There can be a picture hanging on the same wall for fifty years.
You can walk past it every day. You know the colors. You know the frame. You know where the shadows fall. You may even believe you know everything there is to know about it.
Then one day, you stop.
And you see something you never noticed before.
The picture didn't change.
You did.
Maybe that's one of the most overlooked parts of awareness. We spend so much time looking at what is happening around us that we don't always recognize how much the person doing the looking has changed.
And if our own perspective can change, what does that tell us about everyone else's?
Two people can stand in front of the same picture and see something completely different.
Two people can participate in the same conversation and hear something completely different.
Two people can live in the same home, share the same relationship, work in the same environment, or experience the exact same moment and leave it carrying two different realities.
We often assume that because we know what we meant, we know what happened.
I didn't mean it that way.
I changed.
I apologized.
I explained myself.
I'm ready now.
Those things may all be true.
The person standing beside us may also have a completely different truth about the same experience.
That's where awareness has to become bigger than self.
It is easy to understand life from our own position. We have been standing there our entire lives.
The challenge is recognizing that everyone around us is standing somewhere too.
They have a history we aren't living inside.
They have thoughts we cannot hear.
They have goals that may not involve us.
They have wounds we didn't create.
They have experiences we didn't witness.
They have things that matter deeply to them that might mean almost nothing to us.
And they have their own timing.
Sometimes one person changes and wonders why the relationship around them hasn't immediately changed too.
Yet “I'm ready” doesn't automatically mean “we're ready.”
Someone can recognize your growth and still need time.
Someone can understand your intentions and still experience the impact of what happened.
Someone can love you and still need space.
Someone can care deeply about you and still have a life that requires their attention somewhere else.
Walking together doesn't mean we're always walking at the same pace.
Maybe common sense isn't nearly as common as we think because so much of what feels “obvious” to us is only obvious from where we're standing.
And awareness beyond self doesn't mean abandoning our own position to accommodate everyone else's.
I can understand your perspective without adopting it.
I can recognize what matters to you without pretending it matters to me in exactly the same way.
I can respect your direction without following you there.
I can walk beside someone without handing them my compass.
Maybe that's where real awareness begins.
Not when everybody finally sees the picture the way we see it.
When we become capable of standing in front of the same picture, seeing something completely different, and becoming curious about what the other person sees.
Because perhaps the question was never:
Which one of us is looking at it correctly?
Maybe the better question is:
Where are you standing that allows you to see something I can't?
And perhaps if we're willing to move just enough to look from another position, we'll discover something that was hanging there the entire time.
The picture didn't change.
We finally became able to see more of it.
Join Universe Badger, Golden Eagle, and the Twisted Team Thursday, September 24 at 8 PM Eastern on The People's Podcast for:
What happens when you spend so much of your life taking care of everyone else that somewhere along the way, you lose connection with yourself?
On Tuesday, September 22 at 8 PM EST, The People’s Podcast sits down with Mary Armendarez, author, speaker, and emotional healing guide, for a conversation about what it means to come back to yourself after years of people-pleasing, emotional exhaustion, and survival mode.
Mary’s work centers on helping women regulate their nervous systems, rebuild self-trust, reconnect with their bodies, and rediscover who they are beyond the roles they have learned to carry. Her own story includes reaching a point where she describes herself as exhausted, anxious, disconnected, and continually putting everyone else first. Her work grew from learning to slow down, pay attention to what she needed, and rebuild that relationship with herself.
Her book, The Return to Your Soul: A Journey of Healing, Remembrance, and Coming Home to Your True Self, extends that conversation into healing, remembrance, and reconnecting with the authentic self.
When Survival Becomes an Identity
Survival can teach us how to keep moving.
How to function when we're exhausted.
How to show up for everybody else.
How to silence what we're feeling because something—or someone—needs us more.
And eventually, surviving can become so familiar that we may not recognize how disconnected we've become from ourselves.
That is where this conversation begins.
Mary's work explores emotional healing, nervous-system regulation, self-trust and self-worth, people-pleasing and self-abandonment, feminine embodiment, and returning to your soul.
Her current work emphasizes reconnecting with the heart, calming the nervous system, and remembering who you are beneath everything you've been carrying.
