The Comfort Zone is a Beautiful Prison, with Cathleen Trevino

Okay, so the grand slam question here. Okay.

Can I? Actually I knew something first. Yeah, please, may I ask why you're? You can say if you don't want to answer, but may I ask why you are not there, like why I don't know if you're just not there yet or if you're just not there at all with?

Oh man, ms Kathleen asked me a monster question and I thought about cutting the whole thing out because I revealed a bunch of stuff. But that would be cowardly of me because I'm like the guy that's always talking about vulnerability and authenticity and all that jazz, so I left it in at my own risk. So I'd love to get y'all's thoughts on my response, because it reveals a whole bunch. So if you haven't heard part one, I invite you to go and check it out. In this conversation we talk about her perspective on the pros and cons that come with passion right, I think we use that word a lot about what's my passion. I'm living my passion, I want to live my passion, and she gives some pretty good insight as to what that means for her. That could be helpful for you. And we also talk about living life by design. I got a whole bunch of people in my life that I care deeply for and I often think that maybe they're living life by accident. And if you're living life by accident, you may get some direction here in terms of transitioning from living by luck to start living by design. We do have some audio issues. On part one and part two. There was some echoey stuff. I did everything I was capable of doing to take it out, so I appreciate y'all being patient and not like totally disowning me for for the audio issues. That being said, there's a lot of really meaty content in here that I think you and your loved ones can get a ton of value from. And before we go into the rest of the conversation with Ms Kathleen, I want to give a shout out to LNM family member Mr Wally. Wally dropped this one on the LinkedIn on one of the posts and it struck me and was very meaningful, and I also think if you keep it in mind for yourself, it could totally elevate your game. Wally says people do not give you the gift of their time and attention if you are not making an impact. So, wally, I appreciate your observation. It does bring me peace to know that at least one person is getting some positive impact from all the wacky stuff that I put out there in the world. And for the LNM family members that are content creators or content creation curious, always keep in mind like the time and attention that people gift you with is a treasure to be cherished, and I treasure the time and attention you spend with me, and so I'm going to stop flapping my gums and here we go with Ms Kathleen. Ms Kathleen, now you've mentioned the word passion a couple of times and that you're passionate person. What other passions do you have that you cultivate and play around in?

I feel like I try to find passion in pretty much everything that I do. I know that sounds unrealistic, but that's me. People always say that I'm so positive. I always have a smile on my face, but it's forced, the perfect reason. You know, I just try to stay positive and with that it allows me to bring a lot of passion into my life. I love sports, for example, I love snowboarding, hiking. I love walking my dogs, people rollerblading. I'm passionate about my dogs. I'm passionate about being outside, being outdoors. I just really try to find enjoyment in everything and I just feel like I allow passion and I still make. A lot of people don't let themselves feel that much, but I do.

Okay, I'm with you, girl, specifically when you said people don't allow themselves to feel that much. Why do you think people like pump the brakes in allowing themselves to feel that joy or choose to do things that bring them joy?

There's a lot of reasons. One example is just the fear of being hurt, the fear of yeah, that's probably the biggest one the fear of being hurt, the fear of feeling like that devastation. But whenever you become passionate about something and it doesn't work out like even, for example, in a relationship if you're really passionate about that relationship, about that person, but it doesn't work out, you're going to end up feeling pretty devastated. Versus if you don't allow all of those feelings to spill out within that relationship, then at the end of the relationship you're not as devastated because you didn't let yourself fully feel. Everything that you could hurt felt. So that's one thing, but I feel like things that might have happened to in your childhood have a big part of that. So if you felt a lot of failure already when you were a child, maybe you don't want to feel any more failure. You're just over it and so you just stop yourself from taking that extra step forward. Yeah, I just feel like there's different reasons for that?

Agreed, there are a bunch of reasons. What's interesting, when I was guarded in the way I lived life and held back to protect myself, it ended up making everything bland and gray and so, yeah, maybe I was not getting as hurt, I wasn't exposed as exposed or as vulnerable to hurt, but I also didn't have a lot of happiness or joy. What do you think about that?

