Beyond Comparison: Creating Your Midlife on Your Own Terms

As high-performing midlife women, we've been comparing ourselves to everyone around us for most of our lives. How do we measure up against society's standards? Are we meeting our parents' expectations of us? How does our life compare to the perfectly curated lives we see on social media?

But here's the problem: comparing our lives to some contrived notion of what it means to be successful means that we can be successful by every societal measure, having checked all of the "success" boxes...and still feel unfulfilled. Like something is missing. Like we were made for something more.

In this episode, Laurie encourages us to move away from the comparison loop, and figure out what is meaningful to us. As midlife women, it's time to get very clear on what we want in life and how we define success. On our own terms. Without deference to anyone else's expectations.

LINKS + MENTIONS:
Best Life Retreat

Gap Year

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟RATE THIS PODCAST:
https://ratethispodcast.com/schoolofmidlife

📩 JOIN MY MAILING LIST
https://www.schoolofmidlife.com/newsletter

👉 CONNECT WITH LAURIE:
📩 Email Laurie

💻 Website

On Instagram

On LinkedIn

Work with Laurie

Transcript

0:00

Across the board is this feeling that. I want something more that something is missing that, you know, I am, I'm getting older. I'm realizing that I might be running out of time. And there is the sense of urgency. Like I got to figure this out. So when we get to that point, There are really two questions that we need to be able to answer. Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson. This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life Hey there friends. Welcome back to the School of Midlife podcast. I am your host, Laurie Reynoldson. And in today's episode, it's just me. I have been talking to a number of women lately that seem to have this same. Issue. It's not a problem. But it's an issue and it's this idea of comparison, this idea that. They need to be doing something more with their life because. They don't feel the way that they thought that they would feel once they got to midlife, you know, once they did all of the things that they thought they were supposed to do. And then they get to midlife thinking it's going to be this cherry on top. There's going to be this great reward. And they still feel a little angsty. And they start looking around at everyone else's life who seem to have it all figured out. Right. Um, And so they think that there's something wrong with them. In fact, I want to read to you a portion of an email. That I received from a listener and. She has this strong desire to figure out what she needs to do. When I grow up and she's. Using quotes around when I grow up. She feels like she's in this loop of this never ending searching a career that is sucking the life out of her. And she's panicking because it feels like time is slipping through her hands. And the part that really got me about this. Was, she went on to say that she feels guilty and crazy for having these feelings because so many others have it worse off than she does. You know, she's, she's got a great marriage. She's got a great family. Like, if she looks around, she should be happy with everything that she has. And she's she's I think by, by this email saying that she is happy. But it just feels like something's missing and that she, she feels like. She wanted something more than what she has right now. And I think that that is kind of this continual curse of women. Which is we look at where we are. And we look at where everyone else is and we think that we should be somewhere else. So. We get in this comparison loop and it's never enough. And we are just going to continue to. Seek new things. And not that that's bad, but we're seeking it. Too. Fill a void that we don't know how to fill. So. That's a long way to introduce that today. We're going to talk about comparison. And I think that there are two questions that every midlife woman should know how to answer for herself. And those are, what do you want? And how do you define success? And I think the thing that. Most midlife women tend to wrestle with is this whole idea of what am I doing with my life? Right. I there's a lot of joking about what am I going to do when I finally grow up? What do I want to be when I grow up? And just like the woman who sent me the email. We all couch it in this idea that I'm happy. I have a great life. It just feels like something's missing. I don't know what that is. I can't quite put my finger on it. I don't know why I feel this way. Because if you look at my life from the outside, I'm absolutely crushing it at work. My family is healthy and happy. Um, We take vacations. We drive nice cars. We live in a great house. I mean, If you look at. The life from the outside, everything looks like it's in place. But. If that is the case, then why do we feel so adrift in our personal life? Why do women who I work with say that they are happy enough. But they are profoundly unfulfilled. Their words, not mine, profoundly unfulfilled. And most of the time, I believe it's because they. Thought that they would feel differently once they got to this point in their life, they, they kind of feel like they were taught early on this expectation that they are to grind away, work their ass off for some sort of reward that they would get in midlife. And then they get here. And it just feels like more of the same. Sure. They're dealing with different issues because you know, their kids are moving out of the house. They're going to school, they're getting married. They're moving on. Their parents are getting a little. Sick or maybe dying. We're right in the middle of all this chaos. Right. Couple that with the fact that we are. At the point in our careers where there aren't a lot of rungs that we can continue to climb. Like we're, we're very near