What am I solving?

Here's the essay where I will begin to answer that question. 🤓

On LinkedIn, I call myself the Chief Shit Sandwich Officer.

I am in the business of investigating and decoding shit sandwiches.

I call them shit sandwiches because if I were to call them by their real name, the list would be too long and I would get people in my DMs telling me I forgot to add their special kind of shit sandwich to the list.

I don't specialize in any kind of "special reason why you think you are a bit fucked up".

I specialize in giving those fucked up parts a glow up, because 100% of the shit sandwiches happen because you are putting the wrong Assholes in charge of your decision making.

That's why I call them shit sandwiches. You know when you got one, and that's all that matters to get started.

Characteristics of Shit Sandwiches

The shit sandwiches I specialize in have certain characteristics in common:

• It probably started as a rational and reasonable thing to say yes to, but it turns out that the situation is making you miserable. "Success", but at what cost?

• You might even be extra upset because you have been here before. The last time this happened you declared to the world you were never going to let that shit happen to you again. But, wherever you go, there you are. Same shit sandwich, different sandwich wrapping.

• Shit sandwich experiences are disorienting because you didn't wake up one day thinking: I'm going to make sure this next choice depletes the life force out of me.

"How did it get to this?", "What was the point of all that work?", "Is this all there is to life?" are common questions that plague people who feel stuck in perpetual shit sandwich cycles.

Naturally, the feeling of being trapped in this cycle puts a dent on how you think about yourself and how you see yourself.

You might have moments where all you can do is go through the motions. You might have moments where you become obsessed with figuring it out.

Based on what women have shared with me inside the No More Shit Sandwiches private group, most of you are TIRED OF BEING TIRED.

And I believe I got something that will help you with that. But I need to do my part. I need to tell you what I am solving for, so you can decide for yourself.

Shit sandwiches are like gravity

You do not control gravity. You do not pry yourself away from the claws of gravity. You do not overcome gravity.

Defying the existence of gravity is a losing (and stupid) battle.

Shit sandwiches are like gravity. Most self-help will try to sell you a fantasy that you can bend shit sandwiches to your will.

So you try to solve this by doing more, quitting your job, starting all over in a new city, becoming an entrepreneur, or having an Eat Pray Love experience.

Sidenote:

I am editing this document while perusing social media, and I just found out people pay $10K+ for the equivalent of a hazing experience and that's supposed to cure you from all the fucked up patterns you've been dragging since childhood.

So now I don't feel like I am being too much every time I am emphasizing how I am NOT doing you dirty like that.

I've done similar experiences like that. The high wears off. You will be back on your bullshit. Maybe a little more enlightened, but you are right back in there.

As the Chief Shit Sandwich Officer and as a woman who has gotten bangs more than once (I currently have them), approaching shit sandwiches as another project you have to manage seems to work until life throws one more inconvenience at you.

And then, no fucking power pose or affirmation is going to save you from the realization that ONCE AGAIN...you are dealing with the same bullshit.

There are many reasons why "trying harder" doesn't fix the shit sandwich situation.

Most shit sandwiches are external situations over which you do not have control.

If it's your job, you do not own the company. Best you can do is play the game to get the most you can out of it, and change jobs when you can.

If it's a relationship, you cannot force them to do (or feel) anything they don't want to do.

Carolina, what if the shit sandwich is the relationship I have with myself?

Ahh! If it's the relationship you have with yourself, you still have to work with what you've got. Were you responsible for the genetic shuffle and upbringing that resulted in YOU?

NO!

The shit sandwiches that you think are your fault because of some character flaw of yours is a shit sandwich in itself.

That is an external thought that you are mistaking as your own.

Okay, enough of that. I do not want to bum you out. I am trying to get to my point!

Here is the good news: there is one thing that you can control.

The REAL! SECRET! REASON! why you keep changing tables, only to find yourself at another shit sandwich buffet.

I call them...the Assholes.

