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Embracing The Gift of Nothing and Why Modesty Hasn't Helped Your Career! · You're Not Too Much

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  Nobody tells you that being an adult is just figuring out what to
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  eat over and over until you die. I need you to stop
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  apologizing for being amazing at things. Cause that's
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  ridiculous. I would like you to show me
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  what modesty has gotten you in your career. All right, here we
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  go. I'm gonna pretend I'm pushing record. Cause that feels right. Okay, I'm pressing
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  record. Boop. Hi, everybody.
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  I'm Lauren Howard. Welcome to Different Not
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  Broken, which is our PODC on exactly that. That
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  there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling broken. And the
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  reality is you're just different. And that's fine. This holiday
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  season, you want to get something for the
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  overwhelmed person in your life. I'm going to
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  describe what I want. I think it's pretty
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  universal. I don't know that that's true. This could
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  just be me being wildly egotistical, which is a thing that happens,
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  and I will own that. But I'm going to describe what you could
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  get me and make me the happiest person in the world for, like, five minutes
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  before I found something new to complain about. So what I want,
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  and this isn't actually even for the holidays, this is just
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  a thing that I regular, fairly regularly want. If
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  you are trying to do something nice for me. And just know that my husband
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  does not listen to this, so it's not getting back to him. And I'm just
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  saying if somebody wants to let him know, that'd be great. I
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  want a nice hotel
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  room with a giant bed
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  with just shy of 10,000
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  pillows on it. I'll know if you're short, but I'm not gonna count.
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  I want to be able to fall on so many pillows
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  that I don't even know where the bed is. Feather pillows are
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  preferred, but I will not make that request for anybody else. Cause I know there's
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  allergy issues there. I have a kid that's allergic to feather pillows. I get it.
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  I want to fall on a feather pillow and have it catch me and then
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  have it slowly deflate. That's like supreme happiness to me is when it goes.
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  It just, like, slowly becomes flat.
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  Love it. That's like, my thing. Okay, So I want that room.
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  I just want the stark white bed stuff
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  that all looks hyper clean with a pile of pillows so
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  high that it dwarfs me, which is not that hard because
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  I'm not tall. And I want there to be
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  two rooms. Actually, this is. This part is negotiable. I don't actually care. Like a
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  suite with, like, A couch area and a bed area. But I don't. That's actually
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  totally negotiable. I want the TV remote to be
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  readily accessible. I want to push the button
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  when I'm ready. And the only voice I want to hear.
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  There's two options for voices. One, Keith Morrison.
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  Two, Benson and Stabler. Outside of those two, I don't
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  want to hear any voices. I should hear no noise except for
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  those people or the people who are addressing them now.
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  You might replace those people with your own. That's totally fine. That part is completely
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  negotiable. Whoever I want to go on vacation with only Keith
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  Morrison. And he does not have to be there. I'm just saying
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  I want silence. Other than
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  that, I want there to
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  be a steady stream of food that I like that I did not have to
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  pick. Okay, L2 is in her bed.
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  Ready? Start the conveyor belt of
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  snacks. I just
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  wanted to show up. I don't want to have to look at a
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  menu. I don't want to have to make a choice. I
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  don't have to think about anything. I want it to be a no decision
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  zone. I walk in the room, I shut the door.
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  There is going to be a steady stream of random bags of shit
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  that I like that's just going to show up at some point and I'm going
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  to open the door and I'll be like, woo, French fries. And I will make
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  the decision to get the door when I freaking feel like it. Just leave it.
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  You don't need to hand it to me if somebody steals it. That's the cost
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  of doing business. I don't want to get up until I'm damn ready to get
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  up. I want to be able to open the sliding door or the door, the
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  window, the balcony, whatever of the room that I'm in and hear water. But I
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  don't want to go to the water. I just want to be able to hear
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  it, maybe smell it. But I don't want to go to
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  the water. There's no. I have no tolerance for sand. We're not doing that.
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  But I want it to be nearby and I want to know it's there.
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  I maybe want to be able to like sit on a porch that is
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  also very quiet or like a balcony where I can hear the
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  water but not actually go to the water.
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  I want nobody, including housekeeping, to
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  darken the doorway of my room. I
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  want to talk to no one. I want my phone
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  to only be accessible for
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  dog videos. Maybe to talk to my kids,
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  probably to talk to My kids, I would miss them pretty quickly. Maybe to
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  text with my husband, but I don't want anything else.
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  And I want maybe like
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  72 hours of mostly
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  silence. Again, with the exception of Keith Morrison, who is
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  allowed to talk whenever he wants.
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  No decisions. I don't have to make any decisions, including food.
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  The only decision I want to make is if I feel
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  like getting up right now, if I'd rather just roll over,
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  and if I need to go to the bathroom. Other than that,
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  I want to turn off. I want to make absolutely zero
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  decisions. If you give me an option, I'm going to stare at
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  you blankly. I don't want to know that other people exist for three days, except
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  for my kids, because I like them, but everybody else. I'll get back
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  to you in three days. That's what I want. And to be
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  very clear, this has almost nothing to do with the setting, though the setting makes
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  it very nice. And I will be very happy with that setting. It has everything
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  to do with not having to make a single goddamn decision,
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  including food. Because nobody tells you this
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  when you're young and all you can think about is how cool it's going to
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  be to be an adult. Nobody tells you that being an adult
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  is just figuring out what to eat over and over until you die.
