WhinyPaluza Live: It's Just an Opinion

me my phone. Hello everyone, happy Whiny Palooza! Lily, it's not—

I know what it is.

Okay, it's not Wednesday.

Lily, it's a Whiny Palooza livestream! Grab some wine and join us on the Whiny Palooza livestream with the Green Family. Cha-cha chicken!

You did it!

Good job!

You were confusing everyone, including ourselves. So We apologize. We want to start with apologizing because— sorry. So Seth and Max, as you know, have soccer late on Wednesday nights, which is why we have not been doing our Winey Palooza Wednesday vlogs. And I totally forgot that yesterday they also had soccer late. Oh, you had a— he had a game yesterday, so he doesn't normally have a game on Thursday. Correct. So here we are. Seth is like, well, we're all home on Friday at 9 o'clock. Let's do it. So confused, further confusion in the month of May. May and June is so crazy. I'm seeing people posting baseball games, lacrosse games, swim, swimming. What else? Soccer, soccer, gymnastics, cheerleading. There's so much going on. So for next week, I think we can do Thursday. We're correct?

Yes, no games.

And then, and then we will tell you in June, either the first week or the second week, hopefully we can go back to Wednesdays. So please bear with us and thank you for being flexible. We are live in multiple places on Facebook, and, and if you would rather listen to a podcast, this will be available to you on my podcast on Wednesday. What would you like to say, honey?

Um, I wanted to say something about cheerleading. I just got signed up for cheerleading and I got signs for my uniform.

Yes, we did not have enough to do, so we, my— we added yet another thing.

So after years of begging me, I put Lily on a waitlist for cheerleading, not thinking that we would get off the waitlist. So here we are, off the waitlist and getting sized for cheerleading. So we are happily busy and happily want to talk to you today about my topic. This week I picked "It's Just an Opinion," and I pick my topics based on what's going on in my life, unless somebody has a topic request, which we always welcome. I love when you send me topic requests. So I was inspired to do this blog— blog, vlog, both. There is a blog on this topic that is published on whinyplousa.com, and I was inspired by the school board vote this week. Did you know that?

I didn't know that that was where this came from.

So Facebook inspires a lot of topics. And what I was noticing, Lily, this is not really about my kids, but I think it's a good lesson. Okay. So you can chime in as I talk about it. It's just an opinion. So I started to notice what everybody was posting on Facebook. And I tend to gather a lot of information that way on how are people feeling and thinking. And I was like, I kind of get floored a lot of the times by what people post. And I'm very conservative with what I post. Because I'm cautious, because I don't want to argue with people. My purpose on Facebook and social media in general is to put out positivity. I want to be joyful and I want to put out puppy pictures and cat pictures and kid pictures and yes, and I want to put joy out into the universe and some people, that's not their purpose and I I commend people who are brave enough to put out their opinions. And there were a lot of opinions flying around Facebook. And some of them were like, you must vote for this candidate, or no, if you want change, you must vote for this candidate. And well, no, this person's been on the board and has done great, and you must vote for this person. And I was like, how can you be so steadfast in your opinion?

How can you be so certain?

Okay, the certainty is the question, because aren't there like multiple ways to look at multiple candidates, and don't all the candidates want to do good? Sure, you may have an idea that these 3 candidates are the candidates that you want to vote for, but how can you tell me that I must vote for these candidates? What if I want something different than you? What if I don't necessarily agree with you? What if there's another side to your opinion?

What if there's more than 2 sides to every story?

So I was just kind of— I was inspired because I was so floored by how certain people were of their opinions. And I noticed with age, as I get older, I become— are you leaving? You can get closer to me till she comes back. Are you? She's like, no, I'm coming right back.

Nicole Lucas says hi. Hi, Nicole.

Hi, Nicole. So I have noticed with age I change, and I may have been close-minded on certain topics, and I feel like the older that I get, the more open-minded that I get, and the more that I—

Very interesting, because there are a lot of people who probably get more rigid and certain that they're right with age.

Isn't that interesting? I think that, okay, for me, I'm speaking for me and my experience, so I'm not saying that this is how everyone feels, But for me, I feel like confidence makes you more open-minded, at least makes me more open-minded.

It takes a stronger brain and a stronger person to be able to accept different opinions and be open-minded and say, hey, maybe they know something I don't.