Don't blame the sandwich buffet

Focus on the Assholes living rent free inside your head instead.

Sidenote: THIS IS NOT MORE OF "IT'S ALL IN YOUR MIND".

As a Chief Shit Sandwich Officer and Mistress of the High Functioning Depressed Society, the "just think positive thoughts" people need to stop talking for a minute because some of us have to work our way into that.

It's not that we are not capable, and we are not doing it on purpose either. We are simultaneously too smart and too stubborn for our own good.

I really wish it was a matter of just choosing to be positive, Janet!

The assholes inside your head are not just little pranksters. Some of them are villains. They are the reason you can't sleep, can't enjoy a meal, or rest without feeling guilty.

Some of them are sneaky.

They pretend to look out for you by telling you what's good, bad, reasonable, acceptable, sensible.

I call them assholes because I am not a therapist and in my personal experience, the search for the perfect label that describes your particular asshole is busy work disguised as healing.

I spent the first 20 years of my adult life believing that understanding perfectionism, impostor syndrome, and depression was somehow going to cure me.

Instead, I fell into a game of whack-an-asshole. When the Perfectionism label didn't cut it, People Pleaser showed up. Oh, and who's over there? Is that...Eldest Daughter? Golden Child? Highly Functioning Depression? Oh for fuck's sake don't tell me I am also Hypersensitive and Hyper Independent and Disembodied and, and, and...

This is unmanageable!

How are you supposed to deal with that and hydrate and get enough protein, sleep, fiber, quality solo time, quality relationship time, call your mom, feed the dog, fold your laundry and stick to a new healthy habit for 21 days?!

(And keep the tiny humans alive if you got those too)

You can't (until you learn my SUPER! SECRET! METHOD!).

I mean, you can try, but that's a shit sandwich called "the hustle". I tried it already, cannot recommend in good faith.

Keep reading for the big reveal!

How to deal with the Asshole pile

There's another reason I put them all in the Asshole pile.

I have a habit I have not bothered to fix: when I come home late, I undress in the living room. By Sunday I got a trail of coats, shoes, clothes, jewelry and lipsticks all over the dining table.

And every time this happens, I declutter the space by taking all the items of the same category at a time. I empty all the purses and put them away. I pick up all the coats and put then in the closet. I grab all the clothes that need to go into the hamper. You get the picture.

I deal with the assholes in the same way. But this process is not intuitive at all. Not at first.

First, you have to KNOW WHAT YOU ARE LOOKING AT, so you know how to sort through the mess. 🔍

And that's something we don't know how to do.

Perhaps you learned to start here:

"Is this thought real?"

"MARIA, WHO FUCKING CARES, THIS THOUGHT IS RUNNING MY LIFE, CALLING IT AN ALTERNATIVE FACT WON'T CHANGE A DAMN THING."

I promise I won't do you like that, because I do not care if the thought is real or not. It is causing you pain and distress, that's it.

If you want to take away its power, you have to become a Shit Sandwich Investigator too.

Learn to question what you are dealing with so you can categorize and dispose accordingly.

This table is an oversimplification, for now, just know that some of these are straight up intruders and there are others that are your demon babies.

They are not bad at all, they are just pissed that you don't understand them, so they sound like Assholes.

How do you tell these Assholes apart from each other?

Ah! Now THAT is a good question 😌

The Science of Motivation enters the chat.

The first step to sort the asshole pile, is to answer this question:

What drives you?

That question becomes the filter, because what drives you shapes absolutely everything:

• your personality

• your definition of success and happiness

• how you should pursue your goals

• your needs

• your values

• why some stuff is just hard

• what comes super easy and naturally to you

• red flags, non-negotiables, and areas where you have a bit more flexibility

Now the process is coming into focus:

Asshole pile -> Pass through "What drives me?" filter -> Evaluate what the Asshole is saying against your core drivers -> Sort (does it belong to you or no?)

Great! Sign me up, Carolina! I want to take the Reiss Motivation Profile and get out of my own way!

