DO S2 5 | Where Are You Hiding?

 

What are you hiding? Where are you hiding? In this episode, Julia and Travis discuss the dark corners that we unconsciously find ourselves in, and sometimes, it keeps us from doing the hard things. When this constant hiding becomes a pattern in our lives, it prohibits us from living our dream. Also, they explain how social media, in general, can be inauthentic because we put on a facade of who we are instead of being authentic. Do you want to live your dream? Stop hiding now; tune in to this episode, and seek the path to achieve it!

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Where Are You Hiding? The Truth About Vulnerability

What are we talking about?

We are going to talk about the areas in which we are hiding.

Where are you hiding?

Where do we start? Are you asking me where I’m hiding, or are you asking them where they are hiding?

Let’s give some examples. What’s the overview of what we want to talk about?

What we are alluding to here is a gut-check episode for you to be asking the question, “Where am I hiding?” which means what things in my life that I hide behind mentally, emotionally, and physically that keep me from achieving my dreams from being the best version of me, from breakthrough, and from what I want most. These areas, the dark corners that we find ourselves in, keep us from sometimes doing the hard things and keep us from the things we want most. We thought it would be good to share a front-row seat in our lives of where we are doing this, but for all of us to look at it and think it’s hard stuff to talk about where you are hiding.

These areas, these dark corners that we find ourselves in, keep us from sometimes doing the hard things that keep us from the things we want most. Share on X

Most of the time, it prohibits you from living your dream. You are hiding. You are undercover. You are doing things, not at your full potential, which is ultimately prohibiting you from living your dream.

The slippery slope behind these, as you and I have been wrestling with this and talking it out and all those things, is you don’t know that you are doing it consciously. You don’t know that you are doing it most of the time. It’s something that is gradual and sudden. Even for us in our journey with alcohol, when we finally made the commitment to stop drinking. It was a long time coming, but it was gradually, suddenly, this is a place I’m hiding. If I had looked back a few years ago, I would never have thought anything of it, and then over time, slowly, suddenly, it was like, “This is the thing that’s keeping me from what I want most.”

Most often is because it’s a habit. It’s a pattern that you live in, or it’s your environment. That’s what you do. With alcohol, that’s what you do. Whether it’s 5:00 or Friday or a Saturday, you are getting together at a barbecue. It’s what you do. Les Brown says, “You can’t see the picture if you are in the frame.” It’s taking a step back and outside of it. This is why we want to do this show. Where are you hiding? Maybe step back and look at your daily, weekly, or monthly routine. What are you doing that is not promoting and allowing you to do and live the dreams and desires that you have?

Even when you said earlier to me where I am hiding on a daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly basis, my answers could almost be very different, which was interesting to me because how I might hide daily and how I hide yearly was a different way to come at it or to identify it because it is those small things that I’m doing every single day that creates where I end up each year.

It’s like the ripple effect because the daily turns weekly, and the weekly turns monthly. Let’s back it down to what you are doing on a daily basis that you see that’s consistent that you feel like you are hiding based on the time you get up. The routine that you have in the morning typically starts off your day. What are you doing on a daily basis that maybe is not in alignment with your dreams? Is it a new workout routine? Is it drinking water? Is it working out? Is it reading 30 minutes before you hit the ground running? Typically, you have this routine.

Most people are not consciously aware of it because they are in reaction mode because that’s what they do. They typically wake up at about the same time. They do the same routine. They go and get coffee, have breakfast, and make the kids breakfast. It’s like this routine. You even mentioned this to me. I create it because I have been pondering the same question of like, “Where am I hiding? What am I not doing?” I’m waking up earlier, and you asked me, “Do you need an alarm clock?” Most of the time, 90%, I don’t because I have this new perspective on the dreams that we are going after.

