Growing Up Podcast

The speaker reflects on their journey into adulthood and questions the traditional notions of what it means to be a grown-up. They discuss how society often values seriousness, intelligence, and being right, which can lead to stagnation and limited growth. Instead, they advocate for embracing curiosity, humor, action, and gratitude as essential mindsets for a fulfilling life. They share personal anecdotes and highlight the benefits of these mindsets, such as increased learning, growth, and overall well-being. The speaker encourages listeners to explore alternative ways of approaching adulthood and to prioritize joy, laughter, and taking action. Welcome to Shareable, a podcast where I share interesting tidbits, thoughts, and questions to help us have creative ways to look at common problems that might help us live the life we want. I'm your host, Laine Melke. In today's episode, I'll share my journey into adulthood and question if there's a better way. I hope it's interesting for you to hear my stories and reflect on what tools, skills, and mindsets you packed on your trip to being a grown-up, and if those tools and mindsets and skills are still serving you today, or if you're ready to switch them out for alternatives. So let's get started. As a child, I was constantly learning, growing, moving, laughing, having fun. I loved to pretend that I was a teacher, a rock star, president, and a mom. I practiced what I saw people in those roles do, and I practiced playing them. And even though I had adult role models who were fun and creative, I often saw adults mostly as serious, smart, and right. Like most children, I saw the adults as the total package. Grown-ups knew what was important, had all the answers, didn't need help, and were always right. So whatever role I was playing, I followed suit and was smart, had all the answers, didn't need anyone's help, and I was always right. As I became a teenager in school, we were encouraged to become more disciplined in our practice of being grown-ups, and told things like, it's time to be serious, which I heard is stop having fun, be quiet, and do the work. I heard be smart about it, which meant doing it like everyone else had done before. We were told, do it the right way, which I understood to mean that any other way would be the wrong way. Then I realized I was not playing anymore. I was approaching my final destination of being a grown-up. Ladies and gentlemen, as we start our descent into being a grown-up, please make sure your seat backs and tray tables are in their full upright position. Thank you. Then we finally land, and I hear, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to being a grown-up. Local time is 18 years old, and it's a balmy 72 degrees. We hope you enjoyed your childhood. Now it's time to be a grown-up. To me, being a grown-up makes it sound like once you reach it, you're there. You are done growing, moving, learning, exploring. You should know all the answers and be an expert in life. Well, many, me included, did not want to get off on this destination, as I did not feel like I knew all the answers or was an expert in life, so I quickly walked back to the ticket counter and asked to book another trip to college. Whew! And when that was done, I still didn't feel like I knew the answers or was an expert in life, so I booked another trip to grad school. Then finally, ready or not, I decided I should try to be a grown-up. I got out of the terminal and made my way to the luggage carousel, hearing, welcome to being a grown-up, welcome to being a grown-up. I'm antsy, my nerves are a little fried, and that lady is still repeating, welcome to being a grown-up. And that only added to my nervousness. I didn't know what to expect. The people all around me looked like they knew what they were doing, so I shrank. I made myself smaller to not bring any attention to the fact that I didn't have all the answers, I didn't know what was right, and that I would love help. Just like I did when I was small, I watched people I thought were good at being grown-ups and I mimicked what I thought was working. I wore professional attire, I had a briefcase and a serious job with a consulting firm where I could be around other professionals with briefcases. In my briefcase, I packed the tools that I thought all grown-ups were supposed to use, serious, smart, and right. I sat at my desk all day, did my work, and when I came home, I could finally stop practicing being an adult. But oftentimes, I was so tired from all of that hard practice of being a grown-up, I limited what I loved so I'd have the energy to do it again the next day. Soon, I was so practiced at being a grown-up, it was just who I was, serious, smart, and right, and I let the things that light me up fall to my wayside. Here's the thing, I had wonderful parents and mentors and role models who cared deeply about me as a daughter, student, and as a person. They wanted me to be successful and happy. They tried to help me. They knew the route to success and wanted to give me their GPS coordinates so I could get to their idea of success faster and easier than they did. And I was still lucky to have such a great support system. Fortunately, my support group did not pressure me into their own visions and their own GPS coordinates and encouraged me to find my own success coordinates. I just thought that success, I had to follow some unspoken code of being grown-up. I know others haven't been so lucky. As a parent, I completely understand why they did this. The desire to guide my kids in the direction that I think would be best for them, I get wanting to set them up so they have as many options and possibilities for their future. I get wanting to help them make their best way, but as soon as I look out in the world right now, I must consider that maybe their current way isn't best. Statistics show that we are currently more lonely, sedentary, have significant health issues, more socially and politically biased. Maybe there's a better way. We grow up hearing these things, be serious, be smart, be right. We start practicing these things, and practicing these things makes us confined, stagnant, still, small, and dormant in our mental, social, emotional, and even physical realms. Often practicing being a grown-up means being serious, smart, and right. We become lonely and often judgmental of people leading life with different levels of seriousness, smartness, or rightness. We may become judgmental because we're still unsure of how we want to show up, and maybe we don't have all the answers, we don't know what's right, and we would love help. Or perhaps we might be a little jealous of the people who have found a way to do it differently. Today I want to challenge what it means to be a grown-up, and change the concept that grown-up has as a limiting connotation, that once you've grown up, you're done learning, growing, and changing. I want to change the limiting implications of reaching the final destination at 18 and move away from always