Speaker 1: Last week I shared with you one of the hardest
videos I've ever made. I talked about something that I'd
hidden for a very long time, even from myself. It
was buried pretty deep. But what surprised me wasn't how
nervous I was to post it and believe me, I
was nervous. It was how many of you guys wrote
back or just commented saying I'm thinking of you, or
I get it, or the big one was I thought
I was the only one that felt that way. Wow,
thank you, Thank you from the bottom of my heart.
But that got me thinking. Somewhere along the way, I
learned a definition of strength that I carried straight into
retirement and never once questioned. So I started asking myself,
what else have I believed about handling it? Well, isn't
actually true? Hmm. So looking back, I think I can
count at least six lies I suppose that I believed,
and probably still do it sometimes I'm working on them.
But lies that shaped how I thought retirement was supposed
to look and how I was supposed to feel in it.
Now these lies aren't or these lies weren't said to
me directly. Nobody sat me down and told me these things.
They're kind of more like maybe assumptions that I picked
up along the way and really never thought to check
until this year, when real life just didn't ask permission
before showing up. Darn it. So here are the six
lies that I believed about strength that I brought with
me straight into retirement. Hi, I'm more into Branski. This
is life starts at retirement, so let's get into it.
Lie Number one, strong people don't struggle. This is the
one I think that is underneath all of the other lies.
Somewhere along the line, I picked up the idea that
being strong meant not struggling, that if I were tough enough,
if I were capable enough, together enough, the hard stuff
just wouldn't touch me the same way. So for a
long time, a long time, if I was struggling, my
first thought wasn't this is hard? My first thought was
what's wrong with me? Oh? My goodness. But I'm coming
to learn that's backwards. Strength is never about struggling or
not struggling. Strength is not about not struggling. It's about
what you do when you're in it. And I couldn't
see that much until I actually let myself struggle out loud.
So here's what I think I know now. Strong people
do struggle. Struggle is what it feels like to carry
something heavy, even when you're carrying it well. A person
who's genuinely strong isn't someone who never feels the weight.
There's someone who keeps moving, keeps showing up, keeps functioning
while still feeling and carrying the weight. The struggle itself
isn't evidence that the strength failed. The struggle is often
evidence that the strength is actually working, because you're not
shutting down, you're not walking away, you're not pretending it's
not hard, You're just doing it well, it's hard. Lie
number two. If I'm grateful, who the heck are you?
You don't have the right to struggle. And I think
this might be one of the sneakiest lies because it
sounds kind of wise. Be grateful and the hard feelings
will sort them out. Count your blessings, and that heaviness lifts.
Who am I to struggle when other people have it
so much worse? So I need to work on that one.
I am grateful genuinely for my life, for my health,
the people I love. I have a freaking awesome life,
and I still had days this year, and if I'm honest,
every single solitary year that were heavy, no matter how
many things I was grateful for. And I used to
think that meant maybe that I was doing gratitude wrong.
Turns out I was just doing being a human right
now what I think? I know now gratitude and struggle
aren't opposites. You can be deeply grateful for your life
and still be grieving. You can love your family and
still feel lonely. You can have a beautiful life and
still carry a heavy heart. For years, I thought gratitude
meant I wasn't allowed to struggle, And now I honestly think,
or I'm beginning to think that gratitude is what helped
me survive the struggle. Wow, okay, lie number three, Retirement
should automatically make me happy. Now we're told this one
constantly by ads, by other people, heck by me on
this channel. You work for decades and now it's your reward.
