Let's re-experience our youth.
Let's go back in time.
And I would even write, this is the last day I'm writing about boy.
And you flip the next page.
It's like, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy.
If that is what's promised on the other side, I don't want that.
If I could go back and tell myself something, it would be It's not until 10 years pass.
You're middle-aged and you're like whoa.
Things feel so different.
And I'm so glad that I invested the time.
I'm so glad that I went through the uncertainty because I'm better for it today.
And just imagine what 10 more years from now is going to be like.
Welcome back to Voice Hugs, a podcast on becoming your best self and embracing all seasons of life with open arms.
This is your host, Viv and Ro.
Hi, everyone.
Hello, hello.
Let's just take a trip down memory lane.
Oh, okay.
Right?
Yes.
Okay, so the year is 2014 or before.
Just college days.
Top college days.
College days, 2014, okay?
More than 10 years ago.
Let's just set the mood.
2014.
Going back in time.
Going back in time.
Why?
Because this is the episode we're going to be talking about today.
We want to answer one of our editor's questions on just where we were 10 years ago.
She was like, 10 year question mark?
We're like, girl, it's more than 10 years.
It's been more than 10 years.
It's been more than 10 years.
Who we were in college, how much things have changed, and how...
Like the uncertainty that we had felt at the time and how that has changed over the years.
And how we thought, like, are we where we thought we would be?
The expectations.
Yes.
We're going to answer all of that in this episode.
I just yeah, I think the past few episodes have been fun, about friendships, about catching up up, about motherhood, about marriage, which is all great.
But we're like let's, let's re-experience our youth, let's go back in time yes, yeah.
So let's just.
Let's just jump straight into it.
If you want to do the honors of the feelings jar, we're picking out a piece of paper from our white jar that says feelings on it.
All right, we got a refill yesterday.
So Describe your college days with a chick flick.
And this was from our listener KCJX.
Underscore M Oh, my chick flick.
Um, i never watched this movie, uh-huh.
But you know the spring break movie with like, selena gomez, vanessa hudgens yeah yeah, is this selena?
It is okay, yeah.
And ashley benson, yeah.
And then one other person and james is it james franco, or his younger brother, day franco?
I'm not sure, i don't know.
Yeah yeah, that's the younger, there's a younger brother?
Yeah, i think.
Yeah um yeah, that was okay, i see it.
Have you?
Have you watched the movie?
I think i did, but i don't really remember it.
Like, does it get dark?
I don't remember.
Or maybe I'm confusing it with K-dramas.
They all start like very fluffy and beautiful and girls are going on vacation and it gets really dark.
I've never watched the movie, but just the premise of it.
The vibes of spring break.
The vibes of spring break with a bunch of girly pops with your besties.
Yeah, that.
Okay.
I can see that.
I can see that.
I would not describe my college that way.
I don't think I went on any crazy spring break trips.
And let's also just say spring break was like year-round.
Her spring break was from August to May.
That was the school year, right?
August to May.
That was her spring break.
That's funny.
I don't know.
I'm trying to think of a chick flick.
The notebook.
No, I'm just kidding.
No, I was actually not in a relationship until the very end of college.
There's like How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days Sleepless in Seattle When Harry Met Sally Love Actually, you know the holiday where they switch location.
Oh, no.
No.
I'm like, no.
Chick Flick.
Wait, i think i need to.
Let me help you, i'm going to.
Yes, i actually love, i love watching chick flicks.
They don't really make them like that anymore, they don't.
And it's so funny because you watch it now as an adult and you're like that was terrible but so good, and you go on rotten tomato and it's like 22, but you're like i love it, i'm here for it.
Okay, i got one.
Okay okay, 13.
Going on 30.
I feel like that was kind of me.
Like I wanted to grow up.
I wanted to start working.
I wanted to be in like a next chapter in my life.
But I was still so young, like 13 years old.
Like in the movie, she's so youthful and she doesn't really know what's going on.
But yeah, I would say that's my chick flick.
It was no love chick flick at all.
There was no relationship in college for me until the very end.
Yeah.
13, 30 and fliving.
30, flirty and thriving.
In college.
That's what you wanted to be.
Yeah, i just wanted to.
I think i just wanted to make money, like i wanted to get out of college so i can start making money, and then i feel like that's when life happens begins.
