When It's Important To Disappoint other People - Everyday Fulfillment
No Vacation Required
What happens after you realize the life you want is different than what everyone else wants for you?
That’s where this week’s conversation begins.
In the last episode, we explored the dream of the planet – the collection of cultural expectations that quietly tells us how life should unfold. But recognizing those expectations is only the first step. The next challenge is often much harder: dealing with the people around you when you choose a different path.
Friends, family, coworkers, neighbors, and even complete strangers often have ideas about who you’re supposed to be. Some are well-intentioned. Some are rooted in tradition. Some come from fear. But when you start building a life that feels authentic to you, those expectations can become one of the biggest obstacles to fulfillment.
In this episode, we share our own experiences navigating resistance, misunderstanding, and disappointment from people we care about. We talk about why unconventional choices make others uncomfortable, how social pressure shows up in surprising places, and why knowing yourself becomes even more important when everyone else has an opinion.
Onward and Inward,
COMMON QUESTIONS ANSWERED IN THIS EPISODE
❓What is the "Dream of Everybody Else?” The "Dream of Everybody Else" refers to the expectations, judgments, and scripts that friends, family, and loved ones have for your life. The hosts explain that stepping off the traditional path often triggers discomfort and resistance from those close to you, making it a major hurdle on the path to fulfillment.
❓What are the four main detractors from fulfillment? The hosts identify four major detractors: the Dream of the Planet (societal expectations), the Dream of Everybody Else (expectations from friends and family), the Dream of Success (what success is supposed to mean), and the Dream of Money (automatic beliefs about finances).
❓Why do friends and family often react negatively when you choose an unconventional life path? Negative reactions often stem from discomfort with the disruption of the traditional template or from their own unexamined doubts. The hosts note that pushback can sometimes be rooted in jealousy, as your choices may highlight areas where others feel their own lives are not a good fit.
❓Should you announce your plans to pursue an unconventional life before you start? The hosts advise against sharing your plans too early. They suggest keeping your goals close and taking tangible physical steps first to build personal momentum. Sharing too early can invite outside opinions that taint the idea before it is fully formed.
❓How can you handle the exhaustion of constantly explaining your life choices to others? The hosts recommend leaning into "boundaries-driven self-preservation." This means recognizing when an environment is not open or accepting and choosing to step back or withhold details about your life in order to protect your joy and energy.
CHAPTERS
(00:00) Welcome to Episode 2: The Theme of Fulfillment
(00:16) Mind Share: The Drama
(02:04) Previewing the four dreams: Planet, Everyone Else, Success, and Money
(06:04) The Dream of Everyone Else: Why people write scripts for your life
(11:34) Why everyday fulfillment is an inside job
(14:10) The reality of the friend group reaction
(17:30) Navigating the pressure to conform in the modern world
(19:14) Deciding when to share and when to practice self-preservation
(22:09) The energy of being fulfilled contrarians
(25:13) Mailbag: Should you make your moves in secret before telling the world?
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TRANSCRIPT
Kent (00:00)
Welcome Canaan to episode two in
Kent (00:03)
this month's theme of fulfillment. What's on your mind? I know something's on your mind.
Caanan (00:13)
Thank you for having me, Kent ⁓
Caanan (00:16)
Yeah, you know, we use this ⁓ opening moment that we call mindshare to talk about what's going on in our world or share a recommendation of something that's caught our attention. ⁓ and I'm gonna throw out a recommendation for the movie The Drama. So if you haven't seen this, I'm not gonna give any spoilers. So I'm not gonna say very much about this.
Caanan (00:40)
I will say though that it's very unusual to find movies or books or content in general, that is interesting. Yeah. Cause it feels like it's all been done and it's all just like old stale IP that's being refreshed. And this is very interesting.
Kent (00:58)
Yeah, we're big on that. Like I love that you picked this because just something that takes a different look at something or makes you think you remember before we watched this, I had read this uproar about people boycotting it because Zendaya's character is the most unlikable person ever. I'm like, okay, so it's just a movie, you know, what can happen. and then we watched and we realized, you know, why would think people were having a ridiculous response.
Caanan (01:26)
But
Kent (01:26)
Yeah, I mean just a different a different kinda movie that makes you think I love that.
Caanan (01:32)
I also just have to add to this about this movie that you know when movies actually feel like like cinema, you know, like they're done on film or whatever it is directors do to make these movies feel like big movies. This felt like cinema. Yeah. And that was very satisfying.
Kent (02:04)
Okay, so we're so excited about this season three of our podcast.
Caanan (02:09)
my god, I love it.
