Stephanie: Hello, and welcome to the 40 drinks podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie McLaughlin. You know, sometime in the years around our 40th birthday, many of us start to feel what I call the ick, like some part of our life that used to fit real nice. All of a sudden doesn't, and you don't know what to do about it. I know that was true for me and I fought against it, which only made it a messier process.

But having 40 drinks with 40 people over the course of a year helped me escape the influence of that ick. On this podcast, I welcome you to tap into my stories and experience as well as those of my guests to help you emerge from your own ick and maybe even avoid some of the mistakes we made along the way.

My mission is to make it common cultural knowledge that there is a transition most of us face around age 40 and then showcase so many versions of that transition that every single person approaching. Or recently turned 40 with dread in their heart, knows that they are not alone

Hi, Yvonne. Welcome to the show.

Yvonne: Hey, Stephanie.

Stephanie: I'm so thrilled to have you here. I think you and I could probably talk for days and days about all kinds of things. So I feel like we have to like, really try to focus today on exactly what we came here to do.

So let's,

Yvonne: focus.

Stephanie: to do that. But you did just agree to be my friend so we can keep talking after this.

Yvonne: Absolutely.

Stephanie: Excellent.

Yvonne: Okay,

Stephanie: talk a little bit about your 40 story. So why don't you set up where our story begins? What were the forces that shaped you as a child, as a young person? How do we get to your early thirties?

Yvonne: We're gonna go back, but I'll try to make this the Reader's Digest version for you. All right. We're gonna go back to when Yvonne was about seven years old growing up in El Paso, Texas on the border of Mexico and New Mexico and wanted to be an actress from very, very early on.

And then we came to visit my dad's family out east for the first time. My dad grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York. So we came to visit my cousins. We met that whole side of the family andmy uncle got us tickets to go see Beatl emania on Broadway in the seventies. We drove in and my uncle's van with me and the cousins and my mom and dad and my aunt and uncle. It was the seventies and it was gritty New York, and it was triple X signs everywhere in Times Square. And I'm, I remember just looking out the window, my eyes must've been big as saucers. And I was like, I want to live here someday. And I was so completely in love with the energy of the city. As soon as that happened, I was like, I know exactly what I'm going to do when I get older. I am coming to New York and I'm going to pursue an acting career. I was single minded my entire life.

Stephanie: Wow.

Yvonne: I studied theater in school. I stayed home for college,found a really great small theater program, was in a ton of shows because I was a big fish in a small pond kind of thing and got a lot of experience.

Ended up getting married when I was 22, right after I graduated college, to somebody who had been my friend in high school, I'd always had a crush on him and all that. And we ended up moving to Denver. Go figure.

Stephanie: Okay.

Yvonne: He wanted to be a police officer. I wasn't real thrilled about the idea of him being a police officer in New York City.

Stephanie: Sure.

Yvonne: So we thought, well, let's try Denver. Seems like a nice town. It was literally like throw a dart at the map and go, let's try Denver. And it was great. And I moved to Denver and I did a ton of theater there. Really great theater community. Loved it. So that was my early twenties. And then I started to realize that we probably should never have gotten married. We should have stayed friends and he didn't like my theater friendsand I,I look back on it now and I can totally understand because I was going show to show to show, was probably never home. And I'm sure he felt a little abandoned. You know. But at the time I'm like, why is he so weird around my theater friends? What's going on here? And my dream to go to New York was still very active. I still couldn't let that go. So short story ended up getting divorced, and saved all my money for about a year, sold everything I owned and made the move to New York. And for the next, many years, I was living the dream in New York. I was auditioning, doing survival jobs, temping, like whatever it took to, to feed my theater habit,

Stephanie: yeah.

Yvonne: was what I was doing. I ended up meeting my current husband on a national tour just before I turned 30. And we dated for a long time. And we were both actors in the city. Again, living the dream. Not, it wasn't, what's the word I'm looking for?

Glamorous.

Stephanie: Okay.

Yvonne: It was not glamorous, but it was, I was doing exactly what I wanted to do. And so was he and life was amazing. And then as I approached 30, you know, my late getting into my thirties, I was like, I really do want to have kids still.

Stephanie: Okay.

