October 31, 2023 • 31 mins
It's alive! IT'S ALIVE!! The Motivation Report returns! And on Halloween, what a perefect day to resurrect it from the dead and give it new life like Frankensein's monster. This time, I'm doing this for me. Let's learn to grow together through the magic of relating to one another's specifics and authenticity, and not by trying to please others or appeal to the masses. I tried that for a long time and it didn't work. So starting now, MREP returns to bring you some thought provoking topics at my leisure. But I always promise to remain thought provoking, encouraing, and inspiring. Or at least, I can only hope that's how I come across!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Oh, it's such a cliche to do this, but is
this thing still on? Huh huh, this is the motivation report.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I never thought that I would utter those words once again,
that this is the motivation report my intention. I love
closing chapters, and I intended to close this one pretty
permanently a few years ago when I recorded the last episode,
and so many of these episodes, obviously over the years,
(00:55):
had had just this show was all over the place.
I wanted to do the things and say other things
and sort of be able to represent myself as a
different kind of person. But over the course of the
past year or so, I would say this show has
continued to be on my mind as a means of
(01:16):
an outlet for another thing that I like, which is encouragement,
sort of thinking positive, a little bit of a sort
of motivational speaking angle. And I think what I used
to feel was that I had to live only in
one sandbox, and then that the sandbox had to define me.
I couldn't have multiple sandboxes. I had to just have
(01:38):
the one, and it was this podcast. And I wanted
to do a lot of other things. I wanted to
say a lot of other things. I wanted to represent
myself differently as a performer, as a writer, and so
I felt, well, if I just have this one podcast,
I can't do all those things, so I should end
it and start another one. It never occurred to me
that I could have two or multiple if I wanted to,
(02:00):
funny enough as a producer. As somebody who's been in
the podcast industry now for almost ten years, I feel
like I've seen it go from this really wild West
sort of thing to what's now just it's an oversaturated market.
And yet here I am again restarting yet another podcast.
(02:20):
If any of you follow me on the other I
co host a great history podcast called History rated Ar,
which is just a goofy, a way, an outlet for
me to be silly with my co host. He's the idiot,
He's I should tell him. I said that by mistake.
He's the expert and I'm the idiot. That's the that's
the way I bill it. I ask a lot of
(02:41):
dumb questions and make a lot of dick and fart jokes,
and he says all the smart stuff. But there is
still always an you know, will be a side of
me where I want to talk about the difficult things
I love therapy so much. I love talking about my feelings.
I like I like oversharing about my life. Were some
people are very private, I'm not. And it's not because
(03:03):
I think that what I have to say is actually
the most important. It's just that I love working on
things together, admitting faults and being like, fuck it, own it,
and move on. I think that's the most important thing
that we can do in order to recover, in order
to heal, in order to change positively. So a lot
(03:26):
of things have happened in my life in the past
few years that I kept thinking about this podcast as
another outlet to continue those conversations. But now from a
different angle. The episode that I intended to end the
show on, which was the end, is the beginning, I admitted,
and it's still true and will always be true. And
I think that's the new angle for how I'd like
(03:48):
to do some of these episodes. Is that all the
lessons I was hoping to instill onto other people like
I had some magical wisdom I believed for the longest time.
It's this sort of metaphorical image of me pointing and saying,
you need to change, you need to do this. I
think That's what I'd heard from a lot of motivational
(04:09):
speakers and a lot of people. It's always about the client, right,
as I suppose it should be if you're paying for something,
But it's sort of even the general stuff. It's often
that a person is in a position of assumed power
or knowledge. Oh, I need to practice, get back to
practicing my public speaking so I can say I'm less.
(04:31):
That's a good reason to have this show kick off again.
But there is that sort of assumption, that power dynamic
of this person who's telling me this thing has knowledge,
has truth, has power, has wisdom, and I do not,
And I don't think that that's true. I think everybody
has the same capacity for learning, has the same capacity
for discovering things about themselves, and has the same capacity
(04:55):
for both strength and vulnerability. But we if we live
in a society, isn't that the cliche way to say
that where that's inherently we think that that's flawed. The
masses are sort of seen as the weak and the
individuals are seen as the strong. It's why one percent
of the population is the richest and somehow dictates how
(05:17):
the masses should live their lives. That's a terrible inequity
of power when the masses have way more power than
they often believe and of course are often given credit for.
And so for me, the angle of restarting this show,
I thought, screw it, why don't I just talk about
(05:38):
what I'm going through and own the position that this
is not me doing that metaphorical finger pointing and yelling
at you telling you you need to change. I'm telling
you what I'm thinking, and it's up to you to
determine whether or not these topics are relevant to where
you are in your life, have been relevant in the past,
(05:58):
or maybe relevant in the future, and associate as you
will assign yourself to these topics however you'd like to.
But I don't want to take the position of you
come here for this in order for me to tell
you to get your shit together, and that used to
fuel me. I think that there's a little bit of
sort of toxic thank you so much, toxic masculinity in
(06:21):
that process, because that's kind of the old world model
of motivational speaking, which is like usually white guy or
guy heteronormative man on stage speaking very aggressively to you
in order to try to force you to do things
that they think you should do. I'm not exactly sure
(06:42):
how that equation shakes up, but at the end of
the day, the big pushes so that then they can
sell something, right, a service, a membership, a book. Ironically,
aren't we all trying to sell books? Aren't we all
trying to establish ourselves, build business, build a brand. None
of that's wrong, But I think the perspective in the
(07:04):
way that it's gone about is sort of seen its end.
I don't think we live in that world of motivational
encouragement anymore, where it's that simple, singular sort of man
with authority on stage yelling at masses in audience to
change in order to coax them to do things that
(07:26):
they want them to do. Because if it is about
building a brand in a business, to be fair, you
want them to subscribe, you want them to make a purchase.
