The Death of Normal: Why It's Important to Pursue a Higher Quality of Life | S6 E29

Ask yourself...when did being normal  become unpopular?

In this episode, Steve and Mary Alessi take an unapologetic look at the cultural attitudes that are destroying the fabric of our society by accepting abnormal behavior and calling it normal.

You'll hear about their personal battles with everyday struggles, which highlight the impact of a positive approach to life.  You'll see why normal is actually more about striving for the best and taking responsibility for your actions, instead of succumbing to culture's lowest common denominator. 

Join us and learn how to resist the normalization of destructive mindsets that will undermine both your and your family's future.  

Chapters

• 0:00 Coming Up in This Episode
• 0:43 New Glasses, Who Dis?
• 1:30 Answers to Last Month's Question
• 3:00 Winners of March Giveaway
• 4:55 Inflation and Instacart
• 6:13 Praise from the Podience
• 7:52 What Used to Be Normal
• 10:37 What Has Changed
• 12:54 Striving for Better Health
• 15:41 Are We Normalizing Abnormal?
• 17:27 Normal Struggle - Dealing with Menopause
• 20:14 Cheap Grace vs. Costly Grace
• 25:31 Taking the Minority Position
• 29:20 Monitor Your Self Talk
• 31:18 Closing Thoughts

Transcript

0:00

Mhmm. But fight. Fight. Don't let normal die and give in to the abnormal. Yeah. Mary. Hello, and welcome to another episode of the family business with the Alessis where family is everybody's business. I'm Steve Alessi, and I'm here with my beautiful wife, Mary. And if you're not watching us on YouTube or the other streaming where you can see us, you wouldn't see her in her glasses. You're missing her. She's wearing glasses in the studio today. I need them. You do? Well We had some work done on your eyes. But you know what? I did LASIK a couple years ago, but it's great. I get 2020, but I still have this weird focus issue. So this helps me a lot. Well, I think they're cute. It helps me. You like them? I like them. You like the glasses. Boy. Wow. Woman. Okay, listen. We got a great podcast. Let me tell you the title of it real quick. And then I got some work I got to do. But stay plugged in over the next few minutes. Here's our title for our podcast today. Podians, you ready for this? It's the death of normal. Dun, dun, dun, dun. This is a good one. I think you're gonna like it. But before I get into that, some work here. 1st, I wanna thank everybody for helping us. They have, been responding, Mary, to the Alessis Are Asking Questions. Yeah. And the last question we more or less was asking had to do with if your, platform, when it comes time to vote, what what is it that is really gonna sway your decision with regards to your vote? And here's what we got from people, and it's been really nice. Just off the top, just a few of them here, because we got a bunch and just a few of them here. One of them was saying that they're gonna be voting for the party that's in favor of family, children, and safety of babies and children. Okay. So, pro family Yeah. For sure, which we expected with many that are gonna respond. Yeah. Another one here had to do with, vote based on the government that keeps traditional family values about abortion and gender ideology based on what the word of God says. So they're coming at this from a biblical perspective. Another one said in inflation. They're focused on that, how it's touching their, their their pocketbook and their pockets. Education was a big one and trying to stay away from the woke ideology. Yeah. And they don't want that touching their children. Another one said single most important for them had to do with abortion because they are strongly pro life Yeah. And will support the candidate who has a pro life platform. We expected that we would be hearing a lot of those that, responded with our particular, biblical platform beliefs because that's, really what is at the root of the family business podcast, our Christian beliefs. And we don't wanna turn anyone away that may have different beliefs. However, we do know where we stand. Right. So for those of you that responded, thank you so much for doing that. We're gonna have another question for you in the next couple of weeks or so. But we did go ahead, we said if you put in your answer to this, we'd go ahead and put your hat a name and a hat, pull it out. So here's the 2 people who are gonna be winning some of our family business podcast merch. We're gonna go ahead and give you, Mara Young, and you, Vilma Della Rosa, some merch. Pulled your name out. Thanks for responding, and, you're gonna get something. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for listening, and thanks for responding. And we have some merch to you for you. And what we need you to do is, type send us an email, Mara and Vilma. Info at Alessi. Alessi family business dotcom. Dotcom. Info at Alessi family business dot com. Thank you, AP, for helping us do that. Give us your size so we know what to send you. Very cool. Yes. That's what we need. Well, I have a large cup Yeah. For coffee. One size fits all. We have a you have a white one with blue ink, and I have a blue one with white ink. We also have these really cool totes. I love those totes. They're they're navy or are they black? They're in, like, blackish navy. They're ink. They're ink with white letters, and we have hats, and we have hoodies, and we have t shirts. Let us know what your size is, and we'll be sending you something. Potions t shirt, because you wear I love I wear all this stuff. Yeah. I wear all this stuff. When it it's a good look on you. Well, yes, do that. I wanna go back to something you said just a second ago about about the the election and all that and what people are voting for. I went to the grocery store last night. Now I must be very honest here. I've been Instacarting. And the bad thing about Instacart is that you don't look at the individual cost. Oh, boy. You just order and then you look at the bottom line. Right? And I and major Instacartor. I just wanna throw that out there. And I know we say, that our audience listens to us and they agree with our family values. And if you don't agree with our values, this is what you do agree with. A small bag of Doritos, a medium bag, not a sandwich size, but the medium, not the big bag, was 6.90 9. Of what? Doritos. I haven't even bought Doritos. I had a hankering for them last night. Hankering. This is just a little extra for free. I'm throwing it in right now. I it stopped me in my tracks, and I'd already paid for them. I didn't wanna have to go back and void it out. But I'm not talking about the big jumbo family bag. I'm talking about a medium size bag of Doritos, folks. Mhmm. 699. So at the end of the day, people are gonna be voting their pocketbooks like you said. Most people do. That's crazy. Yep. Most people do. So anyway, I just had to share. Have a nice response. It's a nice email from somebody who Beautiful. Wrote in, without oh, you can mention his first name, but why don't you go ahead and read that? I think that's really nice. This is from Paul, and he says, dear Steve and Mary, my name is Paul. I'm a Christian, and I'm a husband to Sheila. Dad to 9 beautiful kids, 5 boys and 4 girls, an ardent podcast listener. Thank you, Paul. That means a lot to us. He says, I just got done listening to the episode about family case study and building strong families on biblical principles, and I had to write. Thank you, he puts in caps, so much for recording and sharing these encouraging thoughts. As a long time child of God, your words rang true in my heart and mind, knowing that following Jesus and giving my children God's word will stand them good for years to come no matter what the culture throws at them. It has been discouraging in recent times with so many teenagers and so many competing voices and ideas. I could imagine 9. Mhmm. They've got a lot. And maybe you could do an an issue about how the smartphones are really wreaking havoc inside. Yes. We need to do that. In social media, etcetera. So, again, this was a real boost of hope and confidence to know God's word is tried and true. The case studies are solid, and my wife, Sheila, and I should stick to the old fashioned principles and values contained in it. Bless you all and keep up the great podcasting. Excellent. Thank you, Paul. Yes. Appreciate that. And if you haven't listened to that particular podcast on case studies, you need to go back and you need to listen to it. It was really cool. Okay. So we've got about 23 minutes here Okay. To go ahead and hit this subject that matter, the death of normal. Here's where this is originating from. It's been normal over the many, many years in just in not America, but in humanity to always want to better their lives. Right. It's been put within us by the creator to want a better life. So we have been encouraged to always strive for the best, believe for the best, to always see the best, so that we make our lives better. Yeah. But that has seemingly lost steam today. And what people what I'm picking up in society and culture is you're almost made to look like a villain if you want to push yourself or push others to be their very best. Right. And what we've done is we have resorted to this, or reverted to this society that gives so many excuses for why people can't be better. Right. And we've made, humanity, lower their bar of expectation. Absolutely. And I don't think that is gonna bode well in our future. It's not. Where we are eliminating the whole passion to drive, to be better to win, we're eliminating that. And instead, we're giving all these like, I don't know, yellow cards out. I don't know soccer. So maybe I'm off here. But you're like, you got a yellow card. Okay, you're you know what you're gonna get next time if you keep, you know, messing up and stuff, we're gonna finally, you know, penalize you and penalize you, nobody ever steps up and says you're you're off. Right? There's a penalty for not wanting to be your best. It's like there's no consequences, period No. Across the board. We don't wanna be a consequence driven society at all. And Mary, that's not going to work well. It's not, and it's not working. It may be the 1st generation that really says, It's okay. I don't have to achieve what my parents achieved, or achieve better. Well, it's And that's an insult to a parent, by the way. It is an insult to a parent. And I what I love about the title, you said this randomly in the car yesterday, and I said, we've gotta get in the podcast booth. We gotta talk about this. Because we talk so much about normal versus abnormal, what's accepted, what's not accepted, and we see at our age, you're 60. 