Kent (02:10)
Everyday fulfillment. If you didn't listen to the first episode of this first suite of episodes, there will be four. This is number two. That first episode is key. tells you what we're doing here, and we talked about a dimension of fulfillment related to
Kent (02:32)
The dream of the planet and how we realized, wow, we're buying into this dream of the planet and it does not work for either one of us. Today, episode two, ⁓ we're continuing on that path. And and just so you know, ⁓ in formulating this month, realizing we wanted to talk about fulfillment, we brainstormed, okay, let's go way back and what what were the big detractors for us?
Kent (03:00)
And equally as important, what do we see to this day? Yeah. Friends, neighbors, loved ones, clients.
Kent (03:07)
Those are the dream of the planet, this larger idea that we all have to buy into. Number two, what we call the dream of everybody else, friends and family specifically, who are like, Are you crazy? And then in episode three, we're gonna get into the dream of success, the idea of what success is supposed to mean. And finally in episode four, we're gonna get into the dream of money, like this idea that we're supposed to automatically carry about money. So there's lots of
Kent (03:36)
Intermingling among these themes in our unfolding. You can read about it in our no vacation required book. There's lots of ⁓ commingling of these themes, but they're all to us ⁓ and to the people we've worked with very specific entities. so thinking about ⁓ what we're calling everyone else and picking up our story where we left off
Kent (04:03)
last week as we were talking about marathon training and and you know, realizing like we don't have to we don't have to wait until we're retired to do the things we actually want to be doing in life. enter the peer pressure.
Caanan (04:17)
Right? Yes.
Kent (04:19)
And I cannot think of anybody at the time. And again, we are not the first people to do something unusual or unconventional. We've never said that. We do not want to carry that.
Caanan (04:30)
Yes.
Kent (04:35)
Yes.
Kent (04:35)
but nonetheless to this day we still get a significant amount of resistance because we do not fit into a box. You know, I have a a relative who well many actually, but one in particular who is constantly misunderstanding what we do and actually attributing
Kent (05:02)
vague sort of not working in an office sort of ideas of what we do to conversations with other people. I told whoever that this is what you guys do. And it's like that's not even what we do. So it's so it makes people so uncomfortable. Yeah. You're gonna get off the path. And as we talk about in our book and we've talked about on the podcast, when you've decided, okay
Kent (05:32)
We're not doing the dream of the planet anymore. Then you have to deal with disappointing people who love quotation marks. Yeah. And their reaction and their judgment. and it's a huge, huge thing. And in a way, I think for some people this is even tougher than going against the dream of the planet.
Caanan (05:56)
I just have to jump in here because this is where you know, this this is sort of like a variation of the dream of the planet because I would call this not just everybody else's dreams, but everybody's dream for you. totally. Whether or not they they know it. You know, like your parents have an idea of you know, if
Caanan (06:21)
If they're good parents but maybe not fully evolved, they have a a vision for your life. They've they've sort of written the script. Yeah. And you're likely to break that in certain ways and they'll be disappointed or they'll have to come to terms with that. But they have a dream for you. What's r more surprising to me is that under this umbrella of the dream of the planet, you realize that everybody has a dream for you or a way that
Caanan (06:51)
you ⁓ are supposed to fit into their ⁓ idea of how things are supposed to unfold, the role you're supposed to play. And when you don't play that role, or you even recognize that what you're doing is a role, boy, ⁓ stuff gets ⁓ tricky. ⁓ So I want you, Kent to talk about because I brought up parents, because that I think this is maybe it's not the most interesting
Caanan (07:22)
Part of our story because we had a lot of people either just full on reject what we had decided to do when we decided to break free from our traditional life and start living a more fulfilled life or at least moving toward a more fulfilled life. But your parents' reactions were just chef's kiss.
Kent (07:46)
Yeah, and wanna say the this is this is something we're very aware about. And funnily, a couple of weeks ago before we had even finalized this as a theme for this month or anything, we who are, you know, well into middle age now are very aware of this and we talk about it constantly. Yeah.
Kent (08:06)
Health insurance comes up a lot. People can't get it. It's super expensive. People have stuff going on.
Kent (08:13)
We always want to say, when we were young in the workforce, you just had to pay your little you didn't even have to pay a premium. Your employer covered the premium.
Caanan (08:24)
Okay. Yeah. Now you're making it sound really old.
