The Legacies We Leave: Kit Cassingham

Hello and welcome to The Legacies We Leave, conversations on fulfillment, joy, and purpose. This week I'm happy to bring you my friend and colleague Kit Cassingham. Kit is a longevity coach who works with people to create a smoother transition into elderhood, and we're all going to be there one day. She's been an entrepreneur for over 34 years in a wide range of businesses including B&B innkeeper, coach, consultant, blogger, and Y and longevity coaching. Kit loves pulling from her diverse background to help people piece together their best lives based on their dreams and their goals. And her mission is to inspire people to take better care of themselves so the extra years they live will be healthy and purposeful. Kit, welcome.

Thank you, Alex. I am so happy to be here. It's good to talk with you.

It's good to talk with you too. I'm so glad that you accepted. So look, I just want to jump right in because we have, you know, a lot of questions, a few things to cover. So why don't you start by telling us a bit about your entrepreneurial journey, how you transitioned from, I would say, more mainstream careers into entrepreneurship, and why did you decide to start your own business?

Okay. My path is like that Family Circus cartoon where the kid goes out the front door to take his dad a glass of water, and he puts the water down and, and goes around, climbs over the fence in the back to the backyard, and up a tree and down a tree to the neighbor's house, pets the dog, and comes back, picks up the water, and takes it to his dad, or forgets about the water. Zigzag, circular— that is me. Now, I didn't even tell you the early part of my career. My college degree is in environmental conservation. Never worked in it, though I live it daily. And the— then I fell in love with computer programming. And when— and computer programming is a real chaotic place to be. I then discovered bed and breakfast innkeeping. I got laid off because the boss had different ideas of who she wanted running the inn than me. Fair enough. And I took a temp job working for a company, and I was doing spreadsheets and word processing and stuff for them. And one day they said, we've decided you can't go to Toastmasters anymore. I said, oh, well then I quit. They said, well, we, we, we're, we're kidding. No, you can stay. I said, yeah. And I said, no, I'm not kidding. So I jumped— felt like I was jumping off a cliff without a parachute on my back, and I learned to soar. I love working for myself. During the time that I was working for that company, I was building, um, the, the curriculum that I taught for years on how to be a bed and breakfast innkeeper, and I coached existing innkeepers. And so all of this was building, and I could really feel it welling up. So when I jumped off that cliff, it was the sense that I had an ability to survive, and I haven't looked back. It— this has been a good path for me, and is the zigzag path from bed and breakfast innkeeper to blogger to on and on it goes.

And but I think it's those deviations that make us I think life throws us in different ways because along the way we are meant to acquire different skills for whatever the long path is, right? There's a game, so to speak, that's being played that we're not aware of, but I have to believe that all of the things we do in life prepare us for whatever that path, that path is.

Right. And my path isn't meant to be straight. I was never the kid who said, I'm going to be a fireman when I grow up, and then pursue it and stick with it. In fact, my younger brother commented once, wow, Kit, you've been with this bed and breakfast stuff longer than anything else I've ever seen you do. I didn't realize I had a reputation until then.

But you know what, that's— you learn different skills when you, you know, you do different jobs. And I can't help but think, when you're talking about your spreadsheets and, and the word processor, as a business owner, that's a skill you need to have because you need to be able to manage your business. You need to keep track of your bills, you need to keep track of your clients and different things like that. And those things come in handy, right?

And even my job as a bed and breakfast innkeeper relied on things. In high school, I helped neighbors put on parties. I was the person who'd walk around with appetizers, take the dirty plates, do dishes, and um, that kind of thing. I'd wanted to go to interior design school instead of the college, and when Mom said no, our family goes to college, I just studied the interior design stuff on my— the side. And then I studied feng shui, and, uh, so all kinds of things that apply to running an inn.

Yeah, so it all serves in the end.

It does. Yeah, yeah. I don't regret anything I've done.

Good.

Even when I went up to the Orcas Island in the San Juans of Washington, um, and got into a situation that was insane, um, rather than feel resentful or hurt, I came away going, now I have experience with running a 12-room inn with a 50-seat restaurant and a full bar, and I know what not to do. Yeah. And so that came into serving my coaching clients very well for that too.

Good, good. Yeah, I think that's the important piece is whether it's a good experience or a bad experience, but especially if it's a bad experience, it's about learning that lesson, right? It's what can I take away from this that's going to help me moving forward?

Yeah, yeah. So in fact, that's kind of how I got into the longevity coaching. That when I left my bed and breakfast career, I kept looking for something because I knew I had to give. I knew I needed to help people. And that was before I'd ever discovered or talked about why. I just knew my purpose or whatever was to serve.