Can You Trust Yourself Again?
There is another layer to healing that doesn't always receive enough attention: self-trust.
When you've spent years looking outside yourself for validation, putting other people's needs ahead of your own, or questioning what you feel, how do you begin trusting your own voice again?
How do you recognize when your nervous system is dysregulated?
How do you distinguish between what you truly want and what you've learned you are supposed to want?
And what does it actually mean to return to yourself?
These are among the questions at the center of Mary's work and the conversation we'll explore together. Her media kit identifies rebuilding self-trust, recognizing dysregulation, quieting self-doubt, moving away from outside validation, and reconnecting with the authentic self as central themes.
This Conversation Is About More Than Healing
It's about remembering.
It's about the person underneath the responsibilities, expectations, survival responses, and roles.
It's about asking:
Who were you before survival became your identity—and who are you choosing to become now?
Join Universe Badger, Golden Eagle, and the Twisted Team as they sit down with Mary Armendarez for an open conversation about emotional healing, nervous system regulation, self-trust, people-pleasing, self-abandonment, and what it can mean to finally come home to yourself.
Moral Compass: Are We Losing Our Sense of Right and Wrong?
There was a time when right and wrong seemed easier to recognize. That doesn’t mean everyone agreed, lived according to the same beliefs, or always made the right decisions. People have always had different values, cultures, faiths, experiences, and perspectives. Yet somewhere along the way, the lines between what we consider right, wrong, acceptable, and unacceptable seem to have become increasingly blurred.
Today, one person may consider something disrespectful while another calls it honesty. What one person sees as accountability, another may see as judgment. Loyalty can be viewed as devotion by one person and control by another. Even honesty can become complicated when people begin deciding that the circumstances surrounding a lie determine whether the lie itself was wrong.
That brings us to a larger question: What is guiding our moral compass today?
Where Does Our Moral Compass Come From?
A moral compass is the internal guidance we use to determine what we believe is right and wrong and how we choose to conduct ourselves. For some, that guidance is rooted in God and faith. For others, it develops through family, culture, community, spirituality, philosophy, personal experiences, or lessons learned throughout life.
The challenge is that having a moral compass does not mean everyone's compass points in the same direction. Two people can experience the same situation and leave it with completely different beliefs about what happened and who was right.
That difference becomes especially interesting when we consider whether our morals are based on principles or circumstances. It is easy to value honesty until telling the truth may cost us something. It is easy to demand accountability when someone else caused the harm. It becomes much more difficult when we are the ones being asked to acknowledge our actions and their impact.
At that point, the question can quietly shift from “Was what I did right?” to “Can I explain why I did it?”
There is a difference between understanding someone's reasoning and deciding that their reasoning makes an action right.
When We Begin Justifying the Things We Condemn
Most people don't view themselves as the person doing wrong. We explain our decisions through our own experiences, intentions, emotions, and circumstances. Sometimes those explanations are important. They can help us understand why something happened. The danger comes when explanation becomes justification for behavior we would condemn if someone else did the same thing to us.
A lie may become “protecting someone's feelings.” Disrespect may become “speaking my truth.” Avoiding accountability can be described as “protecting my peace.” Retaliation can become “matching their energy.”
The words change, yet does changing the language change the action?
This is where self-examination becomes important. If something is wrong when another person does it to us, does it suddenly become right when we have a reason for doing it to someone else? If our standards change depending on which side of the situation we are standing on, we have to ask whether those standards are truly principles.
A current example brings that question directly into politics. President Donald Trump recently proposed a $5,000 “Trump Dividend” for adult U.S. citizens if Republicans retain control of both the House and Senate in the November midterm elections. The proposal, which would require congressional approval, immediately raised questions extending beyond politics and economics into ethics.
Where is the line between offering voters a policy benefit and using a financial incentive to influence how people vote?
And perhaps the larger Moral Compass question is this: Does something being politically or legally permissible automatically make it morally acceptable?
Is “My Truth” the Same as Truth?
We hear people speak about “my truth” frequently, and personal experience absolutely matters. Two people can live through the same event and remember, interpret, or emotionally experience it differently. Recognizing those differences is part of understanding one another.
Still, personal perspective raises another question: Does having our own truth mean there is no longer a shared understanding of right and wrong?