the top. And that leads to some. You know what? I don't think it's dissatisfaction so much as it is. This questioning of what is next. I mean. Look at look at how successful I've been at work. What am I supposed to do now? Like I've already climbed the ladder. And some of us, if you're like me, you climb the ladder and then you realize, you know what, this isn't even my ladder. I've been doing all this work and I'm climbing the wrong damn ladder. But. Anyway. Across the board. Is this feeling that. I want something more that something is missing that, you know, I am, I'm getting older. I'm realizing that I might be running out of time. And there is the sense of urgency. Like I got to figure this out. So when we get to that point, There are really two questions that we need to be able to answer. And I know this because. One, my personal experience and two, given the women that I coach. Once my clients figure out the answers to these two questions, they think they say things like I am so excited to finally live the life I want to live. Or. I'm finally doing something that I have wanted to do for 15 years. So they've had the idea, but for some reason they felt like something was holding them back. And then this one I love so much. W a woman told me I I'm finally becoming the person I was always meant to be. Isn't that great. And, and how wonderful to figure that out now in midlife, instead of figuring that out at the end of life, when. You don't have enough time to fix some of the things that you might regret if you don't end up doing them. That's pretty incredible, I think. And I think that those are. Lives that we should aspire to live. So what are the two questions? And I talked about them earlier. If you have been around here at the School of Midlife before you know that we talk about these a lot, because they really are the cornerstone for living that best life for you to step in and make mid-life your best life question. Number one. What do you want? And I know that sounds so easy, right? But across the board, the biggest struggle for midlife women is figuring out what they want. Because. We have so many years of conditioning, so much information that our parents taught us so many messages that we are getting from society and social media and our neighbors and our siblings. And it's like this constant comparison. Right. But. Here's the question. What do you want? Uh, not, not what is your friend want? Not what is your parent want for you? Not what society tells you to want, but what do you want? And by that, I mean, what is it that you actually want? And this is hard for women because we are in the business of making things comfortable for those around us. I know I have talked about this before, but think about your birthday. And your spouse comes to you that morning and says, where do you want to go for your birthday dinner? And you think about it for a second and you know exactly where you want to go. You want to go to that brand new Italian restaurant down the street. You've looked it up on social media. The pictures remind you of that really quaint little restaurant that you are at in Florence a couple of years ago. You've already looked at the menu, you know exactly what you would order your. Well, exactly. Kind of, because you really like the sounds of the cacio y pepe. You also love the pictures of the spaghetti with meatballs. So you kind of have an idea of where you're going to go with the menu. But they've got the crusty bread and you've looked at the wine menu and like everything about it, just screams. This is where I want to go for my birthday. But it's the morning of your birthday. Your spouse is finally asking the question and you know, a couple of things. Number one. Your son has a soccer game, and your daughter has a tennis match. It's a school light, so it's going to be very hard. I mean, you can. Maybe get dinner reservations at six or seven o'clock at night after the games, but it starting to get late. Right. Okay, so you got the kids, they've got afterschool sports. You know, because this restaurant just opened up and you've been following the reviews and the social media and the influencers and every that getting reservations. Extremely hard. Like there's a wait list for the next six weeks. And your spouse is just asking you the question the day of It's going to be nearly impossible to get reservations. And then of course, you know that your in-laws are going to come with you. And you also know that your mother-in-law's best friend has told her that this restaurant is very expensive and the food is meh it's. Okay. Because it's a different kind of style of food than. You know, your mother-in-law and her friend liked to go to there. They're more, how can we go for the early buffet special somewhere in this. This fancy Italian restaurant does not fit in that category. So. With all of that in your head, you respond to your spouse. You know what? I just want to be able to spend my birthday with my family, so wherever we go, we'll be fine. And on. On one hand that probably is true that you do probably want to spend your birthday with your family. But on the other hand, you're doing that because that is how you have always acted. That is how you've been conditioned to respond in this kind of a situation. Whereas you know exactly what you want, but you also know you can't have it. And you don't want to be disappointed. You don't want to actually tell them what it is that you want. And they can't provide that for you. So now you're making people feel uncomfortable or disappointed, or you don't want them to think that you are disappointed. Look, we have all been there and it started a long, long time ago. Like, you know, when we were in family photos and we were told this smile bigger, even though we were standing next to that creepy uncle, that nobody likes. But. We have been so conditioned to defer decisions to everyone else to make everyone else