Ep 29. Travel Light - Dirty Chai with Chio

The podcast episode titled "Travel Light" discusses the concept of emotional and psychological weight and how it can affect our ability to enjoy life. The host shares the idea of carrying unnecessary baggage, such as unhealed trauma or resentment, and how it hinders our journey. They emphasize the importance of assessing what we are carrying and taking steps to heal and let go. The host also mentions the importance of authenticity and how it applies in different areas of life. They give an example of Indra Nooyi, the first female CEO of PepsiCo, who made a decision based on her role as a mother and recognized the movement towards healthier alternatives. The episode concludes by suggesting a conference with our current, 8-year-old, and 80-year-old selves to determine what baggage to let go of and how to move forward. Hello, hi, welcome to this week's Retorment of the Deadly Chag podcast with me, your host Cheo. The podcast where we focus on holistic professional and personal 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, emotional regulation, and intentional personal development that underpins holistic success. Today's installment is entitled Travel Light. The title and the theme and the subject has sort of followed me across all my social media platforms. I've spoken about it recently on Instagram. I spoke about it in the newsletter yesterday, the Maven Mail. If you don't receive your copy and you would like to receive a copy, you can subscribe at cheonso.substack.com. And you will get a newsletter once a week on Monday. So only email you get from me. And the menu for each week is a book review, a quote, a thought for the week, financial literacy idea for you to research, and what's coming up in the podcast, really. It's a very simple newsletter, and I hope it gives the value that I intend for it to give. So in the newsletter and on Instagram, I've spoken about traveling light. I actually got the concept from a Japanese influencer I follow. He is a minimalist who lives in a Japanese village. And he spoke about how he learned while he was hiking and traveling across Europe that the more light you pack and travel, the further you can go, the more fun you can have, the greater the experience is, and the further you can go. And I got to thinking about that in the emotional and psychological sense. Because, you know, there's this concept or this idea or this research that the longer you are weighed down by something, the more normal it starts to feel for you. So, for example, if I put a heavy chain across your legs right now, you will immediately feel the discomfort and the weight of it. So as long as it's not excruciatingly painful, it's just there. What happens is over time, you become accustomed to the weight of the chain across your legs. So even though the restrictions it puts on your movement are initially uncomfortable, you eventually adjust to having it around you, and you start to work around it. And strangely enough, sometimes when that weight is removed and you are lighter, you don't remember immediately how to move about freely. And number two, you in some sort of weird way miss that weight being on your legs. And a lot of us deal with emotional weight and emotional baggage in the same way. We are like the hiker that carries way too many things that they do not need. And they can't go as far, have as much fun, be as uninhibited as they should be on a hike because they are weighed down by unnecessary things that they are carrying. Unnecessary things look like many things and different things for people. For some people, it might be unhealed trauma. For others, it might be resentment from ages ago that hasn't healed. For others, it might be past pain of some sort, past shame, past versions of yourself that maybe you have hidden in a closet somewhere for whatever reason. It might be a wound that is bleeding and has not healed over many years. It might be a longing. It might be a hope lost or a hope that has died. All of those things, all of the things that we encounter that are an emotional burden, it might be loss even. All of these things that place an emotional weight on us that we carry from moment to moment are items that we are adding into the backpack that we are carrying as we hike through life. And it is ever so important that even when you have a period as artificial as the beginning of a new year that says to you, this is a fresh start, a reset, an opportunity to redefine, an opportunity to restart, an opportunity to reconsider, it is worthwhile to sit down in moments like this and ask yourself, what am I carrying in my life hiking bag that I shouldn't be carrying anymore? And this is not to say that when the pain was inflicted on you, when the trauma was inflicted on you, when the loss was inflicted on you, it did not hurt. This is not to say that it is not valid. This is not to say that you are wrong in having an open wound that is bleeding. It is not to say that it is your fault that those things happen to you. Life happens to us whether we want it to or not. It is to say it is your responsibility once these things have happened to assess how long you would like to carry them and what they are weighing you down from. To ask yourself, how do I go about healing this wound? And to take the steps to do so. To understand that the only person carrying the burden of what you are feeling