What’s interesting to me is when I have been asking myself, “Why do we hide? Why do I hide?” it’s because there is a level of “safety” that is found in the areas where we hide. Let me give you an example. Cammy and I were talking the other day. I value efficiency very much. I like talking fast. I like checking things off the list fast. I like moving fast. I even notice myself with the kids sometimes, and I’m like, “Let’s go.” I’m like, “Why am I in a hurry all the time?” Let’s get to school fast. Let’s write emails fast. Everything is fast.

She and I are talking about this, and all of a sudden, she is very similar to I am. We are rapid-firing all this stuff. I finally was like, “If I’m in this efficiency mode, I’m not connecting,” and the connection is also a huge value, but the connection is slow, vulnerable, takes time, a long-term play, deep, and rooted. What was so interesting for me was that immediately, I went, “I can hide behind my to-do list and my checklist and fast.” It feels like this emotional armor as opposed to picking up the phone, calling, asking for help, asking for some ideas, or taking 30 minutes to have a phone call to unpack and not knowing where this will go, and have a deeper conversation and ask hard questions because an email is faster, easier, and more efficient, but it also keeps me “safe.”

How many people are responding to the emails relative to when you pick up the phone?

I’m not answering that question.

That’s a perfect example. You send off 100 emails, but you are probably maybe getting one response relative to calling 10 people and getting 5 responses.

It goes back to this trend of show. We have been talking about picking your heart and all those things. It’s easier to hide. If I’m using alcohol, I throw myself under the bus a lot because it’s like rapid-fire in my head. I found myself walking into a room needing even a glass of wine. For those of you who don’t know our journey too much on alcohol, I don’t feel like I was this alcoholic that drank a lot. I just drink often.

One glass or even one and a half was fine. That wasn’t on paper. That was not a “problem” until I almost needed it to walk into a room where I felt uncomfortable because it took the edge off. That became an area that I could hide because emotionally, I didn’t have to connect or put myself out there, which is exactly what I want most, but it’s vulnerable to do day in and day out. For me, the trends are alcohol, a to-do list or a checklist, speed, and efficiency. I hide behind efficiency. That’s for me. Welcome to my therapy session.

What are other examples? Let’s go a little bit broader.

No. Your turn. You have to share where you are hiding.

Where I’m hiding most is putting myself out there and even with the show. This is vulnerable. I feel like we have something to share, and hopefully, it can inspire and help other people rethink and live their dreams with your book Dream–I Dare You with our show. It’s all about living your full life. This is something that we have started and stopped multiple times. I’m not hiding, but I’m not doing it to the best of my abilities. I was thinking about this when I was working out. I’m like, “If I’m not hiding, what does that look like?”

You will see some big changes, and you will see some big changes as we move forward with this show to do it to the best of our abilities with the knowledge that we have now. As we progress, it’s going to evolve and get even better. I have done it enough. You’ve done it. I’m going to call you out a little bit too. You’ve done it enough. We have done it to our abilities but not to the best of our abilities. That’s where I’m hiding.

At some level, the way through this is heightened awareness of a simple question, “Where am I hiding?” This episode is not to give you this bullet list and checklist of, “Where are you hiding? How to not hide?” This is your own gut check of all of us hiding in different ways, and how we no longer hide is also done in different ways. The first step is simply asking the question, “Where am I hiding?” I love that you said, “What would it look like if I wasn’t?” If there’s a reason we are hiding, it’s probably to protect ourselves. It feels vulnerable. We feel like we could be rejected. We might fail.

It probably leans towards our limiting beliefs and all our narratives and speaks to our greatest fears that mean something about us. At some level, the only way I’m going to let go of that is to laser in on, “If I wasn’t hiding, what’s the potential here?” That opens up the imagination. It takes us from this fear-focused question to what’s possible. Look up and imagine. The sky is the limit, “What’s possible here if I wasn’t hiding?” That’s the swing that we need to go from fear to hope or fear to faith.

One of the things I have seen in ourselves and other people, if you can do it on your own, it’s not a god-sized dream. It’s not a big enough dream. Looking at that and knowing where we want to go with the show, events, and different communities, we need other people. If you can do it on your own, to a certain level, you are hiding. If it’s about you, it’s not big enough. I challenge and encourage you to re-look at it. That’s not all areas of your life if you are working out and trying to. I also think that you could get there quicker or faster if you got other people involved.