in our life feel comfortable that we do this naturally. And we need to get to the point where we are acting more on our own behalf. We are advocating for ourselves the exact same way that we advocate for our families. You know, if your kid's not getting enough playing time on the soccer field, you're probably there talking to the coach. You're you're advocating on his or her behalf. Same with, think about in the office. You are willing to go to bat for your team, like nobody's business. You know, Somebody needs a raise. You are the first one in your manager's office, talking to them, advocating for them to get that raise. But think about when it comes to you and your raise. I mean. You kind of think. Don't mind numbers just speak for themselves. And you kind of have this feeling that you're doing great work. So at some point someone's going to notice it right. Except that's not the way it works, but because so many of us are used to just kind of sitting back. And letting things happen with this idea that at some point when the time is right or the time is perfect, or everyone else is situated, Then we'll finally spend some time looking at what we want to do, figuring out what we want to do. Doing things for ourselves. And until then, then we just slip back into that conditioning that we are so accustomed to. And. Nothing will change if nothing changes. That fulfillment that you are looking for, you are never going to find it if you don't start doing some things differently. So when it's your birthday and they ask you, where do you want to go to dinner? Start with actually telling them. Because maybe you can't get in for birthday dinner tonight and that's okay. But what if you celebrated this weekend? You're still celebrating your birthday. You're still doing what you want to do. You're letting the people around you celebrate you in the way that you want to be celebrated. This is a win-win, but we have to start by staking our claim actually advocating for ourselves. Say speaking up. Because so often we just stuffed down what it is. That we're feeling that we want. Because we don't want to speak up. We don't want to ruffle the feathers. We want to keep everyone feeling good. But most of the time we do that at our own expense. And we are midlife woman. It's time to pull on your big girl panties and like stand the fuck up for yourself. Like do this. Figure out what you want. And be unapologetic in the wanting. That's number one, number two. How do you define success? Just like, what do you want? This probably sounds very simple. I mean, you have been raised to, define success by, what is your job title and how much are you paid? Some of us go a little bit further than that. Like how big is your house? Our do you have a house on a, on a big kind of address prestigious street? What kind of handbag do you carry? What kind of car do you drive? A lot of times we look at is this person successful by what they have on the outside. And because of, you know, back to society and our parents and what we have been conditioned to want, we also have been conditioned to look at someone and make really a very quick judgment on she is successful. She is not. Here's why going by someone else's definition of success is difficult. It's hard. Because as high performing midlife women, we use success as the yardstick by which we compare ourselves to everyone else around us. And again, we're getting back to that comparison that we started at the top with. But. Comparison that way. It's this dangerous unproductive loop. Because we feel like we are only successful. If we are successful by societal measures. I went to school. I got the degree. I got the job. I got married. I had a family. I raised them up. We have the nice house. We drive the nice cars. We've got a vacation home. It's this constant keeping up with the Joneses. It's this constant comparison. Well, We don't only do it with people that we see around us, but we also do it in our own families. Right. How am I doing compared to my sister? Or how am I doing compared to my brother?, and then, and then we take it one step further and it's like, How, how am I doing compared to the neighbors? What about my friends? And we don't want to get into jealousy. But it's this kind of constant one upping I'm doing way better than they are. Right. Cause, cause we want to, we want to be successful and we want to look successful. And certainly, I mean, beyond even our family and our neighbors and our friends, there are also, there's a lot of comparison that goes on, on social media and in case no one has told you today, most of what you see on social media is a very curated snapshot of someone's life. I mean, I. Well, a couple things here. I always think that women. Should be c I a agents or FBI agents, because if you give me just a couple of bits of information. I mean, give me a couple minutes, couple bits of information. I will tell you exactly where that person lives, who they were married to. Like we can find stuff on the internet very easily. So it's kind of this two-edged sword, right? We can find out lots of information about people that maybe we went to elementary school or junior high school or high school with. And we don't talk to them anymore. In fact, we maybe never even talked to them in school. But one of the gifts of social media is that someone you might know, or those recommendations of somebody that you should connect with on social media. Well, Now you get to compare yourself to people that you don't really even care about. Cause if you'd cared about them, you would still be in touch with them. But no, these are just randos that you went to high school with and you never even really liked, but maybe she's got a really nice new car or maybe she just got divorced because who knows, but you start making up these stories about what's going on in their life, even though you don't even know them. And the back part of that is. Then