is you. You might be carrying anger, for example. I think anger is the best, the better example. Anger towards somebody for something that they did. Anger towards somebody for an apology they never gave you. Anger towards somebody for an unfair action that they perpetrated against you. All of that is valid. But carrying it as you try to journey through life simply takes away from your ability to enjoy the journey. It simply dilutes your ability to be in every moment and to get the most out of your life. And since we only get one life, is it worth it? If you were to die tomorrow, is the bandwidth and the energy and the resentment and the anger that you have given in that direction worthwhile? If you were to find yourself on your deathbed, what would you say to yourself about the amount of time and energy you have spent in that direction? Would you wish that you had healed? Would you wish that you had applied that energy to something else? Would you wish that you had traveled in a slightly different direction? If so, then proactively start walking the path of putting the baggage down. Start figuring out how to travel light and to travel only with the necessities. Nothing stops you from thinking that that resentment is also a necessity for your travel. If it is, then by all means, take it along. But if you would like for a different story to be told when you die, if you would like for a different story to be told at your 80th birthday party, then maybe make a different choice. Maybe choose to travel light. I was listening to a woman called Nisha on YouTube, and she is a British financial advisor, influencer. And she said something that struck me too. And she said every decision she makes is for the 8-year-old in her and the 80-year-old in her. The 8-year-old in her and the 80-year-old in her. The 8-year-old in her is meant to remind her that life is for living, that there is wonder, that there is beauty, that there is excitement and glee in the everyday moments. And the 80-year-old is to remind her to stay anchored, to use her life usefully, and to be proud of the things that she is creating and living and breathing into existence. And those two together are meant to keep her balanced. And I propose to you that you have a conference with your current self, your 8-year-old self, and your 80-year-old self. And ask yourself, what are we carrying that 80-year-old self and 80-year-old self would scoff at? And how can we move in the general direction of a consensus of three of you? That's the concept of traveling light. The concept of traveling light, I think, gently leans against authenticity in one way or the other. So, authenticity is a complex subject. And we would have to break it down over time to understand how it applies in different situations. It applies in the workplace. It applies in personal relationship. It applies in friendship situations. It applies with lovers. It applies with spouses. It applies with business partners. But it applies in different ways and in layered ways in the different scenarios. And the concept of authenticity that is coming to mind now for this purpose is something that I observed in reading Indra Nooyi's book, My Life in Full. And in the book, she talks about both her work life and her personal life. And it's no secret that Indra Nooyi was the first female CEO. She was also a woman of color, Indian, known for wearing her saris, born and raised in India and came to the U.S. to study. There were lots of things that are in play that made her different from the typical. And we talked about in a past episode, lessons from her book, we talked about how at one point she attempted to fit in by wearing a Western-type suit and how it was ill-fitting and it was uncomfortable and it was evident to everybody around her, so much so that someone close to her just said to her, you should have really just worn a sari because that's what you typically wear. But something else in the story along the same vein struck me and it wasn't necessarily what she wore. It was the fact that as a mother and as a woman and as a CEO, her roles coincided in a decision that went on to make Pepsi a firm contender in the market. You see, up until Indra was in charge, Pepsi had focused primarily on being a Coke competitor, which makes sense. Pepsi is an alternative to Coca-Cola and their marketing, everything was geared towards that. Then Indra, who had school-going children at that time, as happens when your children reach a certain age, you start getting invited to parties, you start attending sports events or things, you start attending places where children are being fed and being given drinks. There she was, the CEO of PepsiCo, and she realized that people were not serving PepsiCo to their families. People were not serving PepsiCo products to their children and to their spouses. People were bringing alternatives. Being a mother and being in those situations and functioning in those roles, she recognized the movement towards health and healthier alternatives and better options early. Having realized that, she took it to her place of work and to her business and PepsiCo branched out and started acquiring healthier alternatives, juices, hummus, alternatives that the parents that she was engaging with, the people that she was seeing, the demographic that she was exposed to, by virtue of also being a mother and a woman, had alerted her to. She made a decision