I can't fault that. I'm trying to do the same
thing as is pretty much everybody listening in whatever capacity
that they are professional. But a lot of people there's
trust involved in that person on that stage saying those things,
(07:51):
and I think that trust often gets abused. And for me,
in beginning this again, this title popped into my head
a couple months ago, just this idea that like, if
the end is the beginning, then we begin again. You know,
let's this is now the time to start something new,
(08:12):
to start new conversations with the self. Some dogs are
fighting outside my apartment to start this new conversation with
the self and to see who else in the world
is on the same page and going through the same thing.
Because I think I learned this from somebody that I
do some work for. It's a great guy, and his
(08:36):
sort of take on writing is the more specific that
you are, the more universal what you're trying to say becomes.
Often the studio note is this doesn't make any sense.
Too specific to what you're doing. Make this more universal.
(08:56):
So what does something that's quote unquote universal mean? What
does that look like? Okay, let me please the masses
and try to find a way to envelop this message
in a bland, sort of off white looking color that's
cool and inoffensive. It's like a little bit tan, but
(09:20):
just enough like sand, you know, And everyone's like, I
guess that's fine. I'm never mad at that color, but
it doesn't do anything for you. I use that color
because it's literally the color of my walls in my
apartment that I'm looking at right now, and I bet
they pick that color for the same reason. If these
walls were bright red, the owner of the property would
probably be like, somebody's going to come in here and
(09:40):
be like, I don't like these bright red walls. They're
too specific. But you know you're going to get the
renter who loves or was going to take care of
a space if they come in and go these red
walls are fucking incredible. I love red walls, And so
you're not there's no reason to try to make a
universal message generic in order to try to get the
(10:02):
most followers or money, because it's going to end up
sounding washed up and inauthentic and fake, because you're specifically
trying to please some kind of generic audience that doesn't exist.
Because everybody's an individual who is going through individual things
that look similar to other people. Grief, loss, trauma, pain, joy, love, happiness,
(10:27):
all of these things are things that we share collectively,
but our individual experience with them looks very, very different.
And so I started to think, I love talking. It's
why I want to be a performer. It's why I
wanted to restart this podcast. That's why I have a
second It's why I'm an actor, it's why I'm a writer.
(10:49):
I genuinely like trying to entertain people, and I love conversation,
and I thought it would be more beneficial in the
vein of the motivation report, to reframe this show to
be entirely for me. I'm going to own that it's
a selfish endeavor, knowing that if I tell you that
these are messages about things that I'm going through and
(11:11):
I'm struggling, I feel that I will potentially reach more
people through being specific than I would if I try
to generate some kind of message for a broad general audience.
That's the ambulance coming to take me away from restarting
this show. It's a dangerous They're like, don't do it.
(11:33):
You already commit yourself to too many things. And so
I want to be specific. I want to share earnestly
with what's going on as a regular person. I'm still
I don't think i'm really anybody. I just have the Internet,
like everybody else, a little bit of access, and that
(11:55):
there's still some people listening to the show. Thank god,
it's amazing. I'll get a message every once in a
while like this was such a great show, like I'm
so happy for you, and that's so touching that even
like a year, two, three years later, people will pop
in and be like, this really meant a lot to me.
And I think that those touching feelings is what reminded
(12:18):
me that the biggest lesson to learn was that I
was doing it for myself, not for you, and that
if I wanted to continue it, I had to embrace that,
own it and be happy about that this is being
restarted for me. I'm doing this for me, not for you,
but knowing that the more specific I make it, the
more universal it becomes because we all struggle through these
(12:41):
specific things, because we all share grief, trauma, love, pain, happiness, joy,
all those things. And so there's no promises. I'm not
making any promises with this show one, so I don't
have to overstretch and over commit myself as I am
(13:02):
wanting to do. And also because I'm not trying to
get you to do a specific thing. I'm trying to
find a long form way to share my personal trials
and tribulations as it individual and find common ground through
that specificity, because I think that specificity is incredibly powerful,
(13:27):
and we never give it enough credit, not even just
in the entertainment industry, but how much at your job
or in your industry, whatever it is. It's sort of
from the top down. The CEO is usually a psychopath,
and they're always saying, we need to find a way
to reach the most amount of people possible, to make
the most amount of money possible with this as a
(13:48):
capitalist country, for better or for worse, unfortunately. And you
know what, also, if you don't like my opinions, you
can leave. You have that power. Nothing's better than a
negative email reviewers like I don't like which you have
to say, Okay, why did you take the time. And
I think that's another encouragement as we move forward. You
only have enough, so much time on this earth. Don't
(14:09):
waste it anyway. So I'd like to make these sharings
specific so that they feel more universal. And you realize,
I realize that's the correction, that that's how you reach
people by being vulnerable and saying here, I am totally
authentic sharing with you, knowing that in that vulnerability you
(14:32):
can see yourself reflected back at you. We could look different.
We don't even have to be the same gender. The
same orientation, the same color. Anything, but vulnerability is the
most powerful mirror that exists. When you open up and
become available to the world, the world becomes available to you.
(14:58):
You close yourself off and you think you're being strong
by not being vulnerable. You're closed off to the world,
You're closed off to people, You're closed off to the self,
which from that discovery of the self, precipitates all those
other things. This is the easy thing of you can't
love other peop until you know how to love yourself.
And that's true. So that is where I'd like to
(15:22):
begin again. Would I wanted to do a short message
because there's some other topics that I do want to
jump into for subsequent episodes. But it also should be
stated that for me as a person, some of the
major life changes that influenced the decision to bring this
show back was one I came out as queer, and
that was monumentally important for me, something I didn't know
(15:47):
that I could claim as an identity, as an existence
until I don't know, I'm a couple of years ago.
