If everything matters, then how’s a HUMAN supposed to pull off maximizing like a robot? Spoiler alert: you can’t.
The truth is that you DON’T have to “do it all” to be a happy, whole, well-rounded person. In fact, consider how being selectively lazy will actually maximize your growth where it counts the most.
Kendra Adachi–podcaster and writer–wants you to be a GENIUS about the things that matter, and LAZY about the things that don’t.
This is the path to deep and lasting progress. As living, complicated, breathing humans, we have to honor and lean into our limitations in order to amplify our biggest priorities–including what helps us feel alive!
Kendra will teach you how to be “selectively lazy,” to learn how to recognize what matters to you, how to let people in and fully belong to both others and yourself, and how this can all lead to exponential growth–not less of it.
About a few other things…
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TRANSCRIPT
Monica: [00:00:00] Kendra Adachi, I’m so excited that you made the time to be on the show. Thank you.
Kendra: [00:00:05] Well, I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
Monica: [00:00:07] I’m trying to do that thing where you say I’m excited instead of I’m freaking out, because you are someone I admire so much.
I admire their work that you do. Your book was incredible. I know you’re having another one come out, we’ll talk about that. But you are here because my community led me to you because they recognize themselves in you and the way that you teach about how we can grow in our lives. But let’s just start with the premise here that a lot of my community are recovering perfectionists, but they don’t even think they are because they don’t think they qualify as a perfectionist because they just say, Oh, I’m lazy.
Or I’m a non-starter or I’m a procrastinator, or I don’t finish. And we have a lot of perspective on this. Thanks to you. So let’s just start with first talking about, why it’s okay to be quote unquote lazy and how you discovered this yourself.
Kendra: [00:00:58] Yeah, well I’m so that’s, those are such kind words. Thank you.
I, what I like to do is remind people of what the whole point of being a Lazy Genius is it’s to be a genius about the things that matter. And lazy about the things that don’t and, you know, so often we think that everything should matter. And then when everything cannot matter, we’re like, screw it. I’m not going to do, like, it just becomes this all or nothing thing.
And I know that when I was growing up, like I thought, well, We’ll just get real personal, real fast. I grew up in an abusive home and and so there, there was a lot of pressure on me. So like that I put on myself assumptions that I made. Lies that I believed where it was like, okay. If I don’t mess up, if I am the perfect daughter, if I get amazing grades, if I never disappoint my parents at any possible way.
Maybe everything will be okay. Maybe they’ll stay together. Maybe my dad won’t be, you know, all these things. It was just too much for a little nine year old brain to handle. But when you grow up thinking that poor, very poorly thinking that what I do impacts everyone else’s life situation, everyone else’s assessment of me and my actual value in the world.
That’s like a, that’s a lot to come out from under. And I think too, like, I don’t know if you have this experience, but people who tend to be quote, unquote perfectionist and therefore are pretty good at some things, right? Like you show up, well, you, you you’re, you’re the valedictorian, you are the most dependable babysitter ever.
Like all these different things, like when you’re growing up, that behavior’s rewarded, like being a perfectionist is rewarded like culturally and by the adults in our lives and our friends are like, you’re so you’re so perfect and all that. And, and so you think that if you fail. They’re not going to see you that way anymore.
They’re not going to see you with favor anymore. And so it’s just, this is a lot, a lot to carry that kind of pressure. And so when you become an adult, like I think my biggest moves away from realizing not just the perfectionist with perfectionism was not sustainable, but more like, Oh wait, this is like keeping me from being the person I actually am, which neither of those are great, was when I had kids.
And you don’t have to have kids in order to have like a come apart about your perfectionism, but it happens really fast when you have kids. And so when I had kids, I just remember being like, This is not a life that I, this is not the person I want to be. This is not a life I want to live. This is not a way that I want to model to my children either.
And so I just slowly started to be like, okay, how can I move away from this way of being? And my first move was, was, well, we’re not going to try it anything. It was like hardcore, lazy. We’re going to be so lazy about all the things. And then I was so sad because my house was dirty and I didn’t feel like a person.