You are saying my insights are this buzz, so let’s go with this for a second. I know that Travis and I are putting out all this content, and you are seeing some of my videos now, and I’m doing lives. That’s hard for me to do. Some people love it. I even remember I moved to LA when I was eighteen years old because I wanted to be an actress, and I came to find out I didn’t want to be an actress. It’s hard to do this. Some people love it. It is not the easiest thing for me to do either. I’m sitting with Travis and Cammy, and both of them are like, “You have to do more content. You need to put yourself out there even more.” Tears are rolling down my face because the level of vulnerability to do that is huge, and I didn’t know that’s where I was hiding, but I knew where it was because I was doing it all on my own.

If you look back at my career for the last few years, it’s been awesome. I’ve done better than many people in my field, but I have been solo. It’s where I have been hiding because I have this great fear that you are going to get close to me and find out I’m not as good as you think I am, and then you are going to reject me. You’ve seen the front row, but Cammy, the team, and now the world is getting a little bit closer. It’s butting up against my greatest limiting beliefs on a whole new level, and I don’t like that.

Coming back to what you said, some of it comes back to your experiences and limiting beliefs because you put yourself out there. You didn’t accomplish it. For you to do it again is vulnerable. In this context or for anybody reading, think about a time that you were gung-ho about something, like real estate investing and starting a new career or going to school and getting some degree. You started it, you fizzled out, and you didn’t succeed. For you to put yourself out there, whether it’s in the same direction or a new direction and tell your friends and family about it, you have that in the back of your mind of like, “What if I say this and then I don’t do it again?”

Do you know what’s one of the greatest dream killers? It’s a disappointment. There’s a secondary emotion and primary emotion. It is so close to the soul that we don’t want to feel it again. Anger is a secondary emotion. When I feel angry, it means I have skipped over a sole emotion. When any one of us experiences disappointment or feels like we are a disappointment, a shattered dream, someone rejected us, we failed, or we rejected ourselves, that is so close to our core that there’s almost something unconsciously that snaps within us to go, “I’m not doing that again,” and we put on the armor. We shift to efficiency over the connection. We go to the alcohol over exposure to more people. We go solo instead of community. Why? It’s because I don’t want to feel that pain of disappointment again.

I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, but social media, in general, can be inauthentic. You are putting on a facade of who you are as opposed to being true and real. Not every day is great. Not all your pictures turn out. I was thinking about this like, “We will do a video on it as far as going to the pumpkin patch.”

It sounds amazing and it was amazing, but I haven’t shared this thought with you. Going to the pumpkin patch with five kids is an experience. You already posted some pictures on Facebook. You see beautiful pictures of our family. We are smiling and doing a few things, but there were also some things throughout the five hours that we were there that you are like, “I’m stressed out. This is amping me out,” but you look back, and it’s a good thing to do. Look at the positive throughout the day, but if you could see, speed up, and look at all the moments, it’s not all glamorous.

I’m so glad that you said that. Since starting to put our lives back out there a little more, I want to be a real family. I would agree that the pumpkin patch for me was an experience, and the pictures are stinking cute. We have the cutest kids and the orange pumpkins. I was in that moment of reminiscing because the pictures were so cute. I had a few people go, “Your family’s so cute,” and that looked like the best time ever. I got home, laid in bed, and had to not think about having a beer. I was like, “I want to hide. I want to go away. I want a beer.” I had to think about that consciously and almost reposted on Facebook, “Please know how imperfectly perfect this experience was.” You are right. Many people could look at it and go, “It must be nice to be them. It’s so perfect and pretty,” and I was amped as well.