Our feelings can tell us how something affected us. Our experiences can shape the way we interpret it. Neither automatically determines whether every action that follows is morally right.
If morality becomes completely dependent upon the individual, then nearly anything can eventually be justified by the person doing it. That is where the conversation becomes uncomfortable—and perhaps where it becomes most necessary.
The Spiritual Side of the Conversation
There is also a spiritual layer that deserves examination. Many people believe we are witnessing a form of spiritual warfare reflected not only in religion, but in how human beings treat one another, how quickly compassion disappears during disagreement, how easily humiliation becomes entertainment, and how differently people define what they will and will not accept.
We can see examples of people asking for grace while refusing to extend it. We see individuals demand respect while behaving disrespectfully toward others. We see accountability celebrated when it is directed outward and resisted when it turns inward.
Whether someone describes that as spiritual warfare, a cultural shift, a loss of shared values, or something entirely different, the question remains worth asking: What happens to our moral compass when doing what we believe is right becomes inconvenient?
Character is not only revealed when our principles are easy to follow. Sometimes we learn the most about what we truly believe when following those principles requires restraint, accountability, sacrifice, forgiveness, honesty, or the willingness to admit that we were wrong.
There is also a burden that can come with awareness. The more closely we examine human behavior, suffering, injustice, and our own choices, the harder it becomes to simply look away. Greater awareness can create greater responsibility. Yet it can also create another challenge: the more we understand why people behave the way they do, the easier it can become to explain behavior that still causes harm. Understanding the reason behind an action and deciding that the action was right are two very different things.
Does understanding human behavior more deeply strengthen our moral compass—or sometimes make it easier to justify the gray areas?
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
— Fyodor Dostoevsky
Are We Losing Our Moral Compass—or Are Our Compasses Simply Different?
Maybe morality itself has not disappeared. Perhaps we are seeing more clearly just how differently people determine what guides them.
Some people are guided primarily by faith. Others by love, family, community, experience, survival, pain, fear, ego, personal gain, or combinations of many different influences. Some people have spent years examining what they believe, while others may still be carrying definitions of right and wrong that were handed to them without ever questioning where those beliefs came from.
That makes this conversation much bigger than deciding whether society has become “good” or “bad.” It asks each of us to look inward before pointing outward.
What guides your decisions when nobody is watching? Do your actions align with the principles you say you believe in? Can you recognize when you are wrong without immediately searching for a reason to defend yourself? Do your morals remain the same when standing by them costs you something?
And perhaps the hardest question of all:
When was the last time you examined your own moral compass as closely as you examined someone else's?
What's Your Opinion?
This Thursday on The People's Podcast, Universe Badger, Golden Eagle, and the Twisted Team are opening the conversation:
This conversation isn't about telling everyone what they should believe. It's about examining how our beliefs, experiences, faith, choices, and actions influence what we consider right and wrong—and whether the standards we expect from others are the same standards we apply to ourselves.
Bring your perspective. Bring your experiences. Bring your questions. Most importantly, come prepared to think beyond someone else's behavior and examine the compass guiding your own.
We're the ears that listen, where your opinion matters.
What happens when you accomplish everything you were taught to chase—and still find yourself wondering why it doesn’t feel like enough?
On Tuesday, September 15 at 8 PM Eastern, The People’s Podcast sits down with author Sonny Garg for a conversation that goes beyond the pages of his memoir, Desi 2.0: My Family’s American Dream and the Cost of Never Being Enough.
Sonny describes himself as a “recovering Achievement Addict.” His story explores growing up within the expectations of the Desi-American Dream, where achievement became connected to worth, acceptance, and success. That pursuit eventually took him to the University of Chicago and Harvard, a White House Fellowship, and executive leadership at a Fortune 125 company.
Yet Desi 2.0 asks a much deeper question: What happens when reaching the milestones doesn’t give you what you thought they would?
When Achievement Becomes the Expectation
Desi 2.0 explores inherited expectations, immigrant identity, family, ambition, belonging, and what Sonny calls “achievement addiction.” His memoir follows the process of recognizing that accomplishment and self-worth are not the same thing.
And that is where our conversation on The People’s Podcast becomes bigger than a conversation about a book.
