Dust off your dreams! So says retirement expert and coach Patrice Jenkins. Here she offers tips and advice for those who want to create purpose--and live the dream--once they retire.
Moving Along guest Patrice Jenkins, Ph.D., is an organizational psychologist, consultant and frequent speaker on topics related to career and retirement transitions. She is the host of Day One Dreams podcast and author of two books, it’s still good: Dreams Don’t Have Expiration Dates and What Will I Do All Day? Wisdom to Get You Over Retirement and On with Living! Her online course, A Guide to Take the Weirdness Out of Retirement, is available at Udemy.com. Contact Patrice: https://patricejenkins.com/
Some of the topics we discussed...
Living the dream
Defining the dream
Should I relocate?
Creating purpose in retirement years
When retirement dreams are dashed
Act on your dream
Moving Along - Creating Purpose in Retirement with Patrice Jenkins
[00:00:00] Christi: Moving up, moving out, moving along. Where are you headed next? I'm Christi Cassidy, your host and the creator of moving along a podcast about travel, relocation, and life transition. Listen in to real. Stories as we explore moving along and what it takes to make your life a positive new adventure. Our guest is Patrice Jenkins. She is the founder of Day One Dreams and author of It's Still Good Dreams, Don't have expiration dates, and what will I do All day. Wisdom to get you over and on with retirement. Welcome, Patrice.
[00:00:55] Patrice: Thank you very much. Happy to be here today.
[00:00:58] Christi: Glad to have you. [00:01:00] We've talked around the subject of retirement on this podcast, and.
In the first season, we talked a lot about moving and relocating and I thought, Well, I'm gonna focus more on travel this time. And then you and I started talking and I thought, Yeah, retirement. I mean, is that the elephant in the room or not? Because so many people don't have the luxury to just up and leave because of jobs.
And it does seem that a lot. What you talk about when you talk about retirement is pegged to the notion of a job, like a place where you go to work. Is that right?
[00:01:43] Patrice: So in terms of how people think of retirement, they typically think of it as, I'm working and now I'm not working. So that's where the job defines Am I retired or am I not?
But interestingly, my definition of retirement is [00:02:00] what do you want to make yourself available? So when we think of it that way, it's not so much what we're leaving, but what is it that we want next? And sometimes often that will be some other type of work, paid or not paid. But as long as we're still in this full-time position with those responsibilities at ours and so on.
We don't have the bandwidth to apply to maybe something that might be next. So is retirement? Yes. In terms of work, but also just what's next? I consider retirement part of the career development ladder itself. Just another stage in career development.
[00:02:37] Christi: So when I talk to my aunt the other night, she said six Saturdays and a Sunday.
That's what we have now. That to me. I mean, she plays bridge, you know, most days with some friends. That's not quite the same as, that's more like pursuing a hobby or taking up a [00:03:00] new hobby, which is a little different than career development.
[00:03:04] Patrice: So, yes, and what your aunt just said is to me like fingernails on a chalkboard when I think about how I want to live this next stage of my life.
So my message around retirement obviously isn't for everyone. And the title of my book, What Will I Do All Day? Wisdom to Get You Over Retirement, Not with Living, is not for everyone. Some people love the notion of a 365 day vacation or every day feeling like Saturday and Sunday, but that is not me, and it's not the people that are drawn to my work.
The people drawn to my work are looking for a sense of purpose and meaning and how to create this next stage of life. I like to remind people. Around this topic is why is Friday night so sweet? It's so sweet because it's ushering in the weekend and it's a contrast to the weekend is a contrast. [00:04:00] Friday night is a contrast, so the days that we've been working.
So I like on and off days hard and easy days, and in retirement we can have a lot more of those off days, easy days. But if they are all of that, then the time off has lost its sweetness.
[00:04:18] Christi: That's really interesting. I never thought of Friday nights that way, but. I know the feeling, that's for sure. I kind of like, Oh, yes. Just, just kind of sink into the weekend.
