Stephanie: Hi Deborah, welcome to the show.

Deborah: Thanks for having me on. I'm delighted to be here.

Stephanie: I am so excited to talk to you today, and I say that with almost every person I talk to, but my notes from our conversation say, have her on to nerd out about transition, which is what we're gonna do today because you are actually a midlife specialist, right? I mean, this is your area of expertise. And so when you reached out to me, I was like, holy cow. This is meant to be, you and I are meant to be friends.

Deborah: I love midlife and I'm, I'm so excited that you do, too.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's jump in and, and start with a little bit of your story. So tell me a little bit about, I know you have a, transition at 4.0, so tell me a little bit about who you were when that transition began, and then what that transition looked like. Sure. So I was a researcher and I researched everything no one wants to have or get. And I had a pivotal moment that really was beginning in my thirties, but by the time I was 40, I had the courage to make the pivot. And that pivot really was to say, I am going to move away from what I'm doing, which was having a secure, well-paying job in research and to actually move and pivot. It was like throwing all of that away in a way and completely moving to something new. And I remember at the time, I thought to myself, I don't even care if I don't have a safety net. I'm gonna finally do what I want to do. I felt like, I can do this. And it really took until I was 40 to feel like I can do this and actually feel like I could do it.

So what I did was I moved and I pivoted to look at what we have to look forward to. And I had been building on that beforehand and learning a little bit about it. But I never made the big transition and was still continuing to research all the things that no one wants to have or get by the end of life.

So when I did do make that pivot to what we're looking at, that's positive in life, I started to hang out with new friends. I started to do new things. I was engaged in all sorts of things that I had not ever done before, including things that I was really afraid of. Things like public speaking, things like moving out and doing different kinds of blog work, joining organizations that had you be a little bit more present.

And that was because I made that transition and then finally felt the confidence, like, why was I hiding? Why was I, behind a, a screen with all of this? So it was really around 42 that the pivot really happened, and I have never looked back since. It's really kind of amazing.

I still do all of the things, the writing and everything else, but it's just different. I have a whole different feel about it.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. It's so funny you said a couple of things there about the safety net and not caring about the safety net. So I started my business when I was 36, and I started it a little bit, I've told this story before, but a little bit by accident. I thought I was gonna go find a new job, but instead I took on some freelance work in the meantime, and after about six months, it was like, oh, hey, wait, maybe I can do this.

The interesting thing to me at that point was, so I was single, and I had within a year or two prior, bought a condo. But, it was very affordable and I thought, well, I just need to make like 2,500 bucks a month in order to cover my condo and some bills, and I could go eat at my parents' house if I had to. And I remember thinking to myself, the tightrope is really low to the ground. Like I actually don't have far to fall, and

Deborah: I felt. That's exactly how I felt.

Stephanie: I thought, well, and if the absolute worst happened, and I screwed up so badly that I, I lost my home, I'd go move in with my parents. Like again, I thought of like the very, very, very worst case scenarios and it was like, eh, it's not the worst thing in the world. So,it's interesting that you talk about not caring about the safety net, 'cause I thought I didn't need one. 'cause my bar was so low that I was like, ah, I'm not. And it, and I feel like over time it has inclined up, little by little, so that by the time you're way up in the air, you're really accustomed to being on the bar or on the wire. And it's like, no, this is just where I live.

Deborah: Exactly. You're so right. That's so well put. Because you know, at that point I said to myself, well, I can just go get another job. Even if I don't love that other job, I'll go get another job that is gonna be what I know is safe. And so I always had that as my backup. Will I work? I'll go to Walmart if I have to.

I will work anywhere if I have to. And so I put that in my mind that I didn't need to go and be a director of research someplace. I could do what I wanna do, and even if it was, if something drastic happened and I needed to fill in with a part-time something or other, I'll find it. And that set me free, like I'd never felt free before.