Yeah interesting, that was me in high school.
I was like i just want to graduate.
I just want to graduate, went to college.
I was like i made it spring break, baby.
Okay, shall we read the question?
Yeah, I will read the question this time.
So the question is 10 question mark years after college.
Now the next chapter of your lives.
How does it feel looking back at all the uncertainty that young row slash Viv had?
Was this the life that you expected?
What would you tell yourself?
How did your values now change from the college?
You okay rewind, rewind.
A little bit more than 10 years ago from today, the uncertainty was real.
Yes.
Tell us about your 13 going on 30 uncertainty.
Like this is like pre quarter life crisis.
Yeah.
We're like 21, 22 years old.
Yeah.
Okay.
So I'm imagining myself right now back when we graduated, which was 2014.
I just remember everything felt uncertain.
Like everything.
When you are about to not even before, right before you graduate, you're trying to find a job right.
You have student debt.
You need to find a job because that's why you went to college.
I think you also wonder like am I going to be friends with these people that you see on the day to day?
People move out of the country, out of the state, and so you also wonder, not just career-wise, but am I going to be friends with these people?
How am I going to keep in touch with them?
If you're in a relationship right like, is it gonna work out?
Oh my gosh, i just remember when you're that young and you're like in, you're going out to do your jobs for the first time right, there is a lot of oh.
If he moves to new york and i stay in la, are we going to do long distance for a year or are we going to do long distance for two years?
And then what does that mean after you've been together for two years?
Because usually after two years you get engaged right, oh my gosh, am i ready to get engaged at 24?
Like, it's like questions like that.
And then then you wonder like oh, if he moves somewhere else, like you know, is it?
There's like all these, i don't know, i i feel like you probably would have felt this way too, but there's this sense of like oh, what if they meet someone else?
Right, like what if they meet someone at work, or better?
But I still think these questions because I'm a girl.
Yeah, like so much uncertainty, pretty much.
There was one more thing I felt uncertain about.
I think like the question of success, too.
Like, am I going to be successful?
Yeah.
Am I going to make it?
Am I going to, Because it's your first time going out there.
After How many years of school is that?
12 plus 4, right?
16.
16 years of school.
Yeah.
And now you don't have that environment anymore where, oh, you're just a student.
You can make mistakes.
You can learn.
And there's so much space for you to explore, I guess, at that age.
But then now it's like, oh, if I choose this career, it's going to dictate the rest of my life.
And Yeah.
A lot of uncertainty and pressure and pressure.
Yeah.
And I think more pressure than uncertainty.
So there's career, there's friendship, there's love, there's your definition of success.
And I think under all of that is just you as a person too. oh yeah i didn't even think about it i wasn't even like who am i there was no space for who am i there was i need all i need to make sure all of these things i need job security yeah like there is no what am i feeling like what are feelings there's none of that at the time for me at least yeah 2014 for me I think similarly there was oh the perfect word is angst there's so much angst yeah of we are here but we want to be there or somewhere else or somewhere else or you see other people and you think they're so much further along in their career because they had quote-unquote better internships or like they spent their summers differently or they're actually quote unquote productive during their summers.
So there's just so much angst.
There's so much comparison.
There's so much jealousy, envy, uncertainty, um, because of all the things we mentioned.
And I think specifically for me, I graduated from high school and I went to like a I don't want to.
I'm just going to say I came from a very competitive, predominantly Asian high school.
So I went to a very low tier UC.
For your environment, for my environment, for like amongst your peers at high school yeah, yeah.
So i went to a, a quote-unquote low tier like this was i look, i looked at that and i was like that's the best you could do, girl.
But, to be fair, in high school i didn't really try, right.
And then maybe, like you can share a little bit more context of like your high school experience too, because she was everything and she did a lot.
Okay, class president um, were you?
I was, but i'm not like i was asb president no, but like you were.
It's not a big deal though in retrospect, but at that time, at the time, i guess give yourself some credit, girl.
It's very like.
It's not a big deal, you guys, it's really not.
So i didn't, i didn't care about school.
In high school i didn't study too hard, i didn't try.
I mean i took the aps, i did the classic things, but so i just got into a lower tier uc.
I would say it's one of like at the bottom.
I mean, if you just look at the rankings objectively right, like it's closer to the bottom bottom, um.