Kent (08:27)
No, we're not that old. But we're always very aware, like yeah, hey, this is this person's experience. It's not invalid. And there's something I can learn from that. Like, it's interesting to know that Ruby down the street
Kent (08:44)
you know, worked one job for 40 years or whatever, that's valid. So we want to allow space for other people's experiences, framing their outlook, and that's okay. But we also want to bring a great deal of awareness that there's more ways to look at things. And things are always evolving. We always talk so much about how we are into
Kent (09:12)
Just generative vibes like creating, moving forward, changing. it's the way to be. So, yes, we had, as we talked about in the last episode, our big realization about the dream of the planet. And then you actually to start telling people. ⁓ So we're telling our friends and our loved ones that we're gonna, you know, take some time away, figure out what we're gonna do, and then we eventually started our own
Kent (09:39)
consulting business so we could see the world and give back and work from wherever. And yeah, my parents were basically like, What are you doing? You're ruining your lives. You're they went hardcore. Like, if you're not doing it in the way that you were taught to do it, there's no way that your life will work. Yeah. Just
Caanan (10:04)
Yeah.
Kent (10:04)
this
Kent (10:06)
rigid view. But as I said in the last episode, and I'll say again now, once you start to know what feels right, and you're not breaking any rule, you're just breaking a template that is stupid for most people in the first place. Get to know yourself. You realize like this is about me. In our case, this is about us and your opinion buying into the dream of the planet.
Kent (10:35)
or the dream of our friends and family clumps is not going to change that. This is just a test, but it's not insignificant. Yeah.
Caanan (10:46)
I don't even wanna harp on your parents for having that initial reaction because they had a very traditional idea of success, despite the fact that your dad was actually an entrepreneur But I don't wanna harp on them for
Caanan (11:00)
having that initial reaction, it's the holding on to that reaction because, we're sharing, we're breaking the schema. We're sharing a a way forward that is different than what you've heard or what you expect, and that can be disruptive. And that's okay. It's that when it feels disruptive and the person leans into their side and doesn't take that sense of disruption as a cue to examine
Caanan (11:30)
their reaction, that's where I get disappointed.
Kent (11:34)
In everything we've done, in our personal lives and as sought after business and career development consultants, we've learned one consistent thing. Most people just don't know themselves. NoVacationRequired.com is where we talk about how you too can build a life that you don't need a break from and how it all starts with knowing yourself. There you'll find all of our podcast episodes, information on services, and the scoop on us. And to really raise the bar, we model this as a couple.
Kent (12:03)
To show that a relationship doesn't have to be a compromise or a counterproductive union. When two people are each doing their own work, the heightened connection becomes a shortcut to building a no vacation required life.
Kent (12:18)
I think this is so important and so key. you've just got to be able to stop looking at that external landscape. As we talked about last week, a big part of our change framework. it's an inside job. You can't rely on what other people are doing or their approval. And here's a time when I think about
Kent (12:38)
All these examples, It's been the foundation of the work we've done where people are doing things simply because of pressure from other people. Yeah. Could be family, could be friends, a lot of times.
Kent (12:56)
It's people in the workplace, which is crazy because if you listen to a lot of our older work, you'll learn a lot about workism and how this role of career becomes paramount for people. And in a way, someone's boss or manager will have even more of an influence on the decision this person makes inside and outside of work than this person's family and friends. So it's anybody. And it's just deciding
Kent (13:25)
I need to be doing what I need to be doing. Yeah. I deconstructed the idea of the dream of the planet and I can forge my own path. But now, and we talk a lot about this in the book, now I'm kind of where the rubber hits the road because it's one thing to kind of idealize. I'm not gonna do I'm not gonna do it the conventional way. When you decide that, then
Kent (13:50)
the whole premise of this episode, you've actually got to have a life lived in that decision, which means the people you surround yourself with are gonna learn about this. And
Caanan (14:06)
They're gonna have opinions. Yeah,
Kent (14:07)
They're gonna have opinions. Yeah.
Caanan (14:10)
this was back to our story. This was a pivotal moment for us early on in our journey because we we felt so elated by our yeah recognizing the dream of the planet and having the fortitude and the relationship.
Caanan (14:35)
Where we could say, let's not do that. Let's do something else. Let's figure something else out for us.
Caanan (14:43)
It sounds kind of naive, ⁓ but ⁓ I thought that because we were so happy, ⁓ we were so excited. I just used the word elated, and that's not an overstatement. We were ⁓ on fire. I thought everybody else would be so excited for us. I knew, of course, ⁓ your parents might
Caanan (15:09)
feel a certain way because we were doing something different than they dreamed for you. And sadly my parents didn't pay enough attention to even care. But I thought especially our friends would say, Yeah, my God, you guys, you figured something out. You broke through something. Tell us all about it. Yeah.