And there are certain, I love order, like genuinely. I love order. And I didn’t know where that fit in being lazy. It was so frustrating. And so that’s kind of where this whole mindset and way of being of a Lazy Genius began and sort of evolved over those years of like, Oh wait, I can care about things.
I just need to care about the things that matter.
Monica: [00:04:43] And to you, which is really hard for perfectionists w whatever pendulum swing they’re on, whether they’re the lazy kind or the genius kind, and, and our community, we call us the underachieving or the overachieving kind. You know what other side they’re on, the identity is misplaced. It’s to the exterior. And like you said, you know, perfectionism, well, I’m going to say this in different words, but perfectionism can take you far but only so far. And that’s when you get caught in that cycle of going, you know, bouncing back and forth between either side and you’re not fulfilled, you don’t have a center of identity.
And so let’s, before we kind of dig into some other things I’d like to know, how did you figure out for you, what matters then, because that I think is a trap that we get caught in when we have been so outward focused. Regardless of which side we’re on.
Kendra: [00:05:32] Absolutely. This is the question that I get asked probably more than anything other than when are you going to do an episode about moving?
Monica: [00:05:39] Oh yeah, that would be a really good one for sure.
Kendra: [00:05:43] We’re working on it. It’s coming. But no, I get asked all the time. How do I know what matters? Like how can I figure that out for myself and. I do think that there is perhaps a slight advantage in how I am personally wired, which is that I Intuit, I feel it in my body when something is right.
Not everybody experiences that, but I do think we all have ways that we feel affirmed and confirmed and what makes us feel like ourselves. And so for me, there’s just this energy that goes up my spine when I’m like, Oh, I’m being myself right now. Like this is giving me life.
This is giving me such tremendous energy, even though it might make me tired or whatever, it doesn’t feel like I am chasing a moving invisible, arbitrary finish line. It feels like, Oh no, this, this actually is making me more of who I already am. I’m not trying to become this other person that everyone thinks I’m supposed to be, or that I think I’m supposed to be in order for everybody to like me.
It’s more, I feel like this is who I am and I’m just becoming more of her. And so I had just tried to pay attention to that feeling over the years of like, when do I feel that way? I feel that way when I cook for people. I feel that way, when I have people in my home, I feel that way when I listen to music and when I share music with other people I feel that way when I read, like when I’m in a story, I just feel like myself when I’m in someone’s story.
Whether it’s like reading a book or even just listening to someone else share their story, like a friend, I just come alive. When I’m in a story. And so I’ve just been paying attention to those things. I don’t come alive when my hands are digging in the dirt. One of my best friends, she sent me a text yesterday and she was like, I’m sorry, I didn’t get back to you.
I’ve been digging in the dirt all day and I’m so happy. And she literally sent me a picture of her dirt on her fingernails. And I was like, I love you so much. I’m so glad that matters to you. And to me, I’m like, Oh my word, that’s like the worst. I don’t want to do that at all. But that’s the thing is that we all, we need permission to choose what matters to us and to notice what makes us feel like ourselves and to do that more, to support that more of our choices and not make someone else feel bad for their choices? Actually just today I was reading some comments on a post that I did about making a to-do list and someone had very understandably had said something like, Oh, this makes me feel so much better than all of the journaling snobs. And it was like, Oh no, no, no, no.
Those people aren’t snobs. They care about journaling or they care about making their pages beautiful, like that matters to them. So they can be a genius about that. It doesn’t have to matter to you. We don’t have to put other people’s choices down to make ours seem better or feel better. So it’s just this, like, That’s why it’s the least Genius Collective.
It is this collective, it’s this group of people who are accepting of each other’s choices, even if they’re different from our own.
Monica: [00:08:48] Because it removes the fear of not being enough when you just accept it’s okay for them to do something that way that matters to them. This is what matters to me. It gives you ownership of living your life and the choices you’ve had without having to compare, or have it be aligned with someone else.
And, you know, you talked about how. Part of the problem with perfectionism is that everything has to matter. And the truth is, is that something has to give and you can do perfectionism for so long. Like everything can matter for so long, but it’s impossible to sustain. That’s something we actually do talk about a lot in this community.
So why is it okay then to be lazy because you have to be, how can they change their mindset to, to be able to own it’s okay. For me to not care about this thing, because it doesn’t matter to me.