that I view as authentic and powerful and brave based on the different versions of herself that she is and the exposure that they gave her. Now this to me, and I don't know if this is what other people would get from the story, but this is what I got. I got that there is power in being okay with what you are and not necessarily breaking yourself into parts and shapes and forming yourself into bizarre shapes to try and fit into what is typical for the role that you are in. So let me try to explain that in a personal sense. I am from a very small town. I am mostly what people would define as rural, if you really talk to me, and I don't have a lot of sophisticated exposure to the world at large. I'm slowly getting it, but it's not something that I've always had. So I always have that little sort of naivety when I approach certain things. And the CEO, the CFO, and I in our current company were working on a major project this past year, and we tend to gamify things, especially if things are very hard, and this was a hard thing. And so the game was, when is this thing likely to happen? And each one of us guessed a date, right? And my guess was apparently quite wild. I had considered it based on what I knew, and my date was that it would be end of November into December. And yet the general consensus was my view was wildly naive and not likely to succeed, which is fine, which is fine. I'm willing to take my losses as and when they come. But here's the thing, though. Because I didn't consider a lot of the things that sophisticated people who deal with mergers and acquisitions all the time, right, or who have dealt with them for 20 years, I've dealt with mergers and acquisitions for 10 years. And in my humble experience, they happen when the team that is involved is committed to a particular date, and they fight to achieve that date. Once that date is committed to, the team will make it happen. That's what I have seen. That's all I knew. And that is what won me the bet. My unlikely date was actually the winning bet. It was so unlikely that I didn't realize I had won for a bit. I actually started congratulating somebody else, and I was just like, wait a minute. Am I not the winner? So, yes, they both owe me a case of beer. I don't drink beer, so I don't know what I'm going to do with it. And a couple of expensive spirits. And yet I am the cheapest date known to man. I'm hoping they take me to lunch rather. But the point is, the strength that made itself apparent in that moment was my naivety, right? And that has worked for me in many situations where I show up, and based on what I know, my ability and the ability of the team, I will make a choice and a decision on what is best to do, not necessarily what the next person would decide. And that is what has made me strong in the last year. It is very easy to fall into the trap of wanting to do what the last person who was good at this did. The last person who did this did. The last person who was admired for doing this did. But your true strength relies in using all of the parts of you, the weak, the strong, and the uncommon. The strength that you have, the strength that you bring to the table is you being that particular combination of things. It's perhaps your ability to engage with people of the same race as you on a different level than a person who has no cultural exposure in the way that you have. So then being a rural person actually makes you better able to engage with people who are more traditional and more conservative because you instinctively recognize that need in them. Do not be quick to polish away the rough edges of yourself in pursuit of a final and perfect product because then you might lose the very things that make you a superpower. You might lose the very things that give you an edge. You might lose the very things that make you a meaningful presence that adds value. Now, winning the bet is just one of those things. It's not a big deal and it's an example. But that sort of scenario plays itself out over and over again in approaching big things, big targets, big goals. When you go in without the ideas from somebody else that it can't be done, no, don't deal with authorities in that way. They don't allow such things. Don't do this. Oh, no, you can't do that. There's a lot of that that floats around every time a person steps into a role, into a situation, into even a relationship. But do not be afraid to let all the pieces of you show up with whatever value that they can contribute to create a whole that can land a punch in a way no other person in the room can. Your value is not in the blending in. Traveling light is not in letting go of the things that make you unique. Traveling light is in holding on to those things because they make the journey easier. It is a lot heavier to try and walk as someone else versus to simply perfect walking in exactly your shoes. Look at Indra Nooyi's journey. She is now defined as one of the greatest leaders to ever have been a CEO in a company the size of PepsiCo and in the world. And we talk about her here across the world from where she is because she is a fine example of doing just that. And it's okay to get it wrong. It's okay to stutter. It's okay to be embarrassed a little. It's okay to learn to laugh at yourself a little bit sometimes. But just understand that the more you show up, the more you try, the more you practice healing, the more you practice