Let Me Tell You This About That

We grow when we do the hard things

• Hess and Delbert • Season 1 • Episode 52

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We grow when we do the hard things

Hess is back from a trip in France, and Delbert is back on the green couch today to talk to you about life—Join us in this chat.  They had watched a video of Kara Lawson, Duke women’s basketball coach, telling her players that they should never wait for things to get easier.  She tells them it won’t—but doing the hard things, will make it easier for you to do the hard things in the future. Delbert and Hess have talked a lot about this—doing the “next right thing” does NOT mean that it is the next “easiest thing.”  Listen up and tell us what you think about this.


Peace and Love, and we believe in you—You CAN do it!

Here is the link to Kara's talk:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oDzfZOfNki4


I am still collecting for José's cancer treatments. This week José received radiation in his lower spine every day. We are awaiting the next CT Scans. Thank you for your continued support!
https://gofund.me/e6f61999

In addition to being a podcast host, Hess is also an LCSW--if you'd like to learn more about her work as a therapist, check it out at www.jessicabollinger.com

One of her mission's is for all of our lights to shine--when we see each other and allow ourself to be seen--and we can say to the person in front of us, There You Are! the world will be an amazing place!

Delbert is a top realtor in Louisville, KY, and you can find her at Kentucky Select Properties She will help you find your home, and also help you get the most equity when you sell your house.

Her philanthropic work to continue her sister Carole and niece Meghan is Carole's Kitchen. Blessings in a Backpack helps feed the many hungry students in our schools. The instagram account is: https://www.instagram.com/caroleskitchen.nonprofit?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==





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Hess:

Hey everybody. Thank you so much for joining us again on our Sunday morning chat. This is, let me tell you this about that. My name's Hess. I'm sitting in my little white chair looking out my bedroom window, and it's a pink swirl, a fog down there by the creek. The horses are at the gate. It's a little brisk outside.

Delbert:

It is Hess. This is me, Delbert, as always on the green couch looking out my picture window. It's a beautiful fall day. I was just telling Hess, I looked out the window and I thought I saw Venus. Because you can see Venus in the morning sky this time of year. And I think I did. I didn't have my little star chart, but I just went out on the front porch and it's just a beautiful Exactly. Brisk, like lip and ice tea. Just a brisk morning, gorgeous fall day in Kentucky.

Hess:

I love it when you have Venus up there, like right next to the moon.

Delbert:

Oh my gosh. So beautiful.

Hess:

Delbert, I just got back in yesterday afternoon from France. We noticed we noticed as soon as we got to the Cincinnati airport that nobody had any scarves around their necks. In Paris, in France, all over France, in France.

Delbert:

My goodness.

Hess:

In France, everybody has a beautiful scarf around their neck. Men and women.

Delbert:

Oh my gosh. Too fun.

Hess:

Yeah. Yeah. So it was just, that was a fun, as we were in the line going through customs Mary, my our grade school, high school friend, Mary Carol Zin. Mary Elliot, now she says, look, Jess, nobody has on a scarf.

Delbert:

She's so funny. I think Mary could go on tour as a comic. When we were in Bethany Beach, she made me laugh so hard. One day on the beach.

Hess:

She's like a Leanne Morgan

Delbert:

Yes. Oh my gosh. Totally. Just observationalist. Yeah.

Hess:

She

Delbert:

she said she the best. She's the best. And you all were with. High school friends very strongly. Mother of good counsel. Representation over there you are.

Hess:

So our beautiful friend, Karen Rood, has Karen Rood's kitchen, and she's affiliated with a cooking school there in France. And Mary and I signed up and her daughter's best friend signed up and a bunch of other people. And we were in the cooking school for four days. And then we traveled with this same group and the chefs to different parts of France and. Bert eating. Just this really nice, good, fine food. It was really sweet. It was fantastic. Good people. So Karen Rood's Kitchen, if you ever wanna take an epicurean delight in France and learn how to cook a little bit better and learn that you don't throw your napkin on your plate when you finish eating and other things I learned. You don't squeeze your garlic. Anybody that has one of these garlic squeezers, throw it out. You're supposed to, you're supposed to slice your gar garlic.

Delbert:

Oh God. That's maybe the one thing in the world that I do. Cooking I just don't have a garlic press, but Okay. There you go. Check that off. I'm already done for the day. As far as garlic's concerned.

Hess:

You

Delbert:

I'm golden.

Hess:

throw it out.

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

to

Delbert:

It just was so beautiful the trip that Karen planned. It looked so fantastic. I was living vicariously through you all.