Kendra: [00:09:35] In some ways it could be for some people that lazy, that word itself is kind of like a complicated word. Because It has connotations of you don’t care that there’s no effort that it’s a dismissive negative sort of energy. And so you don’t have to use that word. You know, if you feel like I don’t want to be lazy about this. I mean, I love the word. I love being lazy about certain. It gives me great permission.
I think it’s okay. But I also understand that there is a lot of, there’s a lot of baggage around certain words. And so really the idea of selective laziness, you said before we hit record, which I was like, I wrote that down that is of selective laziness is he idea of really just prioritizing, right?
You just said it, not, everything can matter. Now you could say to yourself, but this really, I mean, but this does matter. It does. It does, but does it matter as much? As the other thing. Okay. So it’s just more about like, almost like a hierarchy of what matters, give your best energy to what matters most. If you still have energy leftover to kind of take, take care of the things, you know, that kind of trickle down at the bottom of that pyramid or whatever do that.
Like you don’t have to just throw the baby out with the bath water. We’re so extreme with that. We think that if we’re lazy about something that we never give it any attention or whatever. That’s just not the case. It’s just about prioritizing. It’s about saying what matters most here.
I want to give my energy to what matters most. And then it, if maybe that reframe can go like, Oh right. I’m just not giving my best energy to this thing. That doesn’t matter as much.
Monica: [00:11:15] I love that. I love that way of thinking about just putting on different levels. I get still pulled into that all or nothing way of thinking.
Cause I’m like, “oh, if I’m about body positivity. And I just had an expert on that, I’m like, does that mean, should I not wear makeup?” Like I just kind of go to those extremes there. So it helps to think, no, it’s just more about prioritizing what is worth more energy and more effort. And that’s where you talk about being a genius.
So what does being a genius look like? How does that translate practically to a life in the day to day.
Kendra: [00:11:46] As you name what matters most to you, you’re giving yourself permission to tend to that in what ways you need to. And that could mean in terms of time and money. You know, if you really want to be a genius about having I don’t know, like cooking with organic food or something, you can’t do that cheaply, you know?
And like you have to prep a lot of things or, or you’re going to have to pay someone else to do it for you. And so it’s like that. If that’s. If that matters a lot, if that matters most, then you have to, you have to be a genius about it in some way. Another side of that, though, when you were just talking about, I feel that all or nothing with the, the body positivity stuff all the time, like I I love to walk.
It is so good for my soul to be outside and listen to music. And I live by a Lake. And so I just walk around the Lake. I could cry thinking about it. It’s like one of the deepest ways that I can feel like myself, that I can come back. So me too. Yeah. But because of like all the garbage around moving your body and exercising and stuff, I’m like, wait, am I allowed to walk?
Because, Oh, my word, like, I don’t think I’m allowed to do that anymore, but really no. What matters about the walk is not like burning calories or whatever. It’s about what it does on my inside. It’s about my soul. And so when I release that, that’s me being a genius, that’s me doing the work of naming the lie, talking to my counselor and becoming educated about what’s really going on in my own brain and in cultural messages that I’m getting and saying, no.
This matters to me, feeling like myself matters to me and putting in my earbuds and taking a 20 minute walk around the lake by my house. This is one of the quickest, most efficient genius ways I can come back to myself. If it’s at the end of the day. End of the day being like four 30, five o’clock and you know, it’s like, I’ve been momming.
I have three kids, I have a job. I’m making a meal and I will call my husband. And when I know he’s leaving for work and I’m like, Hey, listen, when you walk in the door, I am walking out of the door because Kendra’s got a walk and I’ll be gone 20 minutes. And I’m a different person when I come back. And so it sometimes isn’t even about what you choose to do. Being a genius can be about how you choose to think about what you’re doing. So it really is across the board. And that’s why. That’s why I love this concept so much. That’s why I love the book that I wrote that has principles. It’s like principles. are different than like here are rules to follow.
It was like, no, no, no rules change based on what matters. Like they change them. How many children you have if you’re working or not, if you’re in a pandemic or not like, yeah, live your life by rules. You can’t, you can live your life by principles. And so I think that is the, if you can’t tell it makes me really excited to think like, Oh, we can live in this fullness and this whole heartedness of like, what really, really matters to us.