But i knew going in that i was going to transfer.
So then i really buckled down.
My first year of college got like a 40, transferred to the college we both went to.
I don't know why we're like kind of dodging it.
USC.
We just both went to USC.
So we met at USC, but I came in as a sophomore and Viv was already there.
So I think because of this journey that I already embarked on, right?
Like USC was the destination.
So I was like, let's go.
And then we both joined a business fraternity.
And the great thing about a business fraternity but also could be not so great is that I feel like everyone was as keen to party as they were keen to figure out what they want to do with their life, which happened to be more of like the traditional tract.
If you're studying business it's just finance accounting consulting like iBanking management consultant, that kind of stuff.
So I think that was kind of like the angst where, like everyone's doing this, like should I be doing this too?
It's what I was like, the, the quote unquote, better internships, right?
We're like in this path.
But I think because I've always in my heart, I was always like, I want to help people.
I want to do something meaningful.
I want to do something different.
Um, that made me even more angsty, because the internships i took were different.
I was doing like digital marketing and then, oh my god, love relationships.
Losing yourself in love is uh, something i'm very good at, Which is why, for the majority of my online life, you guys knew me as like a single Pringle gal, because I just I lose myself in things.
And I knew that about myself.
And Viv is just smiling and nodding because she went through it with me.
Yes.
Yes.
She was in love.
So that was a journey.
And I think because you're so... you were so young and you didn't know how to communicate.
You tried not to play games, but you ended up playing so much games and you withhold information from each other because you didn't want to seem like the one who cared more.
It's like a whole mind game that, and the thing is it takes up so much of your mind space, like so much of your mind space.
Right, like i don't know about you, but when i was in a relationship, it's like literally all i could think about.
And so yeah, in your college diaries or your younger, younger diaries, how much of it was was boys.
So okay I I, just I, I opened a few of my journals last night in preparation for this episode.
I was like, let's get into the headspace.
Viv, like ASB president uh, this is what an ASB president would do.
This is what I would do.
Um yeah, like every single page was about boy, was about like literally, it was just about the boy.
Whatever boy was was the boy at that time.
And i would even write this is the last day i'm writing about boy, like i'm not writing about it.
And you flip the next page, it's like boy boy boy boy, boy.
And then, like i flipped a few more pages, it's like a few months later i'm still talking about boy like oh, my god, what's wrong with me?
But yeah, we just take up so much space in my mind.
Yeah yeah same yeah, i'd say like majority 95 90 no, i think like 70 percent.
But it was because I was consciously being like, if someone were to read my diary, I don't want them to know who I'm talking about or that I'm just so crazy in love.
So many times in my journal, I'm like, you are crazy.
What is wrong with you?
You're crazy Vivian, i would say my journals from like, middle school, high school, just all boys like.
I shared a journal with one of like with a few of my best girlfriends.
We just like pass a journal back and forth and we like design, it's very cute, and we and it's all about boys.
It's literally just all about boys yeah, yeah.
So that took up a lot of mental space, which is why two, three episodes ago, I think, both of us kind of talked about
Yeah, for the love, marriage, and all of that 20 versus 30s.
Do not centralize men in your lives.
Yeah.
And the cool thing is that you can see that now in our lives.
Like our partners are not, we're not obsessed.
We love them very much.
They're very, very important to us.
But like our world doesn't revolve around the singular person anymore.
Like whether they text us back or not, whether they're calling us back, whether they're thinking of us, he doesn't love me.
Yeah, I think.
Yeah, it's just you can't, we can't talk about college without talking about love, which took up such a huge part of Who we were at the time right,
Yeah.
And I think like beyond just the relationship part, I think because both of us wanted marriage right.
It's also, you're just always wondering, is this the person I'm going to marry?
Yeah.
Did you think about that in college?
Yeah.
Like literally every relationship I walked into, I was like, I'm going to marry this person.
Oh my God.
Yeah.
Really?
Yeah.
One of my exes was like if we're 10 years older, i'd marry you.
I'd be like okay, you're like haha okay no, yeah.
Like every relationship i walked into, i was like I'm in this for marriage.
And I think, looking back now, like if I have kids, I would say don't go into a relationship thinking that this is going to be your husband.
Oh, absolutely not.
Especially when we're that young.
That young, exactly.