And the forties really allowed me to see that I had expertise. That I actually had value. That if somebody wanted to hire me, they were lucky to get me because I knew what I was doing. So I realized at that moment that I wasn't struggling like I was in my early thirties where I was the newbie and I didn't know, when I started out and I was like, my goodness, I'm the expert here? Oh, who me? I didn't feel like that anymore. I was like, I'm the expert here. And that shift in mindset made it for me.

Stephanie: Yeah, I had a very, very similar experience. So maybe six or eight months before my last full-time job ended badly with me walking to the door with an escort, which we all know what that means. I had sort of thought like, oh, could I ever start my own business? And I thought to myself, I have no idea what I have that I could sell.

I could never figure out that I had skills or talents that people would pay for. And again, this is almost 20 years ago, so early on in that everybody can hang a shingle era of our world. But after I had decided, yes, this is what I'm gonna do, I, I'm getting good feedback for my freelance work and I can turn this into a real thing.

I remember going to a community event. It was some trade show type thing and seeing lots of people that I knew and I remember walking up to somebody and saying, Hey Jeff, guess what? I'm starting my own, communications business. And he said to me, you mean I can get you now? And my jaw dropped because he couldn't afford a full-time me. But he could afford a part-time me and God damn it, he wanted my experience and that. It was like he valued this experience that I was bringing to the tablemore than I did at the time. I hadn't shifted to see, to really understand what that expertise was and what that value was.

And, it is interesting that shift that takes place in your mindset around that time. When you do, you become the expert. You become. I remember one of my uncles saying, years I was teenager or something. And I remember him talking to my dad and they're very, they're wise asses, but I remember him saying, Hey, I'm the talent. And I was like, oh, I get it now.

Deborah: Yeah, exactly.

Stephanie: Know what? He was a wise ass, but he was right.

Deborah: Yes. It's when you finally get to take ownership and I really think that's also the time that I started to look at life as a pie. And everyone always made me feel beforehand, or I shouldn't say anyone made me feel, I made myself feel like I had to have one job. I had one, I think, to identify with.

Early on, and that was my job. Well, why do you have to have a one? Why can't you be doing several things? So branching out and doing several things made me realize I, I am doing more than I've ever done before, but I feel more alive. I wasn't, you know, in the workplace and saying, okay, I'm here from this hour to this hour every day, and this is who I am.

I got to be several slices of a pie, and that could be however I wanted to arrange that. And that was also liberating. I think that in transition, people think you have to move from one big thing to another. It's one pie to another pie.

Stephanie: Right. You have to jump flavors completely.

Deborah: Exactly like you're going from pumpkin to pecan and that's it.

You're a whole different, it's just a different pie. But you can have one of those, I love those cheesecakes that has like 14 different flavors or 12 different flavors. You can do that as much as you want or as little as you want. And that's such a cool thing with transitions is that you get to choose how much and how little you wanna do it.

Stephanie: Yeah. So when did your interest in, curiosity about, intrigue by this midlife portion of our lives come to you? Was it about this time during this transition, or was it a little bit later?

Deborah: It was actually a little bit earlier. So what happened was I was studying and researching and wrote a book on end of life and all of these things that happen, like Alzheimer's and frailty and depression and, I was not the life of a party. So, I happened to have evidence of that. I went to a party like, and I truly was sitting there thinking to myself, oh my gosh, I can't wait to tell everybody what I do.

I'm so thrilled with myself. I can't wait. And I'm at the party and it comes to me and like, ha ha. And I tell everyone, and it falls flat. Like looking back, I think, what was I thinking? And so the person across from me was like, the place is like silent. You could hear like crickets and the guy across from me said, so, what do we have to look forward to? It sounds like you are putting a bandaid on all the horrible things that we have to look forward to.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Deborah: And at that moment I was like, oh my gosh, he's right. And so that was the moment that I started to pivot. But it's not like you can pivot and then say, oh, now I'm going to look at everything we have to look forward to.