And, but the way that we are a genius about that, even that can be different, even that is versatile and personalized and all of that. And I just am so grateful that that’s the case. Yeah.
Monica: [00:14:54] And I mean, especially right down, we’re seeing that even what matters to us has to still look different during a pandemic and outside a pandemic.
And. That’s okay. Like you have that built in flexibility, which is very opposite of what it’s like when you are only doing the all or nothing extremes there. So I know that I have listeners who are loving this so much, but they’re so out of practice in both knowing who they are first. And also cultivating those moments of recognition.
Like this is me and this is what matters. And I was wondering if you could give us some suggestions on where can they start. If they’re at ground zero here, how can they start becoming this lazy genius?
Kendra: [00:15:36] Right. One of the 13 Lazy Genius principles is to start small. And I think that’s actually the best way to begin right now is if, if we are, when we are at ground zero, our tendency as perfectionist, either overachieving or underachieving is to build the grandest system or machine to support it.
And to be like, Oh, I, I do not, I do not exist at ground zero. Like there, like there is a, there is something in me that says, if you cannot do this amazingly and completely at, in the beginning, don’t even do it. Like what’s the point give up. Yeah. That’s so silly. That’s so silly. So but it’s also understandable.
And so that’s why one of the principles is to start small. So even with this, even with what I’m about to share, I would say like, to not. Do all of them just start small with one thing today and then try one more tomorrow or whatever, like to not build this massive machine that you have to maintain and it’s going to break and then you’re going to give up again.
So start small another principle. That offers so many, like tiny little things to sort of get you started about what matters is the Magic Question. That’s another principle. The Magic Question is “what can I do now to make life easier later?” And you can substitute any word for the word life. So if you are thinking about something that matters to you, Or something that doesn’t, that you still kind of have to do because we’re like responsible grownups.
I don’t like paying my bills. I don’t like having to sit down and like do numbers and stuff, but if I don’t you’re in trouble. So it’s sort of like you have to name what matters most, what matters most is like being fiscally responsible and taking care of my family, as opposed to like my dislike of this thing.
And so if you can say, I can say to myself, what can I do now to make paying bills easier later? I’m just going to put them all in one place. And I’m going to know that the due date always is the sixth of the month. That’s like the first one for all of them. And so I’m just going to pay them all at one time, I’m going to batch it.
That’s another principle. I’m not going to pay the bills for me, cause I don’t want to be in bill paying mode every time a bill comes in because it makes me so sad. Yeah. So I want to do it all at once. So I’m going to batch it and do it all at once, but I’m going to make that easier. I’m going to magic question that process by putting everything in the same place.
Together. And then by also knowing in my head, the date, it’s like the first week of the month, you got to pay bills, always. You got to pay bills. So the Magic Question is like, it’s magic because you can literally magic question at anything. You can make anything easier later, you can make a relationship easier later.
What can I do now to make that a holiday gathering to make that mother’s day, we’ll say that’s the next like kind of holiday coming. If you have a tricky relationship with your mom, let’s say, what can I do now to make kind of the awkwardness of mother’s day easier later. Call your mom a couple more times than you normally would, rather than having this like arbitrary, like it’s mother’s day, we should hang out and you haven’t talked to her because maybe it’s hard.
Maybe you write her a note or send her a text instead of calling. If that’s a little bit easier rather than entering into difficulties in the relationship that you don’t have the margin for right now or whatever it is like you can literally Magic Question on anything it’s the best. So that’s, that’s one thing that opens up a lot of doors.
Another principle that I think is a very start small kind of principle is to Decide Once that’s the first principle in the book and it is what it sounds like. You decide one time, a decision that you make often. So a common one that a lot of people share on Instagram. They’re like I’m deciding once is what I call a Monday uniform.
So you wear the same thing every Monday, because these can be hard. And so I was like, I’m just, you know what I want to feel good about my Monday. I want to feel like myself that could mean like black pants and a bold lip that could mean we are wearing pajamas that look socially acceptable. Like it doesn’t really matter what that, what the answer is.
