Cocoa Griot- Let "auntie" wisdom and energy keep you uplifted!

• In tonight’s episode, I am sharing my strategy for coping in the midst of chaos and madness. This is the first episode of season 8. During this season I am going to share quotes each week that support positive thoughts about things I feel are important to many of us.
• I am sorry but the show will be on hiatus for a while. I am recovering from surgery.

• Melody Beattie quote- "Gratitude unlocks the fulness of life..."
• Annie Dillard quote- "A schedule defends from chaos and whim..."
• David Cronenberg quote- " Everybody's a mad scientist..."

• Please email me if you have suggestions or comments for my show, [email protected].
• I want to recommend this free book to you if you need a resource for encouraging quotes. https://inspiremetoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/365DailyQuotes.pdf

• In tonight’s episode, I am talking about the amazing lessons that I learned when I had an encounter with a man who was experiencing homelessness. He amplified my gratitude for the life I am living today.

• 01:51 Haiku
• 02:15 Meeting Terry
• 03:35 My Story

• Please email me if you have suggestions or comments for my show, [email protected] (The a is missing in cocoa in my email addy!)
• Please consider donating to https://backonmyfeet.org/ to disrupt the cycle of homelessness.

• In tonight’s episode, I am talking about the amazing lessons that I gleaned from studying the history of Michelangelo's statue of David. There are relevant life lessons I am grateful to share with you about the challenges of creating this statue.

• 01:33 What others deem as fixed, may not be the case for someone with vision.
• 02:46 One man's trash is another man's treasure.
• 03:57 Don't be overly influenced by the opinions of others.

• Please email me if you have suggestions or comments for my show, [email protected] (The a is missing in cocoa in my email addy!)

Please bear with me while I work to find a show notes format that is best for my listeners. There is a transcript attached to this episode.

• In tonight’s episode, I am talking about quotes from the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson. If you have been struggling with change during the pandemic, I have some great insights to share with you in this show.

• 01:13“Sometimes, Hem, things change and they are never the same again. This looks like one of those times. That's life! Life moves on. And so should we.”
• 02:11 “Integrity is telling myself the truth. And honesty is telling the truth to other people.”
• 02:59“Noticing small changes early helps you adapt to the bigger changes that are to come.” 

• Please email me if you have suggestions or comments for my show, [email protected] (The a is missing in cocoa in my email addy!)

Check out the book Who Moved My Cheese? by Dr. Spencer Johnson

00:13

Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast abode! I am Cocoa Griot, a fifty-something who is not going to keep you long but strives to keep you strong. Have you ever had one of those days that was so intense you literally wanted to rip the day off the calendar and pretend it never happened? I experienced that last week and then I had to scold myself for allowing myself to get in the negativity zone. I have ingredients that I keep on hand to enhance my happiness and when I summoned them, my blue skies dissipated and there was sun shining in my life again. Let me just say I am only speaking based on my own experience. Ithought I would share a little info about what turns me around when I am down. This evening I was to share with you my ingredients for happiness: loving wisely, giving freely, and laughing frequently.

01:18

What does love wisely mean? I believe that when you love wisely your eyes are always wide open and you don’t overlook red flags when they are paraded in your face. A couple of sayings from my mom and grandmother come to mind when I think about loving wisely. Everything that looks good to you ain’t good for you my mom used to say. That handsome man or striking woman could be the source of immeasurable trouble dear listeners. Sometimes we are fascinated by a person’s outward appearance and we don’t take into account the inside may not be attractive. This is the case with he=who=shall-not be named. He was strikingly handsome but nutty as a fruitcake. A saying my grandmother shared with me describes my situation with he-who=shall-not-be-named. “The same thing that can make you laugh can make you cry!” In my case, it would often be within the same day. There was such an emotional roller coaster ride I would teeter between elation and despair in the span of a few hours. Now what does love look like for me? Loving wisely involves making self-love a priority. Understanding that when I am healthy and whole, a relationship has a better chance of surviving than when I don’t make myself a priority. On that day when I was struggling last week, I just focused on pampering myself. That was the downpayment on elevating my mood.

03:03

Living freely is easier said than done. I have a few strategies I like to employ which support this goal. One of the most difficult things for me to do, but it is absolutely necessary, is to recognize when my cup is full. Part of me sees this as giving up, but the reality is it is a self-preservation tool. When you chain yourself to a task it can drain you. I find myself overly committed to doing things for others sometimes. This eats up my available free time and it is difficult to stay emotionally upbeat when you feel like there is always something to do. I am going to say this and please hear me out. Voicemail exists for a reason. You don’t have to answer every call, text, or email immediately. There are times when you have to liberate yourself and just be free. It seems we are conditioned to quickly respond to communication once we receive it, but that is not the ideal way to live. I unplugged for a little while last week and it was an incredibly enjoyable experience. The biggest piece of advice I am sharing is know when you are at your limit, and out of respect for your own sanity, take some downtime to re-energize yourself. Don’t get caught up in the Atlas complex. You don’t have to take on the weight of the world!