Okay, if that wasn't enough to convince you...

Here's a truth that we've been circling this entire time.

There's a high chance that you don't know what drives you.

If you did, you wouldn't be in a shit sandwich situation. You'd be able to say "No, thanks" just by looking at something. There'd be no need to try it just to be sure.

As a Chief Shit Sandwich Officer and expert in the art of self-gaslighting, I know what it's like to be the Lead Actress and Executive Producer of the Miniseries: All My Flops.

This is why I became an RMP® Master. I was tired of going through life like a cursed Goldilocks, trying all the bowls in search of the perfectly seasoned porridge.

I couldn't find them. I was so ashamed. Three degrees later, and I had no idea what to do with my life.

Was I always employed? Yes. Did I try every single thing I could afford regarding finding your purpose and finding the power within? Also yes.

Did any of that work? Marginally.

Why? Because I had no idea that I had so many Assholes whispering in my ear. Even when I thought my intentions were good because I was going after something I wanted, there was always (at least) 1 asshole corrupting the whole effort.

So I don't mean to insult you by telling you that you have no clue.

It's really hard to get this kind of clarity on what drives you.

You would need to be blessed by an environment that was ready to catch you every time you fucked up, so you could learn what's a shit sandwich and what's not and not make it about you. Most of us don't have that, we just learn how to proceed with caution (and that is fertile ground for Assholes to proliferate under the guise of safety and security).

However, someone way smarter than me figured out a way to get those answers in 15 minutes 😉.

Now we can fast forward to the part where we just get to take action based on those drivers, instead of sampling the whole buffet to figure out that we are allergic to the first 50 dishes and the 51st was the perfect meal that satisfied our hunger for life.

(Okay, I'm convinced, take me to the test page!)

You think you know what drives you, but are you sure?

The story of the Reiss Motivation Profile® goes something like this:

Prof. Steven Reiss wasn't too convinced that we are just animals chasing pleasure and running from pain. There had to be more than that.

So he FAFO'ed and came up with the assessment that I am now qualified to interpret. 🤪

I may be a sentimental, intense, hypersensitive Goth girl, but I do not fuck around when I got a problem that I need to solve. I become the most determined, relentless bitch you'll ever know. The RMP® was developed in an academic setting first. It has passed the scientific vibe check and my no non-sense vibe check! I'm a Taurus, if you couldn't tell.

After analyzing hundreds of thousands of data points, the model emerged:

The 16 basic desires that motivate our actions and define our personalities:

1. Acceptance

2. Beauty

3. Eating

4. Power

5. Saving

6. Order

7. Tranquility

8. Family

9. Honor

10. Physical Activity

11. Vengeance

12. Independence

13. Curiosity

14. Social Contact

15. Status

16. Idealism

That's it. You can take the test now and build your happily ever after. But I think you should keep reading so you understand why we are all walking around with so much confusion about who we are and what we really want.

Reason #1: For each desire, you have a preference.

A desire can be weak, average or strong.

In case you think they all matter to you, let me show you the math:

So, no, it is statistically impossible that you score STRONG in all of them. All desires are important, but they do not matter to the same extent.

The only ones that matter (to you) are the weak desires (because if you were forced to live that way you'd wither and die) and the strong ones (you must satisfy the craving or else you'll wither and die).

Reason #2: We waste our energy trying to be everything.

If there is a reason to take the test, this is the one. Remember when I said who has time to function as a adult with bills and relationships and a mind and a body that need 24/7/365 maintenance?

You need to prioritize. Stop wasting your energy chasing average desires. They do not contribute significantly to your joy. Let the Universe provide.

If you want to get shit done, if you want to live every day following your purpose, forget about average desires.

It's not that you don't need them. It's just that you don't have an itch to scratch there. Life will more or less take care of it for you.

Example:

Perhaps you are not an extrovert nor an introvert. You just have an average desire for social contact, so you do not understand the need to socialize to the same extent as a strong Social Contact person, but you enjoy company from time to time.

