Episode 42: Not Everyone Will Go With You

When you decide to level up in life, not everyone will go with you. And that's OK. They don't have to!

Ken Atchity's book: https://www.amazon.com/How-Quit-Your-Live-Dreams/dp/1616086866

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Sara's award-winning biography of Dag can be found on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Decoding-Unicorn-New-Look-Hammarskj%C3%B6ld-ebook/dp/B0DSCS5PZT

Her forthcoming project, Simply Dag, will release globally on July 29th! ✨

#levelup #makingchanges #notallfriendshipsareforever 

Transcript

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Transcription by Otter.ai.  Please forgive any typos!

In episode 42 of the Decoding the Unicorn podcast, host Sara Causey discusses the challenges and changes that come with personal growth and leveling up. She uses the analogy of mountain climbing to describe the journey, noting that some people will naturally fall away as you progress. Causey emphasizes the importance of following your own path and not being held back by others' emotions or expectations. She advises letting go of those who don't support your journey and highlights the optimism of finding new, like-minded individuals and mentors along the way. The episode also touches on the transition from a predictable life to one filled with novelty and change.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Podcast episode, Sara Causey, level up, social circle, mountain climbing, personal growth, change, non-verbal communication, Ken Atchity, Groundhog Day, novelty, mental decision, emotional support, Chinese astrology, new opportunities.

Sara, welcome to the Decoding the Unicorn podcast. Here's your host, Sara Causey.

Hello, hello, and thanks for tuning in. Happy February. I can't believe that we're already here. I've been seeing memes online where people have said that January seemed to have lasted an entire decade for them, but that was not my experience. I can't believe that 2026, is going by so fast. All I can say is that whenever you start to live a life that you enjoy and you're not trapped in some soul sucking cubicle farm, time passes in a different way. And I'm not saying that to be like, Oh, braggadocious. I'm saying like, if you're capable of finding what you love and freeing yourself from something that you don't love, time passes in such a different way. This will be episode 42 of decoding the unicorn the podcast. However, I'm also going to share it on my Causey consulting podcast and have it do some double duty, because I think both audiences in both places will get something valuable out of it. And it's this today I want to talk about, whenever you begin to level up, whenever you make a change, whenever you decide that you want something better for yourself. There will be people in your life who take that journey with you, people who are supportive that cheer you on, and there will be people who do not follow you on that journey. There will be people that bow out at various places because of their own busyness, their own insecurity, their own inability to relate to you anymore. And you will also have frenemies. You'll have haters. You'll have people who decide I liked you when you were stuck. I liked you when you were someone different. I liked you when you were griping all the time and you walked around like Eeyore. Oh, bother. Why me? There are people that cannot stand to see somebody else happy. They don't want to see somebody succeed. They want to feel like we're all down here at basically the same level. And if somebody in the friend group levels up, then it makes everybody else feel bad, not because that was ever that person's intention. You can't manage the emotions of somebody else, and you cannot live for the emotions of somebody else. You have to follow your own bliss and your own calling in life. Because if you try to manage everybody else's emotions and keep everybody in the friend group happy all the time, that is a fool's errand. So if you want to level up, or maybe you have recently leveled up, and you're looking around and your social circle is getting awfully small, and you're concerned about why that is, stay tuned.

Just a reminder, Sara's award winning biography of Dag Hammarskjold, Decoding the Unicorn, is available on Amazon. Her next non fiction project, Simply Dag, will release on July 29th. To learn more about her other works, please visit SaraCausey.com. Now back to the show!