Yvonne: And I was getting tired of the gypsy lifestyle of being an actress. And, being afraid to go on vacations because maybe an opportunity would come up. And I just felt my, I didn't want to do commercial work. I didn't want to shill for somebody and that's where the money would come from because theater acting, let me tell you, does not pay a living wage. So I really started to get tired of the, constant, hustle. And I started thinking about, well, what else might I do? And then I started thinking, Oh, maybe I'll do like radio story production. Allah, this American life was a show on NPR at that time. And I was completely obsessed by it. And I thought, I'd love to tell people stories. That would be so cool. But how would I do that? I don't, I'd have to go back to school. I'm too old to go back to school.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: Okay. Then we get married, have a baby. And then I'm like, whew, everything kind of went.And we ended up moving to Washington, D. C. So my husband could get his graduate degree in classical acting.

Stephanie: Okay.

Yvonne: And we took our 8 month old baby down there with us. And, I was not auditioning. I wasn't doing anything. It was a very intense program that he was in. And I was eager to get back to it. Until I did. And then I started auditioning again when he was done, and I'd get a call back, and he'd get a call back, and he'd get a show, and I'd be like, I don't have the energy for this anymore. I just want to be with my kid now. This is what I want. So then I stopped. I was just like, I'm done with theater. I'm done.

And then I'm like, well who am I?

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: Who the heck am I if I'm not doing that? Yeah, I'm mom, but is that all?

Stephanie: Right. Because you had spent your entire life, since you were seven, pursuing this.

Yvonne: Yeah.

Stephanie: So I can imagine extracting yourself from it would have been pretty, pretty scary.

Yvonne: Big identity crisis. Yeah. And then we ended up moving to Connecticut where my husband grew up. So suddenly we're an hour from the city. We suddenly had to buy a car and we ended up with a minivan. So suddenly I'm living in the suburbs as a mom with a minivan, and

Stephanie: Oh my God.

Yvonne: Really? Who the heck am I? What happened to me?

What? Where? You know?

Stephanie: Yes.

Yvonne: And you know, all of my friends were my husband's friends, my husband's family. I felt like I'd been kind of swallowed up into some other life that was like, what am I doing? And I love his friends. And I love his family.

Stephanie: sure.

Yvonne: They're awesome. But I didn't feel like I had anything of my own,

Stephanie: Yeah,

Yvonne: you know?

Stephanie: I do. Yeah.

Yvonne: So it was about five years of me going, cause I had my first child at 35. I was like, wow. What am I going to be when I grow up?

Stephanie: Yeah.

Oh

Yvonne: And then I was really like, Oh, holy criminy. What am I going to do? And, my husband was like, don't worry about it. You're going to figure it out. Sleep on it. And I went to bed that night and I woke up in the morning and I turned around and looked at him. And I said, I want to be a photographer. Bless his heart. He was like, okay. And we use like the last little bit on our credit card so I could buy my first real camera. I enrolled in a photography program and I started studying and I have a 6 month job search from hell. That was really, challenging in that economy.

Now, remember I had grown up all this time in New York, survival jobs.

Stephanie: Right,

Yvonne: Terrible resume.

Stephanie: Right,

Yvonne: All over the map. So who's going to, who's going to hire me for what, at what rate? You know, and I'm 40.

Stephanie: Right

Yvonne: I ended up in a customer service job that I flippin hated.

Stephanie: But you probably had to stay with for a while.

Yvonne: Yes, for about four and a half years, I stayed with that job. And in the meantime, I was building my photography business and I was loving it. Oh my gosh, like just, but all on the side, a lot of weekends, because that's when people want photos done for family photos and things like that. And the whole point of me doing it was because I wanted to be able to do a job where I could hang out with my kids when I needed to, where I could be flexible.

And it was a lot. It was just a lot. I finally went full time with the photography as I got into my later 40s. And you'd think, Hurrah! Yes! All is well! Except that, there was something going on with me through my 40s. There was still like this, now know that it was perimenopause. A lot of it. I've only really recently figured that out. A lot of stuff that was going on. I have a lot of physical things, minor health challenges, bursitis in my shoulder, bunions. I had a melanoma on the bottom of my foot.

Stephanie: Oh that's a weird place to get

Yvonne: Really weird place to get that. And, just like a lot of little things, you know, gallbladder surgery, blah, blah, blah, blah, list goes on.

I was just not feeling good. And, I was hitting the snooze button every morning because I hate it. I just didn't want to get up in the morning. There was a little, depression y thing kind of going on, like a dark cloud over me. And I was looking at other people and thinking, why does everybody else have this life thing figured out and I don't?