So tell me a little bit about what your sense of purpose is. How did you discover it, find it, unearth it? And how do you fulfill that on a daily basis?

Okay, I'm passionate about this subject, so really glad you asked. I already gave a hint of how I came upon it, that I, I had been doing it since high school, and I taught— I worked in the catering kitchen during college, and so service was always something I had done. And when I took Simon Sinek's self-guided course on Discover Your Why, with hours and hours of thinking and processing, I came up with service is my why. Then the Why Institute came into my life, and I learned through their process— I did their YOS discovery— that they call service contribute. And I go, that fits, that works. Um, so that's how I discovered it all. Was I paid attention to what I was passionate about and what I, what I do without thinking, or it's just, it's a knee-jerk reaction. It's just a response on my part. When I walked the Camino de Santiago, lay down in bed to read one night, just so I could, I was gonna fall asleep in a few seconds. But the woman in the bed next to, in the bunk next to me, pulled off her socks. And I kid you not, she had a blister that big on the back of her heel.

Ow.

And I just jumped out of bed and said, okay, I pulled out my first aid kit. I was an EMT at the time, and I just started applying ointments and cleaning it up and fixing it. And I learned that day pads are very handy for blister, for sore heels. If you put a one-day pad, just, yeah.

Yeah, so there you go.

There's an example of— I went from— well, she had that supply, I didn't have it, um, but there's an example of going from almost asleep into action to serve. So I, I do use my contribution, my service, every day. When I went to a coaching retreat, camping spot. Um, one of the guys setting up his tent was having trouble, and I just jumped to it. Nobody else even seemed to notice, and I did. When my husband was sick this week, he had enough energy to get a little bit of food and leave dishes all over the place. And I— you know, you would say, well, of course you did, you're the wife. That's not how our relationship works, but I put them away and cleaned up. Yeah, because I knew that he'd feel better coming back to clean kitchen should he ever get out of bed. Yeah, and he did get out of bed.

No, and I think it's, I think it's important for, for me, service is also key because I feel like if I'm going through this life just for me, it feels empty. It doesn't feel like I've made a difference. And that's one of the reasons why I left my corporate gig, was because I wanted to make a bigger difference than I was making. And the quickest way to do that is through service.

Yeah, yeah. I think that the service we give is the rent we pay for living on this planet.

Yeah, I can see that. That's a, that's a good, uh, definition, I would say.

Yeah, so the idea of retiring and doing nothing puzzles me. Um, one, I know as a longevity coach that that's not good for you. You have to be doing things, and you do— you live longer, healthier if you're giving to others. And, and giving to others doesn't mean you have to have a job and work, keep working. It means you could go to the animal shelter and walk the dogs or pet the kitties. You could read to seniors or the blind. You can go to the hospital and hold the— well, maybe with COVID you can't, but hold newborns whose mothers can't be with them. So there are lots of ways of serving.

Yeah, we just need to find what works for us, right? And yes, somebody, I think it was my financial advisor, recently said to me Um, well, when do you want to retire? And I'm like, why would I retire if I love what I do, right? I think people have this vision of retirement as freedom, right? It's the end of doing my job day in, day out for— you know, I don't say— I won't say for everyone, but I know a lot of people who go into work every day and they're like, oh my God, I gotta do this again, are you kidding me? Right. And yeah, I know they don't like to feel that. For them, it's like retirement is like, can't come fast enough. But there's a flip side, which is if you love what you do, why would you— why would you stop?

I agree. I totally agree. Especially since so many people have their identity wrapped up in what they do.

That's what it is.

If they just retire Now who am I? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

And I, I also, I had a lot of friends who were the Monday through Friday, 8 to 5, 9 to 5 people. My husband and I work and play 7 days a week, and my friends go, oh, you can't do that, you need to take a day off. I say, this works for us, we're very happy. We can take a long lunch in the middle of the week and you can't.

Yeah.

And we, we can go skiing or to the movie in the middle of the week when the crowds aren't there and you can't. So, um, we really do get stuck in these rules that put us into ruts. Yeah.

Yeah. And at the end of the day, we have to choose what works for us. And what works for me is not going to work for you. What works for you isn't going to work for your husband. What works for your husband isn't going to work for, you know, and so on and so forth. It's really—

we—

I feel we don't take enough time to think about these questions and these things, and we end up doing things because that's what's expected, right? That's what society expects. That's what our parents expect. That's what our, our partner expects.