I had to learn it, I had to research it, I had to get into it. And that took a few years. And that's when I realized that we have an emotional trajectory that we don't think about. We think of our physical trajectory, and of course that ends in a way that nobody is looking forward to. But when we think of our emotional trajectory, it starts at the same place at birth and it goes up and it never goes down.

I was like, you know what, when we're little, when we, when people have children, they don't say, oh, I want my child to grow up and run fast. They say, I want my child to grow up and be happy, but we'd lose that along the way. So I was like, okay, let me see what that is.

And then in midlife, like at 40, but definitely by 50 you should have this emotional sort of epiphany stage where you say, I'm an expert and I wanna give back. I've been filling my jar this whole time with stuff. Now I wanna open the lid and let it out. And that got me. And I said, I can't believe that this isn't making it out to the masses. You know that nobody's talking about this. So everybody was talking about all the doom and gloom things. And nobody was talking about how we should be happier, and that how there's literal research showing that in the developmental milestones that we go through support it all. So that was really the moment that, it was before I turned 40, so by the time I turned 40, I was ready. I got it. It made sense to me.

Stephanie: So you said something about the emotional arc, which is so interesting because we all, I think if we think about aging, we think about the physical arc, which is much more of a bell curve, right? It's we're, we grow up and we're strong and vibrant, and then it's around 40 that it's like, oh, I need reading glasses.

I'm like, oh, I can't hold my liquor as much. Or, oh, you know, there's all these things. I can't, I don't. I can't stand up for as long or these little tiny things, my knees hurt, my lower back hurts. And so we always think ofaging as this breakdown, as you're cresting the top of that bell curve and starting down the other side.

And so I think a lot of people kind of view that as, a loss of youth. And we definitely see people grasping for it in certain ways. But I love this concept of the emotional curve being a completely different shape.

Deborah: It's just a line that goes up, a diagonal line that goes up. The other one is almost like an inverted V. We have a very steep incline going up early on in life, but it's way before 40. It's not until we hit 40 that we start to see those changes. But you know, when you're 30, you can't run as fast as you could when you were 15.

There are those subtle things, but we all think aging means we're gonna one day notice. We're gonna wake up and we're gonna be like, oh, I'm frail. How'd that happen? it's all very subtle. Nobody really feels the aging process or the decline. Like I don't sit around and say, oh, I wish I could run faster. Bummer. I don't even care that I wear reading glasses. But I always tell my students, you can outrun me, but I'm happier than you.

Stephanie: I was just looking for that note in my notes. I remember you saying that.

Deborah: And it's true.

Stephanie: Go ahead and run fast child. Go ahead.

Deborah: Pass me. Go ahead. I'm gonna just happily stand back here and enjoy life.

Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, that's so interesting. The other thing that you mentioned to me when we first spoke was, I like to focus on this transition around sometime around age 40. It's, and you and I, connected on the fact that the sort of underpinning framework and thesis for what I'm doing is the book passages by Gail Sheehy.

I, I talk about it very regularly and the background to that book is, that she sort of said, between conception and age, like 18, 19, 20, whenever you leave the house, there is all this information on what to expect and different stages and growth spurts and evolutions. And, and, but then at 20, you must be fully formed in a quote unquote adult.

And off you go. And her contention was, that's actually not true. There are, again, still predictable stages of development that we go through. And the one that I've always been interested in is this, 35 to 45 ish. And you said two things to me when we first spoke. Jumping off from that is, one, we're constantly going through transitions. It's not like 35 to 45 and you're done.

Deborah: Then you go through more.

Stephanie: And then two, Gail's book came out in, I think the mid seventies and life isn't quite as linear anymore. We're not all going through the same cultural things on the same timeline anymore. Right. Leave your house and you go to college and you get married and you have kids, and you, right.

And I'm a perfect example of that. I left college and screwed around for a bunch of years and, finally met my husband at 40 and, we didn't have kids, and started a business at 36. It's not quite as linear anymore. So that's an interesting thing to understand too, is that even though I'm interested in this, the Big four oh, and how our life changes around that. It changes a lot. Constantly.