Stephanie: That is seriously one of the most common things that we think. Cause it always looks like everybody else has it figured out. Whether they're in a similar lane to yours or a completely different lane, you look at other people and you're like, how do they have it together? And I'm such a mess.

Yvonne: And spoiler alert, nobody's got it figured out.

Stephanie: Nobody's got it figured out. We're all, yeah, we're all struggling. There's a woman I follow on, Instagram who was watching a reel just this week and she was talking about, you know, is it your adult consciousness or is it three child consciousnesses stacked in a trench coat? It's Yeah. It's pretty much always three child, three children stuck, stacked in a trench coat.

Yvonne: That's a great image.

Stephanie: Isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.

Yvonne: Oh my gosh. Yeah.

Stephanie: So, I want to go back. I have one question for you. Did you ever think to go to, film? I know you said you didn't want to do commercial, but you were theater for so many years. Did you ever want to go to like TV or movies or anything like that?

Yvonne: Yeah, absolutely. But I was also very uncomfortable in front of a camera.

Stephanie: Oh, God. That's so interesting to me because you're telling your story and I'm thinking, I literally thought to myself, no wonder she's so good on Instagram, she's an actress. Because all your reels that you put up, you're so fabulous. You're so comfortable in front of the camera. So I'm sitting here thinking, why didn't you go to TV or movies?

Yvonne: That is hard won. Thank you. I really appreciate that. I forced myself to start getting on camera so that I could try to build an audience for the podcast. It was super duper uncomfortable.

Stephanie: And, you know, you also think that, as an actor, you'd be comfortable doing public speaking, which was also not the case for me.

Yvonne: If there was ever a time when I had to get up in front of people to speak about something that was important to me or from the heart without a script, I would dissolve into tears, just be overwhelmed with my feelings about it. I'm very, I've got a lot of feelings. I don't have feelings and they would all bubble up and I'm not good at holding back.

I'm a heart on my sleeve kind of person. And, so public speaking terrified me. And it was totally different than acting. You know, if you're in a theater production, you've got a script. You've got

Stephanie: A

Yvonne: a rehearsal process. You're surrounded by a bunch of other people, even if it's a, even if it's a small show, even if I'm like completely the lead and I am the one person on stage or something like that.

There's this whole process that supports you as a performer, which is lights and sound and costume. Man, sometimes I'd put on a costume for a character and I could literally feel everything click into place. It was like, click. Oh, yeah. Now I know who this person is. And it was all about telling the story.

And that whole process fascinated me. But to get up and speak in front of other people the way I am now was inconceivable to me. And it's only because I started the podcast. Starting a podcast changed my life. Which we may need to go back a minute. To talk about how that happened.

Stephanie: Yeah. Let's.

Yvonne: So that point in time where I'd gone full time with photography and I still wasn't happy.

Stephanie: About how old were you then?

Yvonne: 48

Stephanie: 48. Okay.

Yvonne: And so I was approaching 50, saw that coming up and,I'd been hitting the snooze button every morning. I'd get up late and then the kids were slow moving because kids are slow moving and I would be mad at them for not getting their shizzle together sooner.

I'm like, come on, we're late. Get your lunchbox, get your stuff. And I'm like, there was this morning that I was yelling at my kid to get going. And we got down into the car and I looked in the rear view mirror and I see these big crocodile tears coming down his eyes, coming on his cheeks. Cause mom has been just hellacious.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: I realized that I had been having my own adult tantrum to try to get my kid to get out the door on time and,it, it broke my heart and I was like, this cannot go on. I don't want to be that mom.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: So, you know, I started down the self help aisle of the bookstores. And I listened to a lot of podcasts. Love podcasts. And, my husband was like, Hey, there's this book by Mel Robbins, The 5 Second Rule. I just listened to it on Audible. You should check it out. She's amazing. I'm like, Oh, okay.

I'll try anything right now. I knew something needed to change and it was me. And I listened to her book and I realized oh she was hitting the snooze button. She was having a drink every night She was like all the things that I was doing and I'm like, oh Okay, what if I just change a habit?

What if I change this one habit of hitting the snooze button and I set my alarm across the room and if I get up early every morning before my kids and finally start meditating like I've always said I wanted to do,And exercise. I, you know, I was heavier than I'd ever been. I never really lost baby weight, totally. I called my stomach the pooch. People would, you know, this is many years past, you know, being pregnant and people would be like, Oh, are you pregnant?