[00:04:32] Patrice: Friday nights used to be my like favorite day of the week, and then people ask me if I'm retired and I say if I am, this is what it looks like. In other words, I will always have meaningful work in my life, and at this point I want it to be something with my signature on it, Something that's creative, something where I'm learning and growing and building a community around.
So when I started focusing more on that, all of a sudden [00:05:00] Friday sweetness came back. Although I, you know, I work on Saturday and Sunday, or I don't work on Saturday and Sunday. Sort of that sort of has the structure around that. Not as clear as it used to be, but the idea of working and not working is still there.
[00:05:14] Christi: Has your view of working not working. Retirement changed since Covid.
[00:05:21] Patrice: That's a really interesting question because Covid has changed so much of in so many areas of our life, but I actually think Covid was a wonderful opportunity for people to practice retirement. And the reason I say that is a couple of areas.
One, with the lockdown, we were spending more time with a spouse or partner than any other time we probably have in our life when people are both working from home, all of a sudden you have all this together time. And that's one of the more difficult challenges in retirement is suddenly having so much time with [00:06:00] someone else in the, and that whole relationships in retirement's another whole podcast.
But this gave people an opportunity to practice that, to see how hard it was or, or easy, or what it does when we spend more time with something, it magnifies the condition. So when a relationship is good, and this is true in retirement, when it's good, we can expect it to continue to be enhanced in retirement.
And when it's not so good, we can expect it to deteriorate in re as we add more time together. So co gave people a chance to practice that. It also gave them a chance to be okay with being creative. I don't know about you, but if you tried to buy yeast, During the height of the pandemic yeast sales were up 2000% according to King Arthur Baking Company.
People were doing more creative things around home. They were placing value on those things. And in retirement, we need to be able to just as we place value on how important we are [00:07:00] at work, we need to place value on the creative outlets that we have more time to develop in our retirement years. So I think. Covid was a chance to practice retirement.
[00:07:10] Christi: Very interesting take on that. The focus on home and also the focus on being together. I know some parents who weren't too thrilled about it, but for those people who didn't have kids around is a little different. A little different. The situation. Also, the increase in pet sales for those people that live alone and.
[00:07:32] Patrice: Say, And also in terms of travel. Because travel, while it's a wonderful thing to do in retirement, it's also a place to sort of hide out. Just as long as you have your next trip planned, you don't have to figure out what home is. And we need to be able to develop a new rhythm, a new way of being at home in retirement.
And so with travel being shut down, People didn't [00:08:00] have that little outlet for, well, we'll just plan our next trip. You know, I'm somewhat guilty to, my husband's especially guilty of, I wouldn't say guilty, but he's inclined to, you know, what's next. There should be something in our travel folder, you know, ready to go instead of, let's make home such a great place.
We don't wanna leave. But then we do leave because travel is wonderful.
[00:08:18] Christi: Yeah, that's true. , I mean, we didn't even. Drive four hours to see my parents for Thanksgiving. There was no way, There was no way. It was too scary before the vaccine. Yes. My parents are in their eighties and they didn't travel either.
That whole thing about togetherness, , they're people that like their retirement. Let me tell you. Well, you know, but I just like remembering a question that kind of bubbled up to the surface. There's a lot of women. My mother, that's what reminded me, my mother among them who didn't work. Do homemakers ever get retirement?
[00:08:54] Patrice: No , the short answer, I think they would be the first to [00:09:00] say, No, we don't get to retire. You know, only one person's really retiring here and then that's negotiating new roles again. There's a thing called the among, I haven't thought about it for a long time, so I probably won't get it exactly right, but it's the retired husband syndrome in, in Japan, where typically the, the woman is, And now these men who have been in high powered positions, once they are home, the research suggests that they continue to want that level of control and say so, and being in charge and it physically makes a spouse.
Feel sick, Uh, to her stomach. Yeah. Retired husband syndrome. So I don't know how that applies in our culture, but I think your mom would probably agree. Just one person retired there. What is interesting though, when you talk about people in their eighties, which I'm assuming your aunts in that. Age range also, or somewhere around there.