04:34

The most effective part of my trifecta of improving my mood is to laugh frequently. There is a library of material on Netflix, youtube, and old sitcoms that I consult when I need to lift myself out of the dumps. I recognize that everyone has different tastes in comedy. I enjoy clean comedy because I want to be able to recommend the subject matter to all types of people. It amazes how Lucille Ball working on the chocolate factory assembly line still makes me chuckle like it did years ago when I first saw that episode....

Thank you for turning in tonight. I am working on getting my transcript service reactivated.

Please visit tonight’s sponsor at pair.com/free to get one free month of web hosting.

There is no transcript for tonight’s episode. Please accept my apology for this. 😊

You can't force someone to respect you, but you can refuse to be disrespected.

-Anonymous

Please visit the sponsor of tonight's show at www.pair.com/free.

My mistakes are not edited out of this podcast, because they remind me I am human. So many people want everything to be perfect, that is not the place where I choose to live and I am happy!

00:12

Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast abode! I am Cocoa Griot an enthusiastic fifty-something who is delighted to talk to you about life, love, and a smattering of other topics. I feel very confident when I share information about topics I am very familiar with on this show. Tonight’s topic is a little different for me because I love my job! Many of you know I work as a professional mentor and I absolutely feel like it is purpose-driven work. I don’t just make a living, I make a difference! I know I am one of the lucky ones when it comes to the work I am blessed to do. Something very interesting happened during the pandemic and many people have separated themselves from employment. This phenomenon is known as the Great Resignation. I decided to check out what the experts are saying caused the Great Resignation. Tonight I am going to share three main reasons some experts say that work is not working for millions of Americans.

01:19

According to Dave Ramsey, one reason people quit their jobs was that the pandemic caused a philosophical reset. People literally realized that life was too short to spend it doing something they did not enjoy. Let's think about how work changed for so many people. There were layoffs, furloughs, working from home hybrid models of work, and the list goes on and on when it comes to the district disruption of the hamster wheel many of us lived on for years. the past gave some individuals time to rethink what work meant to them. After some of us thought deeply about our work. We let it go. Yep, pulled up an Elsa moment right out of the hat. In September 2021 Alone 4.4 million individuals quit their jobs. That is a staggering number. And it's hard to comprehend that many people just said I quit. The reality is that in the first seven months of 2021 25 million Americans separated themselves from their employer. It made me think about this quote. " Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the ark and professionals build the Titanic Titanic. Okay, I cannot talk tonight.

02:27

Beyond the philosophical reasons, there are other reasons people quit their jobs. Andrew Flowers, a labor economist, offers insight as to why some workers are quitting their jobs and it really boils down to money matters. Mr. Flowers compared the wages of job switchers and people who remained in jobs. Interestingly enough he noted there was significant earnings for people who chose to switch jobs. The fact is that many companies realize that in this current economy wages have to increase to attract and hire new employees. Mr. Flowers stated that companies have to start looking at their salary scales more frequently than on an annual basis in order to stay competitive in the job hiring sphere. Evidence of this is all around in my community. When I saw pizza chains offering $3,000 sign-on bonuses I was shocked!

Before I reveal the final reason some experts are saying work isn’t working for millions of Americans, I want to share a word from tonight's exciting sponsor of this episode.

03:31

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0:05

Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast bold I am Cocoa Griot, just a 50 something who is so excited to talk to you dear listener about life love, and a plethora of other topics. I don't know about you but every month when I look at my credit card bill, I examine the number of subscriptions that I have like subscriptions to Netflix and I think about how am I ever going to let these things go? Then I remember the reason that I get these services is because of the way they are finite in my mind. I don't think I'm going to be paying for Netflix forever. There's a kind of temporariness to the relationship between me and the company I'm subscribed to. So that started me thinking about how love is today when everybody is swiping to shop for love like you shop for a premium video streaming service or you shop for your groceries through a delivery service. Does love deserve more than what we give to our subscription services?

