placed in us by something greater, deaf now because we've been domesticated away from it, to the blueprint that has been placed in our hearts. When we feel that an ease that says, maybe you're in the wrong place for whatever reason, when we feel that discomfort that tries to push us to go to greater places and to greater heights, we push back and we say, I should be happy here. I should accept my fate. Despite the fact that you can feel that you are not a Labrador, despite the fact that you can feel that there is no value in this dirty pink bunny, despite the fact that you can sense that you are meant for greater and more, that you are meant to achieve something extraordinary, time and time again, we look around at the Labradors that are around us in different shapes and forms and we think, maybe I am a Labrador. Maybe I'm not a cheetah. And you need to understand this, there is nothing wrong with being a Labrador. There is nothing wrong with a Labrador doing what a Labrador does. There's nothing wrong with a Labrador taking delight in chasing a dirty pink bunny, but that is because the Labrador is living its purpose. That is because the Labrador is living its truth. When a cheetah attempts to live the life of a Labrador, there is a feeling that something is not quite right, that perhaps this is not where I'm supposed to be. And the Labrador is a metaphor, right? The Labrador is a metaphor for people living the different lives that bring them joy. And the cheetah is a metaphor for you, following blindly without asking yourself why in your spirit there is this unrest, why you're being called to something more. Where your tribe is, where are the other cheetahs? Why do I look different? Why do I feel different? Should I be somewhere else? Should I be doing more? And this is the thing, the danger of domestication, the danger of raising an eagle among chickens is that the eagle starts to believe that it cannot fly. And as long as the battle of the mind is lost, the eagle will never fly again. And what the zookeeper does, by showing Tabitha Minnie doing the cheetah in quotes run, first is to remind her, you are not a cheetah, you are a Labrador. It's to remind her that the cage around her brain is there. It's to remind her to stay small. And when all that she sees is this Labrador doing what the Labrador does, the Labrador that she was raised with, then Tabitha can only remember that this is what she has been raised to understand herself to be. But you cannot deny the whisper in your spirit saying, just maybe I could run faster. Just maybe I could bite harder. Just maybe, just maybe I could be doing something else. And here's the thing, when you find yourself in the space that you are supposed to be in, when you find yourself in the space that you're supposed to be in, like Tabitha, when she finds herself in an open space, not in a cage, not on a restricted pathway, not in front of an audience, as close to the wild as she can possibly get for a cheetah raised in captivity, she begins to straighten. She begins to connect with who she truly is. She looks out there and it feels right. And that is what happens when you're placed in the right circumstances, in the right situation. No one's going to come and place you in those situations. You might happen upon them and they feel right to you. It's incumbent on you to figure out where your calling is calling you to, where your soul is at home, where your purpose is at home, and to go there so that the dream that you have, that dream that maybe, you know, as Tabitha put it, that maybe I should be sleeping, sleeping under a dark sky. Maybe I should be sleeping under a ink black sky with stars. Maybe I should be somewhere else. You must go to the place where that feels true. And it's an easy thing to say. It really is. It's an easy thing to say. It is such a hard thing to do. And I remember doing this, leaving a marriage that was hurting me terribly, emotionally, psychologically, and trying to push back against something as simple as that. Simply trying to go to a place where I would feel safe, because I think that is what feels right. A place where I would feel at home, a place where I would feel love. And yet when I spoke to people other than my closest tribe members, what I got back was, there is nothing out there for you. Be mini. This is what you're supposed to be, Tabitha. This is where you're supposed to be. And if you find that you're not comfortable here, then something is wrong with you. Pray harder to be more like a labrador. Pray harder to fit in to this place that is hurting you badly. And when you find yourself coming up against narratives like this, the amount of work that you need to have done on yourself, on your self-worth, on your self-esteem, on your understanding of your rights, on your understanding of the protections that the system affords you, on your understanding of who you are and where you need to be, is a lot. If Tabitha were to be released into the wild, the amount of unlearning and relearning she would need to do is a lot. But I can tell you this, as much as it would hurt, as much as she would blunder, as much as she would probably struggle or maybe even hurt herself trying to kill her first meal, it would be so worth it to be free and to connect with who she truly