Chad: [00:00:00] I was talking to my friend Amanda the other day and I made the comment to her that I feel like a mess right now and that’s new for me. And she quickly reminded me that I was also a mess at 19. Well, bitch, it’s been a long time since I was 19, but yeah, I was a mess. And this is the great thing about having friends for that long, is that they’re able to offer you that sort of perspective.

Chad: And this was a serendipitous conversation, I think because a few days later I stumbled onto a video online that really moved me, and I’m gonna share a little bit of that with you what you’re about to hear is a clip from an interview from a woman named Betty Reed Soskin. And when I heard it, it moved me to tears and I knew that I had to share it with you.

Chad: you May sometimes have trouble hearing exactly what she’s saying. When this was recorded, Betty was 101 years old. I’ve included in the show notes a link to the clipped version of this interview as well as the extended cut so that you can go and listen to it and read the subtitles, and I highly recommend that you do.

Betty: I have been so many women, so many different times. I’ve been a daughter, a mother, a businesswoman, a federal worker. I was 85 before I became a park ranger. I retired at a hundred. I’ve actually been so many things that’s hard to remember.

Betty: I am 101 years old. When I was in my forties, I believe I suffered a middle break. During my breakdown, I would be singing, I remembered several songs. I’ll need to find that. I’d written them they’re fascinating songs. They tend to be about life as I was living it. I think that music has the power to change anything because I could sing things that I couldn’t say.

Betty: But when I sang them, they were acceptable. I was discovered any number of times I couldn’t do that. I had four children. I wanted to be a Betty, sang I didn’t want to be a singer.

Betty: When my two husbands and my father all died within three months, I was no longer defined my someone else’s name.

Betty: That’s when I began to really feel like Betty. The advice I would give to myself as I was a young woman would be to never marry. I could have done all the things that I have done. It was without a man. Well, it’s more important than life. The questions are the important things each time.

Betty: They get asked. This is a different meaning because you’ve grown so much from the last time you asked it. The answers are only temporary. Being 101 is really something because you feel as if you’re starting all over again. I don’t know what comes next, but I do know that I’m ready for it. I never really dreamed.

Betty: That there were so many parts to me. I don’t think I’ll be remembered as a park ranger. I want to be remembered as bitty.

Chad: If you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been writing lately, you would know that I’ve been talking about stuckness for a while. I feel like I’ve been stuck for a few years now. There is definitely a part of me that feels a lot of shame for that stuckness because my stuckness is the kind that hasn’t just impacted me, but it’s impacted the people in my life that I love the most, and I really hate that.

Chad: Stuckness compounded by shame is not a great combination. What I’m not ashamed of though, is telling you about it. Yeah, because I talk to a lot of you all and you tell me about your own experience with stuckness and the shame that you’re feeling around that. And so if that’s you, you are in very good company.

Chad: I see you, and I hope that some of the things that I talk about today will help you wiggle from the groups of stuckness if just a little bit. I feel right now some movement around my own stuckness, like something that’s breaking through and I haven’t felt this in a really long time. And I am really happy about that.

Chad: And it was Betty’s story that hit me at just the right time, and it put into words some of the things that I’ve been thinking and have been swirling around in my head. And so if you would like to stick with me through this episode, I’m gonna share with you a couple of things that I’ve learned about stuckness and how I’m finding my way out of it.

Chad: So Betty said, I had been so many women so many different times. And that’s the benefit of that kind of perspective of a hundred years of life, to be able to look back and offer a profound view of that human experience from where she is. She’s able to zoom out on her life and see not just the seasons of her life, but also the changing of the seasons too.

Chad: And if we’re lucky enough to live that long, we too will get to be so many different people in our lifetimes. And that’s a gift. It’s not a curse and it’s not punishment. That’s a gift. The Chad PV in his thirties, he started a couple of nonprofits. He started a couple of businesses. He was making about $600,000 a year, driving a brand new Range Rover Sport, living in his penthouse condo atop [00:05:20] the Hilton Hotel in downtown Austin.

Chad: Not bad for a kid who grew up in the rural woods of Crawford County, Arkansas, and I’m really proud of him and he is gone now. Periods of stuckness brought on by a change in your life. Seasons are like keeping your old self on life support, and that’s what I’ve been doing with Chad of his thirties.

Chad: I’ve been keeping him on life support. I have an advanced directive on my physical life to not take drastic steps to keep me alive if the worst were to happen. I don’t wanna be physically alive if that means having to be connected to a machine that breathes for me. And yet, this is exactly what I’m doing with the Chad Peevy of his thirties.

Chad: Me. Now, the Chad, his forties, is denying the former self as dignity, the dignity of allowing him to pass.

Chad: I think the brighter we shine during a season of our life, the harder it is to let that season pass. I was shining bright in my thirties. I was a badass. I really was. I look back at pictures and I look at the work product, and I look at what I was able to do personally and professionally, and I’m just like, Jesus, wow.

Chad: I’m impressed, and I’m finally realizing. That the task now is to honor him and to let him go. Let him go so that whatever is next can emerge. That’s the movement out of the stuckness, right? I, that’s how we get unstuck is movement. Letting something else emerge, letting something else go. I have been spending the last few years of my life doing everything I could to recreate or revive the person that I once was.