I tend to like to gather information and I tend to like to be— I like to hear what people have to say. I'm fascinated and interested. So I went on this journey to explore open-mindedness and how we can realize that our opinion is just an opinion. It doesn't make us right. And how can we be maybe more open-minded? It was just something that I wanted to explore and learn about. Does that fascinate you at all? Do you know what open-minded means? No. So close-minded would mean I— this is my religion, this is what I am, and there are— and I am right and no other religion is right.

It doesn't have to be on religion, it could be on any topic.

Politics.

This is the game I want to play at recess and everyone must play my game.

So open-minded, open-minded would be at recess someone saying, well, we could do a puzzle, or we could do hopscotch, or we could climb this ladder. Like, there's multiple things, and we can be open-minded about what we do together. So I went on an exploration of open-mindedness. So take the journey with me and chime in. And if you tend to be open-minded, I would love to hear how you achieve that. And if you find that there are topics that you tend to be closed-minded about, I want to hear from you, and I want to hear more about that. So please feel free to talk to us. We love to hear from you. So go ahead.

I think it's fascinating how Facebook has made people so much more comfortable in terms of sharing their opinions. You know, growing up, I think we were raised, you don't talk about politics or religion or money or sex. And people just put out there, this is exactly how I feel on Facebook. And if you don't agree with— like they put it right in the post— if you don't agree with me, I don't want to talk to you. What happened to learning from each other?

There's a braveness that people have found behind words. Like, I'm not face to face with you, so I'm comfortable posting this and saying this, and I don't have to see you while I say this. Don't you think?

Yes, I think they can hide behind the social media wall, and it makes them more brazen in expressing their opinions, where if you were standing next to somebody at a cocktail party, they might not necessarily put it all out there, I would hope.

Right. Well, I'm sure that they have, but anyways, so there are two things that stand out to me about being open-minded, one of which is to be curious and one of which is to be empathic. And what that means is if we stay in a curious state and we're interested in people, then we're interested in what people have to say. And we learn about different opinions. The empathic part is if we put ourselves in someone else's shoes and try to understand where they're coming from. So I may, so, you know, friend X may be a liberal and friend Y is conservative. Conservative. And can they try to understand, you know, I like to believe that there's goodness to all of us, that there's a good intention, and that people just have different ways of achieving things. It doesn't mean that they have a bad intention because they're a liberal or because they're a conservative. And to be curious and to be empathic as to why does this person believe what they believe and not think, oh, this person's evil because they don't agree with me. That is one of the things blowing my mind is if you scroll there is such judgment as to if you don't believe this, then you are not a good person, which is so not true because I don't— I believe— I like to believe in the goodness of people and that there are good intentions behind people. I know I'm not always right, but I like to believe—

which is part of being open-minded.

I like to believe that. I like to see, okay, if this person believes something different than me and they're coming from a good place, Why could they be thinking this? And I like to think about, okay, so if this is the situation, if this is the vote for the school board, what are multiple sides to this? So these people want change and this is why they believe this. And these people believe that, you know—

There are different definitions of change. They may say they want change and they want a different change than you want.

Yeah, exactly. So I guess I just am trying to see multiple sides to everything and why do people believe certain things. We have totally thrown people off doing this on Friday, Seth.

Yes.

Everyone is out having fun or they're outside enjoying this weather and we have a hot date on my livestream. This is our hot Friday night right here.

I wouldn't livestream on a Friday night with anybody but you, baby.

Oh my gosh. So I love to collect data in multiple ways, and I like to do research. I like to see where is my research coming from. What is your source? Is your source biased towards one, one side? You know, we have to make sure we're researching good sources. And I love to talk to people. And, you know, just because someone loves this pool company doesn't mean that they're right. But I want to hear what their story is. What is their story? What is their opinion? Why do they love this pool company? What is their story? Why do they strongly dislike this pool company? I did some research on pools today and have a little bit of sticker shock.

So we didn't run out and buy a pool today.

I did not buy a pool today, but I did research a pool today and my parents Um, yeah, my parents bought a pool when I was like, I don't know, 12 years old, and boy have prices gone up.

A little bit of pool inflation. Okay, so we just move their pool to our backyard.

No, they love their pool. We, we are blessed that we have their pool to use whenever we choose, so we do kind of, in quotes, have a pool.

But you say it's not the same.