I think mountain climbing is a good analogy. Here. It feels apropos. Since Dag liked mountain climbing, imagine that you and your friends, maybe even your family members, everybody in your set is hanging out on the ground. Everything's pretty level, and maybe it's a bit like Groundhog Day, the same thing, which also feels apropos, since we just recently had Groundhog Day on February the second, everything's more or less samey, predictable. You know what's going to happen from season to season. You know what's going to happen from day to day. Maybe there are some curve balls here and there, but for the most part, you live the same year over and over again. You may even set the same New Year's resolutions over and over again, but by the middle of January or Super Bowl Sunday at the latest, all of those resolutions have gone by the wayside, and you think, well, there's always next year, but one day, you look around and you realize there's a mountain there. I wonder what that mountain looks like. I wonder what's at the top. I wonder what it would be like to climb that mountain. I'm curious, and I think I'm ready for change. I think I'm ready to get off the level ground. I don't want every day of the rest of my life to be basically the same, or every year to be basically the same. I've talked before about Ken actually his book, don't quit your day job. I reviewed that book for the Causey consulting podcast, and I'll talk about it briefly here as well. Since I'm going to broadcast this in both places, one of the things that Ken talks about is whenever he decided to give up his position as a tenured professor and pursue a Hollywood career, he was like, I realized, if I stay. Be in the tenured professor track every year of my life, every semester is going to be ironed out for me. It's going to be super predictable, and it's going to be like in October, you have to go here. In November, you have to go there, and you have to live by the syllabus, and you're going to always know what you're teaching, and everything is going to feel the same. And he hated that sensation there's like, there's not going to be any more novelty or spontaneity, really, your life is going to be planned out for you. Think also about John Mayer song where he says, like, plotted out in black and white. Like, everything that you're supposed to be doing in the quote, unquote, real world is going to be plotted out for you in advance. And for Ken it was like, I just don't want to live that way. So maybe you are at a similar point too, where you're like, I don't want Groundhog Day anymore. I don't want my life to just feel super samey and repetitive and predictable. I want some novelty. I want some change. And you look at this mountain, and you think, I'm going to climb that mountain. I don't know if I'll make it to the top, but I sure want to try. I can't keep doing what I've been doing here on the ground. I'm tired. I'm burned out. I need a change. Now. You haven't even done anything yet, but you have made an important mental decision, and I would argue, an important spiritual, energetic decision as well, because you've decided that you're going to get off the ground and climb this mountain. But there may not even be any visual cues to that yet. In other words, you haven't even gone to a store like REI and purchased your mountain climbing gear or talk to some other climbers to find out. What do I need to know before I do this, you're still on the ground with everybody else, and you're not humble bragging. Oh, I'm going to go do this, and you peons and plebs are going to stay down on the ground. You've just made the decision that you want to change. The reason why I'm laboring that point is to say this, you will have people that drop out of your life right there and then, even though you haven't told them anything, you haven't verbally said, I'm tired of my life here on level ground. It feels super samey, super predictable, and I want more out of life. You haven't verbally said that to them, but I'm telling you, they will pick up on it. You have to remember that so much communication is non verbal. We might get fixated on the actual words that somebody puts in print or the words coming out of their mouth, but a lot of what happens with communication and the way that we absorb it is emotional and it's energetic, it's non verbal. So even though you haven't telegraphed to friends and family, the people in your set that I'm bored and I'm tired and I want to climb this mountain because I feel I deserve better in life, they're going to pick up on it. And there will be people, I'm telling you, that will get out of your life right then and there, just because you have made the decision. And I would argue that first wave of folk that leaves, let them. I know that's super popular because of the Mel Robbins book, and I'm not a Mel Robbins acolyte by any means, but I will say that phrase is pretty darn handy if you have decided you want more out of life and somebody skedaddles right out the door, let them. Let them go and do whatever they're going to do. It doesn't have to affect your decision to level up and to make change. So let's say, as your next step, you do go to the store, you get your your proper safety gear, you're outfitted. You feel like you have some idea of what you're about to do next, and you start to actually climb the mountain. You'll have some friends and family members that come along with you. It's almost like a novelty, right? It's like, Oh, yay. Look, this could be fun, kind of like planning a picnic. Oh yeah. Well, we'll have some cake and some cookies and some sandwiches out here, and it'll be cool. It'll be fun. But then when the ants show up at the picnic, or it gets too hot, they want to pack everything up and leave. Well, it's going to be the same thing as you're trying to ascend this mountain. You'll have some people that come with you for the first leg of the journey because they think it's fun, or it's cute, it's something to do, or they think you're going to stop they think you're going to start strong when you have motivation, but you're not going to have the discipline to keep going. It's almost like I'll come along for the novelty, for the fun of it, I'll just kind of vicariously see what happens. But they're not expecting you to stick with it, and they're definitely not expecting you to succeed. As you get further off the ground, you'll have another wave of people that leaves, because they'll be like, well, this isn't what I thought was going to happen. I thought we weren't going to go up this high. I thought that she wouldn't stick with this change. I thought she'd want to go back to the ground. They want to go back to the ground so they will leave. And again, to use the phrase du jour, let them if they don't want to go up that mountain with you, let them leave. Let them go back to. Having Groundhog Day. It doesn't mean that you have to follow suit if you still feel like climbing that mountain and seeing what happens next, let them go. You don't have to fight over them or worry about what they're thinking. So you keep climbing the mountain a bit more, and maybe by now, you're to the point where if you choose to look down, the people are like dots. You're not even really seeing the landscape clearly anymore. The trees look like green dots and the people look like dots on the ground. And it's like, Ooh, I'm up higher than I thought I was going to be. That's another phase of the journey where you will start to lose people. Because it's like, I don't I don't feel comfortable up here anymore. My life is getting way too far in the rear view mirror the way that I lived in the past still has a hold on me, and I want to go back down if we want to use another analogy besides mountain climbing. Think about how many people decide that they want to eat healthy. I'm just using air quotes here because that means different things to different people. They're going to eat healthy in the new year, or they're going to exercise more, so they get a gym membership. They show up once, maybe twice, and then never again. The gym gets their money for the entire year. So they're they're making their profit. They got what they ultimately wanted, but the person only shows up once or twice. Or think about the eating healthy crowd, but then it's like, well, I miss going to happy hour and being able to drink whatever I want. I miss going to the pizza parlor every Friday. I miss Taco Tuesdays every Tuesday or every Sunday, when there's a football game on, I want to eat like it's Super Bowl Sunday, and have nachos and wings and beer and tailgate food. And it's like, I mean, do you really need to be doing that every Sunday? I mean, maybe it's no no judgment for me. I I know that I would feel bloated and sluggish and weighed down if I ate like that multiple times per week, every week, but you'll have people who feel like that's what I want to do. I don't want to climb this mountain anymore. I'm looking and it feels like my old life is too far away. I want to go back to the happy hours. I want to go back to eating whatever I want. I don't want to follow any kind of a meal plan. I'm out. So you will lose people on that leg of the journey. And you know what? Let them go. So you keep climbing the mountain. You're a little bit higher up now. Maybe you're to the point where you don't even see the ground anymore. You're just seeing that kind of haze or like a low hanging cloud bank, so you're not seeing the old life. And the idea of being back down on the ground feels so antithetical to you, you can't even imagine going back to your old life. That's how I feel at this point, to be honest with you, living full time as an artist and a creative, it's like I don't