2? 3. Okay. I missed the birthday. And I am 56, just turned 56. And it's this decade of our lives being grandparents that we've noticed who is just normal anymore. -Yeah. -Who's just balanced out there, that's striving for more, that's not getting caught up in a pool of tears or a drowning in a teeny tiny glass of water, through anxiety and depression because they're striving, but they're not getting anywhere. And we're just seeing so much dissonance around us in the world and in people, even in our own lives, that struggle, that battle. And, Steve, I when you said that, it's like it's like the death of normal. And I I've thought about that, and you said it again this morning. It's the death of normal. What is normal? What is normal? And if you go back to our parents' generation Mhmm. And how they did not have self help and resources. They for for marriage and babies, you had doctor Spok. In one book, you did not have all those resources. Then our generation came around, and in our the nineties and the early 2000, even in the eighties, you had so much self help material out there, but you bought books. Now every reel, every video, every pastor, every layperson, every mama in Utah is trying to give you her insight and their insight on just be okay with yourself, and don't put so much pressure on yourself, and and give everybody a trophy, and don't feel bad. It's like, why can't we feel bad and it's okay? Yeah. Why do we have to get listen to podcasts over and over and over and over and people talking about their their anxieties and their depression and their mental illnesses, somebody's gotta stand up and go, okay. Stop. Just be normal. Yeah. Just be normal. You don't have to be eccentric. You don't have to put that language on to be heard. Just be normal. But we were talking about why. Yeah. It's hard to be normal these days. It is hard to be but it's always been hard to be normal. It's always been hard. Because normal is always striving for more, Mary, not settling for less. Now, I know this from a healthcare perspective. You know, I spend a lot of time and focus and money resources on making sure my health has to be its best. Yeah. So I took this chat test. Test. And, it it you know, to want more, I have to be in touch with a doctor more, step outside of some of my traditional ways of doing my health, like I've done in the past, because the way I did it with my doctor back then ended up causing you know, I had a heart attack. So I needed to change things up, right? So I changed things up. If I want to, if I want to be healthy, and I want to live long, to enjoy all the fruits of my labors and my, my marriage, my kids growing up, if I wanna live long, I'm gonna have to be at my optimum, my very best. But even the healthcare industry today, they do not encourage people to be their best. They encourage people to stay the same Right. Yes. And just take medication. Oh, man. So that we could work with just the symptoms of your sickness. Instead of saying, let's let's get to the root of your sickness. Let's just medicate the symptoms of your sickness. Well, normal test results don't aren't good for business. You need abnormal. Right. I don't wanna bring it all down. I hate that that people would bring it all down, the money, follow the money. But you know But there's a lot there. So I took a test. And what was cool about this test is it could show me within the next 52 weeks, 1 year from that test, it can show me my chances of having a heart attack. And since I had the heart attack, widowmaker 2007, the thing that's always in the back of my brain, I can't help it, is oh, my gosh, it could happen again. Because I saw a gentleman when I was younger, have a heart attack. And then like 6 months later, he had another one. He eventually succumbed to like a third heart attack. So in my mind, it's like, Oh, if you had one, that's the whole thought. So I gotta do it. You can have another. So I took this test, and the doctor let me know that there's 3 levels. 