That's exactly what happens when you don't let yourself feel everything. And I don't want to say like everybody needs to be so passionate to let themselves feel everything, because some people can't, some people don't have that capacity, some people because of maybe some trauma or things like that, they can't, they don't have that capacity. And if they did let themselves feel something and it went wrong, their whole world would be destroyed. So I can't say it'd be the case for everybody, but it is true, if you don't allow yourself to feel everything that can be felt, you're not going to feel all repositive. Everything has a positive and a negative. You can be extremely passionate about something. You can take in all of the advantages, but that also means you have to take in all of the disadvantages as well.

Oh girl, 100%. So I'm going to make an assumption here, in that you have a pretty healthy support system. How accurate is that?

Yeah, it's pretty accurate.

Yeah, so who is your support system comprised of?

Okay, my dog, that's just one, but then my oldest sister and my boyfriend yeah, those are pretty much my main support systems.

Okay, and has that evolved over the years?

Yes, time equals change and me and my oldest sister have always been really close with each other, but over the years we've become closer and closer. So I'm trying to figure out, like, whether I want to go there or not. My mom and I used to be really close and I thought that she was my support system, but over time I have just been trying to make, I've been trying to make changes for me and for myself, and that kind of meant learning things that I didn't want to learn. Specifically about my mom, I love her. My mom and I, we have a good relationship. Don't get me wrong, but it's just I had to transition the way that I see her To be able to find growth in myself.

And what was that journey like, that transition of okay, I've got to start taking care of Miss Kathleen, but in order to do that, I've got to maybe let go of some beliefs that I had of some really important people in my life. How challenging was that.

It's still challenging. I'm still going through that now.

Yeah.

It's challenging because you only want to see the best in other people, right? Especially if they're your family member. You love them to death. You don't want to feel anything bad about them, but you just have to figure out what's best for you and put yourself first of all time. And that was a really hard thing for me. That's still a really hard thing for me. I don't always know how to put myself first, but I'm learning and I'm just trying to figure out how to keep those relationships, be happy in those relationships.

Figure out what's best for me? Yeah, okay. So you're actively working on this. You have some, probably some wisdom you may not be aware of yet, and so I'm going to try and pull it out of you here. There are folks out there that are like on that cusp that I remember it being like just really frustrating. Oh my God, I'm wrapped up in this thing and I need to break out of it. In order to break out of it, I have to do this, and that's going to be uncomfortable and hurt, maybe hurt people's feelings, blah, blah, blah. Yes, yes, okay. So now, what advice or tips and tricks would you give to somebody else that is currently in that situation right now?

Okay. So advice the first thing I want to say is just keep trying with that relationship. That might be a little sticky. Just keep trying. If you want the relationship to last, if you want to be close with that person, keep trying. Whether it's you that you need to keep trying for them, that you need to keep trying for In my case I bring trying to the talk to my mom. I've been trying to just help her have more of a positive perspective on life. So that's pretty much just a bit and that's what I mean that I can talk to her about that for me, that I can have arguments with her about how to disagree with but then also try to sway her view in life, sway her view of life, and so I feel like that's just the best thing to do is try to talk to that person If you want to keep having a relationship with them. Don't be closed off to having that communication open. I have always been really bad at communication. I've always been very what is that word? Whenever you don't want to communicate things because you're scared with the word Guarded, no, passive.

Oh yeah.

So I've always been very passive. I've never wanted to open the communication because I don't want to have to fight, I don't want to negotiate, I don't like writing, I don't like negativity, I don't like disagreements. Unfortunately, sometimes, when it's somebody that you really care about, you have to try. That's just the best thing that you can do, and even if that's hard, you just have to keep trying, like for me right now. I just feel like I'm going to stand still. I'm not going to just stop trying. I still go see my mom at least once a week. At least we have a nice time. I come home, I tell her I got made at home safe and that's that. But I still try to have those conversations with her because I'm never going to stop trying to just build a better relationship for both of us. To put in the effort.