[00:09:55] Christi: My aunt's in her seventies. My mom is in her eighties. Yeah,
[00:09:59] Patrice: [00:10:00] because baby boomers have quite a different take on this. They don't wanna use the word retirement and it's. Because it suggests that they are no longer engaged, no longer have value and worth in society. So they're real quick to say, I will never retire, or I'm not retired, or they'll make some kind.
I'm rewire and repotting re blah, blah, blah. You know, you will see books written with all those different titles, but the message is, Don't consider me. Because then you've sort of written me off as someone who still has value and significance. And so as baby boomers, as we've really impacted a lot of a shift in views and lifestyle and so on, you know, throughout the years we are redefining retirement as well.
And that idea that I want to always have some type of meaningful work in my life is a good example of. What matters to me at this, At this stage,
[00:10:57] Christi: you don't think it's type A personality [00:11:00] coming through?
[00:11:01] Patrice: Yes, but I would say it's, it's certainly a driven, goal oriented personality, but also just what matters, what has meaning in life.
So it's not even that we're working to achieve really great things. We're working to have a really nice event, a dinner with our parents or our siblings or our friends. Because that connection matters to us. We're putting more into it than we have to. I, I like to turn things into events, even though it might just be talking about dinner with your sister and her husband.
Let's make it an event. Let's create a menu that's more interesting. Let's dress for it. In my book, retirement book, I call that Turn a Mole Hill into a mountain. Hm. Bring more to it, more of your senses to it. Elevate the challenges involved and now we're talking about something that we get to experience those type of [00:12:00] things at at work too.
[00:12:01] Christi: Talk more about that.
[00:12:02] Patrice: Well, this is a kind of a place to interject. I'm an organizational psychologist, so my research is in thriving at work. So thriving is considered, two things are present. This energy and vitality and learning and growth. It's a psychological state. Both of those are present, and in my interviews with subjects I would ask, describe for me a high thriving experience at work.
So people all usually talked about a project that they worked on. It was often added above and beyond what they were currently doing. They were on the cusp of having the skillset. But they were surrounded by people who would step in and support them if they needed it. So they were very challenged. It falls in that area of flow and flow theory, but they emerged from that feeling a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, and when they would speak about it a whole.
Smile and energy would come from them. [00:13:00] They might be talking about an incident that happened 4, 5, 6, 7 years ago, and the way they describe it is as if it happened yesterday. So what I try to do with my retirement work is how can we take the factors that contributed to thriving at work and bring those into our retirement because we continue to need.
Some of that, we don't need the headaches and we don't need the work with administration and all. We could kind of pick and choose what we want, but let's create some situations so that every day isn't Saturday and Sunday. We have a chance to be in that thriving, that flow state, that being challenged and meeting those challenges. And feeling a sense of accomplishment. My satisfaction from that,
[00:13:41] Christi: you wrote, I believe retirement is the perfect time to dust off a dream and get started. Now, following on what you were just saying, how do you help people locate and dust off those dreams?
[00:13:53] Patrice: Surprisingly, they're not that hard. The first thing you have to do is give yourself [00:14:00] permission to do it. So some of these dreams might be. What you would consider, I'm too educated, too experienced to this or that to do that anymore if they revisit some forks on the road or some ideas they had.
[00:14:16] Christi: Give me an example.
[00:14:17] Patrice: Let's see. Well, maybe someone always wanted to work in a, Loves to knit, loves really fine yarn, and thinks that they would really like working in a yarn shop. And interacting with people who had similar interests and and understanding of why 100% wool that was grown on grass with grass fed sheep out might have, I'd be good. Now, when you're at a certain level in your career, like, I can't go work in a yarn shop. I can't afford to leave what I'm doing, that's not gonna pay anything.