But even growing up as I was born in eighty seven,
so even growing up as a kind of you older
slightly older millennial, you were either gay or you were straight,
and if you were a girl, you were a lesbian.
(16:08):
And if anybody said they are bisexual, you were like, yeah,
they're they're still they're gay, but they just don't want
to say they're all the way gay. You know, it's
like a shitter. I got off the pot thing, and
a lot of people still feel that way about by people,
which is not productive. But all these other options, so
to speak, did not exist. I didn't understand as a
(16:29):
little kid this idea that like I was attracted to everyone,
and as I got older that never changed, but I
could choose heterosexuality. So I just thought that there was
something wrong with me that I could actively just put
over here and not be, which I suppose pan sexual
(16:51):
is sort of the orientation definition of this, but identity wise,
queer is just my favorite word. When I first learned
what that meant as as a kid, went that it
wasn't originally a slur because growing up still at that time,
saying queer was, you know, a derogatory way to say
someone was k hearing that word and knowing that it
(17:15):
just meant something odd, something different, something outside of the norm,
something sort of on the fringes a queer individual. And
when I was little learning that and like reading The
Lord of the Rings, I was like, that's me. But
I but I could. I would never say that. It
wasn't an identity existence at the time, and it was.
It was a negative word. So once people started taking
(17:38):
that back and also utilizing it as kind of a
quick way just to say LGBTQ plus community, saying the
queer community, it rolls off the tongue a little bit better.
Let's be real. It felt so comfortable on it, and
I never understood why I was so comfortable in queer
spaces more than I was in quote unquote straight places.
You know, bars and sports and all that kind of stuff.
(18:00):
That's not for me. So if you're stumbling into this
show and you're like, oh, it's hosted by a queer guy,
I don't vibe with that. That's your problem, that's not mine.
I think the feedback of like, you should not preach
to me is so silly, because what that's saying is
I'm preaching to you by demanding that you change to
(18:21):
make me more comfortable. And that's not how life works.
Life doesn't mold around you. You mold around it. That's
what we've established. The more vulnerable you are, the more
open you are, the more the world is open to you.
And these people wonder why they're so fucking pissed off
all the time and why their little feelings are always
getting hurt and pointing fingers because they're closed. It's not
(18:44):
to say that everybody has to be some kind of queer,
although I do have my feelings about the fact that
there is no such thing as a binary, but that's
a conversation for another day. The more closed off you are,
the more you are closed off to getting the most
out of your life. So that's number one. Coming out
a squeer, big big thing. Somebody was like, you should
do a new episode of the Motivation Report to talk
(19:05):
about that. We can get you know, I might get
into the specifics of it more later, but I did
want to address it in this episode. And also part
two is that I am now sober. These are big
big things and sobriety, meaning that I am an alcoholic,
And that's another thing I think admitting and owning up
(19:26):
to and even being public about it. I'm like, fuck it,
who cares? Like how can somebody else hurt me if
I take power and control over a thing first, and
I think that there's potentially a way and maybe this
is what I'm doing and I'll learn from my mistakes.
That's how life goes. But there can be a way
(19:47):
where people are really open about things, but it feels
like it's not healthy. Have you ever met somebody who
almost immediately upon meeting them, they will confess to you
how they behave in negative ways to make you a
w aware of it, so that way, when they behave
that way in the future, they have the excuse that
they already warned you. They're not telling you they're going
(20:08):
to change. They acknowledge that it's a problem, but they're
not interested in getting help or changing or becoming different.
They're just saying, this is who I am, and this
is what you're gonna have to deal with. So my
problem becomes your problem. And that's incredibly unfair. Ah, somebody,
(20:28):
not somebody. Many people in my life have done this,
and my work in the podcasting space especially. I know
I'm this, but at least I'm aware of it. Okay,
what if I said I know I'm an alcoholic to everybody,
I said, I know I'm an alcoholic, but at least
I'm aware of it. And I kept drinking and then
(20:49):
I got in the car and I killed somebody. Yes,
that sounds like an extreme example, but sometimes the extreme
I think works for effectiveness. You run the risk of
injuring other people when you admit to faults that you
know exist but make no effort to change them, and
that makes you culpable responsible that if you are aware
(21:12):
of what should be changed or what you want to
be changed, and you don't change it, then the outcome
of your actions is entirely your responsibility. And if somebody
gets hurt as a result of your actions, that is
your responsibility. And I think people believe that if we
(21:34):
embrace the negative thing and then make the mistake, they
won't be responsible because they warned you and it still
happened to you and you should have known better not
to trust them. That's not how that works. Although I'm
sure we all have people in our lives that were like,
God damn it, they did it again, and we know
(21:56):
we should cut them out of our lives or move on,
or talk to them about it or have an intervention,
but we don't because we don't want to deal with it.
That's understandable, there's something inherently wrong about it because it's hard.
I get it. All the conversations I had with Casey,
my spouse, about my drinking, I didn't like those conversations.
They weren't a ton of fun because they made me
(22:17):
feel bad because deep down I knew she was right
I had a problem. And even deeper than that, I
knew I had a problem for many years, But for
years I sort of leaned into being what this podcast
(22:38):
used to be. I have a drink in my hand
and we're talking about the motivating things in life, and
I'm saying, fuck, you know, like, oh, I'm a tough
I'm an edgy motivator. I'm different. I was trying to
be what I thought everybody else would think was interesting.
