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Oye, I need you to get absolutely clear on something, okay? Decisions are not life sentences. So let's let go of that idea right now. Buen día, mi gente, and welcome back to La Vida Más Chévere de Childfree Latinas. Welcome back to Healing Girl Summer. I'm your host and resident childfree Latina, Paulette Erato. If you haven't already, please go grab the manuscript this whole series is built around. It's called Benchmarks Are Bullshit. The link is in the show notes. It's only $19, and it's worth every penny. Now, let's get into it. This next lesson I'm gonna read you is number three in the book. It's called You Will Change Your Mind. A lot. Civilization has moved past needing people to marry young and propagate early and often to ensure that we can survive the harvest. Instead, you have options. You have choices. You can want to be a pilot who travels the world nonstop or a trash collector

who clocks out at 5: 1:02

00 PM every day. And in 5 or 15 years realize that's not your intended path anymore. So don't be afraid to make decisions because they seem like they'll impact your life forever. Look, it's always best to have a plan, but also to be flexible. Have marketable skills so you can do a variety of things. That's good. Being marketable is the best contingency plan. But what makes you happy, and what will sustain your lifestyle? Is the answer to both of these even the same? If not, can you match them up? Look, you may hate Brussels sprouts now, but learn to like them when you're 50. Stranger things can happen. I know because I can kinda tolerate Brussels sprouts now. But you, maybe you change careers. Maybe you move to a different country. Setting down a life path is not a life sentence, but being inflexible is. You're not the same person you were 5, 10, 15 years ago, so why would you expect that you would remain the same person you are today in 5 or 15 years from now?

What I wanna leave you with is this: 2:17

decisions are not life sentences. You know what's wild? Back in episode six, Lies We Tell About Ourselves, I told you that I hate fish, except, and I've said this many times in that episode and since then, that's a complete lie. I love sushi. I love ceviche. I love scallops wrapped in bacon. Oh, my God, they're so good. What I actually hate is a very specific fish dish: baked salmon. We ate that a lot when I was a kid, probably because it was inexpensive. The problem is it always had pin bones in it, and those are gross. But that's it. That's the whole thing. That's what created that story in my head. And unfortunately, "I hate fish" is so deeply wired into how I talk about myself that it still comes out of my mouth automatically, even decades later. Even when I know it's not true, even after making a whole episode about it. That's what this lesson is really about, not just that you'll change your mind, but that you're allowed to. You have permission to, and you can give that to yourself. No one else needs to. I'm just here to remind you that this is an option. The story you've been telling about yourself doesn't have to be the story. And instead of treating every decision like it's the end-all be-all of your existence, like it's gonna be carved in stone and never allow you to deviate from its existence, what if we think about it like a spectrum? On one end, you've got something you kinda like, like sushi or, in this example, the Brussels sprouts. On the other end, you have truly permanent life changes like amputations, face tattoos, or having kids. Those are the two extremes. On one end is the stuff that's completely reversible. On the other end, not so much. And almost every decision you will ever make in your life from where to live, what career to pursue, who to spend your time with, what to eat, sits way, way closer to the Brussels sprouts side of the spectrum than the face tattoo one. Maybe this is a question you're more familiar with: Will this decision even matter in a year? If the answer is no, or at least probably not, and let's be brutally honest, for most decisions it's probably not, then it's a Brussels sprouts decision, and you can let yourself off the hook. Decisions are not life sentences. And yet all too often we treat every single one like it's an amputation. We act like once we've said a thing or chosen a path, that's it, identity locked, story written, no takesie-backsies. And that's just not true. Remember our favorite lawyer, Elle Woods? She didn't go to law school because she was pre-law in college. She went 'cause she was chasing a boy. Aw, been there. But then she realized she was pretty chingona at it because she already had