Keep chipping away. If you want it, make it happen. Yeah, that's awesome. I was expecting the opposite. Okay, when you got to cut somebody off, cut them the hell off.

Okay, there are cases with that as well. If you do, if this person is really just bringing so much negativity into your life, for me it just depends on who it is. My family is very important to me, so if it's my family, if it's my direct family my sister, my mom, my dad I'm going to try my best, I'm going to put in all the effort that I can. But if it's like a friend that I had, I have had a friend that I've cut off and it was just because they just weren't putting in the effort that I was. They were bringing in too much negativity and I just didn't want to feel that around me and so I have cut people off. Cut people off.

Yeah, it's clear to me, Kathleen, that you're living a life of design and how interesting it is that you're an engineer. There's some continuity there, and so, in terms of living a life by design, you know that the type of people we surround ourselves with kind of forge the environment that we can either thrive in or that will suffocate and fade away in.

Oh yes.

What are the criteria you use for selecting the people that you surround yourself with?

I don't know if I really have criteria. To be honest with you, I don't really have a lot of friends. I have my sisters, and that's pretty much it. My mom I talk to my dad, these are the people that I call every day. I have pretty much my inner circle, and then my work. I have work friends, if you will, but I don't really have friends per se right now. I don't have another friend outside of my family that I'll go to, and I think it was just because I have such a good support for some. Already I have all that I need in my opinion, how I feel, but I still love to engage with other people, like at work. So we brand a, for example. He's actually a really interesting guy and he's like you said. He is really mature. I don't know how old he is, but he seems mature for his age, and so it's just like people at work. I am very interested in just learning about people and talking to people, but I guess I just haven't really reached out more. Again, like I said, I have everything that I need, but back in college I made a lot of visions that weren't the best, and it was because of the people that I surrounded myself with. So I definitely learned from that. I definitely learned that what I need and what I don't need. That's why I just don't really try to go out there and try to make more friends, just because I just realized that I really don't need all of those, all these outside forces. And just to keep to my inner circle.

Here's what I'm getting is you have a tight circle, a tight knit circle. In your case, it's your family, yeah, and it's not this enormous, great, giant number crowd of people. It's a very small circle, and they provide you what you need to live in passion and live your joy. How's that? Yeah, that's perfect, awesome. So, renee, I think Renee's, he's 28 or 29. Oh wow, yeah, did you think he was younger or older?

So when I first met him, I thought he was like in his early 20s and that's not raised off of how we act, Cause you know, like I said, he acts very mature and he does seem pretty wise, but it was just how he looked. He looks really young. But then I learned that he has three kids and I was like, oh, it's not changed my perspective. I was like is he like his 30s?

Yeah, he's almost there, almost there. He's got the little raptors and I love getting them all excited and leaving, leaving him to deal with it. I think. So much. Here's my take when I was, and thank you for answering the questions, because I know they're weird questions, but I think the core thing there is cause I have a small circle also, but it's not comprised of all of my family. Renee is in the circle, my family, I care about and I love them, but they're not my go to Renee. I go to hit Renee every now and then and I'm there for him whenever he needs it, but I do have a very small group of people that are my support group. They're the people and I'll be selective about. Okay, I want to learn a new skill or starting my business. I'm trying to get into creating an online business. I need a friend that's done that so that I can learn from them, and so I'll go pick a friend based on that, and that's why I asked the question the way I did is what's the criteria? Because I do this thing Now. I do it on purpose. I didn't know I was doing it on purpose before. It's just something I did by default is when I want to learn something or have a new experience or whatever, grow in a specific area. I will find somebody that has those traits or that experience and then make them part of my circle. I don't mean I abduct them or kidnap them or anything. I just spend more time with them. You know what I mean? Yeah, and now what I think what's important, what I want our L&M family members to take away, is that if your inner circle is your family, amazing. What comes across to me, kathleen, is you are living in your passion and you do have your joy and fulfillment is emanating through in our conversation and the energy of your voice. And you said, like, when I asked you about your support system, you're like, yes, tell me, yes, I got one. You didn't say that, but that's what it felt like. And in your case, it happens to be your family. In my case, there's only one family member directly in that. I think the takeaway is are you intentional about your support system? To the listener out there, if you're stuck and if you're in this space of what's it called the Twilight Zone, be intentional about designing your damn support system. Spend time in the things you care about, would you think. Do you think that's decent advice?