Okay, I lie, I was describing myself. I have used this knowledge to reevaluate how I spend my time and who I surround myself with. More hangouts won't make me happy. Better hangouts, on the other hand...that has potential. In other words, don't invite me to a thing where the food sucks. My strong Eating is going to be pissed.

You can apply this logic to just about every new habit you think you want to acquire.

Need to exercise but you are a weak Physical Activity person? Leverage another desire so the workout becomes the means to another desire that matters to you.

This distinction is SO important, I will give you another real example from my clients.

I have a lot of clients who are parents and they have a weak or average desire for Family (literally, not a single strong Family person in my database!)

This doesn't mean they should go for a pack of cigarettes and never return. A desire for Family means that you love all the grunt work related to raising children. Most of us don't enter a meditative blissful state while picking up the toys and wiping butts for the 5000th time.

So, if they want to be present for their children, they do not need to prioritize Family. They need to look at what truly fills their cup, and design their Family life accordingly.

Reason #3: You do not get to pick and choose your desires

Here's where we start bringing everything together.

You don't get to choose what drives you. This is how you are built!

This is where the work begins. Knowing your scores is just the beginning. It's just the instruction manual to make your internal Asshole detection mechanism work like it's supposed to.

Up until now, you didn't know you could describe why you do the things you do using 16 words.

You've had to wing it.

In a perfect world, your instinct would correctly guide you to fulfill your desires and you wouldn't question yourself at all. What you want is what you want.

But that's not where we live.

We live in a world where we have opinions on human behaviour. Becoming your own person just seems like a never ending excavation of how many opinions you keep mistaking for your own voice. Ugh.

You have to consolidate:

• Who you have always been at your core

• What you learned about who you should be

• And how far away those two ideas area from each other

The wider the gap between who you are and what you think you should be, the worse it is. There's too much room for Assholes to roam. And that's how you end up with shit sandwiches!

DEMO TIME: I'm going to use my experience as a weak Power person.

This is one of the desires behind most of the shit sandwiches I have found myself in.

Weak Power is not the problem. It was never the problem!

The problem was that I internalized too many negative messages about something that is intrinsic to me, to the point that I pushed it away and saw it as something foreign that I had to get rid of.

I had nothing good to say about this part of me (except that I am kinda easy-going...as long as there's food...).

The gap between the person I really am and what I learned about being successful was a damn abyss. This is why it never felt like it was good enough! How could it ever be?

I kept trying to override a desire that is baked in. Absolute waste of time and source of distress. Back then, there was no talking myself out of this belief that strong Power is where it's at. I only conceded because I tried for nearly 10 years and failed (aka too many shit sandwiches led to chronic dissatisfaction).

Having the score made it easier for me to recoup from this sense of loss.

This is the real benefit of taking the test. I know what it's like to drive yourself into a gutter. Coming out of that with willpower alone is a bitch and a half. Take the ladder that I am throwing at you and take the test!

No one is handing prizes for most creative escape from the gutter! 😉

Now I understand that there is "power" in being a weak Power person.

But first, I had to embrace it before I could learn how to use it.

Now I am working on the next level: planting myself in places I can flourish. I am finally done with being tolerated. I'm done believing that it is my job to adapt to things I don't like. This is one of the many shifts that finally led to this moment, where I am finally writing and finally sharing my profanity-laced thoughts with the world.

To be clear, this is not a problem exclusive to a weak Power person growing up in a society that values high Power people.

A high Power person could be living in a shit sandwich of their own making too.

Putting it all together: The internal Board of Directors

In a perfect world, your desires are the only voices that guide your choices, and each one is politely waiting their turn to speak inside the Boardroom (which is now totally closed off to assholes).

Your desires are your best cheerleaders, looking out for you, showering you with positive thoughts and affirmations.