putting things down, the more you practice laughing a little, the more you practice letting it go, the more you practice traveling light as yourself, the easier it becomes. The easier it becomes. So that's the second idea as far as traveling light is concerned. And then the third and final idea for this episode is focus on less. I got this one from Greg McKeown's Essentialism. And I follow a guy on YouTube called Gabe Bolt. And I could be pronouncing his surname wrong. It's B-U-L-T. Gabe said something that I particularly resonated with. We live in hustle culture. Do it. Do it. Do it. Get more. Be a millionaire. Have a jet. Look like money. Spend. Spend. Spend. Spend. Spend. Spend. Spend. Spend. And there's a lot of money to be spent. Great. But there is also a consequence to this hustle culture. The result is people are doing more than they should before they're ready to do it. People are scaling their businesses that are good and crashing them because they're trying to do more than the business is ready for. There's danger in scaling your social media. There's danger in scaling everything, anything, relationships, rushing them to the next stage before they've put down the roots that they need to put up. There's a common statement that gets thrown around in financial influencer circles, which is the average millionaire has seven streams of income. True. That is true. But what they don't then add is that the average millionaire did not create all seven streams of income in the exact same moment. That he didn't nearly die at his desk trying to do seven jobs at the exact same time. It's not all seven at once. It's not going an inch deep and a mile wide. It's not traveling one inch in a thousand directions. No. What you want to do is create a gentle cascade. You want to have a beautiful idea and go a mile deep on that idea. Give it a full shot. Don't sit with your 80-year-old self and think, if only I had given it a proper shake, then it would have worked. No, no, no, no. Take the time to give your idea roots and wings. Take the time to give your career roots and wings. Take your time to give your relationship roots and wings. Take your time to scale things proportionately. Yes, the Internet is telling you to hurry. Yes, the world is telling you to rush. But you are the one in the battlefield. You are the one in the journey. You are the one who is traveling. And you can sense that this is not my momentum carrying me. Work hard on making something that you create something that can survive and that can scale and stay standing. Don't do too much. There is power in saying no at just the right moment. There is a grave danger in allowing yourself, for example, to be promoted to CEO before you are. I had this argument with my one of my close friends who happens to be doing very well in corporate himself. And then he says to me, why don't you get ready for whatever the next stage is? I was a lot younger at that point. So he says, get ready for your next stage. You can do it. You can do it. And yes, I can do it. I said, but I can't do it right now. So, for example, if I want to be head of, let's say, head of operations. This is a random example because I'm not ready to tell you what I want to be head of just yet. But let's say I want to be head of operations in a pharmaceutical company in 10 years from now. I'm head of legal in a casino group right now. That means, right, that if that opportunity were to come knocking for me tomorrow, I'm unlikely to take it because I'm not ready for it. Unless they are built in things that will help me get ready on the go. I doubt it. Not for a role of that scale. What I would expect or what I would see in a person who is going a mile deep and an inch wide is I would start studying the things that I need to study in order to take on that role. What do I need to study in order to be head of operations? What skills does a head of operations person in a pharmaceutical industry present with? Check out LinkedIn profiles for people in those roles. See what it is they're presenting as skill that. What is it that the job descriptions on the Internet that are advertising for those roles? What is it they are identifying as key? Do I have those things? If not, where can I get them? How long will it take me to get them? Do I need to study? How am I going to fund that study? Right. That is what you need to do to prepare to scale. Do not just jump because it's a lot harder to come from back from a crash and burn. It's a lot harder, especially in your profession, to come back from a spectacular crash and burn and to rebuild your reputation. Your reputation is worth a lot. So, in the context of a professional failure engendered or brought about by just you not being ready, it's easier to see why going an inch deep and a mile wide is exposing yourself to unnecessary danger and unnecessary weight. And it's not in the spirit of traveling light. Instead, yes, you can do it. But can you do it right now? Yes, you should do it. But should you be doing it right now? Yes, you will do it. But how will you get to it? Plan. Execute. Plan. Execute. Those are the thoughts I would like to leave you with at the beginning of 2024. I wish you the very best in this year. May you grow. May you scale. May you travel light. May you see the beauty in life. May you achieve holistic success. May your heart and your pocket and your soul overflow. May you be whole.