Deborah: Yeah. Oh, all the time. You know, it's starting from birth. I mean, you can see the things that we go through and if you can go back to when you were a kid, transitions were happening all the time. One day you're talking and the next day you're not, or one day you're not, and the next day you are.We're transitioning all the time, and what happens is those physical transitions end up being more background and the emotional transitions become more foreground as we get older. So, puberty, huge physical transformations are happening. That's a transition that we can all relate to. Would anybody wanna go back to that? Probably not. That is a time that, when we say, Ooh, transitions in midlife and later, I'm nervous about that. Well, look back to when you were 12. That was a pretty rocky time. So what happens is by the time we hit midlife, the other thing that happens is we are moving into a much more advanced world in terms of technology and things like that, and our expectations are different. So you said, oh, I, I married at 40 and I didn't have children. That's all completely normal.

Stephanie: Right,

So if we think about the way that we've changed and women may never marry, they may never have children. That is a new accepted thing, and that wasn't back when she wrote the book. So, now that we have tech as well, that's another way that we are using that for transitions much differently.

We can remain connected. We can have jobs that are global. We can say, I'm gonna go work from Italy and my job is in New Jersey in many cases. So our worlds are changing, which is allows our transitions to be a lot more fluid than they were before. And we have a lot more freedom from others who are accepting of our transitions, the way we choose to make them.

Stephanie: That's interesting, freedom, because one of the things that I think happens during this period, this phase of our life. And again, I'm, leaning on Gail Sheehy here, but has proven true through the 120 ish interviews I've done so far. So, people go from relying on and taking advice from other people, right? Our parents, our bosses, our teachers, our mentors, whoever. They are older and wiser than us, they know better than us, and so they must have the answer. And so we follow the path that they set out, whether it's explicitly or implicitly, and, and that's what we wake up to in our thirties or forties, and realize, it doesn't fit, it doesn't feel good. I don't know how I got here. This isn't my life. I don't feel fulfilled. and that's another word we'll get to in a couple of minutes. But then under understanding that you have your own experience, and you are a good enough authority to decide what is good for your life. And to me that has proven very strongly to be a consistent theme among the folks that I've talked to.

Deborah: And that's, it's wonderful to hear that because aging was the wild West. It still kind of is. I mean, we then started to talk about aging, but it was the way that I was talking about it, you know, like, look at all the doom and gloom. Then midlife was not talked about. So that's when, I started to talk about midlife.

People were like, what about it? they called it the sandwich generation and nobody could, think of anything else to do with midlife. When you say fulfilled, that's an emotional category here. We never attached that to it. It was, how are you doing financially? Are you set up for retirement? How much money do you have?

That was all that we had to look at. So we are shaping how this looks. Because now we have this new way to move forward. If you look at just a few decades back, everyone had to worry about, do I have social security? Is that gonna cover me? What are my payments looking like?

Then it was, do I have a 401k? Do I have $5 million in the bank for retirement? And then people who didn't were like, oh my gosh, what am I gonna do? That has changed. That is not the narrative anymore. The narrative now is, how do you wanna spend your time? And that may be work. That may be part-time work. That may be changing where you live. That may be doing something different. There so many options now, and that's where the freedom is. We don't have to say, oh my gosh, I have to work until X Age, worry about social security, and do I have enough money in the bank? Should you worry about those things? You should think about them. But you should also think I will be viable and able to live a lifestyle that I want. And it may include work, but it'll be the work I choose to do until as long as I want to. And that's how we should be thinking. And we are. We're all doing that.

Stephanie: And I think going back to fulfillment, that's another thing that happens at midlife, and you talked about it yourself. I, I backed into it. Didn't realize it, but backed into it is, a lot of times you hear about career changes at midlife.

And I, remember clearly a conversation with a woman who climbed the corporate ladder and did all the things and checked all the boxes and, was in the corporate boardroom, the actual pinnacle of what she set out to do and a meeting let out. And she was the last one in the room and she started crying. 'cause she was like, what is going on? What am I doing here? Is this what I worked so hard for?

