Ends with Z

What kind of friend are you anyway? Do you have close friends at work or just work acquaintances? Have you ever met a person who tried a little too hard to be your friend to learn later they only cared about your failure? Making and maintaining meaningful friendships is real work! It doesn't just magically happen. Join us for part 3 of our Friendship series where we talk about having friends at work, and ask how, why, and can we make friends at different stages of our life. We dish on what makes good boundaries and how to recognize and navigate the dreaded frenemy trap.

We continue our friendship series and dive deeper into making friends, keeping friends, and breaking up with friends. We talk about platonic love (or friends without those benefits), the modern concept of your soulmate also being your best friend, and why statistics say we’re failing at making friends and how to fix this. Join us as we spill the tea while we dish on our attachment theory in our relationships and debate why there may be a little bit of Colin Farrell in all of us.

This week we dive into an underrated topic: the evolution of friendships. We get personal as we discuss the correlation between how we evolve as people and how our friendships evolve with us. What do you need from friends now versus when you are in your 50s, 30s, 20s, or in high school? Is your BFF today the same one you had 20 years ago? Do you even have a BFF? What friends do we need as our lives change? What purpose do they serve in real life vs. online? Exec. Producer, Shawn Meaux, joins the conversation as we start to explore the importance of friendship to our wellness, discussing what true friendship requires and what it looks like as we grow, why friendship breakups can be healthy, and why it might just be the greatest love of all.

This week’s episode, we have a fan of the show with us, Carlos, a hard-working, financial services professional who recently left his job, having been in the industry 16+ years. He’s listened to every episode, but the recent ones on quiet quitting, grind culture, work/life balance podcasts, and self-advocacy really resonated with him. Carlos is here to talk to us about his own, real life journey in self-realization, what it finally took to get him to make the move, and why quitting is the best thing he’s ever done!

Are you an advocate…for yourself? These days, we’re all about supporting each other, but sometimes we forget to be there for ourselves. Join us this week as Cecile and Juan recap Juan’s recent health scare and why it reminds all of us at Ends with Z how important it is to be our own biggest advocates, when it comes to our health and wellness, and maintaining hope during times of uncertainty. And, in matters of the heart and our health, surrounding ourselves with a good support system, love (and sometimes even tough love) is the path to whole healing.

Do you have a secret sauce to life and are you willing to share it? This episode we talk about Juan's recent trip to Vegas for one of the nation’s biggest journalism conventions. We discuss how media careers and job needs have shifted and how we can make these changes work for all of us. From the younger one-person journalism band to teaching older generations the latest apps necessary to keep up with changing needs, we reveal why it's advantageous for everyone to help each other. We also discuss the dangers of toxic Queen Bee mentality and how to better balance the stresses of a changing workplace. Sometimes the secret isn’t in the sauce, it’s in the sharing.

This week’s episode, we discuss why “the grind” is overrated, how channel surfing can be good for your mental health, and what being a man, woman, and successful whole human looks like in today's world. How do you unwind? Taking just 5 minutes to chill out can help prevent you from being burnt out. Grab your slippers and a glass of wine, you won’t want to miss this one.

The answer may depend on which generation you ask. With older ones having internalized it and younger ones glorifying it, grind or hustle culture has been around for hundreds of years and is embedded in the DNA of American exceptionalism. It is our work culture. For many, modern-day work culture involves working a regular job plus a side hustle, working multiple part-time jobs, or working well past 55+ hours per week in a full-time job. The truth is, left unchecked, grind culture can be harmful to your well-being and physical health, and is unsustainable as individuals and for corporations. But how do we stop grinding, when being overworked is often seen as a badge of honor with 4.2M Instagram posts tagged #riseandgrind, when society views it as a measure of success, or when some of us must work multiple jobs just to survive? With 1440 minutes in a day, the answer may be to take 5 of those minutes each day to make a conscious choice to power down, instead of always knuckling down. Start building your different work culture and get more out of life.

Go with the flow, be like water, embrace change. They all mean the same thing: maintaining flexibility and leaning into change. We’re back this week to discuss what being adaptable means for each person, how to not fear change, and how to access your own flexibility for more happiness this summer season. Sit down, take a listen, and get ready to lean into change!

Summer is here and that means vacay, baby! Yes, we’ve all had the wind knocked out of us lately with ever-increasing prices, especially when we fill up. So how do we get our three R’s: rest, relaxation, and relationship time, when everything is so expensive? The answer is proper planning while adopting a flexible mindset that embrace choices to maximize your experience and minimize the stress and cost. In this episode, we discuss staycations, family bonding, past travels, and current adventuring in a way that won’t break the bank but still allow us to dive into the three R’s with some insightful perspective and helpful tips.