Well, it's not the Lily will say, "Their pool is your pool, mom." Right? Oh, does Ella say that? You don't say that? Okay, so how else can we stay open-minded? Staying calm. Once we get hotheaded or angry, everything closes off. If I am having a fight with Seth, I have stopped listening to his opinion. If I am angry, I am not listening. I am in inward to myself and my own feelings, and I'm feeling angry, and I'm not calm, and I'm not listening to where is he coming from. So if we can stay calm, we can stay more open-minded.

That does help.

Oh my gosh, Seth is gonna love this one. So Seth will say to me, why don't you ask a question? So I will jump to an assumption. Okay, so what do assumptions do?

Make an ass out of you. And not me. Because she's assuming something negative that might not be true, like I moved the clicker.

So instead of making assumptions, like Lily, instead of assuming that—

like when mom blames you for something you didn't do.

Yeah, instead of assuming something, we want to ask a question. So instead of assuming that you didn't do your homework, I would say, Lily, Did you do your homework today? Instead of having the assumption that you didn't get it done, I should ask the question, right? So ask questions. We talked about being curious, we talked about being interested, and we need to stay in a state of learning. That is my— one of my strongest opinions. I remember being a therapist and going to a cognitive behavioral training with other therapists. And I remember the therapist rolling their eyes and being like, "How many cognitive behavioral trainings do we have to go to?" and I was like, "How come I'm not feeling like how they're feeling?" and I said to them, "I guarantee you, you're going to learn something." They thought they knew it all, right? There's no way that we ever will know everything. So about anything, you know, I will always learn about therapy. I will continue to do continuing education and to read books and to listen to podcasts and take courses courses, and I will continue to grow as a therapist because I love to learn every single day. And I think that if we stay in a state of learning every day, we won't close ourselves off to always thinking that we're right and thinking that we know everything because we'll never know everything, right? Say it, baby.

When you're talking about When you, you never know everything. Like yesterday while we were learning about elephants, I went up to the teacher and I said, "I think I know everything about my elephant book." And then she said, "Well, go back and read it all." And then I found out other things that I missed.

That is a perfect example. That is absolutely perfect. We, and, and I have also found that If I have already read a book and I read it a second time and a third time, I pick stuff up that I didn't learn the first time. And I also find that, you know, I do interviews for my podcast and I love talking to people, but I learn more from listening to it than I do from doing the interview. So not only do I interview the person, then I go and listen to it because then I will retain more information.

That's an awesome idea.

Yes. Well, I just tried it for myself and I was like, wow, I don't remember her saying that. Wow, I don't remember that question. And I, and I learn, like, I like these questions that I asked, or I don't like these questions, or, you know, whatever. So I learn, I learn from listening to myself every day. I love to learn, and I love to learn from you. I love the stuff that you share with me. I love the questions that you ask or the topics that you request, so please keep it coming. Today on my podcast, today's Family Friday podcast, it's Friday, so I'm throwing everyone off, but my podcast went live this morning. It was with Dr. Cheryl Ziegler, and I had such a great conversation with her. I listened to it today, and I was like, wow, this is like packed full of so much good information. And she wrote a book, it's called Mommy Burnout. I read it. It's fabulous. And one of the biggest ways that women can reduce their burnout is to spend time with their friends, face-to-face time with their friends. So make time for that. And let's not make excuses and say that we're too busy taxiing our kids, or we're too, you know, we have too much to do, or too much work, or whatever. Make time for it because it will prevent burnout and it will make you a happier person. So I hope you will listen to my podcast. Anything else you want to share about It's Just an Opinion and open-mindedness?

It is my opinion that you should check out iTunes, Google Play, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, iHeartRadio, Pandora, and Audible to listen to the Whiny Palooza podcast.

I don't know how he does that. So thank you so much for watching, for reading my blogs, for listening to my vlogs, for listening to my— no, watching my—

watching my vlogs, listening to my podcast.

Thank you, honey. See, I, I'm screwing it up, but I'm having a great time giving you content in my goal to, you know, just help and, and you're not alone and know that you're not alone. And we're always here for you. Oh, that's so sweet. Um, so thank you so much. And what, what else? Am I forgetting anything?

Really need to Take us out.

Okay, take us out, baby.

Thank you for watching Winey Blues Wednesday with the Green— oh, Winey Blues Livestream with the Green Family.