using the tools of being serious, smart, and right as our primary tools through this journey of life. I've decided to reload my briefcase with other mindsets that include curiosity, humor, action, and gratitude. I've seen that any of these four essentials can move me out of my rut, but when I use them consistently and all together, my journey includes a lot of learning, growing, moving, laughing, and having fun. I recognize there are times to be serious, smart, and right, but I'm pulling out those much more sparingly. So let me share why I'm choosing these four mindsets. Let's start with curiosity. My son once asked me, Mom, are you sure you know how to use this tiki device du jour? My response rattled, of course I know how to use this thing. He said, then okay, Mom, I have no doubt that you'll figure it out, but will it be today? Which then made me more frustrated. I was being serious, smart, and right mode. What happens if I would have become serious instead of trying to know the answer and being serious, smart, and right? What if I could have said to my son, do you know how much about this? Should we look it up and figure it out together? How else could we be doing this? Why do you ask? What if I got curious in that moment? What could I have learned? I may have learned that my son was an expert in this technology and he could help. Or maybe I would have learned that he was worried because he really needed to get online to get his class and didn't want to let anyone down. How much richer would my interaction have been had I gotten curious? So why didn't I get curious? Well, I might have been ashamed that I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't like thinking that I couldn't do it, or I couldn't do it fast enough, or maybe I wasn't smart enough with this technology. I wouldn't say I liked thinking that my son thought I was less than or being unable to do this quickly. My fears limited my curiosity. Walt Disney said, curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. Due to my lack of curiosity, I would never know what my son was thinking and I'll never get to explore those paths. Next, humor. Humor and laughter are essential. The Mayo Clinic relays that laughter can help lower the heart attack risk, reduce stress, improve your immune system, relieve pain, and improve your mood. We genuinely want to have a good laugh and be fast to humor, but when we're too busy being serious, smart, and right, we often let humor fall to the wayside, deeming it frivolous, juvenile. I wouldn't do it if we had more time. I suggest we take humor as essential in our journeys and find a way to laugh. I know this is going to sound crazy, but let's practice right now. Here's something I want to share real quick, that you just need a laugh. A good laugh can benefit you as well as a real laugh and will often turn into a real laugh. So let's take a couple seconds and just fake laugh until it becomes real. Ready, set, go. How do you feel? How are your cheeks feeling when you laugh? Are they stretching? Are you smiling? What does that do to your whole system? Stop and breathe. Doesn't it feel good to laugh? How can you incorporate more humor and laughing into your life? How can we make everyday tasks a little more fun? Number three, action. As I mentioned before, we are unsure of ourselves. We often become smaller, stiller, stagnant, and idle. We watch people not trying to bring attention to ourselves. And the best fix for this is action, movement, doing. When we are so busy being serious, smart, and right, we get stuck in our thoughts, our minds, our outward appearances towards others. We are inactive. And because we are afraid of what might happen, we stop. Winston Churchill said, I never worry about action, but only inaction. Dale Carnegie said, inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. So when we're afraid and do not take action that leads us, we do more of the same. And then the action gets us to a different place and allows us to move and grow. I remember being a little girl in my grandparents' catamaran in a small reservoir in Colorado. And I was out in the lake with my uncle, and in true Colorado fashion, a storm blew in really quickly. And it blew down our sail, and we were stuck in the middle of the lake. And all I wanted to do was move. But I was stuck on that boat, scared, helpless. Then my uncle and I started paddling with our cans, and as soon as we got closer, I jumped and swam to my grandma. Action, movement, and doing is what we needed when we are scared or unsure. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally stuck, taking action will help us move out of that situation. And finally, gratitude. Gratitude is critical. When we intentionally seek what is positive or what is going right, our brain will develop that habit. And gratitude makes what you have enough. Gratitude helps us let go of anger, frustration, and resentment by allowing ourselves to see what is good. Gratitude can shift the brain to look for lessons learned rather than to blame or anger. So many times when we're too busy being serious, smart, and right, we are in our own worlds and do not always realize how amazing the world is, as well as all of the people in it. Everyone is doing their job. And their jobs are probably helping you, whether it's the farmer, the road construction crew, the accountant, the electricians, engineers, the store clerks. When we choose a grateful heart and a get-to attitude, all of our lives starts to work better. We bring out the best in ourselves and the best in others. I remember getting frustrated with the have-tos of life. I remember getting so frustrated of having to make lunches for my kids. And I have to. And then when I switched to a get-to, I get to make lunches. I get to nourish my kids. I get to have food. I get to pay for food that I didn't have to grow. All of these things just show that when we change our mindset from a have-to to a get-to, how much richer and exciting what the tasks we have at hand can be. To summarize, I want to look at adulthood as the next chapters of life of growing up. We have not reached our final destination in life. We can still be expanding, contributing, and growing and changing. I want to have fun. I want to consistently use the four essential mindsets in my journey through life. I want to be passionately curious, use humor, take action, and be grateful. I want our communities full of adults who want to learn, explore, and play. Now I'll ask you, what do you want your life to look like? Will you reduce your desire to be serious, smart, and bright? And repack your briefcase with tools that might help you live the life you want? Thank you so much for sharing your time with me. If you think this episode was useful or helpful, please share it with a friend, family, or co-worker. Let's start this as a conversation starter about what mindsets and skills you packed in your briefcase to becoming a grown-up and which ones you want to use now that we know. Thanks. Have a great day.