We even talked about being there, trying to be authentic with this show, and everything that we are going to put out there. We talked about having a beer. It’s October. Pumpkin and cinnamon, I like it. I do. I found this drink. It’s a cold-brew pumpkin thing. It’s amazing. We talked about it like, “It’s October, and a pumpkin beer sounds good now.” I had to sit with myself, and I know you did, too, because we talked about it and were wrestling with it. It’s still there. We haven’t drunk in over a year, but it still comes up because it’s an easy way for us to disconnect. That’s exactly what it would have been.

You even said it, “It would be nice to have a beer,” and I was like, “It would be nice to have 3 or 4 beers.” I didn’t drink in the past to have a beer. If I’m going to drink, I’m going to have a few beers because I truly want to disconnect. That’s why I did it. Thinking about walking through that process of drinking it, I visualized myself going to the store, drinking a beer, having another beer, and how I would feel. Both of us came to the conclusion that it’s a slippery slope and it’s not worth it.

In those times, what has been helpful is to have you be able to say like, “Here’s the truth. I want a beer.” What most of us would do, whatever it is, we hide the truth. We hide our fears. We don’t say it out loud to people we can trust, but then we also don’t ask ourselves a deeper question of not just, “Why do I want to beer?” It’s, “What am I hiding from? What is it that this is going to give me? What is it that checking something off the list is going to give me?”

What most of us would do, whatever it is, we hide the truth and our fears, and we don't say it out loud to people that we can trust. Share on X

Fill in the blank. Wherever you are hiding, what is it going to give me that I need now that I can’t give myself? The only way to heal through this and progress wholly on the other side is that we have to answer that question like, “What is it that this beer’s going to give me?” “It’s going to give me some downtime.” “Do I need to take a nap? Do I need to ask Travis for help? Do I need to not go to the pumpkin patch? What do I need to do?”

If I think about even this silly idea of sending emails or anything that’s task-oriented versus connecting with people and it’s like, “What do I need to do to put myself in place again to connect?” A lot of times, the question is just to be real. Call who’s on your heart. It’s not who’s on the to-do list. Call who’s on your heart to call and connect with.

It’s to connect with yourself to connect with other people. Thinking about so many different experiences that have come up over the last couple of years as we have traveled, the video we did or the pictures we took were amazing, but you think about that process. You are like, “We have to slow down, and that’s part of this journey for us of slowing down.” Like you said, getting in the car sometimes, and you have five kids that you are putting in the car, and one of them is still putzing around and looking at things on the ground.

Zion does.

Nixon does it a little bit too, but you are like, “Hurry up. We don’t need to be anywhere. It’s my thing.” It’s to stop and look at them and enjoy the process. It’s the same thing with being at the pumpkin patch and a couple of experiences that we had where it was 30 to 45 minutes talking about what face paint they were going to get, knowing in three hours we were going to wipe it off. You are like, “That is such a waste of time,” but it’s not a waste of time to them. The experience and the process we can make, we can embrace and enjoy that, or we can be frustrated by it and disconnect and then turn to whatever it is.

Every time we hide what we are doing, we are closing off from one of the greatest human needs, which is connection. If you look at even the intimacy of having a baby, what a baby need is an immediate bond with mom. It needs to be held and connected, and over time we start to think that we don’t need that. Even if you look at that, our need for speed or efficiency or we choose these things from alcohol to busying our time to food, money, work, and busy. All of these things can cause a disconnect between ourselves and other people, which is our lifeline. Connection is the way. That’s the answer. What’s interesting is we keep choosing all these mechanisms to hide and protect ourselves probably because of the past, the narrative, and what we have seen or experienced. It’s causing a huge chasm between what we have and want.

Let’s give a few examples on the cuff of where we have hidden and not talked about it and then where we see other people hide. Work is one of them like, “I’m going to grind it out. I’m going to work because I’m hiding from whatever it may be.” There’s alcohol, which we have already mentioned, food, and working out. There’s a certain personification of, “I’m going to work out, but I’m unhealthy and not satisfied inside. I’m doing it to appease and get those likes or comments, but I’m truly dying inside.”