Stephanie: Oh,

Yvonne: Oh my God. Don't ever ask anybody that. Totally. Right. And I'm like, Nope, I am not. And, you know, but I wasn't taking care of myself. I just wasn't.

I would get up in the mornings and it would be immediately putting out fires and that's how the day would start. And so I did a 30 day project, get up an hour before my kids, which was super painful because I'm not a morning person.

Stephanie: And, let's try it. Let's see what happens. And it changed everything.

Wow.

Yvonne: How so?

Within a couple of weeks, I was feeling much better. I had so much more energy. It was like, wow, this is crazy. And then one morning I went in to wake up my older son and I'm like, Hey, it's time to get up. And he ran, he didn't know what I was doing. And he randomly said to me, you seem happier mom. I was like, Oh, wow. Okay, so that's everything that I need to know right there that I am on the right track and that I need to keep going. And, and it was just a huge change.

As I started feeling better and more energetic and all the things I was like, wow, I feel better now than I felt all through my forties.

Stephanie: And if I feel better now, even though I'm older, wow, I might, who knows, I might, I'm likely to live another 20 or 30 years if I stay healthy.

Right.

Yvonne: And I have some control over that based on what I do, some control. Right? So I'm like 20 or 30 years. That's like a lifetime for some people.

Stephanie: Yes.

Yvonne: What am I going to do with that time? I started to get kind of excited and curious about what my future held, and when I started to get excited and hopeful about my future, that's when I realized that I hadn't been hopeful about my future. That in my 40s, I started to look at myself in the mirror and go, who the hell is that? Who is that old woman looking back at me? That is not me.

Stephanie: Look at that belly. Ew. Gross.

Yep.

Yvonne: All the things. And, and I realized I had been in this constant trash talk loop in my head about myself. And about what I was capable of and what my future held. And I felt, I really felt like it was all downhill.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: And when I started to realize that was the problem, that's when I was like, I bet I'm not the only one who feels like this.

Stephanie: And that's when I decided to start a podcast,

Wow.

Yvonne: Took me two years to do because I was like, well, who, who am Ito do this? But also I don't have the money to to teach me how to do a podcast. I don't know how to do the podcast. I don't have time. I'm building a photography business. I have kids. I'm busy, busy, busy, busy, busy, busy.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: But when I realized that the main thing holding me back was the imposter syndrome, and that it was really all of the, who am I? Who would even want to listen to me? What's one more voice out in the world?

Stephanie: Yep. Mmm.

Yvonne: I knew I had to do it. Because the idea wouldn't go away.

For two years, it literally was like this little voice in the back of my head. Do a podcast, Yvonne, do a podcast. So when I did, oh my gosh, everything changed. I thought, you know what busted it wide open for me, Stephanie, is that I thought, okay, well maybe the podcast is never going to be successful in quotes,

Stephanie: Right?

Yvonne: But who am I going to have to become in order to do this? That's the juice. Is who I have to be to make the podcast happen. And then, I believe so much in what I'm trying to say to people, because I think that a lot of people don't know they're doing this to themselves. That there's this internalized ageism that is holding us back.

Yeah, there's external ageism that is certainly out there that is, you know, hard to deal with. Yes, hard to deal with. But what we're telling ourselves is even more the problem. And I don't think people are aware of how much ageism they carry within themselves towards themselves.

Stephanie: Yeah,

Yvonne: And what they're capable of. So that's when I had to get out of my own way and learn how to do some public speaking and make myself go on camera and do all the things.

Stephanie: That's so funny because before we started you said you had recently listened to my episode with Stephanie Rose and now I understand why you were relating to her so well because she was talking about thinking about her future self and what thoughts would that person have. What actions would they take?

What? So, so there's a very similar kind of process there about who would I have to become to do this thing that I want to do? So that's really interesting.

Yvonne: I read something recently Steph I wish I could cite the source on this, but that people have a, in general, have a hard time thinking of their future self as themselves. It's like a different person. And so very often the choices that we make here and now are all about the person we are here and now. And it's very hard to relate ourselves to who that person is 20 and 30 years from now because it's almost inconceivable.

Stephanie: Right. Well, and here's the way I think about it. I look backwards 20 and 30 years and I think of it as, that was a different lifetime. That was a different person. Like I, I can be amused by her or I can be, you know, nostalgic about her. But we have almost nothing in common other than the meat suit we walk around in.

