Kay:
Hello, there dear listener and welcome back to the Kay & Shi Show. We have a really fun week for you this week because we’re talking about some unlikely inspirational sources.
Shi:
If you’re anything like us, and we know you’re part of our cosmic kin, so you likely share this, but when you start to get really into motivational material, personal growth, and development, self-help, whatever you want to call it. When you get into this material, just like anything else you start to notice it in unlikely places and so this week we’re going to talk about some of the weird and wacky places that we found mentorship and inspiration.
Kay:
First up on our unlikely inspirational source series is the source of Disney movies.
Shi:
We love a good Disney movie. We’re obviously Disney fans. We make no qualms about that but many draw inspiration from Disney movies and I think it’s a little bit of low-hanging fruit. You might be thinking, “Well, of course, Disney movies are supposed to be inspirational,” but I’m here to tell you, we get really into the lessons in Disney movies, especially as Disney’s come through its, let’s just call it woke phase here in the last especially 10 years, 15 years here, where we start to see more empowerment messages. We see much less emphasis on the romantic storyline. We see far more female and diverse characters being brought forward and so Disney is obviously making this shift towards more inspiration, motivational, empowerment material, but it might go deeper than you’ve realized. And I think our quintessential example of this is the movie franchise of “Frozen” but particularly the movie of “Frozen II.”
Kay:
Well, “Frozen” in general, I think kind of really brought this idea of inspirational Disney movies to the forefront and we can look back at all kinds of inspirational Disney movies from the past. We think about the ones through the nineties. We’ve got “The Little Mermaid.” We have “Aladdin,” we have “Lion King” that’s got lots of inspirational sources, but with “Frozen I” they did something that no one had ever seen before, which was created the idea of true love being that of love between family members, the true love of sisters. It makes me want to cry just literally talking about it because I love my sister so much. But “Frozen II” brought forth a lot of inspiration within it because Elsa at the very beginning of the movie hears a call that no one else can hear, a call from within that creates an unexpected journey for her which when she reaches the journey, she has to dive deep within her own self, her own memory, to the point where she almost dies and then emerges as something brand new. Now, if that metamorphosis doesn’t reflect maybe a difficult journey you’ve taken in your life, I don’t know what will.
Shi:
I think audience is everywhere when that moment in “Frozen I” happens and we realize that the true love story isn’t about a romantic couple, but about family members was so just paradigm-shifting and so needed. Obviously, as sisters, we celebrated a movie and a story like that, and then “Frozen II” taking, I think that same embracing of an empowerment message and building a storyline around the family relationship and the support and the dysfunction and the ultimate loyalty and connection and then the metaphor of Elsa’s journey into her own self, her own self-discovery, but needing that support of the family and not being able to fully metamorphize until all of the pieces are there is just beautiful. And we could go on and on about it but that’s the lowest of low-hanging fruit when it comes to the Disney movies.
We love to look at the other princesses too, maybe some of the more traditional ones, and see what can we learn from them? What mentorship do we get from “Cinderella”? A classic 1950s film full of some 1950s ideology and those kinds of things. But even there, we see a character like Cinderella embracing kindness, embracing patience, valuing hard work, being genuine and authentic and this is something that we legitimately talk about between us. It’s not like us saying this for the first time. We talk about the merits of the princesses and love to kind of dive in. Belle’s love of reading. “Beauty and the Beast” came out when I was seven and I was a humongous reader and getting to relate on that level was really inspirational to me as a kid. And I’m so glad they’ve just taken that and continued to magnify that for girls of this generation and beyond, as we see movies like “Tangled,” like “Frozen,” like “Moana” coming forward that are much more dimensional and much more empowering.
Kay:
We love Disney movies of all kinds and whether you are an old Disney movie fan, a new Disney movie fan, what we know is that these movies have an educational basis. In fact, you might not know this, but Disney was contracted, Walt himself, Mr. Disney, was contracted to create military videos for instructing people back in World War II on ways that they can fly planes, create bombs, all kinds of things in World War II and so the very basis of what they do over at Disney was rooted inside teaching people lessons. So, they created formulas for doing just that with the old movies and the new movies, reflecting their educational roots and we love that about Disney. So, unlikely inspirational sources this week here on the Kay & Shi Show. Next up, we’re going to talk about road trips.
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Shi:
Alright. Unpack your bags. We are back on the Kay & Shi Show talking about unlikely inspirational sources and today we are on a road trip. We want to talk about the way we get inspired when we drive through different parts of the country.
Kay:
Big time, have you ever been on a road trip, and you see something beautiful, or you come across something that just strikes you in a certain way in your journey that you just aren’t the same after you encounter that particular thing? Well, we feel so blessed here in the United States to have a gorgeous landscape that actually we hold–I think, what Shi?–all of the ecological systems here in our one country.