Deborah: Yeah.

Stephanie: We finally realize that fulfillment actually is important, and so we can then shift, whether it's changing the flavor of the pie we're working on, or whether it's, to your point, adapting the pie to be a little bit more, more friendly to what we want.

But really that fulfillment issue is something that we start to believe we deserve or we've earned.

Deborah: Yes. And that we can talk about. Decades ago it was, and you know you're talking about the seventies, right? Fulfillment was not a part of our conversation. That was like, for somebody that was just so self-involved. What you're looking for fulfillment? Are you kidding me? Just stay in your job and do what you're supposed to do.

Who makes you think that you deserve fulfillment? We're just cranking it out. And that's where we said, no, no, no, along the way. Like Gen Xers really started the movement of saying, no, I am not gonna stay in a job for the rest of my life and feel miserable just knowing that I'm putting enough money in the bank so that I can live a very modest lifestyle, that I'm still living now, but still unfulfilled.

That is where I think that there was a whole movement of people who said, that's it. I am going to putbalance into my life. I'm gonna make sure that I get to do the things that I enjoy. And if that means moving to a different kind of job that was socially acceptable and appropriate when I was younger, or that I felt like I would be a failure if I didn't stay in that people started to say, no, no, no. I'm gonna do whatever I want.

Stephanie: And that's why they called us slackers.

Deborah: Exactly.

Stephanie: We weren't,fitting in their model.

Deborah: It's so funny because every generation does that. The greatest generation thought the boomers were like slackers and losers. The Boomers think that Gen X is a bunch of slackers and losers and the Millennials get it. It's, we pass that on down. But really each generation is becoming more emotionally evolved in saying, this is what I want. And we keep thinking that the younger generation is just entitled. And that's, really, they're just entitled to feel their emotions. I feel that's really the case. In each generation, we're learning it a bit, a little bit more. And so, yeah, but it doesn't feel good when you're hearing it from another generation that you're a slacker.

Stephanie: Right. You're hearing it from the quote unquote adults.

Deborah: Exactly. And that's harsh. That's hard.

Stephanie: it is. It is. It was.

Deborah: I know. I felt it. It stings, it really does.

And I think I was, I did the opposite of it, which was, you know, work, work, work, work hard, hard, hard. Don't get called that. Don't get called that. I think I did everything I could to not get painted with that brush, which I don't think served me either. Yes. That's what I did too. That's why when I went to that dinner, I was all excited. Oh, I can't wait for these people to hear what I'm gonna say. And then I was like, oh no. And that was a pivotal moment for me. It might not have been if I didn't care what other people were thinking, but I did.

Stephanie: Right, right.

Deborah: I valued their opinions about my work and what I was doing. And then I thought, oh my gosh, what? I have to start the ground level again and learn all the way back up to see what this whole aging thing is. It's not just one side of the coin.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah. So here's another piece. So you and I are both Gen X and the folks who are turning 40 now are squarely in the Millennial generation and will be for the next 10 or however many years the millennials will be turning 40. And so they're doing it a little bit differently than we did, which is great.

I've said this over and over again because it's the millennials, my podcast actually has a place because if I had done it when you and I were turning 40, us Gen X, we do things on our own and we don't talk to anybody and we don't listen.

Right. We don't go looking for support. Right. Yeah. Right. We are, we're cats. But one of the things I think that is challenging is that back in the seventies, when things were a little bit more rigid, societally and a little bit more linear, there was the concept of the midlife crisis and, for some people it was a crisis, but that was probably more the extreme ends of the spectrum. Right?

But at least there was the cultural ideas of, the divorce and the marrying the young secretary and buying the sports car and, all of these things. That the facelift. And all of these grasping for youth things. So, if you weren't on the edge of the spectrum, if you were somewhere closer to the middle, but you were starting to have these weird feelings and thoughts and 'cause our parents and grandparents had these feelings too, they just didn't have as much of an outlet for them as we do.