Kent (15:29)
We've got we get into that a lot and we've talked about that in previous episodes and I often trope it up and and call that the dark night of the soul. Like it can get really lonely and yes on that realization, that truth that you just shared, all I can say is you have to sprinkle reality, which is in fact they're jealous.
Kent (15:58)
Yes. Because although again, I'm not gonna answer any more emails about this, yes, the traditional path or whatever is great for many people. We are not putting that into question. For a lot of people it's not. And among your friend group or acquaintance group, a lot of that reaction will come from people who are having their own pangs of doubt that that wondering.
Kent (16:27)
Why doesn't why don't things fit? And you have to have the ability to say that that's what this is. And unfortunately it's a very tough thing to do at this time because you're still in this fragile learning growing.
Caanan (16:41)
It was very tough because we did you and I, Kent, didn't have you and I telling us from lived experience, watch out for this. People are not in fact going to be as happy for you as you expect them to be. In fact, some people are going to be outright angry at you. And you'll find a few people who are genuinely excited about what you're doing, and those people are gold. They are your new
Caanan (17:08)
friends. They're your new family. They're your chosen family. But a lot of people, they're not going to be having it. So be prepared for that.
Caanan (17:19)
Thanks for listening. We'd be honored if you'd subscribe, like, and share. It means the world to us.
Kent (17:30)
So it happens now, right? Like this is what we always talk about finally. And this is sort of a this is always a a bitter, sweet one. Mm-hmm. And I think you know that because you're on social media, you're living in this world, this pressure to conform. Not to the dream of the planet, because that's last week's episode. To
Kent (17:54)
How people are performing the dream in the of the planet here and now, your coworkers, your friends, your neighbors, your loved ones, ⁓ it never stops. ⁓ And this ⁓ is something we can only say. ⁓ Lean into those tools of knowing yourself, because that's the path to fulfillment. There is nothing outside that is gonna unlock this confidence, ⁓ but it's something
Kent (18:23)
That is always happening. And, you know, we really want to get back to why we're doing this season and what we want to be doing and how we want to change things up for us. Give back the service that we feel people most need. You know, here we're doing the thing in action. I talked last week about how
Kent (18:48)
It never changes. Once you're on this path, you're always finding new roadblocks and evolving. So here we are evolving ⁓ by doing this season three and really getting into these matters. As part of that, we want to be giving more personal examples ⁓ so that people can really feel and understand what we're talking about. Our book has had that impact on people. So here I want to give another example and say this is a struggle
Kent (19:15)
that we continually have because we always feel like we're going against the grain and so often it just feels like my gosh, I didn't wanna spend two of that three hour dinner explaining ourselves and one
Kent (19:36)
conundrum we're always going through. And it makes me laugh to think about it because I can picture us in a moment of frustration and, you know, seeing myself all bothered and seeing Caanan bothered. But now I can look at it and laugh because of course this is going to be an ongoing struggle. ⁓ But
Kent (19:54)
One of our biggest learnings has been this waffling between we're just gonna tell everybody everything because it's our brand and everybody knows, you know, what we do and how we live and it's been decades now and this isn't surprising. Right. And it shouldn't be. It's like, my God, what are we doing? Then we do that. And like I said, we spend two of the three hours at dinner explaining and it's it's not often
Kent (20:24)
Flowing our explanation is not often flowing into these open, accepting faces. It's into yeah, it's funny, we're both high intuition, very high intuition. We know ourselves. So we see the looks of like, what are they doing, or what's this all about, or whatever. And we're we realize so much of it is jealousy and confusion and
Kent (20:49)
You know, we're defying things that they haven't yet defied and whatever. So then we vacillate the other way and we're like We're not gonna tell anybody anything. Like ⁓ we're just gonna we're gonna go to dinner with this group of friends and we're gonna be the biggest simps ever. ⁓ Right? And although they know what we do and da da da da we're not gonna
Kent (21:13)
unwantingly turn the attention to ourselves ⁓ just by talking about these things that are really currently lighting us up or fascinating us or the next thing we're gonna do. so yeah, that's the so what happens now, the final segment of this podcast, which is ⁓ overcoming this ⁓ idea ⁓
Kent (21:36)
that everybody's always gonna understand what you're doing is truly an ongoing process. And I talk about this struggle, a struggle that we currently have. But let me tell you, when did we we talked about this last week. I know we talked about it the week before
Kent (21:53)
The joy we each have from living an examined life, a life where we're doing what we want to be doing far outweighs these little moments of
Caanan (22:07)
Of conformity or Yeah. ⁓ I mean well, no, that's not actually what you were saying, but it's what we were talking about last week. I'll just say that we find ourselves in these situations that you kind of touched on, Kent, where ⁓ it would just be easier ⁓ if we just conformed, if we just agreed to whatever and we didn't do ⁓ us. ⁓ We didn't do authentic Kent and Caanan.