That was my approach to trying to please the masses,
which is why the messages were so forcefully dictated to
(23:00):
quote unquote you, even though the messages were for me,
because I didn't know who I was authentically. I was
trying to be who other people told me I should be,
and burying that confusion of identity both queerness and addiction
(23:22):
with alcohol and drugs, drugs a little less but let's
be real, there was a fair amount of drug usage
going on to bearing it beneath those things as a
way to try, I think unconsciously knowing you're not being
who you authentically are, this knocks you out of your
(23:44):
head to get drunk, to not think that you're repressing
yourself as a means of trying to please other people
or reach the largest audience, totally missing the fact and
now understanding and trying to learn and live the further
learn and live the fact that the more specific you are,
the more universal your message becomes. So yes, Hi, I'm
(24:04):
will I'm an alcoholic. I have what am I as
of this recording, one hundred and seven days sober? I
think twenty days cigarette free? Also, which is I'm like, listen, well,
I'm giving all this shit up, I might as well
give it all up. And so that was a monumental
(24:26):
change too that I think what I'll be discussing in
future episodes comes from a lot of that comes from
being able to be open and honest and free about
being queer and being sober. And I wanted you all
to know that, you know, how many episodes of this
(24:47):
I felt like I couldn't record unless I had the
drink and I had to do it. I had to
do it. I built a format around an excuse to
give myself a reason to drink. I can't record an
episode if I don't drink. I built my other podcast
around that too, History Rate It Are. The first segment
was like, yeah, we drink Martini's and we do you know,
(25:08):
get a little boozy talking about history. It was fun.
I don't have any regrets. Luckily, I didn't hurt anybody.
I just hurt myself. That's I'm actually not in a
A as a active process. You know, we all find
our own individual journeys. For those who are on sober
journeys find their individual paths. As of yet, the one
(25:30):
I have been finding and building for myself doesn't involve a A.
But it's not to say that it is not an
effective and valuable platform. It's just at this current moment,
it doesn't work for me. I think it's important to
say that, but I do know that. I think step
seven of the twelve steps is like you have to
apologize and make amends to people, and I learned very
fortunately I didn't really have to make amends to anybody
(25:54):
because my problem. I wouldn't drink to get to a
point of then like hurting other people because I was
heard side. I would drink to a point of drinking
an isolation and then hurting myself, continuing to self flagellate,
inflict deeper psychological wounds on myself for not being who
I thought other people thought I should be. I beat
(26:17):
myself up, I abused myself, and so that the big
piece of the work of the sober journey is making
amends to myself and then bringing that authentic self to
a space like this and sharing with people so that
way we can learn, grow, love, and change all together.
I hope some of you are still out there. I
(26:37):
don't actually know who's actively listening or subscribe to the show.
I hope it's going to be a fun little surprise
when it pops up in their feed that there's a
new episode. This isn't a weekly show. It may maybe
I'll have an episode every week, maybe it'll be every month.
Like I said, no promises. This is for me, and
you get to come along if you so choose, If
(27:00):
you'd like to welcome your everybody is welcome. If you
don't agree or anything like that, you know. You also
can talk to me about it. I'm on social media,
send me some messages. I love spitball and things. I
like polite discourse, and I like trying to further conversations
(27:20):
so that way effective change can happen. I want to
leave on an important thing that I learned from my spouse, Casey,
who you'll probably hear me mention often. I was saying,
I'm not sure where she had learned at first, but
I kept saying, like, people are afraid of change. Everybody's
afraid of change. I think that's what we sort of
just collectively say. And she had said, people aren't afraid
(27:41):
of change necessarily, they're afraid of loss. You're not afraid
of the inherent difference of a thing. The underlying piece
of that fear is that you're afraid that you will
lose what you understood prior to change. Your identity, the
(28:02):
way the world looks, your belief system, all you, everything
that you are, is up for change. Right. Therefore, everything
that you think, feel and believe, everything that you are
at your core is up to be lost. That's scary.
(28:22):
I think that's how we think about it. I could
lose all these things, but it isn't about losing, changing growing,
Becoming better is not about losing. It's about gaining. And
that I learned deeply by quitting drugs and alcohol. I
couldn't imagine so many social scenarios without drinking, without all
(28:47):
the things I had associated with having a drink. So
the idea of quitting and getting sober was I'm afraid
of change, right. I wasn't afraid of the change of
sobriety because I think I knew deep down, like, yeah,
you're gonna be healthier. Life is going to look and
feel better for you. I was afraid of losing that
piece that had come to define me so strongly. I
(29:11):
always wanted to be seen. I grew up with a
lot of old movies and references and stuff, and so
like a guy with always there with a cocktail in
his hand and like a cigarette, like that was the
coolest thing in the world to me. I wanted to
be that guy. And guess what, I became that guy.
And as it turns out, if you're a guy who
always has a drink and a cigarette in his hand,
that's that's bad. That's not cool, it's not good. I
(29:33):
always had I always wanted to have a drink in
my hand, and I did, and it became a big problem.
And it is a miracle that I didn't get hurt
and I didn't hurt anybody else. Incredible the amount of dangerous,
stupid things that I did. So I was not afraid
of changing. I was afraid of losing who I thought
I was and what I thought was saving me. And
(29:55):
it wasn't true. Because this will be the next episode's topic.
I I was afraid of absence when what I truly
had was abundance. I couldn't see the abundance in my
life because I was so focused on the absence. If
I lose this one thing, everything will fall apart. Instead
(30:21):
of looking at it as I'm gaining all of these things.
By willingly surrendering this other thing because it's hurting me,
I become more vulnerable to this process, definitely afraid of
being sober. Who will I be? And yet the world
opens up to me because I've now opened up to it.
That's the key takeaway from today. I thank you all
(30:44):
for listening. I'm back, baby. Isn't that weird? What a
strange thing to feel. I'm doing this for me, man,
this is gonna be This is gonna be fun. Tune in,
rate and review. I honestly I don't care. Do what
you want, share with your friends. If you do, want
to reach me and chat about some stuff or bring
up some things we could talk about here in the show.