is, and to feel safe, and to feel at home in her own body and in her own soul, and to feel that she is among those who are like her, that she is among people where her identity is normal and does not need to be tailored, does not need to be tamed. So many of us have been tamed into job situations, family situations, life situations, friendship situations that we have no business being in, simply because we were raised, if you are Tabitha, raised by or with a Labrador, and you've been raised to think that this is the only crowd that you can identify with, but you haven't looked in the mirror long enough to see, is this truly who I am? Do I look like this place? Do I look like I should be here? And if I don't, then where should I be? Because most of us stop at the point where we ask the question, we start to question, and then we think, exactly like the zookeeper in 10, oh my gosh, the wild is so dangerous for you, you are so much happier here. In any event, you've never even experienced the wild, what do you know about the wild? This is where you were born, and that is how, if you think about it, that is how the narrative gets pushed back to you every time you start to think about stepping out of the box or making a big change. It's often, what do you know about being out there? And the answer is nothing. I know nothing about being out there, except that I know that it feels right. What do you know about taking on a new role that is so much bigger than you? Nothing except that I can learn. What do you know about applying for a role that is so senior? Nothing except that I have trained as best as I can, I have grown my mind intentionally, I have learned the skills that are required of a leader, and I will show up in my fullest capacity every day, for better or for worse, and that is enough. These are the things that you need to remind yourself of. When you hear, oh, but you should be happy, but are you happy, ask yourself the hard question, if I am unhappy, what would make me happy? Where can I go and find it? What is the work that I need to do to go there? You see, to have the revelation is one thing, but the work behind, the work that follows the revelation, the work behind the untaming is where the sampan beans are, it's where the meat and potatoes are, that is where it all happens. And when you do that work, you will begin to understand that you are Tabitha, that you can show up as Tabitha, that all this taming is meant to prevent you from achieving the fullest version of yourself, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Because sometimes we get tamed, not because people have ill intentions for us, but because this is all they know, this is the best they know how to do for you. Someone once said, you can't, I think it's Brené Brown, your life is yours to live, and you cannot ask people for directions to a place that they have never been. You cannot ask people for directions and permission for how to live your life. You are responsible for it. You are the one who's hearing in your spirit that something is not right. There's another quote I came across on this big wide internet that said, the call to your purpose was not a conference call. It is so important to understand that it is okay to be solo and to be different. It is okay to be solo and to be different. It is okay to feel like maybe you do not fit in. It is okay to feel like maybe there is something more out there. It is okay to feel like your purpose is calling you from all you have ever known. But once that happens, once you hear that whisper, once you hear that blueprint, once you hear the whisper that maybe you're a goddamn cheater, what's important is for you to do the work to recognize your spots, to do the work to understand how your muscles work, to do the work to recognize where your natural talents lie that may not be natural to those around you, to do the work to recognize yourself so that you connect with your self-worth and your self-esteem. Do you hear how I put the work before the self-worth and the self-esteem? Because your self-worth and your self-esteem are not things that you just speak onto yourself. They are things that you earn from yourself. You put in the work to get to know yourself. You put in the work to try and see and identify and appreciate who you are, and you are rewarded by an increased sense of self-worth, by an increased sense of self-identity, by an increased sense of self-assurance, and that carries you into an unknown wild to achieve the purpose that has been placed in your heart to change the world. So maybe, maybe the person who needed to hear this this week just needed to hear that you, you are a god damn cheater. Go after that role. Go after that promotion. Go after that new job. Go after that change. Go after yourself. Go out with lanterns in the dark and look for yourself. You will find yourself. I went out with lanterns and I looked for myself, and God, what a gift that journey has been. Much as it hurt, the reward has far exceeded the cost, and I am ever so grateful. And you see, when people see you becoming a cheater, when people see you connecting with who you are, it's just a little bit scary, and that is okay. That is okay. You are meant to be a little bit scary. You are a god damn cheater. Have a great week.