What's that gonna look like on my career ladder? So we can go back to some of those things that really interest us or we're curious about. They don't have to show up on our resume because we're no longer living for the resume. [00:15:00] We are living for the lifestyle and the quality of life that we want to create.
So give yourself permission. No one's keeping score anymore. You've climbed the ladder, you've demonstrated straighted that you're highly capable of, amazing things. Now what are you curious? Do you have anything that you wonder how it would've worked out? Gosh, if I had tried that, I wonder how it would've worked out.
What I find when we talk that way, we usually think we would be, would've been really good at that. I should have gone down that career path, or I should have done this cuz I think it would've been really good. So, Fall in love and regret, this sort of fantasy version of something that we don't know how it worked out.
So that's why I say dust off a dream. Let's find out how it worked out. Like when I started writing the book, It's Still Good. Dreams Don't Have Expiration Dates for 18 years, I had said if I ever write a book, it's going to be, It's never too late. If you start. [00:16:00] I have this thing about having conversations with people where they're talking about what they want to do and 3, 5, 15 years later, they're having the same conversation.
I can't stand that. Like all you have to do is put something in motion today. And so in March of 2021, I just decided one day. You know what? I am going to find out what I have to say about starting. This idea has not left me. I'm curious. Maybe I have nothing to say. Maybe I write one page and that's what I had to say, but I'm going to find out and so I'm consequently a book ended up out of that experiment of being willing to just be curious and see where it goes, but willing to start claim a starting.
[00:16:43] Christi: How long did it take you to write that book?
[00:16:45] Patrice: It took me a year, but in my mind I probably had been writing it for 18 years and actually my retirement book, which was my first book. When you read that closely, you see it's so much about being willing to let go of what you know for sure and step in, start [00:17:00] the next thing.
View retirement as that opportunity for a new start. A next start, make something happen. So the message is in there too, but not quite so specific.
[00:17:10] Christi: You started getting involved in this whole retirement thing by helping a colleague of yours at the community college where you worked. That would be Columbia Greene Community College, right? Mm-hmm. . Talk about that. What happened?
[00:17:25] Patrice: I was working in the college career office, and I. I was 47 years old and my administrative assistant I had been friends with for over 20 years, and she was 65, appropriate age to retire, had the pension, had a mother who could use her help. She was just too afraid to let go, and she didn't understand what it was all about, what that resistance was.
So for whatever reason, I started thinking about these exercises that might help her process that. At that [00:18:00] point I had a master's in counseling, and so it came from a place of knowing something about what I was talking about. But I started writing these exercises to help her get unstuck and I realized, uh, that I had something to say about that and I really enjoyed.
Thinking about that. So that is how it started. And then about a year later I said, I'm gonna start writing a book on this and coaching, talking to people who are in this kind of position. So the book was, for someone who is of the right age to retire, has prepared financially for retirement, but it's just too afraid to step over the line and to let go of what they know for sure into something that they don't know how it's gonna work out. Get over that whole fear of retirement and get on with living.
[00:18:44] Christi: Right. And you advocate having a design. Right. Okay. So figuring out your dreams, having a design right.
[00:18:53] Patrice: I like a design in that. I think it's important when people let go of something they [00:19:00] know, have some sense of what they're going to. It doesn't have to be a perfect, this is what I'm gonna do for the next 20 years.
But it's really important on that Monday morning to know what you're getting up for. And so that's why I really encourage that. Looking ahead, what do you want to make yourself available to putting some things into motion so that first morning, it's not like you're starting from zero, you actually have some wheels in motion.
And that said, the nice thing about retirement is you can always change. In my book, I write about a, I think I write about a two year intervals. Like instead of thinking of this is what I'm gonna do for the next 25 years, maybe this is what I'm gonna focus on for two years, and if I get one year into it and don't like it, I'll just quit.
Like, you can do that. It's real freedom to know you can do that. But it's also a schedule, A routine actually is freeing. Rather than people might think that is really [00:20:00] limiting themselves. But if you have to get up every morning and figure out, Well, what am I going to do today? Instead of having some kind of landmarks in your day, in your week, that anchor it, that is, that's exhausting to try to figure out what am I gonna do today and tomorrow and, but if we have some of those landmarks and some of those plans, they can change.