There is a tendency to isolate and retreat. I’m an introvert, and I have a lot of friends that are introverts, too, so we recharge alone, but then you stay alone. It starts to be the only answer, and so you find yourself at home more or not connecting more or shutting down from people. You see that a lot.

I would say forgiveness of yourself. Find forgiveness, not forgiving yourself, and then unforgiveness of others. You hide behind that because that can be one of the hardest things to forgive yourself for a decision or multiple decisions you made, or forgiving someone else and making that right because it prohibits you in certain situations from stepping out again. If you had a bad business relationship, you can use that as a crutch and hide behind it like, “I’m never going to have a business partner ever again because they are all like this,” as opposed to saying and taking ownership of, “What did I do wrong? What did that other person do wrong?” and forgive them and know that every experience is not going to be the same.

We can hide behind our pain. If we have been hurt, it’s easy to continue to go back to that over and over again. Meaning you don’t know what’s happened in my lifetime. Whether you’ve done it or someone has done it to you, whether it’s once or ten times. It’s easy to use our pain and past as an excuse to hide. I don’t want to undermine that pain is real. When people take advantage of you or cross boundaries, it is 1,000% real, and there’s a level of it happened, healing, and moving forward versus using it as a hiding place.

It's easy to use our pain and past as an excuse to hide. Share on X

Also, getting help with that. There are some traumas and experiences that you can’t do on your own. You have to be vulnerable, whether with that person or a third party.

Let’s unpack this. We have used this word so many different times, vulnerability. Can you tell me if it is not according to Webster’s definition? You hear all that whole list, and there’s a level of vulnerability to come outside of that, to walk through that, to be seen, loved, connected, and do something you are afraid of. We heard of this from a mid-40-year-old man who, on paper, was successful, had an incredible career, have eight kids and a family. Nobody saw it coming, and he hung himself. You are like, “That was a man who had such pain on the inside.” We asked like, “Was there any proof,” and everyone around him was like, “None. We saw no signs.” Can you tell me what vulnerability means to you?

When I say that word, I guarantee everybody already has an immediate knee-jerk reaction. I’m not saying that our definitions are wrong unless they are, but we can already have a negative connotation or, “I already do that, and I’m vulnerable all the time.” Here’s another area. On Pinterest or Instagram, we showcase beautiful things, and then there’s that group of people who showcase all of their problems. ” I’m vulnerable all the time, and I tell all my problems on social media.” It’s the drama friend who it’s like this constant, “I’m super vulnerable.” No, you are hiding behind the drama. That’s not vulnerability.

You are addicted to drama, but you are not letting people get close and heal you because you are hiding behind the drama of it. For me, vulnerability is we have a mind, spirit, and soul as people. The mind and body are anything that we can be thinking of or physically doing. These are all the pieces of like, “I have these thoughts, and we take care of our mind by thinking good thoughts. We take care of our bodies by working out.” We have a spirit, and our spirit man is the part of us why we would fast, pray, or go to church. We connect with God on a spiritual level, and then we have a soul. Here’s the difference between your spirit and your soul. Have you ever been to church? You could even raise your hand, worship, or pray and feel nothing.

You are in there, and you are going, “I got done fasting. I have been in my Bible. I have been praying, and I don’t feel anything.” That’s because that’s the soul. The soul is the piece in all of us that needs to be fully seen for who we are. Not who we pretend to be. Not even who we think we are. Not even what we have done. Not what we could do. It’s just who we are. It’s our whole heart. It’s all of the love and the fear. It’s the mistakes and the potential. It’s the pureness of who you are. Vulnerability to me is when you start to step out from the alcohol, the to-do list, and the hiding of any sort. You go, “Here’s who I am.” That’s what vulnerability means to me. Did I give you enough time?

The soul is a vulnerable piece in all of us and must be fully seen for who we are, not who we pretend to be. Share on X

Mine is the expectation of myself that is not yet realized. I have this perception of myself or I should know this, or I should be here.

Is it letting someone in on that process? Is vulnerability letting me see that guy who’s not fully developed?