Shi:
That’s right. All five climate zones are represented here in the US which is fine. So, there’s so much climate diversity that you can experience. But anytime we’re on a road trip there’s the reverence for nature and getting to see it from the road and kind of faster than if you were walking, allows you to see some of those climate changes and see the different environmental zones change. That’s always, I know for both of us, very reflective. You see your own life cycles reflected. You see how things in your life, emotionally, physically, health-wise change gradually in the same way that nature changes gradually. And when you’re on the road, you can observe that because you get a little bit of that again, faster perspective. Then you pass through towns in different places. You can literally feel the vibe. You can understand the scene of a town when you drive through it, and you reflect on all of the different stories that are present for people. Every ranch house and little, tiny community. I know, Kay both of us, we get into reflective mode of thinking about all of just the different stories and the perspectives and the angles and the experiences and the circumstances and the onslaught of just regular life happening and when you start to see it town after town after town, house after house after house, neighborhood, neighborhood, neighborhood you realize how small we are and yet how incredible and unique and powerful we are too. It’s always, I know, kind of just reverent for both of us.
Kay:
Well, back in 2017 a hurricane pummeled down on the state of Florida, the hurricane known as Irma. Danny and I lived in Florida at that time, and I was 24 weeks, 22 weeks pregnant with my first child Violet and we decided to take the drive up to Atlanta to evacuate. Well, when we got to Atlanta, the hurricane decided to wobble, wobble and go toward Atlanta and so we decided to just drive home. We were planning on moving home in about three weeks’ time, anyway, home to Reno, Nevada. But if you know anything about the US then you know that the West Coast of the United States is on the complete opposite side of the East Coast and Florida is on the East Coast and Reno, Nevada is on the West Coast. So, we took the drive across the country, and right at about Tennessee, I started experiencing some pretty severe contractions.
Now at 22 weeks pregnant, this is a pretty dangerous thing. You do not want to have your baby before 24 weeks because a hospital will not try to save a baby that gets born prior to that time. They will just call it a tragedy and let it go and so we stopped at a hospital in the middle of Oklahoma, and it was a rural hospital, and the hospital was a fully functioning hospital with an ER and everything, but they did not have an ultrasound machine to check in on the baby. We were able to listen to her. We were able to do all of my vitals, but there was no ultrasound machine in this rural hospital in Oklahoma. They said, if you want to keep driving 45 minutes to Oklahoma City, we can get you to a hospital that has an ultrasound machine. But the perspective that was brought forward between rural communities having access to advanced healthcare was so interesting and an inspirational thing that would not have happened had we not been on a road trip.
Shi:
Man, you can learn so much on the road and it’s beautiful to see and we encourage you next time, even just on your next short drive to see what you can soak in. Even the cityscapes have something to teach us as the rural places do, nature and human-made nature too. It’s really neat to see that contrast and it’s one place where after any sizeable amount of time in the car, we both are always reflecting on some of the lessons that we were chewing on and thinking on as we were driving if we’re not in the car together. If we’re in the car together we’re just blissing out together and talking about all of the inspiration and perspective that we’re gaining. But next up, I think you will be rather surprised as we share an unlikely inspirational source from our restaurant days.
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Kay:
Speaking of restaurant days today, we want to talk a little bit about our restaurant, the Squeeze In.
Shi:
Now we don’t talk a ton about it here on the Kay & Shi Show, but for the first 19 years of our entrepreneurial journeys, we were restaurant owners, and we still are restaurant owners, and we want to tell you today about that restaurant. If you are in Nevada, California, or Eagle, Idaho, then we hope that you will come visit and have one of the best omelets on the planet, our restaurant, the Squeeze In.
Kay:
If you’re traveling to the Lake Tahoe area or going down to Las Vegas. Maybe you’re in the middle of California in Modesto, or like Shila said headed up to Eagle, Idaho. We want you to come in, have brunch with us, test out those best omelets on the planet, and hey, report back to Shila and I how everything was because we want to know. The Squeeze In is part of our DNA, and we want to share it with you. So, check out Squeeze In if you’re ever in the area.
Shi:
Yep. See if there’s one near you. You can go to squeezein.com to find out more. And now let’s get back to the show.
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Kay:
Alright next up we’re talking about a very specific object from our restaurant days, and this is the object of pitchers.