I'm Att will Sterling. Underscore on all of the socials.
(31:07):
Take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones,
Pet your dogs, scratch scratch your catches. What's going on here?
I stopped drinking and I still can't put a fucking
sentence together. Scratch your cats. I'm a mess. All right,
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Oh, it's such a cliche to do this, but is
this thing still on? Huh huh, this is the motivation report.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I never thought that I would utter those words once again,
that this is the motivation report my intention. I love
closing chapters, and I intended to close this one pretty
permanently a few years ago when I recorded the last episode,
and so many of these episodes, obviously over the years,
(00:55):
had had just this show was all over the place.
I wanted to do the things and say other things
and sort of be able to represent myself as a
different kind of person. But over the course of the
past year or so, I would say this show has
continued to be on my mind as a means of
(01:16):
an outlet for another thing that I like, which is encouragement,
sort of thinking positive, a little bit of a sort
of motivational speaking angle. And I think what I used
to feel was that I had to live only in
one sandbox, and then that the sandbox had to define me.
I couldn't have multiple sandboxes. I had to just have
(01:38):
the one, and it was this podcast. And I wanted
to do a lot of other things. I wanted to
say a lot of other things. I wanted to represent
myself differently as a performer, as a writer, and so
I felt, well, if I just have this one podcast,
I can't do all those things, so I should end
it and start another one. It never occurred to me
that I could have two or multiple if I wanted to,
(02:00):
funny enough as a producer. As somebody who's been in
the podcast industry now for almost ten years, I feel
like I've seen it go from this really wild West
sort of thing to what's now just it's an oversaturated market.
And yet here I am again restarting yet another podcast.
(02:20):
If any of you follow me on the other I
co host a great history podcast called History rated Ar,
which is just a goofy, a way, an outlet for
me to be silly with my co host. He's the idiot,
He's I should tell him. I said that by mistake.
He's the expert and I'm the idiot. That's the that's
the way I bill it. I ask a lot of
(02:41):
dumb questions and make a lot of dick and fart jokes,
and he says all the smart stuff. But there is
still always an you know, will be a side of
me where I want to talk about the difficult things
I love therapy so much. I love talking about my feelings.
I like I like oversharing about my life. Were some
people are very private, I'm not. And it's not because
(03:03):
I think that what I have to say is actually
the most important. It's just that I love working on
things together, admitting faults and being like, fuck it, own it,
and move on. I think that's the most important thing
that we can do in order to recover, in order
to heal, in order to change positively. So a lot
(03:26):
of things have happened in my life in the past
few years that I kept thinking about this podcast as
another outlet to continue those conversations. But now from a
different angle. The episode that I intended to end the
show on, which was the end, is the beginning, I admitted,
and it's still true and will always be true. And
I think that's the new angle for how I'd like
(03:48):
to do some of these episodes. Is that all the
lessons I was hoping to instill onto other people like
I had some magical wisdom I believed for the longest time.
It's this sort of metaphorical image of me pointing and saying,
you need to change, you need to do this. I
think That's what I'd heard from a lot of motivational
(04:09):
speakers and a lot of people. It's always about the client, right,
as I suppose it should be if you're paying for something,
But it's sort of even the general stuff. It's often
that a person is in a position of assumed power
or knowledge. Oh, I need to practice, get back to
practicing my public speaking so I can say I'm less.
(04:31):
That's a good reason to have this show kick off again.
But there is that sort of assumption, that power dynamic
of this person who's telling me this thing has knowledge,
has truth, has power, has wisdom, and I do not,
And I don't think that that's true. I think everybody
has the same capacity for learning, has the same capacity
for discovering things about themselves, and has the same capacity
(04:55):
for both strength and vulnerability. But we if we live
in a society, isn't that the cliche way to say
that where that's inherently we think that that's flawed. The
masses are sort of seen as the weak and the
individuals are seen as the strong. It's why one percent
of the population is the richest and somehow dictates how
(05:17):
the masses should live their lives. That's a terrible inequity
of power when the masses have way more power than
they often believe and of course are often given credit for.
And so for me, the angle of restarting this show,
I thought, screw it, why don't I just talk about
(05:38):
what I'm going through and own the position that this
is not me doing that metaphorical finger pointing and yelling
at you telling you you need to change. I'm telling
you what I'm thinking, and it's up to you to
determine whether or not these topics are relevant to where
you are in your life, have been relevant in the past,
(05:58):
or maybe relevant in the future, and associate as you
will assign yourself to these topics however you'd like to.
But I don't want to take the position of you
come here for this in order for me to tell
you to get your shit together, and that used to
fuel me. I think that there's a little bit of
sort of toxic thank you so much, toxic masculinity in
(06:21):
that process, because that's kind of the old world model
of motivational speaking, which is like usually white guy or
guy heteronormative man on stage speaking very aggressively to you
in order to try to force you to do things
that they think you should do. I'm not exactly sure
(06:42):
how that equation shakes up, but at the end of
the day, the big pushes so that then they can
sell something, right, a service, a membership, a book. Ironically,
aren't we all trying to sell books? Aren't we all
trying to establish ourselves, build business, build a brand. None
of that's wrong, But I think the perspective in the
(07:04):
way that it's gone about is sort of seen its end.
I don't think we live in that world of motivational
encouragement anymore, where it's that simple, singular sort of man
with authority on stage yelling at masses in audience to
change in order to coax them to do things that
(07:26):
they want them to do. Because if it is about
building a brand in a business, to be fair, you
want them to subscribe, you want them to make a purchase.