That's a nice thing. But have something that you're starting with you.
[00:20:25] Christi: Health and wealth are the key to a successful retirement. What do you tell people who don't have health or, wealth
[00:20:36] Patrice: okay, first of all, that's not what I believe. It's what research shows.
[00:20:40] Christi: What do you believe?
[00:20:42] Patrice: Right? So I understand that and I totally embrace that idea.
It's in some ways it's like, you know, Maslow's hierarchy if we don't have help, especially the healthy aspect. Doesn't matter how much money you have in the bank if you don't have your health as we all know. And then the wealth aspect that's not about [00:21:00] being, you know, super rich, but it's about being comfortable enough that you're not losing sleep at night over am I gonna run outta money?
So you have run the numbers, you have a sense of your lifestyle that you can support. You don't just stick your head in the sand and like, well, I hope it all works out. You have an awareness and once you've done that, Financially, the numbers don't work out. Then making a. Decision about, okay, I need to continue to work for a period.
I need to do part-time work. I need to think of some source of income that just sort of naturally comes in without necessarily me showing up at an office. Like, you know, could be a number of things, but, but let me say about the health aspect. We need to treat that like a job in retirement as far as we have time to exercise and.
You know, at some point in the day or a certain number of times a week, we have time for healthy meal preparation. [00:22:00] We often will say, When I retire, I'm going to, you know, start walking every day and I'm going to start preparing healthier meals, But, Research also shows that if we're not doing it before we retire, we are less apt to do it once we retire.
It's like we build out this future somehow we're gonna be able to do in the future. What I can't get myself to do now, and it doesn't often work out that way, but there should be no excuse in retirement. We're not allocating time because what can be more valuable than your health? Not allocating time to try to promote a healthy lifestyle that can contribute to your health.
[00:22:39] Christi: Right. And I think you would probably agree, like everybody says, and start doing it before you retire so that it's already a habit. You are already walking every day or doing whatever you can't. I mean, it doesn't cost anything to go outside and walk. Right, right, right. I heard you say so. Maybe it was on Retire [00:23:00] Sooner when you said that's what we do, convert our children's bedrooms into our offices.
And I was gonna tell you, my grandfather worked at Kodak his entire life, and he always had something going on the side. He loved antiques. He collected antiques. He wrote books about antiques and when he retired, he converted two upstairs bedrooms into his waiting room and his inner sanctum office and hired to be his assistant when I was 16. So that was my perception of retirement when I was younger. Was that's, you just went and had your office at home, and I wondered what your perception of retirement was when you were a kid.
[00:23:47] Patrice: Well, my dad retired at 55, so my dad is actually not an example at all of the people who my message is, But he's a great example of someone retiring, [00:24:00] whereas my mom continued to work till she's a nurse, till she's about 70. She had taken years, she had seven kids, so she had taken years off during our younger years. And when they, the youngest twins were in kindergarten, she went back to work part-time. My dad retired at 55. He has a lot of hobbies. He's 93 now, and he continues to have these same hobbies. Hunting and fishing, and he doesn't ski any downhill ski anymore, but he did then boating and he still does many of those things every day still. So when he retired from the US Forest Service at age 55, his plan was just to, you know, to make himself available to those things that he loved. And he was also really good at woodwork. And so I suggested to him that maybe he should start a little business doing woodwork. His comment was, if I wanted to still be working and making money, I would still be at work. So totally of how I view the world. But [00:25:00] a great example of the value that hobbies bring to later years of our life and even into his age, even into his nineties, still out there hunting and fishing and boating.
[00:25:16] Christi: That's wonderful. You grew up in New Hampshire?
[00:25:18] Patrice: I grew up part of the time in Missouri from age four to 12, Missouri and then in the Ozarks, and then at age 12 moved to New Hampshire.