Shi:
In fact, pitchers and pots, coffee pots to be exact. We want to talk about one of our unlikely inspirational sources. Now we had a lot of inspiration in the restaurants and motivation and stories. As you know, we’ve spent nearly two decades as a restaurant family and restaurant owners. But the days of working the floor, of serving, of bussing, of touching tables, and taking orders, there is a part of the duty, especially in a breakfast and lunch restaurant of going around and continuously filling the coffees and filling the waters. And if you know anything about pouring out of a pitcher or a coffee pot, sometimes it can be a little intimidating.
Kay:
Now we want to just paint a quick picture for you and take you back to the summer of 2005. Now I was 12 and Shila was 19 and mom and dad were in the restaurant and so was Shila’s fiancé at the time, Chad. Shila and Chad would be serving, and mom would be running food or cooking, and dad and I would be hosting and running the line and it was truly a full family affair with 100% of us in line. What we learned was that oftentimes when you are doing the duty of pouring water and pouring coffee on those hot summer days, that while you’re pouring, it can be difficult to get all of the water that’s inside the pitcher or all of the coffee that’s inside the pot into the cup. Now, maybe you’ve been at a dinner table before and you’ve looked to pour water for someone else and as the ice water comes to the side of the pitcher it spills a little bit. It goes down the side of the pitcher, you get it on the table, and it seems like, “Man, how can I cleanly get this water or get this coffee out of the pitcher and into the cup?”
Shi:
Well, we found through our thousands of interactions of pouring coffee and water that the most important thing is confidence. Literally, the commitment to the outcome of getting the liquid from the container into the smaller container because with that confidence comes that commitment, and with that commitment comes a sure, certain action that is swift, that is committed and that ultimately typically gets the job done without splash over. Now, if you do it half committed or you’re not very confident and you kind of shake, you’re either going to get that situation with the water pitcher where all the ice is bunching up at the bottom and the water’s coming out, but then the ice comes crashing down or you’re going to get it all come crashing down at once, or you’re going to end up trying to jiggle it and ice comes crashing down. Pretty much ice comes crashing down if you’re not committed to pouring that water with confidence and with swift action. When it comes to a coffee pot, that confidence of knowing that this is a container designed to pour liquid, hot liquid from this container to the other one. The only way you can mess it up is by approaching it timidly, or obviously negligently not paying attention. But if you approach it with that confidence and you commit to pouring it, it’s going to come out with it with a steady stream. It’s going to hit that cup and you’re going to get it all in there. Once we realize this, we thought, wow, I don’t think this just applies to liquid moving from one container to another.
Kay:
No, this also applies to life. Now let’s just say you have a goal of doing basically anything. Now, if you commit to that goal with confidence just like you have to commit to pouring the ice water out of that pitcher with confidence, you can usually have a bit of a cleaner time than if you were to approach it in a shaky way. Now we get it. It can be fearful or difficult to approach something with confidence that maybe you haven’t done before, or maybe something that you’re not sure about. But being able to muster just a little bit of confidence in yourself can save you a whole lot of mess on the table.
Shi:
Right. That coming down to that commitment piece, just being so important and the ability too, because when you commit, you’re more likely to be successful in the outcome or certainly to evaluate whatever the outcome was as a success because you’re calling it a learning experience if maybe it wasn’t quite the traditional success, you had some coffee spill out or anything like that. But because you’re coming at it with that commitment and confidence and conviction then you’re able to look at it like a learning lesson and ultimately say, “Okay, next time I can make these adjustments.” If you come at it from a shaky position of not being committed and not being confident and you spill a little bit, then your little brain goes, “See, I told you, you weren’t going to be very good at it.” And now it just chips away even more at your confidence which can result in not as much commitment, which can result in not as secure of an action being taken and more mistakes. So, we see how this can start to cyclically feed on itself and each other. Whether we’re pouring water or pouring ourselves towards a goal it matters to do it with confidence and commitment and conviction.
Kay:
So, as you pour yourself into the days and the weeks ahead, we encourage you to pour it like the water, pour it like the coffee and do it with confidence, commitment, and conviction.
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Shi:
Alright, for the final installment of unlikely sources of inspiration today, we are talking about personal water experiences a.k.a. showers and baths.
Kay:
Now, this is a literal inspirational source, and that’s actually backed up by a lot of science that often when you’re in the shower or in the bath you allow your mind just enough of that quiet wander time to start to come up with solutions to some of your greatest life’s problems.
Shi:
That’s one of the things we love about it, and we are intentional about getting our water time, and many people find inspiration or there are even whole advertising campaigns about doing your best thinking in the shower. But we certainly love to just feel the water, try to connect to the flow, soak in the water when we’re in the bath and find those moments to relate to the experience and to the general idea of water in a way that helps us deepen our connection to ourselves and to our environment.