I believe this is the kind of delulu you should strive to be, but I do not make this the end goal because becoming yourself is a process. It never ends! (Until you die and then who knows, start again?)

You might have desires that seem at odds with each other (at first glance anyway).

I have seen this combination a lot: strong Tranquility with strong Vengeance.

I love it.

Be so chill that the high Tranquility people feel disturbed by your monk-like stillness.

But also, be a competitive and vengeful bitch.

You contain multitudes. YOU MUST USE THEM ALL. Don't save the high Vengeance to fight a parking ticket!

There is always going to be friction. If it's not between your desires, it's between your desires and the outside world. Remember, everyone around you also has their own scores.

People are constantly projecting their belief that their scores are better than everyone else's, and that their desires are the measuring stick for everybody (that is called self-hugging and everyday tyranny in the work of Prof. Reiss).

If you allow yourself to enjoy that friction, you will come up with solutions that do not require to shrink, repress, or abandon yourself.

And now instead of being a little trickle, you become a goddamn force of nature. Like water, you keep flowing, and you have the energy to break through rocks if you need to.

You finally learn what it's like to BE, and to go after what you want just because you exist.

No more wasting your time chasing your self-worth.

You are forever and always evolving 📈.

Life is not static. The nature of your desires is not static.

There is no satiation point.

I will repeat: THERE IS NO SATIATION POINT.

Which means, once you think you solved the gap (by sorting and processing the Assholes that were telling you things about what you could, should, must do)...A NEW GAP APPEARS.

Because now that you experienced some degree of satisfaction and inner peace, you will have the confidence to believe you deserve more.

That's going to temporarily disorient you, because now you are in uncharted territory. Your brain might not like it. It is still not convinced that it could be so simple as "follow your desires". It will try to bring you back to safety by telling you it's safer over there at the shit sandwich buffet.

But now you know better. Those things will never be good for you. You are more interested in going after the things that will nourish you.

You can now tolerate the awkwardness of those growth spurts.

The big, hairy, ambitious goal is still big and hairy, but you have a different relationship to it.

In the past, you were trying to prove to yourself that you were worthy of the goal.

Now, the goal is something else.

The goal (whatever it is) is just the current way you are playing with the question "What is the next level of being you?"

See how that changes everything? That's what operating from a place of self-trust looks like.

The goal is no longer something that is on a pedestal, far and out of reach.

YOU ARE ON THE PEDESTAL, BABY.

You might end up burning your plan (because the plan was bullshit to begin with)

Once you have clarity on what drives you, you might reach the conclusion that you are currently heading in the wrong direction.

Sometimes the approach is wrong but the destination feels right. Sometimes the destination has to be scrapped.

The good news is that you are not LOST and you don't have to start from zero each time you change your mind.

You got your compass (your core desires).

All you need to do is ask your freshly restructured, Asshole-free Board of Directors.

"What do we want?"

And you follow that. You take action. You assess and continue.

And it's only in this moment where taking action will get you somewhere.

The compass is finally working with its original set of instructions. Of course you'll get there, wherever that is.

You just needed that clarity so you'd stop driving yourself into the gutter. 🚀

My dream

This is what I envision: a world where woman are no longer second guessing themselves.

This is the ultimate thing I want you to experience at a visceral level, so you can start moving accordingly.

• You are the compass, your own guru and your own best advocate. You have always known what you want. And now you know how to troubleshoot when you can't seem to wrangle the willpower to go after it.

• You are the brand, the icon, the once-in-a-lifetime cosmic event that we all get to witness. TREAT YOURSELF ACCORDINGLY, QUEEN.

You've always known there's a part of you that is insatiable.

But that hunger for life needs to be channeled through your core drivers so it doesn't turn into stagnation or out-of-control behaviour.

Curiouser and Curioser

If you made it this far, awesome!

I am writing and fighting the brain rot, and I hope my human writing helped you fight your brain rot too.

That's already a win.

If this made you curious, here's where you start: TAKE THE TEST