[00:25:27] Christi: Ah, Missouri. That's what I hear in your accent, that every now and then I'll hear something, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it in the Ozarks. So you grew up in the mountains. That's great.
[00:25:39] Patrice: So my dad was the Ranger for the Mark Twain National Forest. So we lived on the ranger station.
[00:25:45] Christi: With six siblings, you said it's a really nice way to grow up. Yes. And be out in the woods and you could probably just do whatever you wanted to. And he's 93 and he is still at it hunting and fishing. [00:26:00] No more downhill skiing, but out in nature. That's wonderful. And. Even though it's not your specific retirement model, it's still a retirement model that is not, I think maybe not unlike my aunt and her playing bridge.
[00:26:17] Patrice: That's true, and it's important to validate anyone's form as long as they have intentionally selected that, not just as a default, but as this is how I want to live. I think it's, I. When I speak to groups, I, I usually bring this, again, level of energy around what do you wanna create next? But I preface that with some of you need to do nothing.
Some of you are like, the plants in my house that I've ignored that are. dead I mean, I, I try to say this a little nicer way, but I don't say it much nicer because I think they actually appreciate someone who gets it, that they are depleted. It's frequently [00:27:00] educators I'm addressing, and you need just to take that plant, put it as I do, put it over in the kitchen sink and let the water run on it, and let it run and run and run. That's what I do when I have a dead plant. I just imagine those roots just filling up with water again, and then I remind. But don't leave it under the sink running water, because what happens to those roots is they get too much water and they grow moldy, and the thing just dies. Give yourself time to fill up and then get out there.
Again. The audience seems to appreciate that recognition of, Wow, she does. She's meeting me where I'm at, but she's also saying that there's, It's not healthy to stay in that place of just being watered there's a time to start, you know, spreading those wings again and doing something as an encore.
[00:27:53] Christi: Rehydrating, the roots. Starting over. You mentioned your doctorate in [00:28:00] industrial and organizational psychology, and what do you think are the biggest obstacles to people living their dreams?
[00:28:10] Patrice: One is that we need to. Decide what we want to go after. We need just, people say either they say, I'm I, I'm, I'm passionate about everything. I don't know what to do, or I'm not passionate about anything and I dunno what to do. So choose one thing. What are you most curious about?
What would you like to know? How did that, how would that have worked out if I had done that? And follow that thread with intention. Sign up for something that is going to require you to show up to learn, maybe be part of a community, see where it takes you.
I was just gonna add to that as far as, Well, I don't know what I'm passionate about. It's important to realize that [00:29:00] passion, when you do explore something that you're curious about, passion doesn't necessarily come immediate. Passion happens when we have a certain level of skill set that matches a certain level of challenge.
But when we're brand new at something we don't have, even if we're not challenging ourselves, we don't have any skill set. We followed this little area that passion can't really exist yet. And an example is a woman told me she thought she'd be passionate about playing the piano. So in retirement, she decided to take some piano lessons.
She just started just a little bit into it and she quit, and she said to me, I realized I wasn't passionate about playing the piano. She didn't give herself enough time to figure out if she was passionate about playing the piano. Now, learning to play the piano is very challenging, and so she might have stayed with it a year, but it would've been a good idea to say, I don't know yet [00:30:00] if I'm passionate about.
I encourage people to ask their future self, five years from now, would you like to be able to sit down at the piano and just play some songs that make you feel happy or that, you know, might just make it make it pretty simple, especially if it's piano. Would my future self like that experience? And if the answer is yes, then we need to give that future self a little more chance right now to make that happen.
[00:30:31] Christi: And also see yourself in the future, right? I mean, that's part of what you're saying regardless, is you are gonna be there in five
[00:30:42] Patrice: years. I like the same, Do one thing every day for your future
[00:30:46] Christi: self. That's good advice. Like what do you do? What's an example of what you've done? Trees,
[00:30:54] Patrice: like a morning when it's really challenging to get myself to spinning class at the Y.[00:31:00]
Now some days. Times that will just be a practice that will just go, but sometimes it's really hard. And so that I'll claim that as my future self gift that day when I work on a book. That doesn't happen right away, but in the future, would I like an opportunity to, to speak on that topic or to know what I had to say about that?