And I think that's why it was also tough for me, because in relationships I was like well, what would I do if this was someone that I'm committed to?
That committed to.
And then if you don't know how to love yourself first...
It's so easy to pour yourself into someone else and love them in that way, when in reality, you need to do that for yourself first, and then you receive love differently and you give love differently, in a much healthier way, which is why these relationships are important for you to go through in your earlier years.
I just clapped Miffy's ears.
Wow.
It's very, I was like, you're going to be my husband.
What do you think led to you thinking that way?
Do you think like, was there something or was it just kind of how you thought since you're young?
I think that's just how I thought since I was young.
Maybe the idea of certainty, right?
Oh, this person, if I commit to this person and there's this sense of certainty, it would.
It guides the relationship a little bit more.
But I think the reality is and especially looking back, you're dating another person who is 21 22, who's absolutely not thinking about it.
Guys mature a lot slower than women, especially when we're in our early 20s.
So there's also that.
Yeah.
So, yeah, I think obviously it didn't work out in those earlier relationships.
So neither of us are with people in college.
And...
I think it was supposed to be that way.
But we have friends who have made it through long distance, going to completely different colleges for four years and then even residency for being doctors.
We have friends who...
It didn't work out.
I think it's just across the spectrum.
It's like I don't think there's any defining factor, any way to predict how certain or not, or whether you will be together or not.
I think it's just a you.
It's just like between the two people.
Yeah, after um, you shared that, i think there was also for me this longing for, like that high school sweetheart kind of love, like we made it through 10 years together and we're still together, like we experienced our youth together.
And so there's one of your cousins yeah, did that?
Yeah yeah she yeah, she my one of my older cousins.
She married her high school sweetheart.
But it's so rare for that to happen and i think that was maybe a like hopeless romantic side of me, where you know i wanted to be you yeah, like just um, one and only, and then that's it.
Yeah, kind of cringe a little yeah yeah, but i i think a lot of the interesting thing i hope that you guys are catching up on is that now we look back and reflect on these things and we're like, in the moment it was not yeah, like in the moment it felt like do or die, like it was the most important thing in the world, like it was the loudest thing in the room, but now it's just like oh, Yeah.
Even like career wise.
Okay.
So let's rewind back.
Everything is uncertain for you.
Yes.
Right.
Like you are in a place where you see your peers taking a certain path.
You already know there's a disconnect there.
Yeah, but then you don't know which direction to necessarily take.
What advice would you give to your younger self or someone else who may be in that place right now of i feel so uncertain and i don't know what to do?
Like what do i even?
How do i make the right decision?
That's a loaded question.
The right decision will depend on you and what is right for you.
I think at that time, I can just share a little bit about my thinking process.
At that time because loss was still very fresh in my mind and I was trying to figure out who am i as a person and why we exist and what is my mission here on earth, because i don't know.
I just i think that's kind of what loss does to you, or it could make you think this way, and so i think that's one of the primary reasons why i was thinking differently from my peers and i would see my friends who are working these amazing glorious, super beautiful, Glamorous.
How many more adjectives can I say?
These careers in, like iBanking.
They're making so much money.
They're management consulting.
They get to travel every week.
All of them were miserable.
And then they just had more money to spend on things that we used to spend on in college anyway.
Instead of going clubbing and going through general admissions, we can go clubbing through the VIP and get a table.
But I was like, I've already kind of been doing this.
I did this for the majority of my late teens and early 20s.
I don't think i want to do this like i, if that's, if that is what's promised on the other side.
I don't want that, and i think i was also very clear on the fact that i don't want a nine to five that i wake up hating i don't know what it is, but i was like i already feel this way about school, Like I don't want to live another four years or the rest of my life being like, oh my God, I have to wake up and I have to study and I have to go to classes.
To be fair though, I started enjoying school like towards the end, because I think that's when I finally understood how to learn.
Interestingly, I actually think I learned how to learn when I was studying abroad in Hong Kong.
Because I went to this, like the University of Science and Technology in Hong Kong, is one of, like the top business schools, I think, international business schools.
And our professors, the attendance was mandatory.