I just I look back on my old life, and I mean, like the life that I had, what year is this? 2026, the year that I had 1112, years ago, where I was working outside the home for other people, and I would get crammed into these bullpen situations where everything was an open office, and people would be hooping and hollering and acting crazy, and I'm like, not for a million, man, not for a million. Would I go back to that? Oh, I don't know how I did it, but then I remember, well, you were miserable a lot. You had issues with depression. You you didn't enjoy life. You lived for nights and weekends and for getting away from that situation whenever you could like that. That's how you, quote, unquote, lived. You existed more than you lived when you get to that point on the mountain where you're like, there's more behind me than there is ahead of me. I'm getting closer to the summit of where I really want to be for this leg of the journey. And when I look down, I don't even see my old life anymore. I don't even see dots on the ground or trees that look tiny. I just see this fog below this low hanging cloud bank. Absolutely you're going to have to be prepared to have either the rest of the journey is you by yourself, or it's you with very few people, a lot of the individuals that are in your crew, that are in your set, they're not going to be there to take the whole journey with you, and they don't have to be. I'm not saying it in a mean spirited way when I say you don't need them. I'm not saying it in a mean spirited way. I'm actually trying to say it in a good news optimism way, which is, if you needed them in order to succeed, they would stay, but you don't, so you can let them go, and it's not that big of a deal, and you don't have to dull your shine or compromise on your goals in order to try to keep these people happy, Even if you went back down the mountain, you got back on level ground, and you're like, yeah, it was fun up there, but huh, I lost too many friends. I guess I better stay here where it's safe. You would be miserable, and then you would also have haters when you got down there, because it'd be like, Oh, you think you're so great because you went up the mountain, aren't you something? Don't, don't you think you're just awesome, you're not. Going to be able to win with some people, so why even try? So then you keep climbing, and you get up there to that summit point, and you're like, This is amazing. And you start to look around and you see other people standing on summits too, and you realize, like, Okay, I'm not without friends. I'm not without other people that I can learn from, that I can network with. And then you start to set other goals as well. There are other mountains you want to climb or other adventures you want to have. You don't get to that apex, more than likely, and say, Well, this is all I want to do. I'll just hang out here. Miss some people might, but probably you won't. There will be other things in your life that you decide you want to do, other mountains, to climb, other other cool adventures to have, but you won't be alone. And that's really, I think, probably the most optimistic part of this episode is that there will be a period of time where you start to lose friends. You maybe even have people in your family. They're like, Oh, she thinks she's something now, or I don't get her, those artists are just weird. I don't know what she's doing. Let them go, if they want to go. Let them go, because you will discover other people that come into your life that have more in common with where you're at at this point, and they're more relatable. You're more relatable to them, and they to you. There will be mentors, there will be people that come into your life that you can learn from. So you don't want to get so obsessed with grieving over the people that are gone that you miss out on the new people coming in that are ready to meet you where you are. They're not judging you, because they know what it's like to leave the ground and climb that mountain themselves. I know it may sound a bit pessimistic at times in this episode, but really it's not. It's more like Be of good cheer. There are other amazing people out there. So if you lose a few as you level up, or if you lose a lot as you level up, let them go. That's part of the process. I also want to say, before I log off, that it's like what we're seeing right now with the Chinese astrology and the Chinese New Year. We're coming out of a year of the snake and into a year of the horse. It's about shedding that skin. Maybe you were uncomfortable and constricted, but now it's time to let the pony run free, let the stallion go crazy, like level up. Move forward, get it, get out of the barn and go for a run. You've shed that snake skin. You've gotten out of that point of constriction, and now it's time to run and and feel free and pursue your goals. Be of good cheer. Let everybody else be pessimistic. Let everybody else give you all the bad reports about why nothing's going to work and the world's going to hell in a hand basket. We've heard that for years, for decades, find your bliss. Find your happiness. Don't worry so much about what other people are thinking. It's not about being selfish and self absorbed. It's about saying there will be other people that I can learn from and other people that I can be friends with as I go up the mountain, I'm not going to have to be alone forever. I might be alone for a little while, but it won't be forever. Stay safe, take good care of yourself, and I will see you in the next episode.

Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast and share it with others. We'll see you next time.