it comes all back to comparison. And how do you feel about yourself compared to what she is doing even though you don't even know her. You know, nothing about her life other than what you're seeing on social media. So this whole idea that we use comparison is this yardstick to measure. Not only our progress, but we also kind of do it to feel better about ourselves. Right. Look at how much better I am than that person. Um, and that's where the comparison gets real tricky. That's where, when I refer back to the woman who sent the email. And she says, I feel badly because I've got it so much better than everybody else does. So who am I to want for more? I I'm not quoting her verbatim, but that's the gist of it is we use comparison to feel better about ourselves, but then we also have you noticed that it creates this shame or this guilt. Because. Why, why should we feel badly when we already have so much? Right. There's also guilt involved because we start wondering why can't I just be happy with everything that I have, right. I mean, we, there's a little bit of shame because I have, we might think I have everything I always thought I ever wanted, and it just feels like it's not enough. Like something is missing. I don't know what it is. Can't put my finger on it, but it feels like something's missing. So we've got the shame on the one hand, we've got this guilt because why can't I just be happy with everything I have. And part of that comes with the comparison. Like it's all tied up in this messy knot in our life. It's really tough to move forward from it unless we know where we're going. Right. So once we figure out what we want, then how do we, how, how do we. Define success on our own terms. Even beyond the comparison, I'll tell you what, here's another reason to figure out how you define success. For most of us, we're probably more successful than we think. I mean, Maybe we didn't run the marathon in the time that we wanted to, maybe we worked our way up the ladder only so far and decided we wanted to do something else. So we never really reached the top that we thought we were going for. Maybe some relationships have ended or maybe, maybe we got divorced and that just wasn't the way that we saw our lives going. So for some reason, We don't think that we're successful or we're not as Successful as, as we thought we should be or expected to be. But once, you know how you define success? Again, you're probably more successful than you think you are, because if your definition of success is. That you have a job that you love. A spouse or a partner that you love. You have the flexibility to take time off and go on vacation every year. If that's what you're looking at. As successful. And you do all those things. Then you are already a success, right? It doesn't matter what your paycheck is or what your title is. If your definition of success is being in a loving marriage. Or partnership. Doing meaningful work that you love. And having some time to take off on vacation every year. And you do that. Who who cares? What the definition of success is? My personal definition of success is. Doing what I want to do, what I want to do it with the people I want to do it with. It's just that simple. Now hear me. I'm not saying that you should lower your standards here. Um, but if you take inventory of your life and you realize that you have everything you always wanted and you're happy and you feel fulfilled Then I think you need to ask yourself, do you really need to take on more responsibility at work? Do you need to apply for that VP position? Do you need to move to a bigger house? Just so that it's the biggest house on the block. Do you need to buy a new car every couple of years? If you are successful by what you think makes you successful? Then you don't need to work harder so that you can earn more money. You, you don't need to spend more time working your way up the ladder to a job that you don't particularly care for. Once you figure out, how you define success? Then you can create not only a life that makes you happy. But you will also feel fulfilled and satisfied and joyful and grateful. All of those emotions and feelings that most of us have been chasing our whole life. Speaking of chasing things our whole life. I have a question for you when you close your eyes and imagine your dream life, your best life. What does that look like? Do you, do you actually know. And the reason I'm asking is most of us have never really taken a step back to figure out. What, what does that life that we're trying to lead? The, the one that seems so far out there, the one that feels like we haven't quite made it yet. What does that even look like? High-performing women are no strangers to having goals and targets that we are working for but for most of us, We don't actually know what the life looks like that we're chasing because we haven't spent enough time to think about it. And then to put intentional action behind making it a reality. Instead, what we have mainly been doing for most of the decades in our life are, we are just reacting to what is coming at us. We feel like at some point, we'll be able to figure this out. At some point we will. You know, whether that's after retirement, after the kids leave the house. At some point we will be able to focus on ourselves, but not right now. Too many people need us. We're too busy at work. Uh, our parents need our help. Our kids need our help. Someone always needs something from us and because we. are Conditioned to be good girls. That's what we were taught. Then we are more than willing to give of ourselves and our time and our resources. Until there's so little left for us, but that that's what we've been taught is makes us good. I remember. I was working with a coach. When I was starting to, to. Head into that mid-life inflection point, that midlife decision point, the point that some people say you're having a midlife crisis. I do not