Yeah. But releasing that that need to make a decision often and over and over again and just making it one time can be super helpful. So admittedly, every single principle, the whole thing about being a genius, you can’t be a genius about what matters. If you don’t know what matters and you can’t be lazy about what doesn’t, if you don’t know what you’re going to let go.
So it really does start with what matters to you. You do not have to have a complete list immediately after this episode. Yes. Just start to pay attention to how you’re feeling when you do certain things, what you long for, what you’re missing, what makes you come alive when you’re having conversations?
Even like when you’re, when you’re cooking, like, do you feel better cooking when music’s playing or when it’s quiet or when you’ve got people in there with you? Like. Just start to pay attention to what matters. And then you can slowly and in very small ways, start to make choices that make that thing happen more often.
Monica: [00:20:38] I feel like you almost are creating your own handbook of what matters because when I started this About Progress. I originally was going to call it Mediocre Monica, because I was realizing I had to find a middle ground. I had to find the middle ground between only doing the all or only doing the nothing.
And I also had to find myself and it, and I started this whole discovery process that we call, Do Something, you just do something, not all, not nothing. And it changed my life, but it wasn’t overnight. And I didn’t have a handbook right away. It was more about what you’re talking about. Just paying attention to those signals, to those feelings, to the recognition of here, I am like, that’s me. And this matters to me. What did that look like for you as you were figuring that out and maybe what has it looked like for people in your community as they’re in that beginning phase of just trying to start to recognize the seeds and starting to plant them and kind of seeing what that process looks like.
Kendra: [00:21:36] I wish I could remember the quote. There’s a quote about like your, your life is made up of what you do every day or something. Sure. I’m lazy about that. About quotes. I don’t know. But the idea really we have in our head that it’s like, we have to create our life almost like we’re building a robot, or like designing a house or something that is like, start to finish a to Z and then you’re done. And then you live. That’s not how it goes. That’s just not what life is. Right.
Monica: [00:22:10] We are not robots That shoudl be on yoru next t-shirt.
I actually
Kendra: [00:22:15] wanted that to be the tagline as like, cause perfect. Perfect is only for robots or something. But that’s what we do. That’s what we tend to do is think we have to know everything that we’re going to do. We have to have five-year plans and ten-year plans. We have to make all these choices now for later, but not in a Magic Question way.
It’s almost like, Oh no, no, no, no. We have to. We have to secure what we know to be true or what we think should be true right now. And then we get really grippy and grit our teeth, and we’re not a person anymore. We put up walls and we don’t let people in and all these things. And so the thing that I have noticed, which is not a sexy answer, but the thing that I’ve noticed change in my life as I start small as I just pay attention and go slower and slower, is I just feel good at the end of the day.
I mean, that’s really what it is. Not every day. I mean, I’m still tired. It’s not like days. Aren’t hard. Circumstances are hard, but when something really difficult happens, which this year, I feel like side note, I feel like this is true of so many people. I mean, obviously the pandemic has been incredibly difficult.
There’s so many things that have happened in America that we’re just kind of at a reckoning. And also on top of that, it feels like everyone in my life is suffering through something incredibly difficult. Like everyone in my real life is hurting deeply. Like one of my friend’s husband died a year into the pandemic. It’s like, Oh, he’s grief. It’s like deep grief all around us. And so I’m not saying that that’s not going to happen, but in some ways what we do with our perfectionistic ways and building it big and trying to turn ourselves into robots is like that, that stuff isn’t going to happen.
Or it’s not going to knock us down. Or I don’t know that we’re going to be ready for anything. And there’s this like, Almost a warrior mentality when really it’s like, we just want to be humans. We just want to be human beings who are living every day. I was going to say the best we can, but even that language can get a little tricky around perfectionists because what’s the definition of best.
Sure. We’re just, we’re just trying to do our best with what we have that day. Right. We’re just trying to be the most we can be of ourselves with the day that we’re given and the circumstances that we’re given. And so the more that I have, let go of the big machine, the more in tune I am with that feeling every day.
