Are You The Pusher Or The Driver?

Brown Girl Self-Care

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2026

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

I'm back behind the mic and dropping some real talk about what happens when life forces you to wake up from autopilot. This week, I’m sharing the raw reality of working a labor-intensive retail job at 50, dealing with the daily grind of pushing carts, and how a repetitive question from an older gentleman in the store literally stopped me dead in my tracks and forced me to look at how I'm navigating my life.

Spoiler alert: You have permission to take control of your own damn life.

True, decolonized self-care isn't about performing wellness or waiting until your circumstances are perfect to claim your space. It’s about standing squarely in a hard season, looking at your life, and choosing your power anyway. Lean in as we untangle what it means to stop living on autopilot and step into the driver's seat of your own liberation.

What We’re Unpacking In This Episode:

The Retail Reality Check: The logistics of being back in the retail trenches in decade number five, the physical toll of pushing carts, and navigating a season that feels heavy and labor-intensive.
The Pusher vs. The Driver: The exact moment a daily question from a retail customer bypassed my ears and hit my understanding, sparking a deep revelation about survival mode vs. conscious sovereignty.
The Anatomy of Autopilot: Breaking down how trauma, people-pleasing, and public validation trick us into letting life just "happen" to us, instead of mapping out our own master blueprint.
The Power of Stillness: Why reclaiming your life requires getting quiet, turning off the noise and distractions, and allowing what’s beneath the surface to bubble up so you can figure out what you actually want.
Getting Sick of Your Own Sh*t: A real-talk reality check on how we get comfortable in our excuses, make them our identity, and why hitting a wall with your own patterns is often the exact catalyst needed for true healing.
The Reclaiming of Your Power: Why you have a right to hold the map, choose your destination, change your mind, and fully embrace every single gift and talent inside of you before you leave this earth.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	So what's going on? You are listening to the Brown Girl Self Care podcast. My name is Bree,
0:07.1	and I am the host of the show. If you have been listening for a minute and you wondered where
0:13.3	the hell I went, girl, I am back. And if this is your first time listening to the podcast,
0:19.2	you know, I'm so glad that you're here. Thanks for
0:21.6	joining me, joining us as we have these conversations regarding self-care and personal
0:27.8	development and faith and healing and all these things that I believe have been helping me
0:33.8	to bloom. Now at the ripe age of, I'm in decade number five, y'all. Have I? Yeah,
0:40.9	I turned 50 last year. I think we talked about that. Anyway, you know, I want to pose a question to you.
0:48.2	And the question is one that I was asked while I was working. And this was a couple of weeks ago and I'm curious to know what
0:57.8	your thoughts are on this and the question that I have for you real talk is are you the pusher
1:04.5	or are you the driver again are you the pusher or are you the driver? Now, you may be like, what are you talking about,
1:14.2	girl? Okay, let me tell you. So I was at work. Again, this was maybe like a couple of weeks ago.
1:19.6	And there's this, and I work in retail, by the way. That's a whole other story, girl, for another
1:24.0	day. Okay. It's another story for another day. But anyway, I am back to working retail.
1:29.7	I've been working now for a few months, and it's hard. It's hard out here for a pimp, okay?
1:36.5	And so anyway, there's this guy that comes in, an older gentleman, probably, I don't know,
1:42.6	maybe early 70s, I would guess. And he comes in and he just walks around
1:48.8	the store. That's what he does for exercise. He walks around the store. And he does this pretty much
1:54.8	on a daily basis. And so I say that because I have seen him multiple times because when I'm there, he's there.
2:03.3	Every time I'm in the kitchen, he's in the kitchen, okay?
2:07.0	And so he's doing his laps and every morning, I swear, he will say, are you pushing or are you driving today?
2:16.1	And usually I'm just like smoky and Friday Friday like, you know, get on the way.
	...

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