So I went to every class. but because the teachers were so great um and this is during the time of like rate my professors you can like see which professors are good um because they're so good i think they like brought something out of me where i used to be the student who would just sit in the back of the room and like i'd never say anything whether that's me yeah i think like why didn't like why didn't you speak up or like participate I was really bad at school like I it was really hard for me to pay attention and so even now in meetings like at work I'm like I can't focus it's like really hard for me to focus if I'm not interested and I think a lot of the things that we learn in college are like mandatory things so I'm like uninterested in it and I'm just there to get a good grade but what you're good at no no yeah i like almost failed all my main classes at usc good enough to get into usc yes because of extra career getting into college is different than having a high gpa okay yeah that's fair i think a huge thing for me was i was afraid of sounding stupid oh yeah yeah so i just i'm already clueless in class I'll just be at the back or it's like I never cared enough as you said about the whatever we're teaching Miffy just going around the world today that I never paid enough attention to have questions to ask.
So anyway, I think that's a whole other tangent of learning.
But I think upon graduation, because I already knew these were the things I didn't want to do.
I was like, let me take some time to figure out what I do want to do.
And I think that was a bet on myself to be like, if I take some time off, if I don't have an internship or a full-time job lined up, that's okay, let me see what i can do, or let me figure out what i want to do, while being okay with the fact that my peers are just bulldozing ahead in their careers.
And that was that season.
Um, just the six months after graduating was filled with a lot of doubt, a lot of comparison, a lot of jealousy, a lot of me, as we said in the beginning.
But So I think if I could go back and tell myself something, it would be to trust yourself, to listen to yourself and to double down on what you believe is right for you.
And I think what is right for all of us is very different, right?
I'm not gonna sit here and be like take six months off and try to figure out what you want to do, because all of our circumstances are different and maybe you'll be miserable if you did that.
Maybe you would actually thrive if you went to an internship or if you tried out different internships.
So i think it just really depends on who you are, what you truly want and, And I think the best thing we can do for ourselves is to get to the root of like what it is that we truly want.
Even if it's a list of.
I definitely don't want this this this, this this.
Let that be your starting point and have the courage to just believe in yourself.
I remember when you decided that at the time and me thinking like, I could never like that.
That's like so admirable, but also so crazy in my head.
Like I was like, yeah.
And I think that just goes like, it's exactly as you shared.
It's so easy to compare and see, you know, like, oh, that's what Rose doing.
Or like, that's what this person's doing with like their career and stuff.
And then trying to figure out what's true to you.
Back to what you're saying about.
Like, at the root of it, it's figuring out what is true to you.
I think at that time, it's really hard to even understand what is true to you.
And so like the process of elimination of, well, I don't like that.
I don't like that.
That helps.
And then I think another thing that can be helpful is that, like When you're in your early 20s, you really don't have that much data points.
So any decision you make, it doesn't always have to feel like the right decision or that it's completely true to you.
But if you make a decision or if you take action, even if you take the internship that you're like, this doesn't feel right.
That's going to give you some information for yourself of like okay well, there were parts of this that felt good, right.
Or like there are parts that I really didn't like about this.
So then you can then readjust.
And then what is true to you will change every year, every month, every season.
And I think that's part of your entire 20s, if not your entire life, of you collect these data points.
Over time, you start understanding what feels better, what makes you happy, what your needs are in the moment right.
I think sometimes...
When I look back in my 20s, there were parts of it where decisions were made for me that were completely out of your control.
When you experience things like loss that completely shapes your world in a way that you couldn't have planned for it.
And that changes what your needs are in the moment.
Sometimes things happen where you have to move home or you get fired from a job or you lose.
You know like you go through a breakup.
And these are the things that also add to your experience but help you become more certain as more time passes of like what feels good to you, what feels true to you and the direction that you wanna go down.
Yeah, I think the thing I want to double click on that you said was it's good to think and dream and plan and live in your head.
Oh my god, there's just so much to life.
The most important thing you can do for yourself is to do something like to actually move forward with either betting on yourself or with doing that internship that you like you're not really sure about, but you want to give yourself a shot, or just doing something rather than.
I think it's like in our especially in our late teens, early 20s it's so easy to live in our heads and to just mole and wallow and just be so caught up in everything in our minds.
But to be able to step out of that or to try to, And to just take one step forward here, one step forward there towards yourself,
I think that is the most important thing.
Yeah.
And sometimes it's not even a step forward.
It's like a step left or step right or step backwards, right?
Or up or down.