Once you start to get to a certain point in your life, for me, I will talk for myself. You feel like you should know everything. I came to the realization a long time ago that I know nothing. If I could know some of the people that are my mentors or people that I’m around, if I could know what they forgot, I would be way further ahead. I’m so intrigued by knowledge. What I feel vulnerable by is when you put yourself out there and my own expectation of, “I should know this.” I’m at this age or whatever it is, and I don’t.

It’s letting someone see that part of you. Not just the “finished part” of you.

It’s the process of like, “I don’t know this.” That’s what I see stop so many people from like, “I don’t know how to.” We all didn’t know how to at some point. It’s this thing of I judge myself. Sometimes in the past, I wouldn’t even start because I’m like, “I don’t know how and I don’t want to be vulnerable to put myself out there to ask someone I respect, but they probably think that I should already know that.” It’s like this story that you have with yourself that it sets the limitations of what you can do and the life you can live.

That’s so huge. If we even go back to the example of the gentleman we heard who took his life or we think about all these people that we are talking about who have shared areas that they hide or when we are looking at our own. What I hear you say is that vulnerability is that point where you let someone in to see the unfinished part of you or the in-route part of you, the perfectly imperfect part of you of where you are as opposed to where you should be.

That’s exactly like this show is one of those for both of us. We have talked about it so many times. We are getting started. The ball is in motion, but we are not where we should be. That’s what stopped us from fully pressing into this. It will be better next time and next week, month, or year, but we are starting here, and it is what it is with what we know, and now it’s time. At the beginning of this episode, we were talking about, “I know I can do better, so now it’s up to me to do as much as I can with what I know, knowing that’s going to grow.”

What’s interesting is that after connection, the next greatest thing we humans want and look for is the freedom to live free. What’s interesting is that it’s already been given to us, especially if you are a believer. It says that once it sets you free, you are free indeed. We live from freedom. What’s so interesting here now, and I have been saying this to myself all the time, is you can hide or be free.

You don’t get to do both because the minute you hide and go to protect yourself again, your armor is on, and you are no longer free, as opposed to the minute that you go, “I’m going to stay open and be vulnerable, but I’m not doing this for them. I’m not doing this for the person I’m calling. I’m not doing this for whoever they are. I’m doing it for me.” The book The Untethered Soul talks about this all the time. The idea here is I’m not staying open, vulnerable, and real for you, the audience, the world, mom, dad, brother, sister, cousin, and the person I won’t ever even know at the skate park. I’m doing this for me.

In those moments, that could be easy to go, “I’m going to close off here, and I’m going to hide.” I sometimes would say, “Do I want to hide or be free?” By staying open and vulnerable and letting someone into the perfectly imperfect parts or the unfinished parts that you are talking about, or the soul of me, the all of me, I will stay free, and then it becomes almost a choice. Do I want to hide? Do I want to be free? Our question for you folks is to ask, where are you hiding? What would it look like if you were no longer hiding? Do you want to hide, or do you want to be free?

I’m going to end this a little bit differently, but if this is the first time you’ve read the show, get the book. There’s a workbook that comes with it. This is the foundation of who we are and what we are going to be talking about. Like and subscribe and check out the Facebook channel or the Facebook group. We have had a couple of people reach out like, “I want to get connected.” Join the Facebook community as we talk about some of these thoughts and ideas. We are going and pursuing our dreams and will be real, authentic, and vulnerable. We hope that you join and get engaged. Don’t do it on your own. Invite other people.

The whole premise of this book is a book club. That’s why there’s a journal and a workbook that goes with the book. Get the book. Get a few of your friends or family together and work through it. It’s not like a quick read. It’s meaty. It’s meant to challenge you and make you think and rethink. After you do that, it’s a process and a journey. It’s not that you read this book and you are good. Get connected, whether it’s to our community or another community, in the direction you want to go. I’m excited about this show. It’s going to get better and better as we move forward. Until next time, we appreciate you. We will see you soon.

 

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