You're supposed to be happy. So when retirement arrived and
happiness wasn't automatic, or even happiness came and went when
real life showed up instead with all of its complications,
again I felt like I was doing something wrong, Like
I'd been handed this great reward, and somehow I failed
to feel rewarded. So what I think now, or what
I think I think now? For years, retirement became my
when I'll slow down when I retire. I'll travel when
I retire, I'll relax when I retire. I'll finally be
happy when I retire. Retirement became sort of this destination
where I imagined happiness was waiting for me. But happiness
wasn't just standing there waiting. Life was beautiful life, difficult life,
ordinary life, but still life. Retirement just gives you the
freedom to feel everything a little bit more, not a
guarantee that everything will feel good. Wow, lie Number four,
needing help means I'm failing. Okay, this is gonna be
probably the toughest one for me to work on. I thought,
and still do many many times, most of the time,
that I have to figure it out by myself. If
I was the one holding things together for my family,
for the people who needed me, then I couldn't also
be someone who needed holding it. It wasn't that there
was no room for that. I made sure there was
no room. I didn't allow myself to be the one
who was ever needy because somewhere along the way, I
had promised myself I would never be depressed, I would
never need help, that I was gonna be the strong one. Yeah,
I'm gonna have to work on this one. So what
I think I know now needing help was never proof
that I was failing. It was proof that I was
carrying something to heavy to carry alone, which is true
for every single solitary one of us. No matter how
strong we are, we can be someone people can lean
on and still need somewhere to set our own weight down.
That's going to be a tough one. Number five. If
I say this out loud, it becomes real. And this
is what kept me quiet the longest. Some part of
me believed that as long as I didn't say it,
if I didn't name the struggle out loud, if I
could just keep managing it privately, it would be okay.
Naming it felt like it would make it bigger, make
it more real, make it harder to undo. And last
week I finally took the plunge and set it out
loud for the first time on camera to all of you.
And what I found on the other side wasn't the
collapse that I was afraid of. It was hundreds of
you saying you believed the exact same lie. So what
I think I know now about this one is I
think this lie is that silence. We believe silence is protective,
that as long as you don't say the hard thing
out loud, it's days smaller, Maybe it's more manageable, maybe
it's more private. It's almost like a magical kind of
thinking underneath it, like naming it might summon it, might
make it official, might turn it from something that I
was privately dealing with into something real and permanent that
I could never take back. And if I'm honest, darn it,
some of it was pride too, or maybe just plain ridiculousness,
not wanting people to know that I was struggling, like
admitting it would somehow change how they saw me. But
here's what I think I know is that the struggle
was already real before I said anything. Saying it out
loud didn't create it. That's for darn sure. It was
already there whether I spoke it or not. Let's never
actually protected me from the real thing. All it protected
me from was anyone knowing I was carrying it. So
the cost of quiet was never the struggle stays smaller.
The cost was carrying it alone. Saying it out loud
doesn't make it more real, it makes you less alone
in it. Holy cow, okay lie number six. Nobody wants
to hear the hard parts. I think I told myself
this was all about other people that nobody wants to
hear someone complain, Nobody wants to be the downer. But
if I'm honest, it was really about me a common thing. First,
I didn't want anyone to know I was struggling. I
needed to be strong to be better of that. And
then underneath all of that, I didn't want to be
a burden. But what I think I know now is
something actually surprised me after my last video, the moment
I stopped pretending everything was okay, people didn't pull away.
In fact, many people leaned in, not because use they
wanted to fix me, but because they've been carrying some
of the very same thoughts. I realized people don't connect
with us because our lives are perfect, no one's is.
They connect with us because we're willing to be human.
We can tell the truth, we can say the hard parts,
and we don't have to push people away. Maybe they're
the very things that remind us were never as lone,
as alone as we think. Being honest didn't make me
a burden, it made me human. The most honest video
I'd ever made wasn't the one where everything was fine.
It was the one where I finally said it wasn't.
And it sounds like that's the one so many of
you told me you needed to hear as well. So
that's it, the six lies I carried straight into retirement
without ever questioning where they came from. I don't honestly
think I'm done learning them, but I do think naming
them is where it all kind of starts. So if
any of these resonated with you, if you believe one
of these two, I'd love to hear which one in
the comments. And if there's a lie you've been carrying
that I didn't mention here, tell me which one too.
I read every single comment. So thank you for making
last week's video feel less lonely, less scary, less vulnerable
than I expected to be, And thanks for listening to
this one. Please subscribe if you want to keep having
these honest conversations with me, and I'll see you the
next time here on life starts at every talent.