Just anything. step yeah because if you stay still you're you're just stuck there yeah so any step in any direction i think is better than not and then if you're unable to take a step that's something to look into right like why is it hard for you to move why is like this inaction a thing in your life why do you feel paralyzed why do you feel stuck yeah what were some things that helped with your uncertainty It's interesting when I think of uncertainty because there were always things that I was very certain about.
I knew that I needed to be in a position where I was self-sufficient.
Is that the right word?
Where you can provide for yourself.
I knew that was probably my most immediate goal coming out of college.
I knew I wanted to get married, but then there's uncertainty of who or how, or are you going to be happy in marriage, right?
So there were always these end goals and this vision of a life that I wanted, but I just didn't know if I would get it or what it would actually look like.
What helped me feel less uncertain?
I think it's kind of, as you said, like it's the living in your head, right?
Because ultimately, if you have these goals or like, if you have this vision or if you have some sort of sense of direction, you're going to take a step in that direction.
But the process of getting there, I think, was probably the hardest part for me.
I didn't believe in myself.
I wouldn't have taken a bet on myself at that age.
And so I think something that really helped me become more confident, at least, and certain in my life decisions, was exploring the inner world, understanding like why don't I have confidence in myself, why do I feel like I have low self-esteem?
Or like why do I doubt myself so often?
And so a lot of my twenties was actually exploring the mindsets inside and trying to figure out well, your external world is always going to be there, but how you see your external world, how you process it and how you go about it is a completely different experience, based on your internal world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So would you say like books, therapy?
Lots and lots and lots of therapy.
I was thinking about this.
Like for anyone who has never done therapy, this is like the worst answer.
It's like, oh yeah, therapy helps me.
And you don't really know what it feels like if you've never gone to therapy.
I'll speak just from my experience.
My experience.
Most of my friends who have done therapy, I think they do cognitive behavioral therapy.
Their therapist will like give them homework or like something to think about.
I think some of that is a little bit more aligned with what I see in like self-help books, compartmentalizing a bit.
Mm-hmm.
The type of therapy I did and fell into, like I wasn't looking for it.
I think it's called psychodynamic therapy and it was extremely intensive.
Like I was going to therapy three times a week.
And the idea was that, as humans, like we, have these subconscious thoughts and behaviors and you want to bring it to the light, like shine light on it and make it conscious so that you understand where the root of things come from, and that way, when this situation happens again, you almost have this opportunity to like change it or approach it differently.
And so it was a lot of like unraveling things from like deep, deep within and then transforming it.
And I share that because when I look back at my twenties, that's what it was.
It was nothing external.
It wasn't the relationships or, like the career choices, or it was everything that had to do with my internal world that shaped how I view my external world.
And then the more that I knew about myself and it goes back to like the more you know about yourself, the more you accept and understand yourself.
Then you have the confidence to like, even embrace uncertainty and Right.
Like before it was like, oh, if I'm uncertain, I'm a failure, which is not true.
But now it's like, oh, I'm uncertain, but I can handle it.
I know that uncertainty comes with life and you approach life differently.
And I think that helps me feel better, feel like life is more fun than I used to think it was.
Yeah.
And I think uncertainty now in our 30s may be like a little bit more exciting.
Because when things are uncertain, you're like, ooh, something's happening.
Like, what is happening?
Like, I want to know.
Like, I want to get curious about it rather than before it was just like, ah, shun.
Yeah, like everything was like, ugh.
Yeah.
But I think, as we've been saying too, when you feel uncertain and you're already on unstable grounds which you are in your early 20s it can feel like your world is crumbling right.
But I think now in our 30s, having done more work through the just across the board, I think it's.
Yeah, it's just you feel uncertain, but at least your foundation is a bit more stable.
Yeah.
So I think, like when I was feeling the most uncertain I you know how everyone processes things differently, right?
I find now that I love leaning on books of, whether it is from founders at the time, like back, like 20 years ago, was like business books or self-help books.
Now in motherhood, it's like obviously motherhood books.
But I remember being very inspired and also put at ease because I would read these stories about billionaires and these tech founders and these huge company runners founders of huge companies.
Um, and they would all either in their book or in, this was like the height of articles.
I think like, if you remember in, like when we're in college, I just feel like there was a rise in articles and then just kind of died.