Deborah: Yeah.

Stephanie: You at least had some sense that, oh, this must be my version of the midlife crisis, right? You at least had something to attach to that explained what was going on with you.

And I think now, the millennials are, I know this anecdotally. The millennials do not like the term midlife, do not resonate with the term midlife and certainly do not resonate with the concept of a midlife crisis.

And so my whole goal is to make it common cultural knowledge that there is this transition that we go through, but how do we do that, and not attach it to the concept of a crisis. How do we get their attention and tell them this transition is coming, and if you're like Stephanie, and you ignore it and stick your head in the ground, it's gonna be messy, you know, and you're gonna make some messes here. There are better ways to do it. Talk a little bit about midlife crisis.

Deborah: Sure. Midlife crisis isn't a crisis, it's a transition. And we keep using that word crisis, which who would want that? Who would even want midlife, if you think here comes a crisis? But midlife is a transition period. You are supposed to, just like puberty, just like other times. Do we get through it?

Yeah. But transition is what happens in midlife. That is the word that we should be using because we do it throughout our life. We're gonna do it again in another decade. We're gonna do it again later in old age. And so we need to acknowledge that there's a point in time that we're gonna be thinking differently.

So if you looked back at those, midlife crisis things, those were people seeking fulfillment. That's what we're really seeking in midlife. And that's the transition that we're moving toward is fulfillment. So when I am emptying myjar of knowledge, wisdom, culture, values, blah, blah, blah, to somebody else.

I'm saying, I have something important to give to you, and then I'm looking for that person to take it, who's gonna say, this is just what I've been looking for.

Well, it looks like a crisis if you don't have anybody to give something to. So this whole idea of, you know what, I'm gonna go get a red sports car. Well, that's one way that you can feel fulfilled. It just doesn't last very long. That's why when we go buy a new purse or new shoes or new something, we feel amazing when we get it and it wears off in a couple of weeks, or a month or whatever, and then we need to go get more. So that's the only outlet that people had for that.

There was no one saying, oh, you're transitioning to more fulfillment. Let's get you involved in mentorship, volunteering, philanthropy. Let's get you involved in some way so that you can pass on your meaning to somebody else. They didn't have that. That did not exist at all. I actually feel like that must have been really rough for them.

Now though, we have expectations that are out there for people to engage in, in midlife that will allow for that. Many different options. So it's expected that in midlife you should be giving some of your expertise to somebody. You get to choose to whom, to how, whatever, all of that. But that's the difference.

And I think that we're gonna start moving to talking about those things which are positive, and ditch the word crisis and see doors opening rather than, a hurdle in front of us.

Stephanie: I'm wondering, so I've heard the term and I know there's a book out there, but I know it's also been used elsewhere. You've mentioned the concept of adolescence and there is a concept out there of middlescence, right. And midlife. But as you're talking, I'm wondering if we should just start calling it adult puberty.

Deborah: It's adult emotional puberty.

Stephanie: There we go. Um,

You have this blog on midlife and turning 40, and so I knew we were gonna have some good stuff to talk about, but one of your most recent blog posts, talk about what if.

Tell that story. The story

Deborah: Yeah. This one just came out in Psychology Today. I was talking with Neil Cummins. He's a friend of mine and he is an astrophysicist. He teaches at University of Maine and he has 21 books out. I mean, he's so amazing. I'm always like, wow. And he's so humble. It's unbelievable. But I said to him, I wanna talk about your What If books, because he started that whole genre of what If books.It started with his, I think he was five, his son James, who said to him, he used to ask him what if questions all the time. And one time he said, what if there was no moon? And as an astrophysicist, he said I needed to start taking away all of the things that would, that were there that would, that the world would look different if there wasn't a moon. And he had to peel each one of those away and see what that was.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Deborah: So I said, Ooh, that sounds like we could apply that to our lives. So w we applied that the question, what if to midlife? And it was fascinating to see how you can do that. You can put that whole what you know, what if in midlife.