believe that. I think that that is just a shitty little term that was put together probably by the patriarchy to keep us in our places. Right. But. Um, I was working with a coach at that point, figuring out what do I want to be when I grow up. And she asked me, what did you dream about when you were a little girl? And I know that this is going to sound ridiculous. But I didn't really allow myself to dream as a child. Um, which is crazy because to me it felt childish to dream. I mean, why would you spend time like pie in the sky? What happens then Pollyanna, just, you know, blah, blah, blah. I mean, you can even hear the, the change in my voice because I like really poo pooed it as something that. If you know what you want to do, you don't have to dream like dreaming is for the losers who can't figure out what they want to do on life. And I was. I was smart. I was driven. I did not want to spend my time on dreaming. I said in the fifth grade I was going to be an attorney. And that is exactly what I was focused on for then the next, I don't know how old you are in fifth grade, but like the next 20 years to try and make that a reality. And. I mean. I really had this feeling that I needed to prove something right. That dreaming was, it was a waste of time because I was trying to check these boxes. I was trying to make sure everyone around me was happy. I wanted to make sure that I was working hard towards my goal. I'm not saying that any of this was healthy. It's it's just, it's what I did. And. I got into this pattern really early on, which was. State a goal in my life. Work my ass off to accomplish it. Smashed the goal. And then not feel like I thought I would feel after I did the thing and so double down and get real busy doing the next thing, because surely that fulfillment, I was looking for that satisfaction that must be on the other end of another to-do list or another checklist or another achievement or more credentials after my name, because the only thing that I knew for sure. Was I still didn't feel fully satisfied with what I had. So I must have to work harder or work on something else to get that feeling. And I did that for. Decades. Decades of my life. I mean, I spent so much time. Doing the things that I thought I was supposed to do. That I never once questioned. But why are you doing it? Are you doing it because you want to do it. Are you doing it because that's what you think will make you successful. Is that why you're doing it? It wasn't until I left the law, so after a 20 year career of constantly thinking I will feel differently when I get the next law job. I mean, I was. I called myself a job whore for awhile, right. Because I worked in private practice and then I was in corporate and then I was back to private. And then I owned my own firm for a while and I was partner in a small firm. And then I. I bounced around constantly thinking that what I am looking for must be at the next job, because it's not here. And it was only until after I left the law and realized, yeah, I was damn good at doing that. I, you know, I'd climb the ladder, but like I said, it wasn't my ladder to climb. If I, if I had to go back and do it over again. I probably, well, I wouldn't say I wouldn't go to law school. I'm not going to take it that far because I had a great experience in law school. I, my legal education. Really. I feel like set me up in a number of directions. Um, so I can't say that I wouldn't have gone to law school. Maybe, maybe not. Um, That's kind of one of those things. It's probably like having kids that you can't imagine your life, if you wouldn't have done that. Um, like there are just too many. If we talk about sliding door moments, there are too many things that happened that it's really hard for me to go back and undo that. But. I don't think I would have practiced law for 20 years. If I would have figured out earlier what I wanted and how I define success. I would've done something different earlier. So what I needed to find out for myself, which is exactly what we're talking about. It's not how can I keep working to compare my situation with somebody else's but right back to those two questions. What do I want? And how do I define success? What I know now is that mid-life women don't need to work their entire lives for somebody else. I mean, There will come a time where. Either you reached the pinnacle of your career or it's time to retire or the kids move out of the house. When you need to figure out. What is next for you? Because. Well, I mean, if you think about it, if you have this career and you were working to retirement, And you get to retirement and you haven't thought anything about what happens next? Well, What are you going to do then? Right? I mean. Why wait. That none of us are guaranteed this long, healthy, beautiful retirement. So why are we spending so much time? Which is just our most precious resource, but why are we spending so much time trying to live a life that isn't congruent to who we actually are, or the life that we actually want to live. It might look great compared to somebody else's, but if it doesn't feel good for us, if it's not satisfying or fulfilling to us or for us. Then we need to stop waiting. I mean, God, we get one shot at this life. Right. And none of us know how much more time we have. Let's stop kicking the can down the road. Let's stop waiting until. Some day or the right time or retirement, let's start getting really intentional about making decisions that align with who we are authentically. That get us closer to living our dream life. That put us squarely in the position to make decisions because we know what we want and we know how we define success. So then how are we going to create a life that we can live that allows us to do both of those live the life we want and do it successfully. There are a couple of options coming up that I want to talk to you about. Um, Really the cornerstone of both of