That fabulous 20 something who was, you know, tearing up the world. She was great, but I'm a completely different person. And so, so it's interesting. I love the way you're saying this. We don't, we think of our future self as someone different, but if we take that concept and we throw it backwards, maybe that helps us to gain some of that separation so that we can. So we can think about our future self as a different person.

Yvonne: Yes. There are two really powerful exercises that you may have heard of. It's certainly not me that came up with this, but the idea is to think of yourself, project yourself into yourself like 10 years from now or 20 years from now, pick it, pick a number

Stephanie: and write a letter from your future self to your current self

Yvonne: and say, thank you for everything that you did to get me to where I am now.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: And what that does is it ties you into, well, what do I really want for my future self 10 or 20 years from now? What do I want that person to be? And if you can make it feel like it's in the present, it kicks you into the future. The, it being an actual existence. So sometimes when I imagine myself 20 years from now, okay, I'm 55 now, I'm going to be 75 in 20 years, if I think to myself, okay, me at 75, I'm going to put this in the present, I feel energetic,

Stephanie: I am still out going for walks. I might have grandkids, I'm playing with my grandkids in the pool. I'm active. I'm doing work, I love, I'mand I start to take all of that and make it in the present, and then I can go back and go to myself now at 55 and go, thank you. Thank you for working out. Thank you for taking care of yourself. Thank you for all the relationships you built.

All of that. And then the neat trick to do too, is to go back from yourself now and write a letter to yourself 20 years ago and say, thank you so much for what you did to bring me to where I am.

Yeah,

Yvonne: Super powerful.

Stephanie: Yeah. Yeah, that is super powerful. I'd have to think about what I was doing at 32 to that would have set me up for what it is I'm doing now. That's interesting because it does, feel like a whole different life, but I would have to go do some homework. Where was I living and what was I, what job was I doing and who was I hanging out with and you know, what things was I doing at that point in time, that would have, that today I would look at as foundational to where I am now. But I suppose that's really the point of the exercise, right? Is to do, go back and do all that thinking and all that, that, that investigation.

Yvonne: Yes.

Intermission

Yvonne: One of the things that I really related to in your conversation with Stephanie Rose was, the idea of the story we tell ourselves. And she was kind of rewriting her story about her younger self. Doing that letter to yourself is a way of rewriting your story about your earlier life, because everything that you have done in fact, has brought you to your here and now.

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: But you may have, you may be telling yourself a story about yourself from 20 years ago, or 10 years ago, or 5 years ago, that is punishing. That is, why did, why have you always been this way? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? I'm bad because blah, blah, blah.

Stephanie: When, maybe if you can go back and find the things that you did that, that you're, that brought you to what you're, is going on in your life that you are actually grateful for. Then you can go, wow. I know it was hard when you went through that, but look at what it, look at where it brought us.

Yeah, I have had to go through a little bit of that exercise with regards to my health. As you and I were chatting just before we started. And as people who listen know, like I manage a couple of chronic illnesses and have been for just about seven years and I have to always be really careful of the language that I use because language is so powerful and stories are so powerful. I used to say that I suffer from.

chronic illnesses.. And. that put me in a position of not having any power, not taking any responsibility, not having any agency really, if I was just suffering from something, if something was happening to me. So I very consciously say that I manage

Yvonne: Yes.

Stephanie: chronic illness

Yvonne: So much more empowering,

Stephanie: it's so much more

Yvonne: You're managing it.

Stephanie: I am doing that. I am taking care of me. I'm taking care of my health. And it also to me, it might not be in that language, but in my head, it also,sort of says that there will come an end to this.That I will get beyond this, that this is not forever. I don't ever say I'm living with chronic illness.

Because that is not the true. I mean, it is a piece of the truth, but I don't want to make it sound to myself, to my body that, that this is a lifelong condition from when it started to when I'm done. It's no, I am actively managing it. I am taking care of it so that we can put this phase behind us at some point. So yeah, stories are really important.

Yvonne: Yeah. The other thing that you reminded me of is, this exercise that I did probably in my late twenties and it was given to me by a psychic. And it was so powerful for me. He said, at night when you go to bed, I want you to write down all the things during the day that pleased you. Didn't have to be an accomplishment. Didn't have to be something you succeeded at. Just what pleased you. And it's not quite gratitude, but it's, you know, what did you notice that went well that day? Okay. That's easy.

Stephanie: Ah, but then once you have your list, I want you to go back and item by item. I want you to identify what talents, skills, qualities, or abilities you brought to the table to make that thing go well.