I can't fault that. I'm trying to do the same
thing as is pretty much everybody listening in whatever capacity
that they are professional. But a lot of people there's
trust involved in that person on that stage saying those things,
(07:51):
and I think that trust often gets abused. And for me,
in beginning this again, this title popped into my head
a couple months ago, just this idea that like, if
the end is the beginning, then we begin again. You know,
let's this is now the time to start something new,
(08:12):
to start new conversations with the self. Some dogs are
fighting outside my apartment to start this new conversation with
the self and to see who else in the world
is on the same page and going through the same thing.
Because I think I learned this from somebody that I
do some work for. It's a great guy, and his
(08:36):
sort of take on writing is the more specific that
you are, the more universal what you're trying to say becomes.
Often the studio note is this doesn't make any sense.
Too specific to what you're doing. Make this more universal.
(08:56):
So what does something that's quote unquote universal mean? What
does that look like? Okay, let me please the masses
and try to find a way to envelop this message
in a bland, sort of off white looking color that's
cool and inoffensive. It's like a little bit tan, but
(09:20):
just enough like sand, you know, And everyone's like, I
guess that's fine. I'm never mad at that color, but
it doesn't do anything for you. I use that color
because it's literally the color of my walls in my
apartment that I'm looking at right now, and I bet
they pick that color for the same reason. If these
walls were bright red, the owner of the property would
probably be like, somebody's going to come in here and
(09:40):
be like, I don't like these bright red walls. They're
too specific. But you know you're going to get the
renter who loves or was going to take care of
a space if they come in and go these red
walls are fucking incredible. I love red walls, And so
you're not there's no reason to try to make a
universal message generic in order to try to get the
(10:02):
most followers or money, because it's going to end up
sounding washed up and inauthentic and fake, because you're specifically
trying to please some kind of generic audience that doesn't exist.
Because everybody's an individual who is going through individual things
that look similar to other people. Grief, loss, trauma, pain, joy, love, happiness,
(10:27):
all of these things are things that we share collectively,
but our individual experience with them looks very, very different.
And so I started to think, I love talking. It's
why I want to be a performer. It's why I
wanted to restart this podcast. That's why I have a
second It's why I'm an actor, it's why I'm a writer.
(10:49):
I genuinely like trying to entertain people, and I love conversation,
and I thought it would be more beneficial in the
vein of the motivation report, to reframe this show to
be entirely for me. I'm going to own that it's
a selfish endeavor, knowing that if I tell you that
these are messages about things that I'm going through and
(11:11):
I'm struggling, I feel that I will potentially reach more
people through being specific than I would if I try
to generate some kind of message for a broad general audience.
That's the ambulance coming to take me away from restarting
this show. It's a dangerous They're like, don't do it.
(11:33):
You already commit yourself to too many things. And so
I want to be specific. I want to share earnestly
with what's going on as a regular person. I'm still
I don't think i'm really anybody. I just have the Internet,
like everybody else, a little bit of access, and that
(11:55):
there's still some people listening to the show. Thank god,
it's amazing. I'll get a message every once in a
while like this was such a great show, like I'm
so happy for you, and that's so touching that even
like a year, two, three years later, people will pop
in and be like, this really meant a lot to me.
And I think that those touching feelings is what reminded
(12:18):
me that the biggest lesson to learn was that I
was doing it for myself, not for you, and that
if I wanted to continue it, I had to embrace that,
own it and be happy about that this is being
restarted for me. I'm doing this for me, not for you,
but knowing that the more specific I make it, the
more universal it becomes because we all struggle through these
(12:41):
specific things, because we all share grief, trauma, love, pain, happiness, joy,
all those things. And so there's no promises. I'm not
making any promises with this show one, so I don't
have to overstretch and over commit myself as I am
(13:02):
wanting to do. And also because I'm not trying to
get you to do a specific thing. I'm trying to
find a long form way to share my personal trials
and tribulations as it individual and find common ground through
that specificity, because I think that specificity is incredibly powerful,
(13:27):
and we never give it enough credit, not even just
in the entertainment industry, but how much at your job
or in your industry, whatever it is. It's sort of
from the top down. The CEO is usually a psychopath,
and they're always saying, we need to find a way
to reach the most amount of people possible, to make
the most amount of money possible with this as a
(13:48):
capitalist country, for better or for worse, unfortunately. And you
know what, also, if you don't like my opinions, you
can leave. You have that power. Nothing's better than a
negative email reviewers like I don't like which you have
to say, Okay, why did you take the time. And
I think that's another encouragement as we move forward. You
only have enough, so much time on this earth. Don't
(14:09):
waste it anyway. So I'd like to make these sharings
specific so that they feel more universal. And you realize,
I realize that's the correction, that that's how you reach
people by being vulnerable and saying here, I am totally
authentic sharing with you, knowing that in that vulnerability you
(14:32):
can see yourself reflected back at you. We could look different.
We don't even have to be the same gender. The
same orientation, the same color. Anything, but vulnerability is the
most powerful mirror that exists. When you open up and
become available to the world, the world becomes available to you.
(14:58):
You close yourself off and you think you're being strong
by not being vulnerable. You're closed off to the world,
You're closed off to people, You're closed off to the self,
which from that discovery of the self, precipitates all those
other things. This is the easy thing of you can't
love other peop until you know how to love yourself.
And that's true. So that is where I'd like to
(15:22):
begin again. Would I wanted to do a short message
because there's some other topics that I do want to
jump into for subsequent episodes. But it also should be
stated that for me as a person, some of the
major life changes that influenced the decision to bring this
show back was one I came out as queer, and
that was monumentally important for me, something I didn't know
(15:47):
that I could claim as an identity, as an existence
until I don't know, I'm a couple of years ago.
But even growing up as I was born in eighty seven,
so even growing up as a kind of you older
slightly older millennial, you were either gay or you were straight,
and if you were a girl, you were a lesbian.