And so we sort of peeled that onion back and realized that there's so much there that we can look at that gets exposed when we apply the whole what if to midlife. And I didn't realize until talking to him how applicable. You can look at things in outer space, and things in our emotional lifespan that are all very similar, and if we just peel back some layers, we can get to the meat of what really is there and how our life would look like if we sort of took the what if approach.

Stephanie: Yeah. I love you wrote, what if we stopped fearing midlife and instead treated it like Cummins treats the cosmos, as a system worth questioning layer by layer with imagination and curiosity rather than angst. And that just blew my socks off. I love it. I'm a what if girl, anyway, so, it's interesting to think about, what if I quit my job? What if I changed positions in the company? What if I stopped hanging out with that friend who makes me feel weird and toxic? And what if I stopped eating dairy? I mean, it, it's so easy because the stakes are low. It's

Deborah: Exactly. And don't we love that when there's a nice low, like you said before, that the tightrope is like inches off the ground. That puts it into those digestible nuggets that we can all, you know what if about. Most people, if you think about space, you're curious and you're excited, right? Woo. What if I got to learn something?

Why not put that to ourselves? And like you said, what if I'm not hanging out with those toxic people all the time, that every time I go out I'm like, wow, how, when is this gonna end? You don't have to hang out with them.What if you got to go out with people you like instead?

What if you got to spend your time, eight hours of the day doing what you like? What if you got to, live where you want? What if you got a dog? What if you, what if that's fuel?

Stephanie: Yes.

Deborah: Which is how we made all those discoveries in space was by asking what if. He really inspired me to think a little bit differently with the what if.

Stephanie: Yeah, and you've inspired me, and he's not far from me in New England, so I may reach out to him as well. But it's so neat because there are just little thought experiments and if you were then to just, I know this doesn't work for the cosmos, but it works in our example, pay attention to how your body feels when you explore the answer.

Deborah: Yes, you're right about that.

Stephanie: 'Cause that's gonna give you information. What if I were to, stop hanging out with those toxic friends who are always gossiping? Your body's gonna give you a little feedback, and maybe it's a little bubble of Ooh, ooh.

Deborah: And people don't talk about how good you feel when you subtract something bad in your life. And we often go through rote. well, this is what I do. This is a person I hang out with. This is, and you have all of this negative stuff around you that's not matching with how you wanna feel. So what if you just ditch it?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Deborah: And you, you know, I love the saying because I think that if you look back to when you were a kid, how many people have a a friend that they had from elementary school, how many from middle school? We go through friends and it's not like a bad thing that you, as you're going through a life stage, when you're in your twenties, you're built to have a whole lot of friends around you, 'cause you're figuring out who you are. Well, as we go through our stages, we evolve. And sometimes that means saying, you know what? I know that everybody told me I should be nice to everybody. And that I say yes to everything. And I say yes to everyone. Well, when you hit 40, that's when you're like, no, no, no.

So if you do the what if, what if I said no every now and then?

Stephanie: Right. What if I only said yes to the things that make me happy?

Deborah: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. And you know what? People think that certain things are tied to negativity. Like, well, I have to work. Okay, so say yes to the work you like.

Stephanie: Figure out how that looks because if you start to peel that, what if I looked at, how could I make myself feel good about my job? You are gonna peel those layers off and you're gonna find out what that core is that you like about things, and then you just pursue that.

What if I was able to reduce my cost of living by getting rid of some of these luxuries so that I wasn't,chained to this high paying job?

Deborah: Yes, absolutely. So if we, what if'd our way to amazing friends, fewer but more meaningful. What if'd our way to the work we like. What if'd our way to living where we wanna live. We are gonna be much happier. you know, honestly, you could go, what if the whole day away, and it's kind of an exciting, journey to go down. Like just to sit by yourself for a few minutes, and what if, even if you wrote out every day a what if, and dug down. You're on a journey with yourself, how fun is that?