1, on the first level 1 to 3, you're like, you don't have to worry about a a heart attack. You're at 1%. From number 4 to 6, the 7, you're like at, you know, 30%. And then from, like, 8 to 10, 12, you're at a high risk of having a heart attack. Well, I was at 1 to 3, so I have a 1% chance of having another heart attack within a year. Yeah. That's incredible. But I wouldn't have that chance if I didn't try on a regular daily basis to make sure Yeah. I'm at top performance as for health. Yes. So normal is always pulling you in the direction of better. Yes. We just stepped into this crazy society of ours today that says don't try to be better. And let's, by all means, don't put pressure on people to be better. Instead, let them be just themselves. Right. And quite frankly, today, we're dealing with abnormal. We are. Abnormal is becoming the new normal. Yep. And I would say to people listening, don't buy into it. Well, please don't. You have to push yourself to be your best, so that your future self will thank you later for being willing to press past all the uncomfortable sacrifices that you got to make, and not buy into the lie of this culture today that says it's okay, just be who you are. Just accept who you are. No. If you're not careful about, alright, I might feel something right now. Let me not go with my feelings. If you go with your feelings constantly, then you're gonna hate yourself in the future. Oh, man. That's true. Because every, you know, for one thing, every decade you change. You want different, you want more. That's it's just human nature. You go through a 10 year cycle, and it's like that was good for this year, but I want better. So that means you're gonna look at your marriage is different. If you're looking down the road, it's saying, no, I'm not gonna accept this abnormal behavior. And it's okay. I don't have to force myself to be a better husband or force myself to be a better wife today. I don't have to do if you do that 10 years from now, when you're now alone, single and alone, because you didn't stay married, didn't try to be a better spouse, you're not gonna like it in the future. No. Normal is working hard at everything you do. Mhmm. With expectation that your hard work will pay off in a feeling of satisfaction and a feeling of accomplishment. Abnormal says, I don't wanna fight those battles. And if I feel something that's off Yep. It's not right, so I am doing it wrong. No. You're not. That comes along with just trying to be normal. Yeah. Do normal things. I'll give you an example. 56. I'm through menopause. Right? I'm on the other side of it. Yep. But I'm around all these 34 to 48, 50 year olds now. And as I've done this few a few cycles, been around a few women, what I thought when I was in my forties, around 44, having hot flashes, crying all the time, wanting to kill you, I thought was something's wrong with me. Yeah. So did I. Okay. Well, you did think something was something was wrong with me, and you did Yeah. Go ahead. Speak to it a lot. Anyway, we fixed it. Yeah. But it wasn't abnormal. It was normal. And all I needed to do was make sure I educated myself and I worked hard and I endured through it. But it was normal, and then I'd get through it on the other side of it. The minute I went to the doctor, he's like, oh, honey. That's normal. That's what this is. In my mind, I was like, it can't be. Something's off. There's a demon. There's a dark force in me because it's really real when you're going through it. Some women struggle with severe migraines. Some have pains all throughout their body. When I started really going through the other side of menopause and I started having pains in my ankle, the back of my ankle, how can that be menopause? But you know what I found out? Mhmm. It's menopause. Wow. It's a lack of something. So I don't give into it. I stretch myself. I find out what's the remedy for it. But the depth of of normal and I'm just using it as a very practical because I'm a practical person. I can talk to a younger person, a younger woman now. And when she says, man, I'm I'm I'm having hot flashes. How old are you? 45. That's normal. Mhmm. Yeah. Okay. I'm going through in my marriage, and we're not on the same page about our future. That's normal. Yep. Fight for it. You'll get there. Yes. Don't quit. Well, I'm going through it with my teenagers, and all of them wanna be on Instagram and social media. And one of them is acting you know, their their best friend is a guy that is now a girl, and they're giving guess what? Sadly, in this day, having to fight your teenager over something like that is normal. Mhmm. But fight. Fight. Don't let normal die and give in to the abnormal. Yeah, Mary. Don't give in to the lifestyle that's saying, well, guess what? I mean, Paul just said it. When he said it in in his letter, it's good to know that the road we're on this case study is the right one. Old fashioned is normal. Yeah. It's not old fashioned. It's not abnormal. That's what we even said in the podcast. But everybody is so quick to give up just being normal. It's the death of normal, where abnormal is like now it's sexy. Okay, here's what they're going to upgrade in their life. They're going to upgrade their car. They're going