Yeah, definitely I. The people that support you are the people that you also need to support back, though I try to remind myself if somebody's putting in so much effort to help me, I need to put in the same effort the amount of effort to help them, if not more. That's definitely something, because I'm in a pretty good place in my life right now. I'm pretty happy when things are moving along, things are going well, and so I have an opportunity to help someone else who might not be in the same position as me. And that kind of takes me back to my relationship with my mom. She is probably in a more rough position than me right now, and that's why I do really try to make an effort in our relationship.

What other outlets do you leverage for serving others? What do you mean you talked about? People are feeding it, breathing into your life and helping you and supporting you. You got to return that. I'm making an assumption that you also find ways to contribute or give back outside of your inner circle.

Oh, are you particularly like asking about, like volunteer work or things like that? I hope.

so that's a great question. So maybe volunteer work, but maybe mentoring, giving people advice, challenging people to grow, these types of things.

Oh yeah, challenging people to grow. I feel like I've been doing more of that the last year, just because I've grown a lot in the last year, and so that makes me want to challenge other people as well. It is particular mostly within my sisters, my people, my mom and dad. I challenge them and then at work, if I have conversations with somebody and they are talking about like a situation that they're going through, I will put my two cents in. Sometimes it depends on the person. If I'm not really that familiar with them, like maybe I'll back off a little bit, but if I feel confident enough in my response, then I'll give a little advice. I don't really like to call it advice because everybody takes things in differently. Yes, so I don't really want to call it advice, but just my opinion, okay.

Good for you. What question did I fail to ask you? I don't know. I guess I could think of a few things.

Yeah, I wanted to touch on where I want my life to go.

Okay, girl.

I think this in-depth conversation might as well go there.

Yes, ma'am. So that's exactly where we want to know. What I want to know, like, where do you want your life to go?

All right. So and I'm only saying this because I've made an epiphany within the last several months yeah, like the last year. So this is particularly about me having kids. I used to know when kids like I was totally close off with the idea. I was like, maybe one day I'll adopt a kid, yeah, but that's it. But then I go with my dogs. You know I have, I'm in a good relationship, yeah, and I don't know what it is. It was just like something like sport inside of me, like I just I have a question need to care and to nurture. Now, I did not know it was there, I had no idea it was there. But, man, am I excited to have kids? That's why I wanted to bring this up, because it's another thing that I look forward to and then I'm going to be passionate about is just having kids, my kids. I'm so excited to be a mom. I honestly, I love having a career, I love the idea of having a career, but if I could be a stay on home mom, that's what.

I would want to do, and I imagine that's a dramatic change from, they'll say, two or three years ago.

Yeah, and your people are bonding to that three years ago.

So how's your family responding to this new development?

Yeah. So it's funny because this whole, you know, started happening whenever I got into this new relationship and before. I was always telling them like I don't care about getting married, I don't want to have kids. I was just like in a totally different place in my life. I had no idea what it was like to be in a relationship to really love and care for another person, and so I never had that before and I would always say these things because I didn't know what it was to love and care. I didn't know how passionate I would become about that. And so when I told them that I want to have kids now, I want to get married now, they were super surprised. They were like, oh my God, why are you doing a full 180?