(16:08):
And if anybody said they are bisexual, you were like, yeah,
they're they're still they're gay, but they just don't want
to say they're all the way gay. You know, it's
like a shitter. I got off the pot thing, and
a lot of people still feel that way about by people,
which is not productive. But all these other options, so
to speak, did not exist. I didn't understand as a
(16:29):
little kid this idea that like I was attracted to everyone,
and as I got older that never changed, but I
could choose heterosexuality. So I just thought that there was
something wrong with me that I could actively just put
over here and not be, which I suppose pan sexual
(16:51):
is sort of the orientation definition of this, but identity wise,
queer is just my favorite word. When I first learned
what that meant as as a kid, went that it
wasn't originally a slur because growing up still at that time,
saying queer was, you know, a derogatory way to say
someone was k hearing that word and knowing that it
(17:15):
just meant something odd, something different, something outside of the norm,
something sort of on the fringes a queer individual. And
when I was little learning that and like reading The
Lord of the Rings, I was like, that's me. But
I but I could. I would never say that. It
wasn't an identity existence at the time, and it was.
It was a negative word. So once people started taking
(17:38):
that back and also utilizing it as kind of a
quick way just to say LGBTQ plus community, saying the
queer community, it rolls off the tongue a little bit better.
Let's be real. It felt so comfortable on it, and
I never understood why I was so comfortable in queer
spaces more than I was in quote unquote straight places.
You know, bars and sports and all that kind of stuff.
(18:00):
That's not for me. So if you're stumbling into this
show and you're like, oh, it's hosted by a queer guy,
I don't vibe with that. That's your problem, that's not mine.
I think the feedback of like, you should not preach
to me is so silly, because what that's saying is
I'm preaching to you by demanding that you change to
(18:21):
make me more comfortable. And that's not how life works.
Life doesn't mold around you. You mold around it. That's
what we've established. The more vulnerable you are, the more
open you are, the more the world is open to you.
And these people wonder why they're so fucking pissed off
all the time and why their little feelings are always
getting hurt and pointing fingers because they're closed. It's not
(18:44):
to say that everybody has to be some kind of queer,
although I do have my feelings about the fact that
there is no such thing as a binary, but that's
a conversation for another day. The more closed off you are,
the more you are closed off to getting the most
out of your life. So that's number one. Coming out
a squeer, big big thing. Somebody was like, you should
do a new episode of the Motivation Report to talk
(19:05):
about that. We can get you know, I might get
into the specifics of it more later, but I did
want to address it in this episode. And also part
two is that I am now sober. These are big
big things and sobriety, meaning that I am an alcoholic,
And that's another thing I think admitting and owning up
(19:26):
to and even being public about it. I'm like, fuck it,
who cares? Like how can somebody else hurt me if
I take power and control over a thing first, and
I think that there's potentially a way and maybe this
is what I'm doing and I'll learn from my mistakes.
That's how life goes. But there can be a way
(19:47):
where people are really open about things, but it feels
like it's not healthy. Have you ever met somebody who
almost immediately upon meeting them, they will confess to you
how they behave in negative ways to make you a
w aware of it, so that way, when they behave
that way in the future, they have the excuse that
they already warned you. They're not telling you they're going
(20:08):
to change. They acknowledge that it's a problem, but they're
not interested in getting help or changing or becoming different.
They're just saying, this is who I am, and this
is what you're gonna have to deal with. So my
problem becomes your problem. And that's incredibly unfair. Ah, somebody,
(20:28):
not somebody. Many people in my life have done this,
and my work in the podcasting space especially. I know
I'm this, but at least I'm aware of it. Okay,
what if I said I know I'm an alcoholic to everybody,
I said, I know I'm an alcoholic, but at least
I'm aware of it. And I kept drinking and then
(20:49):
I got in the car and I killed somebody. Yes,
that sounds like an extreme example, but sometimes the extreme
I think works for effectiveness. You run the risk of
injuring other people when you admit to faults that you
know exist but make no effort to change them, and
that makes you culpable responsible that if you are aware
(21:12):
of what should be changed or what you want to
be changed, and you don't change it, then the outcome
of your actions is entirely your responsibility. And if somebody
gets hurt as a result of your actions, that is
your responsibility. And I think people believe that if we
(21:34):
embrace the negative thing and then make the mistake, they
won't be responsible because they warned you and it still
happened to you and you should have known better not
to trust them. That's not how that works. Although I'm
sure we all have people in our lives that were like,
God damn it, they did it again, and we know
(21:56):
we should cut them out of our lives or move on,
or talk to them about it or have an intervention,
but we don't because we don't want to deal with it.
That's understandable, there's something inherently wrong about it because it's hard.
I get it. All the conversations I had with Casey,
my spouse, about my drinking, I didn't like those conversations.
They weren't a ton of fun because they made me
(22:17):
feel bad because deep down I knew she was right
I had a problem. And even deeper than that, I
knew I had a problem for many years, But for
years I sort of leaned into being what this podcast
(22:38):
used to be. I have a drink in my hand
and we're talking about the motivating things in life, and
I'm saying, fuck, you know, like, oh, I'm a tough
I'm an edgy motivator. I'm different. I was trying to
be what I thought everybody else would think was interesting.