It's investing it. Now. My future self's gonna appreciate that We need to show up for our future selves cuz we're going to arrive
[00:31:30] Christi: there. I think that's can be hard for some people, especially if you've had certain kinds of diagnosis or the health thing isn't, you know, I have a friend who out of the blue something.
Smacked her sideways and hopefully she's all right. I mean, but, And she's gonna be all right. But suddenly future is got a new meaning to it. If something happens to you health wise, or I look at the people [00:32:00] in Florida now after Hurricane Ian, but also, you know, I lived in Santa Fe for about a dozen years.
The fires, the drought, but Florida in particular, so many of those retire. Their dreams just dashed.
[00:32:15] Patrice: That is a really good point. And I would, you know, it'd be really interested to have a conversation with someone who finds themself in that situation, whether it's health or, or a hurricane That changed everything I would be to, to see, because things do shift our thinking and my thinking under those circumstances could easily shift.
[00:32:38] Christi: Have you ever had the rug pulled out from under? Or do you believe that design thing? I mean, that's what I'm going back and forth with is like this notion of design and making plans. I write to do lists, all that, and opportunity, whatever it is.
[00:32:57] Patrice: Well, in terms of opportunity, I like to remind myself [00:33:00] opportunity does not always arrive on schedule.
So sometimes, You need to grab an opportunity, even though it's like, this isn't the perfect
timing for this, or who said it was gonna arrive when it was perfect? Maybe, maybe that house you want to buy on the water is now on the market. It hasn't been on the market for, you know, 30 years. And yes, you were gonna wait two years to consider this, but so opportunity doesn't always arrive on schedule.
We need to jump at some of those, but I think some of these. More detrimental things that happen to us gives an opportunity to focus on what am I grateful for right now? And that's important too. When I say do one thing every day for you, free yourself, I'm talking one thing. I'm not talking like, do everything. Pour everything into what you're doing right now so that in five years from now, you know you'll have that PhD, you'll have this, you'll have that, whatever.
[00:33:57] Christi: So, So you would say, [00:34:00] I mean, I'm sure you've known people who've gotten, you know, terrible health diagnoses and natural disasters and, and, and you know, their kids.
Something happens. I mean, bad stuff happens to people, right? And life happens as I have a friend who's fond of saying, life happens. So you would say to them still, you can still make that. Toward your own, your own gift to yourselves, to the future. Do one thing each day. Maybe it's gratitude. Maybe it's going to the spinning class despite everything, right?
Or maybe what, maybe it's making a phone call.
[00:34:43] Patrice: I don't know if, honestly, if I would say that to them. I think I would try to meet them where they're at and see what I can learn from them.
[00:34:49] Christi: Ah, So that's your coaching and psychologist head, right? And you meet people where they are and then you say, Okay, what are your options [00:35:00] and how are you gonna go
forward?
[00:35:01] Patrice: As for opportunities just to serve, to express compassion and, and to serve them instead of, And then if, if there's a part of me that, you know, the real Patrice or, or someone will say, That sounds so Patrice, but there's a part of me that comes out in that. That's because it's coming from a place of a relationship that it's welcomed.
They would not expect anything less than that. Of course, some Patrice stuff will have to come up, but yeah, I would really hope I could use it as an opportunity to learn, Show up. Just show up. That's another thing I, I think is really important in those situations
[00:35:42] Christi: for you as the compassionate outsider. A lot of the people I talked to, they had no idea they were going to end up where they are now.
Even the ones that had plans, the ones who retired and you know, they've [00:36:00] got pensions or military stuff or this or that, and, but then suddenly life happened and they ended up somewhere else and they were willing to take that chance. They were willing to take that opportunity as it. And I wonder if you see any tension or friction in that design and plan.