Yvonne: I love that. I love that.

Stephanie: What that did for me was at the time I, this is universal. This is not at the time, but I have two voices in my head. I have a very nice one and a very mean one.

Yvonne: And at the time the mean one was volume turned up to 11, and the nice one you could barely hear. And you know she was completely buried. And so this exercise ended up doing a really nice job of equalizing those voices because the mean one you know there's a use for her, in the right way. And in the right. But it,gave volume. It gave room for this nice one to think of all the reasons that I made things go well,

I love that.

Stephanie: Yeah, it, I did that for about a year and a half, pretty much nightly. And it,changed my life. It changed my outlook. it definitely was a big shift in, in my world in my late twenties.

Yeah, so, but again, it's about stories. It's about being able to, you know, the things we tell ourselves and the things we hear going on inside our heads are really powerful at setting the tone for our day to day existence. As you know, that your early forties sound like they were really challenging and a lot of work and not a lot of fun.

Yvonne: Yeah. And I,so, so I'm so glad you brought up the word fun.

Stephanie: I didn't even do it on purpose. But now that you say that, yes,

Yvonne: It's literally become a current obsession of mine to choose the option of fun and playfulness. Is. I use the word play these days. Because there's so much, to be had in going, how can I make this more fun. And part of it is giving myself more time to play on my calendar. Like to go, okay, this is playtime. And I think what happens is we, as we're getting older, as we, as kids, the adults in our lives are like grow up. You know, they want us to mature because it's a big bad world out there and they have all the best hopes and intentions for us to be able to manage all the hard things in life, right?

Cause they know they've been there, they've done that. But what do we give up? When we start to squash the playfulness in ourselves. We're so wired as humans, we're the otters of the universe. We are wired to play and it's how we learn as children. Kids experiment. That's how we learn to walk, to talk, to do all the things. And it wasn't work. It was play. It was, Oh, can I do this? Can I, what kind of noise can I make? Just our little, our little brains just constantly looking to evolve, right?and then we start to shut that down as we get older, so that, because we have so many obligations, and work, and it's time to get serious, and it's time to adult. Well, adulting sucks, let me just say.

Stephanie: Yeah, it does.

Yvonne: Adulting sucks, and it doesn't have to suck. It's a paradigm, that we've grown up with, that I think it's time to start questioning, like, how much do you have to be in misery to get things done. So I try to make time on my calendar to literally play. Get on my roller skates. Roller skating again, which is so much fun. Paddleboarding in the summer. Walks.

Play, I consider it to be anything that is not work related But the real trick is, can I approach my daily tasks and all the things that need to get done? Can I approach those things with a sense of playfulness and a sense of experimentation? Nobody told me I had to be a photographer. Nobody told me I had to start a podcast. Nobody told, and so those are just things that, those are things I want to do. And then, but you get into the grind of it after a while and it just feels like I have to, I have to, I have to.

Stephanie: Mm hmm.

And when I can remind myself that I get to do this. Yeah, maybe there's like little tasks that are involved with running a podcast that I don't particularly enjoy, or running a photography business. I got to pay sales tax, you know, whatever. Can I look at those things differently? Can I look at it as, you know, I don't like social media, but I have to do it to try to build an audience, right. So how can I make it more fun?

Yeah. Yeah. I love this whole topic of conversation.

I also spoke, to a woman by the name of Teresa Thomas, who created this, she did a project when she turned 50, much like the one when I turned 40, and she did 50 Fun Things, that she wanted to do in her 50th year. And it again, mu much like my 40 drinks sort of took on a life of its own.

So last year,at my birthday last summer, I made a list of 52 ish fun things that I wanted to do in this year, in my 52nd year. And, I've done some of them. I've built some of them in again, it's a little challenging to be limited in your energy of,what you can do and have things that you need to take care of running a business, you know, those kinds of things.

But, but it was actually my conversation with Stephanie. She blew my mind. You know, there's this concept in the chronic illness community around spoons. And you only have so many spoons for a day. And so how are you going to spend them? and she gave me this idea. She said, well, why don't you color code your spoons and actually save some for fun, for play, for things like that. And that was a bit of a mind blow to me. So I've done a pretty good job this year of doing a bunch of those fun things. Not enough. I want to keep going. Your element of bringing the fun and the playfulness into every day isn't, I haven't gotten that far yet.

