Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 552 of the Wildly Successful Lifestyle podcast! Nice to be with you! I hope you’re all doing well. If you’re not, you can take the advice of my yoga instructor this week. She said “if you feel like you’re at the end of your rope, tie a k it and hang on”. I loved that. Because we’ve been there right? And we’ve also gotten on the other side of it too. Remember your resilience in the moments where you feel overwhelmed, experience teaches us that we are tougher than we thought and far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for. Remember that.
Ok. Speaking of resilience.
I saw a snippet this week of Jamie Kern Lima’s podcast who I have seen speak and enjoyed her story, because she never gave up. she’s the one that created a makeup company on her own and sold the company for a billion dollars. I mean she really is a force to be reckoned with. She has done amazing things and I love that. Anyway I didn’t know she had a podcast, but what caught my eye and probably the eye of a bunch of people was her guest was Meghan Markle who you can love her or hate her, doesn’t matter, she is very resilient, that’s all I can say because I don’t know her, but we do know, she is controversial. So as it will when you interview a controversial person, often the light gets shined on you. And so people on X were like who’s this Jamie person interviewing Meghan Markle? And so they do a deep dive intoJamie’s past. Dragging up old stuff about her life, her choices, past mistakes. For a minute I was like “uh oh she should have never interviewed that girl”.
But then I realized wait a minute, Jamie’s amazing, why are we tearing her down??
It got me thinking about how quick we are to play armchair quarterback with someone else’s life. We see a snippet of someone’s past—maybe a bad decision, an old tweet, or a moment they’re not proud of—and we act like that defines them forever. But let’s be real: we’ve all got a past. I’ve done things I cringe at now. Haven’t you? The difference is, most of us don’t have the internet digging through our high school yearbooks or old Facebook posts.
What bugs me is how easy it is to tear someone down. I’ve been guilty of it too—scrolling X, seeing some drama, and thinking, ‘Oh, they deserve it.’ But when I saw people coming for Jamie, it hit me: judging someone’s past doesn’t make you better than them. If anything, it just means their life is probably more interesting than yours. [Pause for a chuckle.] come on, it’s kind of true! And honestly, it’s kind of painful to admit, because I’ve been that person clutching my popcorn, watching the drama unfold.
The truth is, we’re all on a journey. We grow, we mess up, we learn, we evolve. Hopefully, we come out better on the other side. But when we zoom in on someone else’s mistakes with a magnifying glass, we’re not just being unfair to them—we’re ignoring our own work. It’s like we’re saying, ‘Look at their mess so I don’t have to deal with mine.’ And that is NOT what we’re going for, right?”
Let’s be real we all have cringe moments in our past that we wouldn’t want to be defined by now. I unloaded a soon to be exboyfriends clothes onto a train track once, I also remember leaving an apartment with things still in it when I moved out, that’s not who I am today and I would never want to be defined by that now. There are other things I’m not proud of but let’s not unload ALL our dirty laundry at once, right?
You see, when I see the mistakes people make, it’s easy to sit back and say I’m glad that’s not me, but then if I’m really being honest…deep deep way back in the part of my brain that wants to forget my mistakes, I realize “it could have easily been me”. And Admitting that makes me want to hug that person I was starting to judge and tell them “it’s going to be ok, this too shall pass”. Just keep moving forward and making the best decision you can for where you are right now. And don’t worry about what others are thinking. If they’re thinking about you it means you’re interesting to them, take it as a compliment. Why not?
So, here’s my challenge for you this week: ask yourself, ‘Am I okay with who I am?’ Not who you were five years ago, not who you think you should be—just who you are right now. It’s a tough question, because it forces you to get real with yourself. Are you proud of how you show up? Are you giving yourself grace for the mistakes you’ve made? And—are you giving that same grace to others?
Next time you’re tempted to judge someone’s past—whether it’s a celebrity like Meghan or your annoying coworker—pause and think: ‘What’s their story? What have they been through?’ We don’t know why people do what they do, but we can choose to meet them where they are. And maybe, just maybe, that starts with being kinder to ourselves.”
Share this with 3 interesting people in your life. I love you guys. I’ll talk to you in a few days!