How much of the life we build comes from what we actually want, and how much comes from what we were taught we were supposed to become?
When does ambition push us forward—and when does constantly needing the next accomplishment keep us from recognizing that we are already enough?
Beyond the Pages
Sonny’s journey did not end when he reached professional success.
Today, through his writing and speaking, he explores how inherited expectations influence identity and how people can begin creating lives centered not only around achievement, but also connection and belonging.
That’s what we want to explore Tuesday night.
Not simply what Sonny Garg wrote, but who Sonny Garg discovered while writing it.
Join Universe Badger, Golden Eagle, and the Twisted Team as we sit down with Sonny and take the conversation Beyond the Pages.
We believe every voice brings a different perspective, every experience carries a lesson, and every story has the power to reach someone who may need to hear it.
If you have a story, experience, message, or perspective you’d like to share, we invite you to join us on The People’s Podcast.
Because not only does your opinion matter, so does your story.
Join our conversations.
We’re the ears that listen, where your opinion matters. Unseen Twisted Truths LLC Media Publishing Company
At 11 years old, most children aren’t thinking about launching a business. Angell wasn’t necessarily thinking about launching one either.
He was sitting in his mom’s car when he created a popcorn mix with a lime tortilla twist. He liked what he tasted enough to give his creation a name: Lime Creeper Popcorn.
That moment would become the beginning of YanniMakesPopcorn.
What started with one flavor grew as Angell began making popcorn for school and church functions, barber shops, car washes and other community events. An idea created by an 11-year-old was slowly becoming something people could recognize, purchase and enjoy.
The name YanniMakesPopcorn has its own childhood story. “Yanni” was a nickname given to Angell when he was a toddler, and it stuck. Years later, that childhood nickname became part of the identity of a growing business.
Today, the brand offers a variety of flavors, including the Lime Creeper creation that helped start the journey. The official YanniMakesPopcorn store describes its mission with a phrase that fits Angell’s journey perfectly: “Keep it Poppin.”
Building a Business While Building His Future
Angell is now in the 10th grade, where he earns mostly A’s in his classes. One class in particular has a direct connection to what he is already doing outside of school: marketing.
Instead of marketing being something he may use someday, Angell already has a business where he can put what he learns into practice.
YanniMakesPopcorn has grown beyond those first sales at community functions. Angell sells his popcorn online and in person at a local farmers market in McDonough, Georgia, on Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
He also owns a food trailer that is planned to be converted into a space for serving his popcorn.
And his vision goes further.
Future plans include participating in fall festivals, hospital and healthcare pop-ups, daycare in-house field trips and school pop-ups, with an even bigger goal of eventually seeing YanniMakesPopcorn sold in commercial stores.
That’s a lot of vision for someone who hasn't even finished high school.
More Than the Business
Entrepreneurship is part of Angell’s story, not his entire identity.
Outside of YanniMakesPopcorn, he enjoys playing the drums, producing music, riding dirt bikes, skating, swimming and cooking.
He is also a member of the Police Explorers Association, where young people interested in law enforcement can receive training while participating in community service.
Between school, business, community involvement and the things he simply enjoys doing, Angell represents something adults can sometimes overlook about young people: they can carry responsibility, creativity, ambition and fun at the same time.
They are still discovering who they are while already beginning to shape who they may become.
Let The Children Speak
That is one of the reasons stories like Angell’s belong in Let The Children Speak.
Young people should not have to wait until adulthood for their ideas to be considered important.
Angell was 11 when he experimented with popcorn in his mom’s car. Someone could have looked at it as nothing more than a child mixing together a snack.
Instead, that small moment became the beginning of a business.
There is a lesson in that—not only for other young people with ideas, but for the adults around them.
Sometimes a child doesn't need someone to tell them how unrealistic an idea is.
Sometimes they need someone willing to ask:
“What could this become?”
Angell is still writing the answer to that question.
From Lime Creeper Popcorn to a food trailer, online sales, community events and dreams of commercial-store shelves, there is plenty of room for YanniMakesPopcorn to keep growing.
And Angell has plenty of time to decide just how far he wants to take it.
Keep It Poppin’
Want to support Angell and see what YanniMakesPopcorn is serving?