And so my, and the day after day after day after day, that’s the life. That’s the life I want to live. It’s okay. That I don’t have a journal where I track how many glasses of water I’m drinking. Like that’s not that doesn’t matter to me. I don’t need to have graphs of how I’m doing as a human. I feel it. But I only feel it if I let go of the graphs. Yeah. That makes sense. Yes, it totally does. That’s kind of how it’s impacted my life personally.
Monica: [00:25:18] A lot of that is just being able to move, you know what, we’ve talked about a few times on this episode, moving from the external validation measures, metrics to the internal ones. And that can be pretty painful in the beginning. I think, especially when you are so out of practice, because sometimes, who you find inside it isn’t so pretty. Yeah. You know,
At first. Yeah.
Kendra: [00:25:40] And you’re, and I remember one of the conversations in my life, and this was, I don’t know, probably eight years ago. I was with some girlfriends, we were out of town on a weekend together. I miss those, you know that we were out of town together. And I basically, one of them was like, I feel like, you know, all these things about me. You have shown up for me in my life when things are hard, I’ve shared all these vulnerable things with you, which I feel like people who are perfectionist and have it all together, tend to be the wise friend and their relationships because they have everything together.
Quote unquote, they do not, spoiler. And she said, I feel like, you know, so much about me, but I don’t, I don’t really know you. Like, I, I don’t really know you. And I thought back to how many times friends had said that to me in the past. I don’t know you. So we’re sitting in that hotel room and I started to tell them my story. And then I realized that my vulnerability, as I was sharing, it was just, there was a cracking started to happen. And going back to what you were saying earlier about how scary it is when you start to let go of this way.
I remember sitting after I shared with them basically, the lie that I’d been believing my whole life, that I was responsible for the abuse in my family. Like, that’s what I realized. I didn’t know. I believed. Wow. And when I started to say it out loud, it was like, just everything shattered. It wasn’t even like an onion, like the layers of an onion.
It was like, literally I just literally fell apart. And I remember sitting in the, on the floor of this hotel bathroom alone, crying and saying out loud, I don’t know who I am anymore. Like everything was gone.
Monica: [00:27:23] Outside the black and white.
Kendra: [00:27:25] Yes. It was like, there was, I didn’t have anything to hold on to. It was just, it, it was an impossible feeling. And so I just want to like, go through this though. You should, you should like all this stuff because, but it is worth it because on the other side of that breaking is such a freedom that I. Didn’t know was possible. And, and I just want to say that with like counseling and people loving you and people do love you like to you who are listening that are like, but if I show them who I really am, they’re going to leave.
That’s my deepest fear. You guys, the number of times that I say that to people in my life, I’m afraid if I mess up, you’re going to leave and they just are like, Kendra, I’m not leaving. I’m not going to leave. There is such a vulnerability in that, but that’s the deepest connection that we can have with people.
That’s the thing that we long for the most, as humans is to belong and be valued for who we truly are. And the very thing, the very thing that we all long for and the thing that we use our perfectionism for which is to be accepted, is the very thing that’s keeping us from being known. So the sooner that we go, all right, I’m not, I’m going to start small.
You don’t have to sit in a crying bathroom and break open. You don’t have to do that. You start small, but as we start doing that in small ways, and we start to notice, Oh wait, I just made a decision for myself here. Not for this person, not for the shoulds in my head. I just made a decision based on what feels true to me.
And they’re still here. Like she’s still here. I’m still here. Everything’s okay. Nothing felt what’s happening, you know, like we’re so afraid of what’s going to happen. And, and I just want to like hold every single listeners’ face in my hands and just be like, it’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.
Monica: [00:29:21] I feel like we have a Big Magic thing going on between us. Have you read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on that? Some of that language we use the stories we told, the struggles we faced are just so eerily similar but in such a beautiful way, because it helps me see just like what we’re talking about. We’re not alone in the struggle.
We’re not alone in this struggle and being known and, you know, not being able to be in the black and white, even how you view yourself or how you view life or politics or society. Like it’s scary. I kind of liken it to when people first hear about intuitive eating and they’re just like, Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I can’t do that. I can’t do that.
Kendra: [00:29:59] All I would do is eat chips all the time. I can’t trust myself. It’s scary.