I was like yeah, I am not in that boat and I accept that. I know when our conditions are positive and reinforcing and supporting, we have there's a security all of a sudden that helps us discover new things and new interests about ourselves. Is that something?

like a documentary. Yeah, I like that. I never actually really thought about it like that, like having a security. I think that is what it was for me. I never really had a serious relationship before this one and, yeah, it was. I never felt that security. So I guess that is how that developed.

Yeah, two things. One does he know about all this or do we have to warn him? Yeah, you know okay, good, I don't want to blindside him on this, but, yeah, yes, I thank you for sharing that, because there's this thing that I'm weird about, the things that catch my attention and it's one of those. That's one of the things the conditions that people live in can cause them to transform dramatically or shrink dramatically. And when you were describing your situation, I was like, oh yeah, that's one of those things. Security is a condition, right, it's the conditions that we live in. And then back to the design thing. One of my missions in the world is to help people become aware of the fact that they can design their life on purpose. They don't have to live by accident anymore. They can actually make decisions about the people, the type of people they surround themselves with, so that they can discover themselves, a new level, a new experience within them, so that they can also serve others. And being a mother, that's a pretty damn amazing way to serve and contribute to the universe. Now, when it's assumed, fast forward, you have the kids. Are you going to get rid of the Aussies? What are you going to do with them?

Oh no, I'm keeping the Aussies.

So it's everybody, the family pants the whole thing oh yeah, definitely, oh yeah.

That's like my dream. Whenever I picture my dream life, I guess in a few years from now, five, 10 years, I don't know, but that's what I picture all of the dogs, all of the kids.

Wow, yeah, oh, that's exciting, okay, so the grand slam question here. Okay, I think you answered it, but I don't know, can I?

actually use something first. Yeah, please, May I ask why you're? You can say if you don't want to answer, but may I ask why you are not there, Like why I don't know if you're just not there yet or if you're just not there at all with fatherhood.

Oh, I love it. I have a daughter and she's oh my goodness, 24. That was not a planned situation and when she was born I was a mess. And when I say a mess, I was a horrible representation of what a young man should be. And so, technically, I have a child. I was not a father by any stretch of the mean. The closest I come to that is my relationship with Renee, and still I'm a brother right Now. Around the relationship thing and the family thing, I, for a very long time and when I say a very long time, I would say from high school all the way until about maybe eight, five years ago tried like hell to be in relationships. It's not hard for me to meet people and it's not hard for me to date. It's hard for me to stay in the relationships and I couldn't like in my head there's you know how you talked about that pressure of needing or feeling like you need to be an engineer, because everybody's proud of you, because you're an engineer, but you have this other thing pulling at you. That's how I felt around the be, get married, be in a relationship, have kids thing. Everybody was telling me that I needed to do that, but I didn't really want to do that, I did it and every time I do it it creates stress for me, like it's a really stressful thing. Now don't get me wrong. Like I appreciate the companionship and all the physical stuff and the emotional stuff. That's all great, it's all awesome. But I know that my mind, my interests are on other things, such that for me to carve time out to go to dinner, it's a mathematical equation. For me it's three hours of time because I got to take a shower, got to get dressed, got to iron my clothes because I like to have my nice shirts iron got to drive there, have food, drive back. That's three hours easy and a couple hundred dollars those three hours. Every second of those three hours I'm thinking of the work that I'm not doing. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes sense. And that's not okay. Yeah, like the person that I'm hanging around with can feel that. And so I've been in some, I've tried it and tried it, like the dating things, many, many times. And there always comes a point there's a threshold of like early on it's cool, right, cause they're busy I'm hyper busy, workaholic, and it's like fun and exciting. And there's this thing like I give things intense amounts of attention, and so when I'm interacting with somebody or dating somebody, I will give them intense attention. And then when I'm working, I give my work intense attention. But what does that mean? That means I ignore the hell out of everything else, and so it creates this disappointment or frustration, and for me it's really. It feels like like I'm doing something I don't really want to do and it's not okay. I don't think it's okay for me to take somebody's time that really is invested and really wants this thing to grow, and my I've given. I've already calculated precisely how much time I'm willing to give it. Does that make sense? Yeah, that makes total sense. So I've been married a couple of times. I'm not against marriage. People always say you'll meet that one person Cool, yeah, I would like that, the lightning bolt and somebody that steals all my attention and frees me from the grip of my work and my ideas. I'm not opposed to it, but I also know that, like casual dating and this sort of thing, it's not a healthy situation for me because of the stress that it brings and the pain that I cause other people, because I'm a pretty lovable guy. You know what I mean. Yeah, I don't know, was that like a weird answer? What do you think? What is your assessment of that?