It's what I've always done. Why would I change?

Exactly. And, and yet it's— the world is changing every day, every second of the day. So we need to also change, change with it. And but most importantly, we need to do what makes us happy.

Yeah, absolutely. There's no point in doing it if you're not happy, right? That's the best payback there is. And Uncle Sam hasn't learned how to tax you on it yet.

That's it. Give him a chance. He just might.

I, I, he should know. I shouldn't have said that out loud.

I know, right? Okay. So how has your understanding of legacy and purpose evolved over the course of your life? And how do you see it continue to change, if at all?

My— well, I didn't even think about legacy for the longest time. I heard men talking about legacy in the terms of businesses they started, the money they made, the boys they had as kids, um, that somehow that kept them alive and moved them forward. But I think that my legacy is the gifts I give the world, and that varies. Um, I'm going to live a long time, and partly because I have too much to do, too much to give, to die young. And you might ask What do you mean live a long time? My plan, Alex, is to live to be 150. Now people say, oh, you can't do that. And I said, just because it hasn't been done yet doesn't mean I can't. And I know I won't be the first. Um, but, and so, no, but if I don't, I will live better along the way than if I'm willing to say, well, I'll make it to 85, 95. I have friends who are 98 years old and they're going strong. And one of them survived polio. She's in a wheelchair, but she's vibrant. I have a neighbor who's 93, carries on the best conversations. So I always learn when I talk to her. So for me, legacy, I don't have a specific thing of what I will give.

Okay.

But with my Why of contribute, and I don't think we talked about this. My what is challenge. So I challenge the status quo and the, the job that told me I couldn't do Toastmasters. I challenged that status quo of be at your desk from 8 to noon and 1 to 5. Like, no, I want to be at my desk till I'm finished with this project, which means I'll have lunch from 12:30 to 1:30 or 12:10 though, but anyway, um, but then my Quad of Mastery means that when I want to learn something like walking the way of Saint Francis of the Camino de Santiago, I go deep and broad. When I learned I had ADHD, I learned a lot about that because I thought, wow, with my high performance coaching skills, if I'm struggling with ADHD Imagine what others are struggling with. So I learned a lot about that and contributed to them. And now I'm pulling more of my background together. Nutrition and movement and things have always been of interest to me, and now I can find a way of spinning that to help others, to inspire them to do the same for themselves. My newest, uh, elevator pitch is, or, or little ditty is, uh, I transform the fear of aging. Nice. So that— and I had a friend say, oh, nobody's afraid of aging. I go, oh yeah, they are. And then as she— we talked, she goes, oh, I guess you're right.

But yeah, but I, I think it's, I think it's a couple of different things, right? It's We don't know what to expect for ourselves. We see people around us who age, who aren't necessarily aging gracefully. They're getting sick, they're losing their memory, they're battling whatever it is that, you know, that they need to battle. And we don't know, I think, enough for most of us how not to let that happen, right? How it is about aging gracefully, but not just physically, it's holistically.

Right. So my definition of longevity is it's equal parts of lifespan, healthspan, and purpose. And when you have those components, you know, it's not the years you live, It's how well you live them. If it's your path to die early, like at 80, 85— funny how I would say that— but, um, I want you to go to bed one night and then forget to wake up the next day. I don't want you to linger. I have a neighbor who— I still work with the EMS crews, um, she is a little younger than I am and looks 20 years older than me. Wow. Because she has not taken care of herself. And I just, I cry for her.

So I want, I want to just piggyback on that because you mentioned something earlier. You said lifespan, healthspan, and purpose. What is lifespan versus healthspan?

Ah, okay. Lifespan is the number of years you live.

Okay.

Healthspan is the number of years you're healthy. And right now people are afraid of getting old because they see people on the streets who are decrepit and frail, their memory's gone, and they don't want that. I know my dad was terrified of losing his mind before his body quit. But if you take care of yourself, I mean, I could start today. Improving my lifestyle and have a better ending. But if you could start a lot earlier, it'd be a lot easier. But people don't like change. My high school boyfriend said to me, we were talking about this once, he said, "I'm going to live a long time, but I don't want to change any of my lifestyle. I just want them to put a computer into my skull and that'll be good." And later I thought, yeah, but you still have to have a body to move that computer around with. So, um, my husband, bless his heart, doesn't really want to give up. I mean, sugar is the number one culprit of ill health.

Yeah.

And he likes his sugar, and sugar can be disguised as cereal and bread and pasta. It's not just the white granular stuff that we put in our coffee. And he's not willing to change that. Okay, I'll be a happy widow. He doesn't like hearing that.