to upgrade their phone. Forget the car. Their phone. Every year, they got to get a new phone. They got to upgrade their phone, they're gonna upgrade their picture on their social media platform, but they won't upgrade their life because society says, don't do that. If you're feeling weird, you're kind of, you're not in the right mental space. It's okay. Yeah. You've got mental health issues. We can we can placate that and not put too much pressure on you. Right. Babe, people have to realize, no, here's what is put on the inside of us. It was put there by the creator. Yeah. Always strive to be your best. That's right. So even from a religious standpoint, if you don't mind, our spiritual, not religious, spiritual standpoint, There's this message that came on the scene a few years ago that pretty much wrecked the strong, healthy, normal church. And it was all about this message of grace. Yeah. That God grace is this unmerited favor. It's it's it's something you you just can't you can't earn the favor. Favor is is the blessing of God in your life. You can't earn it. It's just given to you Yeah. Because of God's love. And there's so much truth to that, that everything good God wants to give us, he gives us because we're heavenly father. Now we can mess that up because we can mishandle the things that he wants to give us. People on the side of grace, were making it more about, well, lean in on the forgiveness factor instead of leaning in towards let me not do those things. Right. That are causing me some pain, that the failure. Let me not lean into being better, and not, you know, step into that sin. That's not what they've done. They've leaned more to, I'll get forgiveness. We even make that statement. It's better to get forgiveness than permission. Right. We're so conditioned to saying, oh, I can talk my way out of it by saying, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Well, that's a big problem if you carry it out over and over again. So what it's come down to is one guy has called it cheap grace. Cheap grace. It's grace that really isn't costing you anything. But grace has cost somebody something. So I I follow this gentleman. His name is Jim Dennison. The Dennison Forum. Love the guy. And he talks about just a few things that that if our audience could grab hold of when it comes to making sure they're they're not buying into the cheap grace philosophy about their life. Is cheap grace across the board, it'll undermine first real repentance. Yeah. And repentance is not just saying I'm sorry when I've hurt somebody. It's saying I'm sorry, but then working on never doing that thing again. That can cause people pain. If you don't have that kind of mindset, then it undermines what real repentance is about. It it dilutes what is considered the cost of being a disciple, following after Christ, and being a Christ follower is being a Christ doer. Right. Doing the things that Christ did. A follower says, let me do that. It undermines that when all you do is lean in on, oh, forgive me, I didn't do better. And quite frankly, maybe I'll never do better. Right. It undermines that. It it weakens our faith. If if we lean in to always being the weaker instead of the stronger, then why do you even need faith? Faith is is something that, quite frankly, we demonstrate, not just something we talk about or we believe. It's something we didn't demonstrate. It compromises ethical living. Right. Instead of elevating ourselves to make sure I'm treating you in an ethical way. I'm again, leaning into relying on, well, my bad Forgiveness and grace. My bad. Yeah. See? So I could go on about some other things that are really cool about making sure we don't lean into the cheap grace, but instead use grace for what it is, which is allowing us to be our best version of ourselves. Right. So even grace pushes us to be better. Right? That's normal. Yeah. Everything from the creation of man at the beginning, God put it in them to be your very best. Take dominion, go out and conquer. Use your gifts and talents to be better. Everything from that point on has been about the normal is being the best version of yourself, not permitting yourself to be a lesser version. Absolutely. And so I would just say to our audience, don't buy into the abnormal mentality that is out there today where you're constantly given a pass for failing and not being your best. Yes. You say this, quite often that people that really want to live, a godly life, live a great life. There are times you have to take a minority position. And when it comes in the to the culture we're in now, normal has become a minority position because it's so much easier to live in this sliding scale of abnormality. I'm just different. It's just different for me. It's different for my marriage. It's different for my kids. It's different for my doctrine. It's different for my ideology. I'm just different. You know, I'm a Christian, but I'm a different kind of Christian. I'm more of a liberal progressive