And I'm going to, you know, this is what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna give piano a year to like, Oh, I have an opportunity. Do I take it? Do I give up the piano for a year? Because there's something over here. Do you see any friction in that or do you see it all of a piece?
[00:36:39] Patrice: No, I think there's probably a lot of friction in.
and what I like to try to figure out are people, are they
hiding out or holding
out, is what I say. So some of that, yes, I was gonna learn piano, but I have this other opportunity. Are we using this other opportunity [00:37:00] to kind of hide out from something that really matters to us? But it's just hard. I, I, I have a friend that's writing a book, I should say, supposed to be writing a book. But she was, and she had a, a deadline by which she was gonna write it, and she started talking about these young women that she's mad at work, that she's kind of mentoring, and that she said, It's more important I pour myself into them than work on this. And I, I said, Is it, or is it easier? Are you using? Is there a way to do both? This
book you're working on, These are young women, they have ideas. How might they even be able to help you? Maybe they can help you with technology or so, but it felt to me like she was sort of hiding out behind another thing that matters opportunity, but it does doesn't have to be one or the other.
And can she keep her focus on what her goal? [00:38:00] And still have that going on, or pick that up later or include them in this in depth. So I just challenge people's thinking a little bit. I try to ask questions that make them evaluate and be honest with themself and, and perhaps see things in a little different light.
[00:38:16] Christi: I like that. That's a question you can ask yourself, right? Am I hiding? Oh, or hold? It's about a little bit about what Stephen Pressman calls resistance. Resistance all around us. Wow. Well, Patrice, thank you so much. Uh, this has been really interesting and I, I wish we had another hour to talk and maybe at some point in the future we will.
But I wanna ask you if there's something, I'm, there's so many questions I could have asked and continue to ask, but I wanna know if there's something else you wanna tell me about, thinking about moving along, and especially as it relates to retirement
[00:38:58] Patrice: well, what was interesting when I saw [00:39:00] your topic is I instantly thought about a question I frequently get from retirees or people plan in retirement is, Should I relocate?
You know, and there's all kinds of magazines out there on the best places to live in retirement, and I've had someone come up after a talk and say, We, we want to go someplace, you know, from upstate New York. We want to go someplace warm. So we're thinking Florida. But now our daughter in Wisconsin had our first grandchild.
And we're torn. What should we do? So my advice along those kind of decisions is to first plan lifestyle, then plan location. So think about how do you want to live? Does it matter to you that you can play golf 365 days a year? Then you're probably going to be wanna be someplace. warm do
you rank afar as priority, You know, family and and proximity to them.
And so design a [00:40:00] lifestyle first and then look for where maybe that fits. And experiment. Don't just go someplace because you've always vacationed there. It was wonderful in the middle of winter when it was cold up here, but now you're down there in September, October and you're having hurricanes be willing to rent in a place experiment, have an experimental mindset of what does it feel like to be here? Let's get involved in the community. Don't keep everything on a vacation sort of mode before
deciding exactly where that relocation might be, but prioritize what matters. When I think about
that, one thing that really matters to me is easy community someplace.
I won't have to work really hard to be, be a part of a community. And so part of that then is, well, I'd like to have some, some family there. I don't need my whole family, but maybe someone as an easy entry into that community as well. So those are some of the things to consider. When moving along, [00:41:00] literally in retirement that you might wanna think about.
[00:41:02] Christi: Oh, that's great advice. Thank you so much. I hope we can talk again soon.
[00:41:08] Patrice: All right. Thank you so much. Wish you the best.
[00:41:26] Christi: Thank you for listening to moving along a podcast about travel, relocation, and life transitions. If you like what you hear, please share and subscribe. You can find moving along wherever you listen. This show was edited by yours truly, Christi Cassidy. The music is by Eve's Blue. If you have an idea for a show, contact me at christi@movingalongpodcast.com [00:42:00] Till next time.