And now it's kind of coming back maybe through Substack like 10 years later.
But anyway, I read a lot of articles about interviews and founders and their lives.
And they're all in some way or another just being like...
I don't know what I'm doing.
I got very lucky.
I was at the right place at the right time.
I had a great team.
I had a good enough idea and things happened.
And I still don't really know what's happening, but I'm just going along for the ride.
And I'm so grateful.
And I'm just grateful to be alive.
A lot of them would just say that.
And I think reading that as a recent graduate, I was like, oh, So nobody knows what they're doing.
Even these people that we all look up to, even all these people that we put on pedestals, they're being honest about their path and their I mean obviously they're being humble, right.
No one's gonna be like, oh, I know everything.
I mean, there are some.
CEOs, founders, politicians, whatever, who are like that.
But I think, because of the types of media that I consume, because of the books, because of the articles, the through line was just no one really knows what they're doing.
So if that is the reality, I it's okay if I don't know what I'm doing.
And I think that frees up so much brain space and the pressure and uncertainty of like you have to have things figured out by now.
Right.
So instead is like, this is like a 40, 50 year old dude.
Who's like, I don't know what I'm doing.
So I'm like, if he doesn't know what he's doing and he's the founder of like a multi-billion dollar startup, I have permission to not know what I'm doing.
I'm just a little girl who graduated from college.
Little old me.
So I think like.
Again, it's... Perspective.
Perspective.
And it's also finding out the thing that speaks to you, right?
Like if it's therapy, it's therapy.
If it's journaling, if it's books, if it's a combination, which I think, for us it was a combination of everything, right?
The whole gamut of our self-care toolbox or like our self-care toolkit.
But spending time on yourself...
You say this all the time, even though sometimes it can be grueling, and you feel like Sisyphus pushing a huge rock up a hill and the rock keeps sliding down and you feel like you're going backwards.
But at the end of the day, time spent on yourself is never time wasted.
Yes.
Yeah.
And to kind of paint a picture of how long it took for me, in the first episode of this season I was like I think I feel good Ro.
I'm happy.
I think I feel happy for the first time.
And that's how long it took.
I knew in my 20s that my 30s would be more of my prime than my 20s.
I knew that.
I was like, there's absolutely no way this is going to be my prime.
And I was not one of those people who were like, oh my God, I hit my prime in high school.
Like that's really sad.
Yeah.
And so it was like that long game in mind, right?
Like I have the rest of my life and I need to set that foundation.
And so-
Even if you're in your 30s now and you're just starting that self-discovery, self-anything journey, it's not too late, right.
You can start at any time in your life, but the sooner that you do start.
You can start today, you can start tomorrow.
When you do start... that journey is gonna be tough.
It's not a clear path at all.
It's actually- Growth isn't linear.
It's actually unclear.
It's the step forward, backwards, sideways, up, down, like diagonal.
That's what we're talking about.
And then it's not until-
10 years past you're middle-aged and you're like, Whoa, like things feel so different.
And I'm so glad that I invested the time.
I'm so glad that I went through the uncertainty.
I'm so glad that those things happen because I'm better for it today.
And just imagine what 10 more years from now is going to be like, right?
What would you say to younger Viv?
Hmm, to younger Viv on 2014 Viv, if it's, if a specific point in time helps.
I would tell her that she is I don't know what would I tell her?
I would tell her Yeah, like things might feel really tough.
I think at the time I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel.
I had to imagine a light at the end of the tunnel.
I was like I actually truly didn't believe in, like I didn't think I could be happy in this lifetime.
Yeah, like I was in a place, I think for the majority of my life, where I was like this is what life feels like.
And so I think, when I got to a point where I was like you have to believe in something even if you genuinely don't believe in it.
So like I faked believe that like I will make it out of this, whatever that is.
And I'm so glad that she did that, you know?
And I do think that there is a light at the end of the tunnel now.
I see it, I feel it, I'm living in it.
It's embracing her.
Yeah, but hold on to that drive, hold on to that desire, because that's going to be the thing that will guide you in life.
And I think that is so important with anything you do, right?
It's that you have to believe in something, right?
And that thing, whatever that is, is really important because it guides everything else in your life.
Yeah, there's that one quote where it's like everybody worships um, i don't know, but it's it's generally like everybody worships.