some of the key prerequisites: 5:36

the ability to read people, the ability to persuade people, and she understood emotions. Like, she just had empathy. And all of that traveled with her into this completely new context called law school. So instead of becoming a fashion merchandiser, she changed her mind. Even though it was a big pivot, it wasn't an amputation. It was an expansion. She didn't let her college degree dictate the rest of her life. She built on it. In an earlier episode I called The Loneliest Year, I told you about how I got sick in late 2016, and I had to leave a career I'd spent 12 years building. And I was really good at it. But I didn't choose that pivot, my body chose it for me. And when you spend that long doing that one thing that you're so good at, it becomes your identity. Which, by the way, isn't healthy. Don't let your job become your identity. That's a mini lesson inside this bigger lesson. But letting go of that caused grief, real pain, real grief. And I didn't have a plan after that. So then I started dabbling in sewing, and I became a sewing blogger. And in order to try to stand out in this crowded sewing blogger field, I fashioned myself into the challenge girl, the one who tracked all the challenges across the sewing community. I was even interviewed on the Love to Sew podcast about that. The link's in the show notes. And then, for those who remember, came Sew My Style. 5,000 sewists across the world during a global pandemic. We sewed a lot of masks back then. But getting there required letting go of something else first, that old identity. The award-winning event planner, the independent woman who had built a damn good reputation over 12 years. I had to leave her in the past to become someone new. And then sewing didn't even turn out to be the last stop either. But the writing, the SEO, the learning how to build a presence online, all of that came with me to what came next, the pivot to podcasting. And rediscovering my knack for public speaking. And founding Latinas In Podcasting. If you're keeping score, that's three completely different versions of me in less than 10 years. None of that was in the plan. The best part of becoming, as our favorite First Lady, Michelle Obama, would call it, none of that experience was ever wasted. Just like Elle Woods, those skills traveled with me. The community building I learned in event management all went into building Latinas In Podcasting eight years later. Not to mention the actual event management skills because virtual events have just as many moving parts. My point is that the skills don't care what container you put them in. They just come along for the ride with you. All of that said, I wanna make something clear. Becoming, really becoming, the way Michelle's book lays it out, is not always comfortable. The concept is simple. You're allowed to change. You will change. You are going to change into someone new. So am I. I'm still becoming. But the actual becoming, the embodiment of it all, that process, I'm not gonna lie to you, it can be a little painful. Letting go of who you were to make room for who you're becoming next, the next beautiful version of yourself, that's growth. And growth can be messy. But that doesn't mean it isn't worth doing, obviously. So I'm gonna give you examples of other people who also made big life pivots. For example, Vera Wang. Did you know that before she started making wedding dresses, Vera Wang was a competitive figure skater? And she didn't even design her first dress until she was nearly 40. Here's something really interesting. Her college degree was in art history, not fashion design. And yet, what do we know her for most these days? Designing celebrity wedding gowns. The woman who is synonymous with bridal fashion didn't touch a wedding dress professionally until the age where most people assume a woman's career is already half over. See what a horseshit idea that is? Half over? Come on. Let's talk about another honest to God late bloomer. Maybe you've heard of the 20th century American folk artist Grandma Moses. Grandma Moses was born on a farm and dropped out of school to become live-in help. She was born to a farmer, and then she married a farm worker. So not only did she not go to college, she barely got an education at all. Certainly not one in art. That's a very privileged thing to have been able to do at that point in time. In fact, it still is, if we're being honest. But what she would do is embroidery at home. That was her artistic outlet. Until she got arthritis. So then her sister suggested, "Maybe take up painting. Maybe that'll be easier." She was already in her 70s at this point. And then she went on to paint for over 20 more years, two entire decades, after her new career started at the age of 78. We're all gonna be lucky enough to live that long, much less start a new career. Now, that's some badass shit. I'll give you an even more recent example. I've been hate-watching the show I Changed My Mind with Dan Souza on Netflix. I'm only jokingly saying hate-watching because I love Dan. My husband calls him my food boyfriend, and I love America's Test Kitchen. So I'm only half joking when I say I'm hate-watching it. It's 'cause I was duped. I thought it was another ATK show, not a podcast. But you know, Netflix is doing podcasts. Everybody's doing a podcast. Anyway, Dan recently had Kardea Brown on, who you might know from her show Delicious Miss Brown, which is on the Food Network, or she's also got a couple of best-selling cookbooks. But did you know she's not a trained chef? She went to school to be a social worker. She was a social worker. You know that in some states you have to go to grad school for that, right? You need an extended education to be a social worker. On the show, she even talked about how her grandmother, who helped her pay for college, would give her grief about no longer using her degree, and she said,"Grandma, I use my degree every day." And then she told the story of how. You can watch it on the show. I'll link it in the show notes. The moral of the story, my love, is that decisions are not life sentences. These ladies' stories weren't written when they were 18 or 40 or 70, and neither is yours. So say it with me one last time. Decisions are not life sentences. All right. I want you to text me from the link in the show notes and tell me this. Are you currently working in a field dictated by your college degree? Do you work in a field based on what you went to college for? And it's totally cool if the answer is yes. Don't not text me because the answer is yes. But if the answer's no, what was the degree and what did you end up doing instead? What did that degree end up being the foundation for? I'll tell you mine right now. I have a degree in history, and everything it taught me, how to write, how to make an argument, how to question the stories we inherit, how to stay curious, all of that has shown up in everything that I've done since then. Which is pretty cool. And that includes this podcast and building Latinas In Podcasting. All of it. The degree was not the destination, and it sure as hell wasn't the only path I was allowed to follow after graduation. It was just the foundation. So what was yours the foundation for? I wanna know. Text me from the show notes. And don't forget that if you want all six of these lessons, Benchmarks are Bullshit is $19 in the show notes. Go on and get it. And until next time, mi amige, that's a burrito.