Christian. Or I'm you know, my wife and I, we've just come to an agreement. You know, we do things differently than everybody else. Well, you know, we raise our kids different. We we kind of we take in to our home and into the environment around our kids. We we let them be exposed to more worldly secular things, but what we want is the fruit of godliness, but we we wanna open up the borders of our life and have too much empathy for a world that, quite frank frankly Mhmm. It's more than sloppy grace. It's toxic grace. Yeah. It's more of a manipulative grace. And I know we're getting too deep into this the weeds of this. But the problem with that is the normalness of life. Just be normal. Do not always talk. Stop looking and searching for more resource. Just do the things you already know to do and do them well. Yeah. And and let's not leave the audience out there wondering, okay, here's the problem without giving them the remedy. Yeah. So you just tap touched a little on the remedy of this. Yep. And the remedy needs to be, alright, 1, look around at those who have succeeded in life. Yes. And if they succeeded, let them be the mentors. Yeah. Follow their example. Yes. Okay? Read a book, listen to their podcast, go to their church. Okay? Be open to that person that has made something of their life. Not everybody that's on a podcast, everybody that's on social media media that's trying to lead people today have produced much. That matter of fact, a lot of people who wanna tell you about how to keep your marriage together, but they've never kept a good marriage together. A lot of people wanna tell you how to raise kids, but they haven't raised kids. Right. So listen to people who have have done what you're wanting to see done in your life. Listen to that. So good. Right? Yeah. It's true. I'd also say this, listen to that little voice on the inside of you. There's a voice that says you're better. You deserve more. Too much has been invested into your life. Instead of listening to the voice of your hurt and your past and your pain, if you've gone through something early on in your life that's kind of crippled you because maybe a parent treated you a certain way, society did Yeah. Whatever. That should not be the voice that you constantly listen to. Don't listen to the voice of your failures and of your pain of your past. Listen to the voice. We believe it is the voice of God on the inside of us that constantly says you can have more. You can be better. I've invested in you. I've made you for greatness. Just that in itself, a couple of little truths Yeah. Could help you. Something else I would say, lit, watch your own self talk. Mhmm. Because you could talk yourself right out of being your best version of yourself. Right. I don't do it as much as I used to, but there was a time when I'd always, I do my best to get in the gym. From the moment I drove up to the gym to the moment I left, I hated every second. But after I got back in the car when it was over, I was grateful-Yeah. - that I didn't listen to the voice that says, I'm tired. Don't go in and push yourself. You know what? Go you got more to do at home. Go home. I didn't listen to those voices. Instead, boom, let's get in. Nobody loves really pushing themselves to the extreme. But talk to yourself about that. Right. Be more of a I can do this. Be more of a I want better. Right. Be more of, you know, mediocrity. You you may have had your place at one point, but there's no room for you in my life today. Listen to your self talk and make sure your self talk is encouraging you to be the best version of yourself. That's awesome. So I think if you'll do that, then you'll start to stir up normal. Right. What is really normal is you being your best version of yourself. And when you start talking normal, you start believing normal Mhmm. All the planets start to align, and you start living at a normal level in your life. And check out your friends because if they're at not at if they're not normal and they're abnormal, that's an indicator that maybe, you're abnormal as well. We need to you need to go back and listen to our podcast when we talk about that. Wow. Go back and search. We talk about that. Well, this was good. Yeah. You and your glasses made a real impact today in this, Well, this isn't normal. No. This is unusual. I like it. Maybe I'll make these normal. That sounds good to me. Running a minute longer than I wanted. Thanks for listening to another episode of the family business with the Alessis. Mary Alessis, Steve Alessi had a great time talking to you. So be normal. Be your best. Embrace it. Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. Go ahead and subscribe to our YouTube channel, like this video, and click on the notifications bell so you can be notified for all of our future videos. And if you love today's topic, we have plenty more. And you can click on this link right here to watch all of our videos so you can learn why family is everybody's business.