Kay:
Well, whether you’re in a shower or you’re in a bath you are experiencing a luxury of connecting to one of the basic elements of life. Showers and baths give you an opportunity to be a little bit more intentional about connecting with this aspect of nature and we don’t necessarily have this aspect of nature readily available to us in the aspect of earth. Not everybody lives in easily nature-accessible environments, but most of us live with an accessible shower or bath, which means that we have the opportunity to connect to this element. Now, connecting to fire is one thing. You put candles up in your room or in your house and it kind of gives you that elemental feeling, but you can’t go touch a fire. You can’t bathe in a fire. I mean you can, but it probably isn’t going to feel very good, but you can experience the beautiful element of water through a shower or a bath.
Shi:
So, one of the ways that we like to bring intentionality to this is to set up the environment to allow ourselves to experience it at that kind of inspirational level. If you take a bath and you bring your phone because it’s 2022 and that’s what people do. Maybe stay off of your social media platforms. Don’t let that just be an hour of scrolling while you sit in this beautiful bath. Maybe you turn on some meditation music, maybe close your eyes, maybe experience the water, or maybe even sit in silence or read a book on your phone or something like that. You could still use devices and technology. Not saying don’t do that, but you’re in an environment that’s conducive for deeper reflection. That’s where reflecting even came from, initially seeing our reflections in water. So, being immersed in it allows us to be more open to reflection. Set yourself up for success. Create your environment to allow yourself to go deep with that reflection in the shower. I’m a big two-shower-a-day kind of girl. So, I’ve got my morning shower that’s like the utility shower, and then I have my evening shower where I put my hair up. I rinse off my body. I brush my teeth, kind of do my evening routine, but usually, I have some steam time in there. I like to turn on whatever book I’ve been listening to and have that playing while I’m in there, which right now it’s a yoga book so I’m really enjoying that level of reflection. But being able to set yourself up intentionally to utilize that source that you’re already using every day for deeper connection and reflection is something we would highly encourage you to do.
Kay:
A couple other things that might help you with your shower time. If maybe you’re like me and don’t necessarily have a bathtub in your house that is conducive for relaxing baths. One thing that I love to do to help bring more intention to my showers is I’ve got a little stack of essential oils in my shower that occasionally I will put near the drain and let the hot water kind of drip onto that to create a bit of an essential oil steam that comes up. Now, the scents help it feel more luxurious, and essential oils have all kinds of benefits for you, especially when you’re using that olfactory sense, the sense of smell to create a better and more conducive environment for maybe relaxation or awakening. So, using those orange essential oils, using a lavender essential oil. I will sometimes even use spearmint if I’m looking to maybe clear up my sinuses and the other thing, this one’s really simple, but I’m going to call you all out on it because man, I know I’m guilty of this sometimes as well, but I’ve brought a lot more intentionality around it.
Do a shower audit. Look at the shampoo bottles, the conditioner bottles, the body wash, the soaps, and the things that you have inside your shower. Now, are you the average person who leaves empty bottles in your shower after they’re done being used, or do you take them right to the trash? Many of us have maybe just the last two uses of a shampoo left over before we buy a new one, but we don’t get rid of the trash in our shower or the clutter in our shower, or the shower soap that somebody gave you for Christmas two Christmases ago that you had in your shower, but you don’t use. So, keeping the environment clean, giving yourself tools to let it be more of an experience than a transaction for your life can bring more intentionality to this inspirational source of a bath or a shower.
Shi:
Well, as we wrap up, I just want to say one, I am totally doing the essential oil trick in my shower this evening. Kay. Thank you for that tip. I can’t believe I’ve never thought of that or heard you talk about it. So, hey, I’m learning here alongside all of you. That is the first thing and then the second thing is as much as you declutter your physical shower space, make sure that you declutter your mind shower space as well. Towards the end of last year, 2021, I started realizing that I was in a nasty habit of allowing negative thoughts to spiral while I was in the shower. It was like this trigger for me to think about that one person or that one interaction or that one embarrassing moment, and then chew on it for my whole shower. That is not a wise decision for me to continue forward and so intentionally worked on snapping myself out of it. So, if you find yourself being triggered by being in the shower and allowing your mind to do the worry routine bring more intentionality to that. Shake off your body, even inside that shower even say out loud, something more empowering and positive and shift your direction of focus and thinking so that you can enjoy that opportunity to reflect a little bit more. So, this week we talked unlikely inspirational sources, and it was so much fun, and we have endless inspirational sources. So, you’ll definitely see another installment of this coming soon to the Kay & Shi Show.
Kay:
We’ve loved having you. Thanks for giving us this time this week to be in your corner and remember we’re rooting for you.
Shi:
Thanks, everybody.