01:25

Tonight I want to ask a question, is it time to cancel the subscription mentality of love? The reason I believe we have a subscription mentality of love is based on three aspects of the current mindset about relationships. Number one, when you are shopping for love, you are making comparisons between people to say what amenities do I get over here as opposed to getting over there? Now that's fine when you talk about a video streaming service or even how you're going to get your groceries, but are we really being fair to ourselves if we are searching for love that way? Now I'm not knocking online dating if that's your thing, my personal experience with it has not been that great, but I am a 50 something so that might account for the slim pickings that I had to go through. But all kidding aside, I really do wonder if in our mind when we go through these catalogs of men or women or whatever we're shopping for, we just think this is not necessarily Mr. or Mrs. Right, but Mr. and Mrs. Right now until I'm offered a better deal. And it really concerns me because I think we sell ourselves short and relationships short because we're so hung up on this fear of missing out. This FOMO mental battle of if I go with Choice a choice B might come along and there's probably more of that for me than I'm going to get with Choice a. That is like comparing what's on Netflix and Hulu and deciding who you're going to go with based on the offerings of that particular subscription service. 

02:32

Another way that I truly believe we are treating love like a subscription service is when it comes to commitment. Now what I said in the last Point kind of addresses it but I want to drill down even more. Someone told me that do you know you can look at marriage or marriages as just a series of events that you participate in your lifetime? I sat back and thought about that and I said there was nothing in my marriage vows that said until you feel like flipping to another Channel go ahead and focus on this channel. But that was kind of the equivalent of it. In other words when you get bored with this program, just call up another program. Call up another service and you're good. That is not how I view marriage. The vows are pretty clear if you choose to take them. In sickness and health And for richer or poorer really means something to me. I can't look at marriage as just an event I attended because it was something to do at the time. It's deeper for me than that. It means connecting with another individual and being there for one another throughout all of life's challenges no matter what comes along. Nothing could have prepared me for what happened in the end before my husband passed away. I had no idea that I will be changing his diapers before he left this planet. But I did that because of those words in sickness and in health and I also knew that if the shoe was on the other foot he wouldn't hesitate to do the same thing for me. We have to know that who we couple ourselves with is not...

00:08

Good evening and welcome to my humble podcast abode. I am Cocoa Griot, a fifty-something who is so ecstatic to share my thoughts with you about life, love, and a host of other topics. It seems that I blinked and 2021 is just about done! This is the time of year when many people start to think about how they want to live differently in the new year than they did in 2021. I want to share a few plans on how to make 2022 Happy You Year! This topic came to me because so many of my friends are really not living for themselves. I have to beg them to do for themselves and it makes me sad. I believe you can make yourself a priority without neglecting the people you love. In fact, making yourself a priority will often improve your relationships with those you love. Three areas of life can make a huge difference in 2022 being Happy You Year. 

1:05

The first domain is time. Commit to giving yourself at least one uninterrupted hour of each day to do something you want to do! It could be reading, watching a tv program, exercising, writing, or any activity you enjoy. When I say one hour, I mean one solid hour! Do not bargain and take two thirty-minute sessions, or 4 15 minute sessions. You are totally worth taking at least one hour for yourself. This is something I do the first hour of the day upon waking. It is my time to meditate and be in tune with how I am feeling. Nothing can interrupt this time! It is my job to protect this time and honor it. In doing so, I feel that I am putting a down payment on an amazing day! There are times when I have had to wake up an hour earlier than I normally would in order to have this protected time. To be clear, this is the minimum you should give yourself each day. If you can find more time, that is wonderful.

2:08

The second path to Happy You Year is developing a relationship with the word no. That’s right, learn to use this word without guilt. You have a right to refuse anything that compromises your peace, sanity, or financial health. When people call you and invite you into the latest chaos in their lives, you have a right to say no. Exit the conversation and focus on something positive that will help to lift your spirits. When people ask you to correct financial misdeeds they have made and funding them will make you financially vulnerable, say no. People often finance their wants and expect you to finance their needs. Sometimes you can say no without saying a word. Voicemail was invented for a reason. Allow people to go to voicemail if you don’t feel up to dealing with a conversation that you know will drain you. It is not a given that you have to respond to every text message you receive. Sometimes we are so caught up in being nice people that we are not nice to ourselves. We contort ourselves into incredibly uncomfortable positions to appease others. The irony is that we will cross oceans for people that would not hop over a puddle for us. Know your limits and respect them by using the word no when an occasion calls for it.

03:19

I am saving one of the most difficult habits to adapt for last. Do not argue with anyone! I am going to say that again. Do not argue with anyone. I struggle with this probably more than I should, but I am going to tell you how I get out of the you will hear my perspective zone. I have talked about this before and I want to reiterate the importance of respecting your truth. The core of many differences I have had with others is because I stopped respecting my truth and recognizing that others have their truth. When I respect and own my truth, I will not try to ram it down your throat. There is no need because I am comfortable with my own truth. When I make it my business to get you to honor my truth, I have lost sight of what really matters. I don’t have to fight about something that is my truth. The saddest thing in the world is to watch two people who are just going at it and neither person is listening to the...