So um, whether it's like you can worship the quote yeah i, i think it's.
Uh, i think steve jobs either said it or he was paraphrasing someone else saying it but everybody worships something.
Right, like.
Some people worship god, some people worship worship god, some people worship themselves, some people worship their partner.
Right, like so, everybody worships in life.
So it's very important what we worship, or like what we choose to believe in.
Yeah yeah, and i think that was also a central driver.
Maybe we can put the quote on screen.
Actually, let me try to find it.
I was like this is not a youtube video, i can just pop it up on screen Intermission.
Everybody worship.
Oh, it's David Foster Wallace.
There's no such thing as not worshiping.
Everybody worships.
The only choice we get is what to worship.
And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual type thing to worship, be it Jesus Christ Allah, be it Yahweh or the Weaken Mother Goddess or the Four Noble Truth or some infrangible set of ethical principles, is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
Hmm.
Yeah, because if it's yourself, other people like vanity, pride, money, so much money worship, right?
Power, greed.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I think this was definitely a driving.
It was a this is one of the many articles I read.
David Foster Wallace has a really good graduation speech, like commencement speech.
But yeah.
Believing in the universe was something too.
Yeah.
Which is funny because like we came about that in different ways.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Before I believe that when you died, you just died.
Like there was just nothing more to it.
I'm still like not a religious person, but now I think I'm like spiritual.
Like I believe in a higher being and I believe in like a higher power.
And at that time, when I was trying to figure out like, do I believe in the universe or like do I not?
Because when you come from a place where you don't believe in it, right?
Like I fully understand.
Why would you have faith in something that doesn't exist?
Like you can't see it, you can't feel it and like the logic in my head at the time was okay, there's two options here.
I can choose to just believe that things happen, they happen, there's no meaning behind it, everything just is.
And then you just die and then like we're just like a speck in in A blip of time, right?
Or I can approach this lifetime that I'm in right now believing that the universe is real and that something has my back right.
And I think at the time it was hard to believe that, because what would make me want to believe that?
But the logic or how I came to the end conclusion is that it's better for me ultimately if I believe in the universe.
Because life is going to happen differently for you if you have that belief set in stone in the first place.
So why not just... if it's not real, just believe, like, just be a little Delulu.
Just, you have to, I think everyone has to be a little bit Delulu sometimes, right?
Like the founders that you're talking about, they have to be Delulu to think that they can achieve the thing that yeah.
Yeah.
And like make a difference in the world.
You have to have a little bit of that.
And so I now do believe in the universe.
So call me Delulu or whatever, but I it was just better.
You know, like you have a choice to see things half full or half empty.
Why not just pick the one that's going to help you?
Even if it's in your mind at that time you think it's yeah.
Yeah, because you have to believe in the universe, for the universe to conspire to work in your favor, right.
Right, it's like everything in the book the alchemist great book, one of my favorite books during that time.
Yeah, the universe is working in your favor, or you can.
I mean, I think it's the classic glass half full or glass half empty, right?
Like you, either believe that the universe is working in your favor or the universe is just out to get you.
And I think, depending on how you choose to view that and the glass, whether it's half full, half empty, what have you?
It will dictate how you show up in the world and how you feel on a day-to-day basis as well.
Yes.
Yas.
Yas.
If I could go back, I would just tell my younger self to be less avoidant.
To just tell your friends you love them. tell the person that you're with how you really feel.
Like there's no point in withholding feelings, information, vulnerability.
Yeah, for as much as I.
I think like ever since then, I've been very open about certain aspects of my life, like things that I'm going through, things that happened in my life and things that I'm working through.
But in like friendships and in relationships, it was hard for me to just actually be like, share those things, like i love you, you know, or just yeah yeah yeah i, i get that.
Yeah lovely lovely, all right.
Thank you to our editor for this amazing question.
We traveled back in time.
Now we're back to our middle-aged self hello.
So we would like to hear from you.
If you have more questions, situations, please let us know.
You can leave us a voicemail.
We have a link in our description for every single episode.
You can call in.
We've heard some already.
They're super cute and super fun.
And so I think for those we might compile a bunch and then have an episode dedicated to just like the actual voicemails, and then you can always find us via email.
Hello at voicehugspodcastcom.
Shoot us a dm at voice hugs Podcast.
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