#99 – Expand Your Bubble

[00:00] Paulette: Mira, mira, mira. We’re gonna get comfortable with being uncomfortable in this episode, and I challenge you to stay till the end. Buen día, mi gente, and welcome back to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas. Welcome back to Healing Girl Summer. I’m your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato, and we are on the very last lesson in the book and of this summer series.

[00:26] We skipped around a bit in that little book called Benchmarks Are Bullshit, so to catch you up, lesson one was about failure. Lesson three was about decisions. Lesson four was about bullshit. And today we’re wrapping it up with lesson six, which is about curiosity. Because the most interesting version of you, mija, is hiding behind all the doors you’re too comfortable to open.

[00:51] So let’s get into it.

Lesson 6: Expand Your Bubble

[00:53] Paulette: The next few years of your life are ripe for exploration. You get to reinvent yourself multiple times until you figure out who you are. Take advantage of it! Explore the larger world around you. It’s huge, and fascinating. You never know what you might find. And what you might love.

[01:16] When my husband first moved to Los Angeles from the Midwest, he did not like spicy food. Like at all. He hated it. I don’t know why he got with a Latina, but anyway. Now? Now he can’t do without his habanero salsa. Do you even know how spicy habanero peppers are? I don’t eat them. But he loves them, can’t do without them.

[01:40] Now, of course, he hasn’t given up his love of ranch dressing. You’re never gonna take the Midwesterner out of him. But he can appreciate the bolder flavors now, too, thankfully. The point is to try everything. Okay, except cocaine. That’s just a stupid drug. It’s one of the worst parts of the ’80s. But spicy food, a semester abroad, taking up a new language, befriending people from a different culture, all of those will broaden your horizons and make you a better and more interesting person.

[02:14] And I know anything different can seem scary at first. Life in general is scary, period. That doesn’t mean it isn’t worth living. One of the worst things that can happen to you in the next five years is that you’ll have learned nothing and remained sheltered in a bubble. And mi amor, you deserve better than a life unlived.

[02:40] The takeaway here is to be curious and evolve constantly.

Comfort Zone

[02:46] Paulette: Let’s talk about that “unlived life” thing for a second because I think we mistranslate what our comfort zone actually is. We call it a comfort zone like it’s a nice place, like it’s a safe place to be. But let’s think about what the actual words mean for a second.

[03:02] Comfort zone, not safe zone. Because comfort and safety are not the same thing. A prison cell can become comfortable, too, eventually. I’ve never been to jail, much less prison, but I can surmise that you’d get used to it even if you never learn to like it. And that’s not safety. That’s just familiarity within your own walls.

[03:24] And I think a lot of us are doing time in a comfort zone we’ve mistaken for a safe house. When really it’s just the prison cell we know best. Or even a gilded cage if that’s a more comfortable metaphor. So actually, you know what? I’m gonna walk back some words. Let’s forget about expanding your bubble.

[03:43] Let’s just burst it. Because a bubble doesn’t stretch to make room for you. It pops! And the second it does, you realize there was never anything holding you in it except the bubble itself. And I love bubbles. Making bubbles, favorite thing to do as a kid and as an adult. But on the other side of that bubble, that’s where the adventures begin.

[04:06] Live a life of adventure. I’m not talking about the kind you find in a vacation brochure. I’m talking about the small everyday kind. Saying yes to something you’d normally talk yourself out of, trying new food like habanero salsa, taking a different class, striking up conversation with the stranger sitting next to you at the coffee shop.

[04:28] Adventure doesn’t have to be a plane ticket. It can be the decision to stop defaulting to what’s familiar, to stop thinking negatively, and just accept that you get to try something new.

Pizza & Curiosity

[04:43] Paulette: I’m gonna tell you a little story about myself here, because this is one of my favorite examples of how curiosity paid off for me, and not in a big way, but in a really fun way.

[04:53] Way back in, like, 2010 to 2012, I was a food blogger. There was a group of us called the Food Bloggers of Los Angeles, and this group was made up of people from all over the culinary world: professional chefs, caterers, food stylists, PR people, photographers, recipe testers, people who worked in restaurants.

[05:12] They were all professional food people, pro level all the way. And on one of our FBLA trips, we went to a local restaurant and had a little bit of a pizza-making contest. And I need to be really clear with you about something. I am not a chef. I am not classically trained. I didn’t go to culinary school. I was just a little home cook turned food blogger who liked to eat, liked to experiment, and then write about it and maybe take a few crappy pictures.

[05:38] That was the entirety of my qualifications, and this was long before people could make a career out of being TikTok chefs, okay? We’re talking me, my little food blog, surrounded by professionals. Talk about bursting a bubble and being outside of your comfort zone. So there we are at the restaurant making pizza, me and the professional food people, people who were trained for this very kind of contest.