Yvonne: It's a challenge. And the I started a 30 day playfulness challenge gosh I think it was back in February and it's funny when you start a challenge like that, it tends to point out to you how much you're not having fun or how much you're not playing. And then the trick is to keep Yourself from beating yourself up. But there's so many things that we can do to incorporate fun and play into our daily lives that don't cost anything, that don't take a lot of time, that actually can give you more energy to do the things that you have to do.

So it could be like, if you notice you are working and you're grinding away at a project, and you feel like you're starting to bang your head against the wall, or you start to feel that overwhelming sense of tired or overwhelmed.Get up from the desk, put on your favorite song and do a little dance break. That is play.

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: And it doesn't have to take that long.

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: Three, a three minute song?It's transformative. Or, go take a 15 minute lie down that doesn't need to be sleep.

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: I set my timer. I go lie down, and I just get horizontal for 15 minutes, and maybe I play a little meditation, or I just put on some easeful music, or white noise, or something.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: I know I'm getting up in 15 minutes, so it's not gonna throw me off for the whole day. It's not gonna, it doesn't mean I'm quitting. I'm not gonna get my work done. It's just a little break. And if we can be kinder to ourselves, to allow for that sort of thing, and not feel guilty about it, as we do, and not feel like this is not productive time, No, five minutes of just breathing. If the sun is coming in the window in your,kitchen, and that feels good, give yourself an extra minute to just close your eyes and feel the sun on your face.

Stephanie: Yep.

And I know for me, for myself, we get so wrapped up in the day in, in the, oh, I hate it. Right. The shoulds.

Yvonne: We get so wrapped up in that, that we feel like we can't just stop or just take a moment or a break, but you're absolutely right. The three minute dance party it's not only gonna energize you in your brain It's gonna energize you in your body. It's gonna get your blood moving. It's gonna get you breathing It's gonna get you did you know your brain detached from whatever it was you were stuck on and once you sit back down you're likely to be more productive than had you just stayed and kept banging your head for those three minutes.

Yes.

Stephanie: And really I'm not talking to anybody else but myself.

Yvonne: Me too, believe me, because I'm a person who is addicted to the grind. I might be a little bit of a workaholic Steph. I'm just saying. I could, that could be a problem. You know, so this is actually a personal challenge that I've,set up for myself. And I'm, and again, I'm like, wait a minute. I don't think I'm the only one suffering from this. I think that this is a thing that at least we in America tend to do,

Stephanie: Yes. Yes, for sure. I know, anecdotally, right, we know that the Europeans do such a much better job than we do building in breaks and, you know, during the day, the siestas and the,and building in, you know, taking the month of August off.

Yvonne: Right? We've got that Puritan work ethic that is a part of our DNA and our social system. You know, work, earn your keep.

Stephanie: Yeah.

And then, you know, do you ever go play and you feel like, especially if it's in the middle of the day and you go for a walk and somebody sees you out for a walk in the middle of the day. Do you feel like they must think that I'm living the life of Riley. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, honestly, you must look like one of those people who's got it all together because,

Yvonne: oh my

Stephanie: Right, you can actually take a few minutes and go walk around the block.

Yvonne: And I just want people to know, no, I still don't have it together. And I know that may be true because of what they're seeing on my social media and what I'm putting out there. And I also want to be completely transparent with people that I still get up under a dark cloud some days. And I have to choose to shake myself out from under that cloud.

Stephanie: Well, one of the things that I have done in my world is I've as somebody who owns their own business, you know, there are lots of things that you feel shackled to and lots of things you feel like you're supposed to be doing. And I,I've had to give, I've had to detach from a lot of that again, because of my health. For many years I was debilitated and I wasn't working anywhere near full time. But in more recent years, one of the things that I have done for myself, is come to the understanding - I've already, I've always known, but maybe I've owned the fact - that I am not a morning person. And in fact, between not being a morning person and managing chronic illness, mornings are very, very challenging for me.

I feel better. You know, I struggle with productivity because of all the issues with, with my health. So if I optimize my day around my best bio rhythms, my best energy, my best flow, I am more likely to do well than if I try to get myself to my desk at nine or nine 30 or 10 and struggle for the first couple of hours and then be headed home right when my brain's coming up to, you know, full functionality. So. That's one of the things that I have done for myself. And as an, as a grown ass person, I can make those decisions. And my team knows it. My, my clients know it. I have a client who, if I answer the phone at 10 AM, he goes, you're awake. But we've worked to create a situation where yeah, a bunch of them are much more morning people than I am. So they start earlier. And we'll overlap in the middle and then they'll go home and I'll keep going. So, you know, all the supposed to's and the shoulds and the structures that exist in our adult world, it's okay to question them and to rework them, so they work for you. Cause now I don't wake up with the dark cloud over my head.