Stephanie: Well, and it goes back to the beginning of our conversation, which is this is about the emotional part. This is about the meaning and the fulfillment and the emotional part of what's gonna make you happy, healthy, secure, safe, fulfilled, joyful. It's so cool. And it's really funny too to take, for me, this is taking back a phrase because when I was in my thirties, I dated a guy for a, a long time, and he was a bit of a wild fire. He was an a functioning alcoholic. There was all kinds of things. He worked in the entertainment industry and he used to come to me and say, well, what if we moved to Orlando for this exhibit? Or what if I took a job on this tour, and I was gone for nine months. What if we moved to Chicago to work at this museum? And it used to give me these whoa, like I, I would react emotionally and try to figure out like how am I gonna change my life? And oh my God, what if I have to move away? But I finally got to the point where I called them his what if bombs? And I said, do not drop what if

Deborah: But they were his.

Stephanie: bombs. Exactly right. And I was reacting to them for sure, but I finally was able to say,don't talk to me until there's something real, until you've got a job offer. Until, we actually need to make any plans. But like, I'm not gonna go on this emotional, you know, whirlwind.

Deborah: You're making a, a really good point, which is your what if is yours, right? You do not have to include everyone in your surroundings in your what if. It's really what if I, not what if we.

Stephanie: Right.

Deborah: So you could say, I really looked at my life and here's what I want, right? And the what if shouldn't be that I'm gonna turn to my left and have a new goal immediately. Turn to my right and have another goal immediately. It's really you're looking for fulfillment. And sometimes a rapid change can feel like a momentary fulfillment. Just like when you buy a new handbag and you're like, look at me, I feel great right now, you know, or whatever. But that wears off. So you're looking for a longer term fulfillment, is really what it is when you're looking at your what ifs. But you know, when you're checking that out, you might find out like you did, what if his what ifs aren't matching my what ifs?

Stephanie: Right, right. And I don't need to be at the mercy of his what ifs.

Deborah: No, nobody should be at the mercy of anyone's what ifs. And most people aren't. Most people whenyou have friendships, they're real friendships, right? Or if you are past the discovery stage with somebody, in a relationship, you have something at your core that's got you together. So, you could bounce off and say, I'm having this thought about my work. What if.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Deborah: Where you're not saying ride this train with me. Instead, what's your feedback about my thought about my own what if?

Stephanie: Right, right. I have explored this what if question and here are some things I've thought of. What do you think about them, or knowing me, what's your feedback on them? Yeah. Yeah. So I love this reclamation for me of what if and and really just using it to look under the covers everywhere.

It's like, look under the couch. Look under the covers on the bed. Look behind the pillows. Look, look and see what's there. Because maybe there's some stuff that you haven't considered yet. Maybe there's even better.

Deborah: Exactly. What if my life could be better in this area? Yeah, absolutely. And the emotional evolvement of us, this is a transition also. We always transition and evolve with our emotions.If you look back at your life, if you're frustrated, do you react the same way you did when you were two? Most people don't. They don't throw themselves on the floor and grab the leg of the person next to them and kick their feet. We evolve and transition to match where we are, and that's what we should be striving for. You know, if you're using the what if, or if you're doing whatever, but the inner looking at what you want, you should be able to say, I deserve this. I need this. I want this. And I'm gonna go get it.

Stephanie: Yeah. Oh, Deborah, so much good stuff. So much fun. I think you and I could probably keep going for hours and hours, but, for the sake of our, the folks listening to us today, let's call it here and decide that maybe we'll do it again sometime.

Deborah: I'd love that.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Deborah: What if we did it again?

Stephanie: What if you were the first person I had on twice? I'm gonna have to think about that. I love that idea. Deborah,

Deborah: Or what if we collaborate on an article together sometime?

Stephanie: Oh,

Deborah: That would be fun, wouldn't it?

Stephanie: Oh, let's what if together.

Deborah: Exactly.

Stephanie: Deborah, thank you so much for joining me today. I've just so enjoyed our conversation. I really appreciate you being here.

Deborah: Thanks for having me. This was a great time.