Monica: [00:30:03] It’s too scary. But just like with intuitive eating, I mean, just living in, you know, leaning into this way of being a human, allowed to be a human. And, you know, kind of what we talked about you, you talked about, there will be a breaking and a remaking in this process that as you are in the remaking, you will find miracles happening inside of you and outside of you, you will find growth.
That is actually, in my mind, exponential compared to when you’re doing it, the all or nothing way. Anything else you want to add on what’s on the other side of this, then not that we’ve arrived because it’s always going to be an ongoing process, but what’s on the other side of breaking point.
Kendra: [00:30:43] Yeah. I think that the biggest thing for me is relationships connection and relationships. I get asked a lot about friends, about making friends. I talked to my husband often about like, Babe, like why my friends are amazing, like these people in my life, like, I just feel it’s like an embarrassment of riches, the friends I have.
And I’m not saying that in like a, like I’m trying to brag about my friends. I honestly think that’s what’s on the other side because there is a willingness in me to be vulnerable about my struggles, about what I need. About my insecurities in that relationship, because I have different insecurities with all the people based on what the dynamic of that relationship is.
But I’m also not afraid of the conflict, because I know that on the other side of any sort of difficulty is deeper connection. And so I just feel like my ability to have relationships that matter. That make me feel like myself, that are safe, that are like daily, like all just the sort of like normal, ordinary things.
But also I can call these people in a crisis, like the friendships I have now, or the friendships that I craved for the first 30 years of my life. And I don’t think it has anything to do with me. I think it has everything to do with the fact that I am not hiding or trying or striving.
Monica: [00:32:16] Or projecting.
Kendra: [00:32:17] Or projecting exactly. To be valued based on what I can control. It’s just about, I’m just going to be myself here. And it’s a decision every single time, every single time, every, I mean, I feel it sometimes where like a friend will text me something and I feel the paths splitting in me of like, all right, you could do this thing.
And you think that this is the thing that she’s probably gonna want to hear. But it’s actually not true, not necessarily true information, but it’s not all of you. You’re not actually, you’re hiding something back. You’re keeping something back because you’re afraid that if you let it all there, if you show it all that she’s going to leave. Don’t do it afraid, like do the thing that is most you.
And the more that I’ve done, that the deeper the relationships have gotten. And I think that’s true of everyone who begins to make that move.
Monica: [00:33:07] I think you hit the nail on the head for me personally. I mean, what you just said, there is what I have, you know, I have to get the same lessons taught to me over and over again for them to sink in.
And this is a lot of what started my path to being mediocre. And being okay with myself. And it’s also where I am at again, where I’m like, remember Monica, it’s about relationships. You’re missing out on relationship. So you’re helping me with that. Oh, Kendra. I just want to keep talking to you. I know that you to go and do your day, so let’s end this by hearing, what are you working on right now? Because I think a lot of people look at you and it’s still easy to just put you in this black and white thing. Like, well, Kendra, she just knows things and she just like, does what matters? And she does a perfectly, and it’s so easy for her.
No, I’m sure you’re working on something. So what is that for you right now?
Kendra: [00:33:59] I actually, I love it when people are like, you know, you’ve probably, everything’s fine. I’m like, no is super not like that. The thing is it’s like every day is a choice. Every day is a choice to not believe the things that used to believe.
So every day, I mean, that’s what I’m working on is believing the truth about who I am and how I am in a room. I started with a new counselor. That’s my newest thing is I went back to counseling and I started to suffer you. I wanted to see a woman I’d been seeing a man for years and it was more trauma therapy.
And now I’ve gotten to a place where it’s like, you know what, I need help just living every day. Like I need kind of these like smaller things that feel inconsequential. Like, Oh, you don’t need to go see a counselor for that. But what has actually happened. And I did not realize this until I just am now about to say it.
So every morning, I will get up before my family because, and I’ll go sit in my morning chair, I’ve got it. My kids call it my morning chair and I will go sit in my chair and I will journal and I will read that’s what I like to read. And but it’s mostly about the journaling and it’s just sort of like getting out these things in my head, like, what am I struggling with?
And it’s almost. Always 99% of the time it is relationship stuff. It is, I think I might’ve said this wrong. I think this friend is feeling this way about me. I’m starting to spiral. I need to not spiral. It’s like all of this ever since I started seeing this counselor and it’s only been about a month, maybe six weeks.