We're ready to go. And you know, people who work for the man don't always have that opportunity. For those of us who own our own businesses or who create our own schedules, maybe think about what works for you best.

Yvonne: And trust yourself. I'm hear what I'm hearing in what you're saying is that you're learning to trust your rhythms.

Stephanie: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. And I'm learning to let the,the snarky comments from friends and family, you know, just roll off my back because it's sure, you're a morning person, rock on my fine, you know, but. But you know, that's not going to work for me. And I am, I'm a unique person.

I'm a snowflake just like you are. And so I'm going to do what works for me. And that's, the trust is the big word because that's the other thing that happens to us around midlife is that we stop trusting all the people outside of us who tell us all the things we have to do, and we should do, and we're supposed to do, and we start trusting ourselves.

I really only really came to that in the last, you know, I don't know, three, four years. Maybe not even that, long, but yeah, I built what worked for me because I trusted myself and I knew that taking into account all the variables of my life, the team, the clients, the work. It could work. Maybe it would be better.

Yvonne: Midlife is such a huge opportunity. I mean, they built this whole thing, this whole idea of the midlife crisis, you know, which I don't believe it's a crisis. I think it feels like a crisis because all of a sudden you do start to question all the things that you've been told your whole life, or all the things that you decided to do to try to please your parents and to try to please other people.

And when you start to question that, it can feel really uncomfortable and it can feel like a crisis, but I think it's an awakening. I think it's the chance. It's our moment in time to go, Oh, who am I really? And what do I really want? And I am a grown ass person and I can make those decisions for myself now. And I'm going to start setting some boundaries and living life on my terms.And you can call it selfish if you want to, but I think selfish gets a bad rap. I think if everybody was a little more selfish, in that good way, I think the world would be a much kinder place because people would be happier.

You know, people pleasing is this funny thing there's a lot of guesswork involved of trying to make decisions, calculated decisions to do things, to please other people. And you don't really even know what's going to please them.

Stephanie: Right.

Yvonne: You think you know what's going to please them, but how authentic is that?

How real is that? How truthful is that? All you can know is what's truthful for you inside and how you're going to walk through life and be your happiest self. And if you can be your happiest self, you're going to be able to show up for other people in a whole other way. And connect with them in a whole other way.

Stephanie: Yeah.

Yvonne: There's so much possibility in it. So

Stephanie: Yeah. It is. It is. My, my big challenge with this transition that we go through around age 40 is that we've gotten so far away from the concept of the midlife crisis that the generation that's turning 40 now, they don't relate to it. They eschew it completely, which is fine because it was kind of a stereotypical thing to begin with in the 70s 80s.

Yvonne: We don't know that we're headed for a transition or a transformation, or an awakening or a questioning or any of those things. It's just not common cultural knowledge that, that there is a shift we go through sometime around our 40th birthday. You know, it's, I was talking to one of my coaches recently and he was saying, you know, is it in conjunction with menopause?

Stephanie: And I was like, well, not really, because that happens later. And that's a thing we all know, whether, our mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers talked to us about menopause or not. We know it's a word. We know it's something we're going to face.It's something that is,a little bit more broad, you know, we're all going to go through it.

But if you come back to this 40, this 35 to 45, we don't know that there's a developmental stage that we go through, where we begin to trust ourselves and we begin to ask those questions and we begin to make shifts, whether small or large. And that for me is one of my reasons for doing this podcast because I made such a mess of it.

You know, I just was,I was a mess. in my mid and late thirties. I didn't know, and I thought I was the only one. And all of those things. So, I really want to make this part of the conversation that, that, that there's something we're going to go through around age 40.

And if you just start listening to those little things bubbling up inside you, if you don't try to, jam them back down or ignore them, you could probably get through it with a little bit more ease and grace than maybe I made it through by ignoring all of it.

Yvonne: Yeah,

Stephanie: Yeah.Well, Yvonne, I just feel like, you know, you and I could chat for days and I'm sure we will. I hope we will over time, but, I wanted to thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your story of transition and, and I look forward to, growing our friendship over,over the coming months and years.

Yvonne: Me too. I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Stephanie: Oh, I'm so excited!

Yvonne: Yeah!