Hess:

Oh my gosh. And stayed in such nice places. was funny the four of us Mary and myself and her daughter's best friend. We had a hotel that we set up to have a few more days in France. At the end of our epicurean journey and we did hashtag no longer traveling with Karen because on our photos, because there was no more heated towel racks, it was

Delbert:

I Love it. Oh, I love that. She took her daughter and her daughter's friend and,

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

And then Mary Denny traveled with her daughter-in-law. That's just, it's beautiful. I love that you all did that. It was so wonderful to see those beautiful French country sides and see your all's faces. It was, it looked fantastic.

Hess:

and just Karen and Sidney and his wife Allison from the cooking school there. They just plan it to a tee flawless, no hiccups. I don't even know. I don't even remember stopping for Petro. It's just, they're, it was just a flow. It was beautiful.

Delbert:

Just a perfect flow and, I would've been not great about cooking'cause everybody knows I can't cook. But and the dinners that you all were saying like four and five hours, that's really up my alley just sitting there talking, tasting all the food that, oh, I would love to do well. Okay. When I was a young mom, my mom and my sister Carol and I used to say, let's be European. And we would sit at my mom's dining room table and drink wine after dinner and not care about the dishes and just sit there and talk and and let the kids play. And, and it, and it didn't happen very often, but it was just usually if Carol came into town, like once a month or once every other month, and it was just the most beautiful thing to, yeah.

Hess:

And that's what I, that's what I told Karen and. Sydney and Allison that you all are giving the service of conversation People sitting around a table, being

Delbert:

Yes.

Hess:

share ideas and thoughts, and that is so beautiful and so good and so necessary.

Delbert:

I think so too. That is how, I tell you all a lot about my Mama and Papa's house growing up and we stayed a long time because the women were upstairs in the kitchen talking and the men were playing poker, talking lots of conversation. I think people knew so much more. About each other's lives. I just feel like nowadays we're all in such a hurry. We've got so much to do. What a gift you all had to have these nice, long, beautiful conversations.

Hess:

And what I noticed about the Europeans is when they have coffee, they sit down and drink their coffee like the English with their tea. You take a break, you sit down and we're in our Starbucks drive-through lanes, and we take our coffee in our car.

Delbert:

Now I am having my coffee while we're talking this morning. I do sit down and drink my coffee.

Hess:

Yeah. That's what our Sunday morning chats are.

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

got tea here and you have your coffee and it's a chance for you all to join us right now in our coffee and conversation or whatever beverage you might be having. Or wherever you are in your life right now, that even if you're driving right now, even if you're driving, you're sitting down with Delbert and I and we're having a conversation.

Delbert:

It is beautiful. Yes. So Hess one of our friends from our sacred Heart 1976 Championship. Thread texted something really beautiful last night. I was telling Hess I was waiting for a Lyft to go to my brother's 65th birthday party. My brother, Jay Bird, turned 65 and

Hess:

Happy birthday, Jaybird.

Delbert:

Jay Bird and he's a good brother. And I was waiting for my Lyft to come and I started watching the video that Kim sent. Oh, so great. You wanna head it off? Has.

Hess:

Yeah, this is Kara Lawson talking to, she's the coach. I think she's been there maybe five years or so. Delbert, she's the head coach of Duke basketball, duke girls basketball, And she's telling her kids, how, Hey. We're, don't ever think it's gonna get easier later on. It doesn't. But you working through the hard means that you're more prepared to be able to work through the hard later on it. It doesn't get easier later on. Delbert it. You just listened to it. I listened to it last night. What do you recall about what she said?

Delbert:

Just you know that people who are waiting for easy are always gonna be waiting. If you're sitting there waiting for the easy button or the easy it's not gonna come to you. You're just gonna be sitting there waiting for your life and it's gonna go by. It's actually in the hard things that we grow. And so if you just, quit putting things off and saying if I can just get through this semester, if I can just get through this deal, if I can just get through this. No, it's. Life is hard. Parenting is hard. Parenting ain't for sissies, right? Everything that we do that is worthwhile in life. It's hard and let's just deal with it. Let's just settle into it and relax into it now. Now I'm paraphrasing, I'm telling what I got out of it now, but let's just go ahead and lean into hard. I love, one of my favorite podcasts is we can do hard things and we can, as humans. I think we've gotta say, I'm gonna go for it. I'm gonna learn this. I'm gonna. Deal with this, and I'm just gonna head it up front. Go ahead and deal with it. That's when we grow in life and that's when great things happen. I believe, I have a saying, when my parents were aging and there were hard decisions to be made and I had to we had to take the keys away from my stepdad'cause he was just being a terrible driver. I. Just that, they don't call it the easy thing. They call it the right thing. Sometimes doing the right thing is very hard and it's uncomfortable. Sometimes it's having hard conversations with people. Sometimes it's doing something really hard, like taking keys away from somebody that's no longer driving. And may endanger somebody or, many people who knows. But it's having the courage and the wherewithal to say, and also the self-confidence, just to say, I can do this.