these programs, start with the answers to those two questions and. I know that they sound simple enough, but I have to say. If it was that simple, if it was that easy to figure out the answers to those questions, you'd already be doing it. I mean, you would already have the life that feels the most fulfilling to you and the most satisfying. But the fact that you still want something a little different means that there is room for improvement. So there are a couple of options, with the School of Midlife and one is the Best Life Retreat in Sun Valley. And last week's episode, I was joined by Monica Sowders from Texas who attended last year's retreat and talked about how life transforming it was for her. It is. It's one of my favorite weekends of the year. And if you are feeling at all that kind of midlife axed, and you need a little. Prof. Proddings not the word, but you need some encouragement to spend a little bit of time getting quiet with yourself so that you can understand what it is that you want. Um, I'd love to have you join us. It's a small group. It's intimate by design so that we can have, we can really create life transforming change for everyone there. So that's in October and there is a clickable link in the show notes for you to get more information on that. And then we started the founding member cohort of the Gap Year a couple of months ago. And the Gap Year is the School of Midlife's 12 month signature experiential coaching program. We take a couple of different frameworks and we apply them to every part of our life. Which allows us then to create this very vivid picture of what our best life looks like, and then a concrete plan to put that into action. So if you think about a Gap Year between college and starting your career where, you know, you're able to travel and maybe have an internship, but have experiences that you probably won't have the opportunity to have again for much of your life, because you'll be heads down at the job, trying to work your way up the ladder, trying to earn a paycheck so that you can support your family. Well, this is sort of like a sabbatical for you to figure out what your life really should look like. But it's in a. Timeline so that it fits perfectly in with your already busy schedule. But it gives you several opportunities to do a little toe dip and figure out what you actually want to be when you grow up. It's fantastic. The founding member cohort is closed right now, but, um, we will be onboarding the next class. I don't know if we'll do that in September or October, but you can get on the wait list so that you are the first to know. When the next Gap Year onboarding will be. There will be clickable links for both of those in the show notes. I guess I will leave you with this. If you do nothing else this week. And I know if we do something this week, it sounds like there's some urgency to it, but I, I really think that there is some urgency to it. Right. we. none of us are getting any younger. So spend a little bit of time this week, just kind of figuring out how do you answer those two questions? What do you want, how do you define success Get really quiet and listen to. Your intuition. And then once, you know, the answers to those questions as, as You. are answering them authentically for yourself and only yourself. What would need to happen in your life to make both of those, your current reality. Do you have to stop something? Do you have to start something? But. Figuring out how you can start living your life consistent with your own answers to those questions? Not what you've been taught to want. Not, not what you've been conditioned. For. But really, truly, how do you answer those questions then? You're taking the first step in making midlife your best life. And to the extent that you need help with it, you let me know, because at the School of Midlife, we have all sorts of tools and courses and. coaching to help you figure that out. Thanks again for being here today. I. I. love having great conversations with the guests that come on. And, and from what I've heard, you, you are all enjoying those as well. But I do relish the time to spend just the two of us talking through some. Issues that maybe we don't think about on the regular, when we are busy making life happy for everyone else around us. So. Thanks So much for being here. It really means a lot. Make it a great week and I'll see you right back here next week with a School of Midlife is back in session. Until then take care. I have a question for you. When was the last time you spent a day focused completely on yourself. Away from the daily grind, the constant emails and text messages. The never ending question of what is for dinner. Well, if a day sounds good to you. What about an entire weekend away? And before you start thinking that sounds a little too indulgent. Let me remind you that you can't take care of everyone else in your life if you don't take care of yourself first. I am thrilled to personally invite you to join me at the next Best Life Retreat in world-famous Sun Valley, Idaho. Group coaching to figure out what you actually want in life, how you define success and help you lay the groundwork for you to create a life that not only makes you happy, but also makes you feel personally fulfilled. There will be incredible group activities like happy hour paint and sips morning walks a sunrise hike, your choice of spa appointments and an award winning spa. All of this wrapped up in luxury accommodations, gourmet meals, premium drinks, and the best gift bag you have ever seen. I'm telling you this will be one of the very best weekends of your entire life. To keep their retreat intimate. There are only 10 spots available and when they're gone, they're gone. So go right now click the link in the show notes and get yourself on the priority list so that you'll be the first to know when we open up registration I cannot wait to see you in Sun Valley.