Okay, my assessment. I feel like I definitely understand where you're coming from with casual dating. I feel like maybe this is not for you. But if you're open to it, just never or just never close yourself off to it. Maybe you'll meet somebody at work, during work, things like that, and I just hope that you never close people off to it and I hope that if there is one person that comes along and just really sparks your interest, just go for it. Try to go for it. Sometimes that has to be that one special first thing. But if that person does come along and you realize, maybe during or after a date or a conversation, oh wow, like this person actually made an impact in my time today, Go for it. Try to let yourselves have that as well. I guess single work of hauling you never know what could come up.

Sure, I'm gonna tell folks. Y'all heard it here and the outcome of this response is your fault, Kathleen. I'm gonna remember this, Like to be clear. I'm 100% open to it. That being said, I got issues Right, Like I got this whole work thing. But yeah, I am totally open to the idea and when it happens, it's gonna happen, and if it doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. I don't feel a sense of loss, of not being in a relationship and, at the same time, yeah, I'm totally open to it Now because it's gonna be on the internet because of you, Kathleen, when people start lining up in front of my house. It's your fault.

What do you think? I'm not sorry.

That's so good, amazing questions. Do you have any other questions? I shouldn't even let you ask me another question no right. No, right now, no, okay. Then I got the one big closing question Okay, what is the promise you are intended to be?

I'm not sure how to answer that. What is the promise? I'm intended to be? Yes, Can I have an example? I feel like I have like answers floating around my head but I'm not really sure what to go with.

Go with all of them, but start with one.

What is the promise I intend to be? So I guess when I tell my thoughts, we'll go with that. When I tell myself is just I'm learning to just try to find happiness in everything, to try to appreciate everything, to try to be grateful for everything that I have in my life, I am learning that time is of the essence. We work these jobs, we work these long hours. We do the same thing every day, Monday to Friday, and so I have to remind myself to switch it up, to enjoy every moment, enjoy moments both at work and outside of work. So my promise to myself is just always try to keep the same positive attitude that I've always had. Again, just be grateful for everything that I have. One big thing help others. That is definitely one big thing I've been keeping in mind Just be selfless, help others, be a mentor to others. One huge thing as well is just be a nurturer. I really want to be a nurturer. I want to nurture everybody in my life.

Amazing what I tell you. That conversation with Kathleen got me shaking in my boots there at the end when she was asking me all them really hard questions, and I spilled the beans a little bit. So I may be in the market for security, wink, wink. And before I let you go, I want to give a shout out to Sweat Equity Improvement, the sponsor of this episode. If you've ever been under like schedule pressure and your only option was to throw more people at it and work a whole bunch of overtime, sweat Equity Improvement is for you. The folks that have been through the sessions are now equipped with a way to like study work, make it better, prove the result in terms of production, safety and quality, and they can scale those improvements and take them forward onto all the projects in the future, which is super sexy, especially if you ask me. Anyhow, there's a link down in the notes. Check that link out. Sign up for the course, provided it's open. Right now. We have seven open spots for the session that is kicking off on Wednesday, january 10th 2024. And we will be having an open course every quarter of the year and there's a maximum of 10 people per session. So hit it up if you're interested. Bear it with somebody that you know is living the pressure and stress of the emails and the threats and the texts and all the stuff that a lot of us construction professionals weighed through all the time. And remember be kind to yourself, be cool and we'll talk at you next time. Peace.