Hess:

Yeah. And another thing I'd like to just say more about in some of the things you just said, all that wisdom you just said, Delbert. Is we, it seems like we're circling around talking about things in different ways here on our podcast, Bert, that we're going through something tough, it's okay to feel it. It's okay to feel the

Delbert:

Right.

Hess:

from it, feel it, and then to spiral up. And to spiral up doesn't mean go on to do the easy thing to do the next best thing. Can it, it can be knowing what we need to do. Oh, I realize what I need to do. I had, I need to have that hard conversation. I need to go ahead and make this change even though it's difficult, even though it might shake things up just a bit. Right now, it's the next best thing that I need to do. Best thing doesn't mean that it's the next easiest thing. It You shi or drawback or Shrink up.

Delbert:

And you know that really good feeling and my work. One of the hardest things is when you have an inspection and you just have to get through all that. Just go through all of that. Report it's plumbing and electrical, all the things that you don't really know much about'cause you're not an electrician or a plumber. And get through it. And when I just dive in and I just go ahead and say I'm gonna do it, I'm just gonna, get in there. It makes you feel so good when you've worked it out. And that's how I think you build confidence.

Hess:

And maybe it needs a new roof, and you go ahead and get the roof put on.

Delbert:

I know I've called an agent before and said, we're gonna need a plumber, a electrician, a roofer, a nun a priest and a rabbi on this one. And I think you just have to. Deal with it with a little bit of humor.'cause I, I always say they're built by humans. They can be fixed by humans usually. Just depends. But I just love that. I love that speech that Kara Lawson gave. It was just such a nice treat. I think it was about nine o'clock last night we got it right. And.

Hess:

Delbert, I've got the transcript pulled up. Let me just read a little bit of it. She says you don't say, I just gotta get through the preseason. The preseason, and then it'll be okay, I just gotta get through my junior year of school and then the classes are gonna get easier. I've just gotta get my spring and my senior year of college. Then it's gonna be easier. She says, that's what we do. We wait for stuff to get easier, but it's never gonna get easier. What happens is you handle hard, better. What happens? That's what happens when most people think that it's gonna get easier, that life's gonna get easier, basketball's gonna get easier, school's gonna get easier, someone that handle, but gets easier. And what happens to you is you become better. You become a better, you become someone that handles hard stuff better. So that's a mental shift that has to occur in each of your brains. It has to, because if you go around waiting for stuff to get easier in life, it's never gonna happen. And then what happens? Oh. so hard I can't do it. Oh, this, I don't know. When is it gonna be easier for me? And that's when we kind of start blaming other people. That's my little side thing going on here.

Delbert:

It's not your fault. It's, it's always, I'm the victim now because I can't do hard things and yeah.

Hess:

I get, if I get this degree, then it'll be easier.

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

But in each of those steps, when you do the next best thing, that's harder, that enriches your life and your character so much The experiences that you can have

Delbert:

It gives you confidence, it makes you feel better. You push through that hard thing. And it is doing the hard things is what gives us confidence.

Hess:

and just after just traveling abroad, Delbert. It's not easy packing a bag and carrying 45 pounds and all of that and sleeping in other beds and whatever, and you don't know what's gonna be there, how it's gonna be. When you do travel in, in other countries and cultures and see how other people live, it broadens yourself so much more. And Expo expands yourself so much. And you come back with that to, I, I come back now with a tourist mind. I know I'm on a different time zone. I tried to go to bed early last night. I woke up at 4:00 AM That'll get better. I'll adapt back to Eastern standard time. But it I come back with a tourist mind to dive in. What can I dive in around here and what can I see and what can I broaden myself around here? anyway, it's. It's in everything you do, In travel or anything. Even if it's gonna be be fun. If you find yourself maybe it might be hard to do that or maybe I won't learn how to surf, but it sure does look like fun. Get out there on the board, take some lessons, try something that's hard it, whenever you're learning, whenever you're learning anything, it's not gonna be easy at first, is what I guess I wanna say.

Delbert:

Exactly.

Hess:

Yeah. Yeah,

Delbert:

We can do hard things though. We can.

Hess:

Yeah. And when we've been recently talking about, when we've hit that spot, what can we do to flip our perspective to, so that we can get the energy to. To take that next step. We've talked about that. How can, last time we talked about reenergizing yourself, Delbert, so that you don't get bronchitis two times in a row, that you know when you need to recharge and we do need the good energy to do the next hard thing, to do the next step.

Delbert:

Exactly. It's such a little delicate balance, of, going ahead and pushing yourself to do the hard things, but then giving yourself permission to recharge and pushing hard on things. And then also realizing when we need to open our heart and soften our hearts to humans and other people.