Chad: And it is profoundly painful. I’m not doing it to create self-harm. I’m not doing it to hurt myself because that’s what I’m trying to alleviate is the pain. It’s just that I want to provide. What I once provided for the people in my life

Chad: I wanna be able to get back to doing things I was able to do, to feel that energy and enthusiasm again, to be a change maker again. And maybe I’ll do all those things again in the future. But the thing is, I’m not gonna do it the same way. I’m not gonna do it as the Chad in his thirties. It won’t be the same person doing whatever comes next.

Chad: It has to be somebody new and whoever that is, that is gonna do so, that’s gonna bring that forth, has to have the courage to let the old version of me pass. Over the last several years, throughout this period of stuckness, I’ve had suicidal thoughts more than a few times. And when I get quiet. What I realize is that what I was looking for wasn’t a physical death.

Chad: It wasn’t, it wasn’t that, but I really wanted the death of an identity and the yearning for it was coming from both the person I was wanting to be let go and the person that I’m becoming bagging me to let him go so that something new could emerge. Somewhere in the middle of that was my ego clinging to the idea that I could somehow recreate it or become it again,

Chad: and it’s in that tension that so much of the pain of stuckness gets created and that video with Betty, if you get a chance to go watch it, go watch it. She talks about her name changing over the years. And that she’s able to recognize the different version of her life over her lifetime because of the name changes.

Chad: And I think this is a really interesting idea. Richard Albert became Rom Das. Cassius Clay became Muhammad Ali. Lou Cindo becomes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Marshall. Mathers becomes Eminem, and I’m not announcing a name change today. But I get why people do it. It makes a lot of sense to me. You know, as well as I did in my thirties, there came a point where it got harder and harder to get motivated to get up in the morning. That version of me played its part, it played itself out. The excitement of starting the day started to wane, and I started asking questions like, is this it?

Chad: Is this all there is to life? The success was there, but the fulfillment was not. There’s a reason that I wanted to move on from that life. It turns out fulfillment is a big deal. From what I can tell in my research, there’s six kinds of fulfillment. Fulfillment being the kind of activity or the role. That makes you feel most alive, what makes you feel alive?

Chad: That’s fulfillment. And you can either be a creator, a connector, a guide, a builder, a visionary, or a healer. And from what I can tell and from my own experience, that role isn’t enough. There, has to be an internal driver that fuels you to that type of fulfillment expression. And I’m calling those our dominant needs.

Chad: And there are also six of those. It’s security, belonging, purpose, growth, autonomy, and impact. And I’m discovering that alignment of your fulfillment style and your dominant need. Wiggles you from the grips of stuckness. I’m not here to say that I’m fully out of my stuckness, but I can definitely say that I’m moving out of it.

Chad: And this is what I’m finding helpful right now. And I wanted to put this podcast out because I think so often we get the message of people that are on the other side, completely on the other side of whatever they’re going through, and who knows, maybe they are or they aren’t, but that’s what we’re [00:10:40] told.

Chad: Is that completely healed? I’m completely through it. And I just think it would be helpful to know as you’re moving through it, what are the things that are getting you out of it? And this is bringing me some relief.

Chad: To be able to name something or label something, I can say I’m not fulfilled, how do I know if I’m moving toward fulfillment unless I can identify and name what’s gonna make me feel that way. So naming it is helpful. It gives me somewhere to go. And so I, I actually created an assessment to help you name your fulfillment style and your dominant need.

Chad: And it’s, uh, it’s on my website. I will put a link to that in the show notes if you wanna use it. It’s free. You know, the Chad Peevy in his thirties was the product of a lot of work, and I wrote about that work in my book, breaking Untangle. And the premise of that book was the idea of inherited mindsets that these ideas we pick up from our parents, our culture, school, religion, society,

Chad: and when that misalignment happens of the ideas and beliefs that we pick up don’t match our lived experience thereto lives tension. And I write about these techniques or these mindset methods to help shake loose those inherited mindsets and discover new ones. And I’ve, you know, as I’m sitting here today, I’m writing this and I’m like, oh my God, what a great idea.

Chad: You should do that. And Betty reminded me that the questions are the important things. Each time they get asked, there’s some different meaning because you’ve grown so much since the last time you asked it because the answers are only temporary. The answers are only temporary. I love that and it’s something that I’m putting more practice into these days, and my invitation to you is let’s ask ourselves some more questions.

Chad: Maybe ask some of those questions that we’ve asked before. I wrote a book full of questions. Maybe it’s time that I go back and read my own book because I’m likely to find new meaning since the last time I read it. Probably a good idea, but what I know for sure is this. I really love the chat Peevy of his thirties.

Chad: I love the life that he created. I love what he was building. I love what he did. I think he was great and I think he deserves better than I’m giving him right now. He deserves the love and compassion of the Chad, his forties, and the Chad of his forties should have the love and compassion to let him go because the Chad of his forties deserves to write his own story, to create his own adventures to live this season and to live it full out because I think he has something to offer.

Chad: I think he has something to say, something to share, and I’m really ready to give him the chance to do that. To emerge and to become. I was a messy 19-year-old and I found my way to a win, and I was a chaotic 20 something, and I found myself working my way to a win. And when I reflect again and again, and again, I have found myself in mess after mess, and yet finding my way through and winning again.

Chad: And if today’s message resonates with you, I want you to take that reminder to heart that you’ll find your way forward. Not back, but forward. And if you’re lucky, then you’ll look back like Betty, and you’ll be able to say that I have been so many people, so many different times. May you have joy, peace and happiness, good health and wellbeing, a life of ease and prosperity.

Chad: The courage to get what you want from this life. The clarity to know what that is. The imagination, to not sell yourself short and the discipline to see it through.