And it’s not necessarily her. I mean, she’s fantastic. But the work that we’ve been doing is what I was just saying about like, Who are you when you’re with friends, are you holding back certain things because you’re making assumptions? What does it look like to be truly yourself in these places?
And I have started to notice that and practice it. When I first started noticing it, I cried so much because I was like, I adjust to everyone constantly, and I didn’t even realize it. And it was so debilitating at first it was like, wow, Kendra. But then again, it was the freedom on the other side where I was like, no, no, no, you don’t need to feel badly about that.
Like, we’re going to have freedom from that. And then we’re going to grow even closer with these people. I have not gotten up early before my family in like two weeks because I’m like, I don’t know, sleep is so nice. I’m not really, I’m not craving that time or even needing to ju I haven’t journaled in weeks because since then, because so many of those things are being processed in the moment as opposed to being held so tightly and then having to be like dumped out at the beginning of the day. And so it’s that, it’s like, here’s the analogy I will share with you as we close. Cause I think analogies where pictures are so helpful for professionals.
I realized that I am like, my personality is like a spice cabinet. Okay. Made up of like this complete collection of spices. And I realized that I hold back certain spices because I think, well, this friend doesn’t like the cinnamon in me, this friend really likes the tumeric. So I’ll give more here, you know, so that that friend will be happy with me.
And my process now is no, no, no, you don’t. It’s it’s spices. Let’s just, this is what it is. This is who I am. You don’t have to change the proportions of yourself in order to be acceptable to people. And so that spice cabinet analogy has been like such a godsend for me in the best way. Cause I’m like, Oh no, hold back.
I’m holding back. I’m not opening that whole drawer all the way that cabinet is just cracked. It’s not open. And it’s been like so transformative, but it’s daily. It’s choosing to allow the knowledge to transform me every day.
Monica: [00:37:40] That’s another thread that has really kind of poked itself out to me just thinking agency, like it all comes down to choices and, you know, Having the resilience and the strength, the inner strength takes to be willing to stand in between the stimulus and response to that choice and do it in alignment with what’s true.
What’s true to you. And to this moment in the season, and it takes courage. I had a client Kendra, and we’re going to end on this, but she said it takes a greatest courage to do the smallest of things. And there’s no true words than that. And today you’ve given us that courage to do that. You’ve given us the practical ways of doing it, which I absolutely adore about you because every time I listened to your podcast or I see something you’re doing on your feed as well as the principles that you laid out in your book, it is so doable, but it’s also this heart behind it of giving us that courage that we need.
To be willing to make the choices that we need to make. So I thank you for that. And before we go, I’m just gonna tell everyone, you know, obviously listen to the Lazy Genius Podcast, go and follow Kendra on Instagram, but you have a book coming out soon. Is there anything you can tell us about that?
Kendra: [00:38:52] Oh, it is. What can I tell you about that you might not be able to? So it’s about, it’s about the kitchen. It’s not a cookbook. But it is a, it’s like a tool it’s like a toolkit for your kitchen. It’s time to lazy genius. Our kitchen’s a little bit because we all think we’re all like looking for, we’re looking for like a magical recipe.
That’s going to make everything easier in the kitchen. It’s like, no, no friends. No, that’s not. You’re, we’re looking in the wrong place. And so that’s one of my, like I said, in the beginning, that’s one of my passions is feeding people and gathering. But it’s, but we need a way to like, have what we need and use what we have and actually like being in our kitchen again.
And so that’s coming out in March of 2022. Okay. Yeah. So it’s another it’s another year it’s it’s been. I’m leaving actually tomorrow to finish the edits for it. So exciting. We’re in the process. It’s very exciting.
Monica: [00:39:43] Yeah, sure. It’s also hard, I’m sure. It’s really difficult. So I, I send you some, some good vibes and courage as you’re going to go into that. But again, I appreciate that. Thank you for, for being here for being so generous with what you know, and your experiences and what you’ve gone through and what you faced. This has just been a really rewarding interview for me. So thank you.
Kendra: [00:40:07] Same for me. Thank you for having me.