Hess:

To be able to go outside and just be

Delbert:

Yeah.

Hess:

for two or

Delbert:

Yeah. Outside of yourself. Yeah. It's such a, life is just such a little balance, isn't it? It's just, it's a delicate little dance that we do, but it's a beautiful dance. So worth living friends, we want you to get out there and live it and love it and do the hard things, and then sit down and relax. Like you're, like, you're in France having a big dinner and listen and have the conversation. S what was that great quote that you were telling me about earlier this morning when I was looking at Venus?

Hess:

Okay. Yeah, I'll read it to you. It's Albert Camus He said, in the midst of hate, I found there was within me and Invincible love in the middle of tears. I found there was within me an invincible smile. In the midst of chaos, I found there was within me that invincible calm. I realized through it all that in the midst of winter I found there was within me an invincible summer, and that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, something stronger.

Delbert:

That is so I love that. So beautiful. Perfect for today too.

Hess:

Back home Delbert, this is how I'm gonna spend my day. Okay. I before, before our chat this morning, I'd eaten breakfast. Poor CAthy. She doesn't really, drink milk too much. So the milk had expired, so I just took a spoon and ate some dry cereal, had my coffee opened up letter, took the letter opener, opened up all the mail that it accumulated over the past two weeks, and I took things out, saw what was pertinent, what made my stacks I I'm gonna enjoy. Being back, feeling grounded in my home, riding my horse. Go to my Unitarian Universalist church. Go see my mom. Take her those caramel chocolates from that little C Chocolaty, chocolate to cure or whatever, c choc ch they have. They make special chocolate over there in France. Went to the special. I, for, I forget how it's called

Delbert:

We'll put it in the, we'll put it in the notes.

Hess:

one of the, of the belly laughs of. Of one every hour with Mary Carol is that we go through customs in Cincinnati. The line's pretty long go through customs and then we had to take our, then we got our bags and then we had to go through this other line. We didn't realize that we're supposed to resubmit our bags even though we're not catching another flight in Cincinnati.'cause there was a spot where you put your bag into. To have it, to go to your next destination. So we were just pulling our big old suitcase back to this other line and these people are saying stop. You're supposed to put your bag over here on this other spot. Mary goes, Hey, we've been listening to French. We didn't understand that English,

Delbert:

did you say that in French? Yeah. Oh God.

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

back. Has welcome back.

Hess:

So good to be back. So

Delbert:

awesome.

Hess:

back.

Delbert:

I love that you all had that adventure and I love that you all shared so many beautiful photos on social media. It was great.

Hess:

Yeah.

Delbert:

Traveling along. I'm gonna do an open house today and just regroup my house as a disaster. I went to Boo at the Zoo with the Darling Society, my grandkids last night. We were the boy band, the Sja Boys from K-Pop Demon Hunters.

Hess:

That's what you all dressed up as.

Delbert:

Yes, the five of us, and it's a five, person, band. And and it's funny because that was a really popular theme last night. We were the only ones dressed as the boy band, but lots of the little girls were dressed as Rumi. The lead character and, we were waiting for some friends of my daughter Nikki's, to come and meet us. And so we were all just standing in this little area. And, they have all, it's beautiful, they have all these big sets set up, like the Wizard of Oz and all the different characters. And if you haven't, if you live in Louisville and you haven't done Boo at the Zoo, it's fantastic. You gotta do it. And just Disney characters, all the little minions. All of the, video games, Mario Brothers and stuff, and each thing is like just this big, huge we were just standing off on a little piece of grass. Together and people started asking to have their picture taken with us. Our costume were really good and they thought that we were part, and we're like, should we have asked for, we took probably 20 to 30 pictures with people and their kids and we're like, should we ask for a paycheck from the zoo? We had so much fun and

Hess:

they thought that you all were one of these

Delbert:

yes. It was hilarious. Yes, it was so funny. We had so much fun. And of course my darlings have beautiful singing voices. They were singing all the songs and we were just having the best time. And

Hess:

I went to it last year with my brother and his

Delbert:

isn't it great? It's so great. It's so great. And anyway we just had the best time and, now I'm home. I had a costume change and then went to my brother's 65th birthday party, so I had a, and I worked that yesterday too. So my house is a disaster. I got, I have all these deliveries from. Amazon, goodness knows what kind of mischief I got myself into. But anyway, I'm gonna clean a little bit here this morning. That was a long way around the barn to tell you. I've got costumes everywhere, a wig. I'm gonna, I'm gonna try to get organized here today before my open house and enjoy this beautiful fall day.

Hess:

Sweet, sweet. And it is beautiful everybody, thank you so much for listening. We appreciate you. We love you. And please share and and leave us a comment please.

Delbert:

We love you friends. Peace and love.