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  And then they give you kids, and they're like, by the way,
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  figure it out for these ones, too. And
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  also, they're not going to like a bunch of the stuff that you put in
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  front of them. And also, if you give them things out of the bag, the
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  rest of the world will make you feel bad for it. I am
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  so tired of thinking about what to feed people. My husband
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  will come into the office and be like, hey, what do you want for dinner?
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  And I'll be like, I don't care. And he's gonna be like, but I need
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  your help. And I'm like, if I have to choose, I don't want to eat.
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  Cause that's how tired I am, making decisions. Not that I
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  don't want to participate in our family, because I do. But I cannot
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  make any more decisions. I've done all of it. There are no more decisions
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  to be made until five minutes from now when a new decision pops up and
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  I have to make that one. And I'll be very, very spicy about it. If
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  you are unsure what to get someone
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  who does all the things for all the people and works
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  really, really hard, is probably overwhelmed, but is probably not
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  telling you that, go for the gift of nothing.
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  And that doesn't mean you get them nothing. It means you give them the
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  chance to do nothing outside of exactly what they want to
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  do. And if they're a person who picking fancy meals is,
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  like, something they enjoy, then they probably don't need
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  the just food showing up at the door thing. But I almost
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  guarantee you, especially women, especially
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  women who are expected to be the
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  primary logistics officers for their families,
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  which does not necessarily mean children, by the way. I was the
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  primary logistics officer for my family long before I had children, and
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  that does not necessarily apply to the person I married. I
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  have three brothers. They're functionally useless, and I say that to their
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  faces all the time. Give them the gift of nothing. I promise they will
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  appreciate it. You might have to do a little bit of homework to figure out
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  what their actual nothing is. This is my version of nothing. My
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  version of nothing absolutely includes not talking to people, but most of
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  my versions of everything include not talking to people. So that might be
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  negotiable, but I bet it's less negotiable than you think it is.
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  So I was talking to one of my team members today. She's relatively new to
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  the team. I was talking about something that was unrelated to her job. It was
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  just something that we were kind of shooting the breeze about. And
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  I sent it to her, and she came up with this amazing
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  solution for it. It wasn't even really a problem that needed to be solved. It
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  was just something that I was talking about. And she was like, oh, well, the
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  way that you fix that is. And I was, like,
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  completely blown away by it. I was like, okay, I didn't even know that this
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  was in your skill set. Amazing. It was an incredible
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  answer. And then as soon as it came out of her mouth, she
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  immediately apologized for overstepping, which, like,
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  what? So I said, I need you to stop
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  apologizing for being amazing at things, because that's
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  ridiculous. But she was like, oh, I was just really worried that I. I
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  was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We don't do
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  that. No. You are not only encouraged to be good at things, you are
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  allowed to be good at things. And I need you to be good at things.
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  I pay you for things to be good at things, and that does not mean
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  that you should only be good at the thing I specifically pay you for. Maybe
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  I need to be paying you for more things. Maybe that's the problem. Maybe I'm
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  not paying you for enough things. It got my brain working. I
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  want to start encouraging Dear
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  Listener to be more Willing to brag about yourself
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  because you do good things every day and you have been conditioned to believe that
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  you should keep them quiet for seeming like you're impressed with
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  yourself. Be impressed with yourself. You are
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  impressive. We need to know about the amazing, kick
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  ass things that you are doing and I want to know about them all the
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  time. And it can be little stuff, it can be tiny stuff. I remember to
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  take out the garbage because I'll be honest, in the amount of years
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  I've been married, which is a lot of times, there are a handful of times
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  that I have been responsible for the garbage and not fully outsourced that to my
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  husband, who is very reliable when it comes to the garbage. In the times that
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  I have been responsible for the garbage, I've maybe gotten it done twice
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  and it might be more than twice, but I'm including getting it
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  done, like remembering to do it and getting it in the can the
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  night before like grownups are supposed to do. As opposed to what I
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  do, which is hear the truck going down the street and go,
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  oh shit and run outside with
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  bags full of trash trying to get there before the.
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  No. My husband, who is very good at this type
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  of stuff, remembers to like sweep the whole house for garbage on a
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  Wednesday night because our trash truck comes on Thursday morning. I can probably count
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  on one hand the number of times he's completely forgotten to put the trash out,
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  which is not catastrophic, but because the trash truck just comes the
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  next time. But when you're me and you forget like four or five weeks
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  in a row, that's kind of gross. That gets weird. That's why we have a
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  husband who does these things and remembers these things. So it could be that or
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  it could be I got a new job, or it could be I told my
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  toxic boss to shove it up his ass. There
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  are so many things it could be. But I want you to brag on yourself
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  and I want you to do it for all of us to hear. So we
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  are setting up a line that you can call into. You can find it
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  at different not broken podcast.com brag.