Caanan (22:33)
Yeah. We just said, yeah, let's go do ⁓ whatever it is, dream of the planet thing. Or
Kent (22:40)
Yeah.
Caanan (22:41)
act in that way or respond in that way. Whatever. Because it gets tiring to be ⁓ fulfilled contrarians. ⁓
Kent (22:51)
Yeah.
Caanan (22:52)
It takes effort. ⁓ But ⁓ nothing feels better ⁓ than
Caanan (22:58)
Doing what is authentic to you, you know yourself, yeah, you know what is right for you. Everybody else in the world might be telling you you're crazy. But when you choose gosh, talk about tropey, when you choose you, when you choose to align your actions with what you know about yourself, which is predicated on knowing yourself, that feeling is so good.
Kent (23:28)
Yeah. So I guess I you know what? Listening to you, that was brilliant. I think this is just more of an invitation than it is a solution. ⁓ And it's an invitation to say, do this. ⁓
Caanan (23:38)
Yeah.
Kent (23:40)
Ask the questions ⁓ of the world, of yourself, that you've been yearning to ask. Start by journaling. Start by doing something to kind of coax ⁓ that deep truth out of you. ⁓ And just know that ⁓
Kent (23:56)
We're on the same path and other people on the on the same path. And people on this same path may not be your immediate friend, family, coworker group. But just know we're going through this with you. It's a never ending thing. But talk about tropes. It gets easier. It gets better. It really does. It does, yeah. And you're able to find a bit of joy.
Kent (24:18)
In realizing, like, okay, for self-protection, we have to kind of step back into this sort of mindset. Yes. Because I'm not gonna let this, ⁓ you know, family reunion take our joy by having to go through a series of six hour long total explanations of what we're doing. We're we're gonna
Caanan (24:39)
Yes.
Kent (24:40)
find pride ⁓ in self-preservation. So it's an invitation for you to know
Kent (24:48)
Fulfillment is also about living your dream, uncovering who you are to find that life that you don't need a break from. And knowing that there's other people like Caanan out here and Kent doing the same thing.
Caanan (25:13)
Now it's time for a new segment for this season, and I'm gonna say my favorite segment. It's mailbag. That's such a an old school way to think about mail, but whatever. Mailbag. Yeah. Inbox. I don't know. DM's. Go ahead.
Kent (25:34)
Yeah,
Kent (25:34)
we got we got kind of an interesting question non question, but I'm turning it into kind of a question after last week's episode about what came first, do we s do we start talking about going against the dream of the planet, or do we make movement first? And this person was sort of
Kent (25:55)
in dialogue with themselves via in an email about like it's so hard to just start something this big, but yet if you come out of the closet about it, about going against the dream of the planet, following a real passion, living an inquired life, then you start getting all the the questions and everything. And I think to answer that non-question question it becomes a very
Kent (26:24)
It becomes a very inside job to start definitely with a trusted person, love relationship, a friend, or you know, maybe you're in a in a crew or a group where this is kind of cool language to share.
Kent (26:44)
But if that's not the case, you need to start making the steps first, doing something first. Yeah. Getting pride in that, getting momentum. The word generative, getting that generative juice going. Yeah. So that when you tell the people, hey, this is what I'm doing, or this is what I'm thinking, or this is the dream I'm pursuing, you've got a little skin in the game and a little
Kent (27:13)
Of that forward momentum that'll keep you going. Because yeah, there's gonna be the questions and the whatever. So ⁓ it's okay. It's okay to keep secrets. I'm sure this is something we'll get into too. Caanan and I are huge ⁓ on keeping things tight because we know, as the real ones do ⁓
Kent (27:38)
That the minute you start blabbing some of the magic leaves. Yeah. Or the magic starts to take a shape that is not what you intended because you've let the magic out and then other people are tainting and tweaking it. ⁓ So we always are very cool about that. Here too. ⁓ Actually, this is another weird societal thing, especially with religious tenets, Like ⁓ you've got to be honest in your soul and like
Kent (28:08)
Like this idea, like if you're not disclosing every alternative thought, you're not doing life right. And we know as contrarians that you need to hold a lot of your magic in and it'll come out at the right time.