That was my approach to trying to please the masses,
which is why the messages were so forcefully dictated to
(23:00):
quote unquote you, even though the messages were for me,
because I didn't know who I was authentically. I was
trying to be who other people told me I should be,
and burying that confusion of identity both queerness and addiction
(23:22):
with alcohol and drugs, drugs a little less but let's
be real, there was a fair amount of drug usage
going on to bearing it beneath those things as a
way to try, I think unconsciously knowing you're not being
who you authentically are, this knocks you out of your
(23:44):
head to get drunk, to not think that you're repressing
yourself as a means of trying to please other people
or reach the largest audience, totally missing the fact and
now understanding and trying to learn and live the further
learn and live the fact that the more specific you are,
the more universal your message becomes. So yes, Hi, I'm
(24:04):
will I'm an alcoholic. I have what am I as
of this recording, one hundred and seven days sober? I
think twenty days cigarette free? Also, which is I'm like, listen, well,
I'm giving all this shit up, I might as well
give it all up. And so that was a monumental
(24:26):
change too that I think what I'll be discussing in
future episodes comes from a lot of that comes from
being able to be open and honest and free about
being queer and being sober. And I wanted you all
to know that, you know, how many episodes of this
(24:47):
I felt like I couldn't record unless I had the
drink and I had to do it. I had to
do it. I built a format around an excuse to
give myself a reason to drink. I can't record an
episode if I don't drink. I built my other podcast
around that too, History Rate It Are. The first segment
was like, yeah, we drink Martini's and we do you know,
(25:08):
get a little boozy talking about history. It was fun.
I don't have any regrets. Luckily, I didn't hurt anybody.
I just hurt myself. That's I'm actually not in a
A as a active process. You know, we all find
our own individual journeys. For those who are on sober
journeys find their individual paths. As of yet, the one
(25:30):
I have been finding and building for myself doesn't involve a A.
But it's not to say that it is not an
effective and valuable platform. It's just at this current moment,
it doesn't work for me. I think it's important to
say that, but I do know that. I think step
seven of the twelve steps is like you have to
apologize and make amends to people, and I learned very
fortunately I didn't really have to make amends to anybody
(25:54):
because my problem. I wouldn't drink to get to a
point of then like hurting other people because I was
heard side. I would drink to a point of drinking
an isolation and then hurting myself, continuing to self flagellate,
inflict deeper psychological wounds on myself for not being who
I thought other people thought I should be. I beat
(26:17):
myself up, I abused myself, and so that the big
piece of the work of the sober journey is making
amends to myself and then bringing that authentic self to
a space like this and sharing with people so that
way we can learn, grow, love, and change all together.
I hope some of you are still out there. I
(26:37):
don't actually know who's actively listening or subscribe to the show.
I hope it's going to be a fun little surprise
when it pops up in their feed that there's a
new episode. This isn't a weekly show. It may maybe
I'll have an episode every week, maybe it'll be every month.
Like I said, no promises. This is for me, and
you get to come along if you so choose, If
(27:00):
you'd like to welcome your everybody is welcome. If you
don't agree or anything like that, you know. You also
can talk to me about it. I'm on social media,
send me some messages. I love spitball and things. I
like polite discourse, and I like trying to further conversations
(27:20):
so that way effective change can happen. I want to
leave on an important thing that I learned from my spouse, Casey,
who you'll probably hear me mention often. I was saying,
I'm not sure where she had learned at first, but
I kept saying, like, people are afraid of change. Everybody's
afraid of change. I think that's what we sort of
just collectively say. And she had said, people aren't afraid
(27:41):
of change necessarily, they're afraid of loss. You're not afraid
of the inherent difference of a thing. The underlying piece
of that fear is that you're afraid that you will
lose what you understood prior to change. Your identity, the
(28:02):
way the world looks, your belief system, all you, everything
that you are, is up for change. Right. Therefore, everything
that you think, feel and believe, everything that you are
at your core is up to be lost. That's scary.
(28:22):
I think that's how we think about it. I could
lose all these things, but it isn't about losing, changing growing,
Becoming better is not about losing. It's about gaining. And
that I learned deeply by quitting drugs and alcohol. I
couldn't imagine so many social scenarios without drinking, without all
(28:47):
the things I had associated with having a drink. So
the idea of quitting and getting sober was I'm afraid
of change, right. I wasn't afraid of the change of
sobriety because I think I knew deep down, like, yeah,
you're gonna be healthier. Life is going to look and
feel better for you. I was afraid of losing that
piece that had come to define me so strongly. I
(29:11):
always wanted to be seen. I grew up with a
lot of old movies and references and stuff, and so
like a guy with always there with a cocktail in
his hand and like a cigarette, like that was the
coolest thing in the world to me. I wanted to
be that guy. And guess what, I became that guy.
And as it turns out, if you're a guy who
always has a drink and a cigarette in his hand,
that's that's bad. That's not cool, it's not good. I
(29:33):
always had I always wanted to have a drink in
my hand, and I did, and it became a big problem.
And it is a miracle that I didn't get hurt
and I didn't hurt anybody else. Incredible the amount of dangerous,
stupid things that I did. So I was not afraid
of changing. I was afraid of losing who I thought
I was and what I thought was saving me. And
(29:55):
it wasn't true. Because this will be the next episode's topic.
I I was afraid of absence when what I truly
had was abundance. I couldn't see the abundance in my
life because I was so focused on the absence. If
I lose this one thing, everything will fall apart. Instead
(30:21):
of looking at it as I'm gaining all of these things.
By willingly surrendering this other thing because it's hurting me,
I become more vulnerable to this process, definitely afraid of
being sober. Who will I be? And yet the world
opens up to me because I've now opened up to it.
That's the key takeaway from today. I thank you all
(30:44):
for listening. I'm back, baby. Isn't that weird? What a
strange thing to feel. I'm doing this for me, man,
this is gonna be This is gonna be fun. Tune in,
rate and review. I honestly I don't care. Do what
you want, share with your friends. If you do, want
to reach me and chat about some stuff or bring
up some things we could talk about here in the show.
I'm Att will Sterling. Underscore on all of the socials.
(31:07):
Take care of yourself, take care of your loved ones,
Pet your dogs, scratch scratch your catches. What's going on here?
I stopped drinking and I still can't put a fucking
sentence together. Scratch your cats. I'm a mess. All right,
Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
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