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  You can leave a message there that we might play on air to say what
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  cool things you've been up to, what things you're proud of yourself. Leave your first
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  name, your last initial, please don't leave any information
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  that will get you in trouble or fired, which, let's put it this
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  way, if I'm concerned about that, I'm going to redact it anyway, so you're probably
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  safe. But do yourself a favor and don't send it if you can avoid it
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  because we should be bragging on ourselves more and
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  women and femmes will do really, really amazing stuff and then sweep it under a
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  rug because we have this idea that nobody's going to like us if we're not
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  modest. I would like you to show me what modesty has gotten you in your
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  career. And I'm not saying to be a self impressed, braggadocious
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  douchebag. I'm saying you are allowed to be completely proud of yourself for the
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  things that you've done and we want to celebrate it. So the end of every
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  episode we will remind you that you can send over your brags
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  and we might play them on an episode, we might read them on an episode,
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  and we might share them on an episode.
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  And now we'll go to Alison, who has this week's
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  small talk. All right, so this question is about family and
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  holidays. What to do? I have several dogs
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  and cats and every year I hear how having X number of
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  pets is illegal in a lot of places and even though it's
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  legal here and they are taken care of, you don't even have
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  kids. Why choose pets over children? How do
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  I answer that? Especially because it gets asked every year at least
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  once or twice. I have many, many responses for
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  this. The first one is
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  fuck those.
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  The second one is it's none of their goddamn business.
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  The third one is you could just stare blankly
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  when they ask that. Don't justify it with a
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  response. Stare blankly and blink hard. I promise they will never
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  ask it again. The subtext of that. Actually no, I don't
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  even think that's subtext. I think it's just text. Is that
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  somehow having pets or having animals
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  is a less valid decision than having a family.
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  Which is not flippin true. I have two children
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  who I love more than anything and given my druthers I would have 10 more
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  because I love having kids that much. And I say that as somebody who
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  has a busted ass uterus that doesn't work correctly. So I can't
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  have this 7,000 kids that I want. Even though I'll be honest, I'm not sure
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  I would ever be pregnant again because being pregnant is the worst thing in the
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  whole entire world. Even though you get a really cute kid out of it. Anyway,
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  I say this with all of that
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  very widely documented I have kids. I love them. I would never trade them for
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  anything. They're the most important people in the world to me. I love every minute
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  that I have with them, even the minutes That I don't. And also, you can
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  love sleep and money as much as you can any smell human
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  there is. It is a completely valid decision to decide that you don't
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  want children. And that is not worth judgment
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  or derision or to be treated as if you
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  are making some decision that they have any business
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  passing judgment on. It's not their goddamn business. We
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  had trouble having kids. We struggled for four years before we got pregnant
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  with our first. We were married for six years before we had our first kid.
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  And it was devastating
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  and awful. And people would ask us all the time
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  when we were gonna have kids. And I started looking them square in the face
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  and saying that we have dogs instead of kids. Because you can put dogs in
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  boxes and leave the house. And people get really mad when you do that with
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  kids. They would stop asking after that.
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  Now that wasn't true. The reality was every
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  time somebody asked me that question, it was like a knife to the friggin heart.
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  Because we went through this horrible process of years and years of
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  fertility treatments that took every ounce of my
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  soul, crushed it up and spit it out. But you don't have to be
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  going through something hard for it to be a question that people
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  shouldn't freaking ask you. It's not their goddamn business.
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  So we actually did an entire episode on not asking people
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  why they don't have children. It was episode number 21. You can find it at
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  differentnotbrokenpodcast.com 21 if you want to
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  go back and listen to it. But we did a whole episode on
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  leaving people in their fertility choices and not choices
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  out of friendly conversation and how it should not be part of it. So
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  go back and listen to that for more on this. If your pets are well
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  taken care of, if they are, how you choose to spend your time
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  and money. And again, I say this as a person with children, but also
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  a person with lots and lots of pets. Technically we only have two, but
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  they're very large. My pets are as well taken care of as my
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  children are. They are as integrated into the family as my children
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  are. Some would argue that Bruno's attempts to
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  be inside my skin all the time means he gets more
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  attention than my children do. And
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  there's nothing wrong with not even. You're not
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  even choosing pets over children. It sounds like you just have pets. That's
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  not a mutually exclusive existence. So the
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  reality is, whoever those people are,
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  please tell them I told them to bite me. I wouldn't even
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  answer the question or I would come up with some way to make them
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  deeply uncomfortable for asking it. That's the way that I deal with conflict. That's
• 17:17
  actually not true. I deal with conflict very directly. But I would
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  absolutely. I mean, I really like the blink hard option, but you aren't
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  responsible for asking that question. And maybe it's time to find somebody else to hang
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  out with if that's the question that you get asked every year. As if your
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  personal choices have to change year over year for you to be a valid member
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  of their family or their circle. Get bent. You're allowed
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  to not have kids. You're encouraged to not have kids. The world outside is a
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  toxic hellscape. You don't need to bring kids into this nonsense. Thanks for being
• 17:45
  here guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean it.
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  I love saying the word, but I think I like saying get bent more.
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  It's really satisfying. It's really deeply
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  satisfying.