[06:03] And when we were all done, we had a blind tasting where everyone got to vote on all of the pizzas. And guess who won the grand prize? Me, the non-professional, the person who was not trained to make pizza, who didn’t know how to make pizza. The grand prize was that they put my pizza on the menu, and anybody could order it, but when I went, I would get it for free for a year, which was pretty cool.

[06:28] I took advantage of that a few times And I didn’t win because I had a better technique. I didn’t have a technique. I did not know how to make pizza. But what I had was curiosity. When most people think of pizza, you think of the classic red base, right? It’s classic for a reason. It works. Now, in the contest, we could only use the ingredients the restaurant had on hand, but we were given a lot of leeway on how to use them.

[06:56] So my pizza had a pesto base, salad greens with a honey balsamic drizzle, and then the ingredient that most people ignored, and this is gonna sound weird, but trust me, it worked. Breadcrumbs. Yeah, on a pizza. I know how that sounds. Weird, right? But I got curious about what that combination would actually taste like instead of just assuming it was wrong. And it worked because I won.

[07:21] I beat out all of these professionals, and they chose my pizza. Them. That was pretty rad I’m not gonna lie. But there’s a few lessons wrapped up in this story. One is just because you’re not a professional doesn’t mean a damn thing. You can still produce a crowd favorite. More on this in a second. Number two is that coloring inside the lines is safe, just like using traditional pizza sauce is safe.

[07:49] It is, after all, what all of those professionals chose to do. But safe can also be boring. And three, curiosity won that day, not just me. Curiosity. Because being curious without judgment is what created the winning pizza. Who knew you could glean so many lessons from one afternoon of making pizza? If you want the actual recipe, I’ll publish it over for the Super Cheveritas on Substack, so join up if you want to.

[08:15] Link’s in the show notes.

Selena & starting messy 

[08:17] Paulette: Who’s another Latina we can point to that did something similar? Who made non-traditional choices, who wasn’t a professional in her chosen field but kept going anyway, and who lived their life in an unpredictable way? Well, for one, it’s every single woman I’ve talked about during Healing Girl Summer, real or imagined, because we also talked about the movie Encanto.

[08:37] But to bring it home, let’s talk about a Latina who couldn’t even speak Spanish when she started her singing career, recording records phonetically, doing interviews where she messed up the words all the time. Yes, you know who I’m talking about. Selena, La Reina de Tejano. Okay, she didn’t like that title, but she was recognized for being a giant success, and yet she couldn’t even speak Spanish when she started.

[09:01] She was a no sabo kid from Houston whose dad was teaching her Spanish syllable by syllable in the studio while they were recording. And yet she went on to become a legend, the biggest female artist in a genre that up to that point had been completely dominated by men. Man, we love to see a woman in male-populated fields.

[09:24] So Selena didn’t grow up speaking Spanish, and yet became a legend singing it. She learned it phonetically on the way to becoming the Queen of Tejano. She didn’t wait until she was comfortable. She did it messy, she did it on the go, and she succeeded. So why shouldn’t you?

Recap

[09:43] Paulette: All right, mi gente. That’s it.

[09:44] That’s lesson six. That’s the last lesson of Healing Girl Summer. To recap, here were the four lessons. Failure is a data point, not a verdict. Decisions are not life sentences. Benchmarks are bullshit. And now, get curious, because your bubble was never keeping you safe. It was just making you comfortable. And no one evolves or grows or becomes a better version of themselves inside a prison of comfort.

[10:16] So if any of these lessons hit you the way they were supposed to, the whole book is a measly 10-page read. Benchmarks Are Bullshit, link’s in the show notes. It’s just a few bucks. Help support this show and get your own copy. But now it’s your turn. If you’ve got your own lesson, the one you wish someone had taught you at 18 or 28 or 38 or 48 or beyond, please text it to me.

[10:38] The link’s in the show notes for that, too, because I’d really like to hear from you about the life lessons you carry with you that other people can benefit from, too. I showed you mine. Why don’t you show me yours? And hey, if you send me one, I’ll read it on a future episode with your consent. Gracias for sticking around for this one, for sticking around for the whole summer, for being on this healing journey with me.

[11:00] It’s been a lot. This is coming out the week we finally have the memorial for my father, so yeah, when I say it’s been a lot, I mean a lot. I appreciate everyone who’s reached out to send condolences, to share your love, to share funny animal memes. I can never get enough of those so thank you, thank you, thank you. I’ll be sharing snack review videos with my dad in the box over on Instagram and for the Super Cheveritas, so check them out. And for now, mis amiges, that’s a burrito.