You know, you talk about sugar, um, and I don't remember, I heard the story recently about a woman who had a friend who had cancer, and she changed how she ate, and she eliminated sugar. And she had pretty much kicked cancer to the curb. And maybe it was you who told me this story, I can't remember. And but she was really craving sugar, and so she started eating sugar again, and the cancer came back with a vengeance. Insidious, because it's everywhere.

It is. You can't eat processed food, most of it. I won't say there is no processed food without sugar, but there's some form of sweet I have cut sugar from my diet, and in the middle— and I, on January 1st, I gave up 5 or 6 food groups, and I had to come up with an acronym to help me remember what it was I wasn't eating. And I had been through a program where they'd reduced the amount of fruit we ate.

Okay.

So I kind of cut— I didn't cut it from my diet, I just forgot to eat it. But my brain was screaming, and I couldn't understand what was going on. I was agitated, and it was noisy there. And then remember that diverse background of mine? I go, oh, I don't have enough glucose. And that's what feeds your brain.

Yeah.

So for dinner, I had an apple with honey almond butter.

There you go.

Homemade almond butter, raw honey, and an organic apple. And my brain immediately calmed down. It took several more days for it to be quiet. So sugar may have fooled me, but I was reluctant about the honey, but I'm okay with it now.

Yeah. And I think there's a difference, right, between processed sugars and sugar you get from fruit, from honey. I mean, I know from a breakdown perspective and from a— the word I'm looking for— a, like a, the way our body processes you're still going to get metabolic— yeah, you're still going to get that sugar spike, right? But there are ways that you can mitigate that through fats and through protein. So it's not—

well, and here, whole fruit, which has the fiber, fiber, you get a lot— you, you don't get the spike, at least not as much, and it drops quickly. Sugar, it spikes and stays up there.

Yeah. Yeah. So there are different ways that, you know, we can, that you can tackle the whole health, health side of it.

My sugar craze, I used to say I was a sugarholic and I'll bet if I were to have a piece of something with sugar in it, I would slide right back into it. But I, I bought Randy some candy the other day with the store. I wasn't sure I should, but he asked, so I did. And I could smell the peppermint. And I normally would have said, oh, he won't miss these 3 or 5. It didn't even faze me. So I thought, good, I can continue on my path for longevity.

Good. That's good. That's nice positive reinforcement.

Yeah. Yeah, it was. Good reminder.

Yeah, exactly. Feather in your cap. Okay. So, Tell me a little bit about this. Was there ever a time in your life where things weren't really going the way that you wanted them to? Any challenges that you might have faced? Um, how did you get past them? How did you grow from them? What were some of your lessons? Tell us a little bit about that.

Got another 3 hours? Uh, for somebody who zigs and zags and circles around, yeah, I've had a lot of challenges. Life often doesn't go the way I planned it. It was such a great plan, but you know, like, the universe has other plans for me. So what was your biggest, most memorable, most marked, let's say? Well, as— and this is one that everybody can relate to, everybody in the world can relate to this— 9/11 happened. My phone quit ringing. I mean, I even said, Randy, would you call me? I want to make sure that the phone's not broken, and it worked when he called. Uh, so I had to find other ways of trying to reach customers. And I mean, and also there was a recession in the travel industry because nobody wanted to travel. Uh, we couldn't easily for a while anyway. Um, and people who were just about to buy bed and breakfast lost things in the— lost money in the recession. So They didn't want to talk to me about buying a bed and breakfast, and they weren't sure when they could do it, so they didn't want to take a class yet, etc., etc. I, I did a variety of things to bolster and keep me going, um, but that was kind of the beginning of the end for my business. And then we moved over to this side of the state, and I thought this would be a good time to make a break. Okay. But I started blogging, and that made me some really good money in the early days. I had developed— I took my environmental conservation background, my hospitality background, and I created a website for green hotels. I listed the hotel, how to reach them, and which green initiatives that I decided were important, um, they were doing. And that did very nicely. I was quite happy with it. And then I sold it and moved on. So, but with all that going on, I still going— I'm still not quite serving people the way I want. What is it? And I hemmed and hawed, and in my meditation school I learned some things about how to be a better person, and I thought, oh, well, I could teach that, that kind of thing. I won't steal from my teacher and teach his material, but I, I took from my wealth of background and and start— I created a class, but then I discovered the ADHD, and it just kind of kept, uh, I kept pivoting until I even went through the Certified High Performance Coaching, which is where we met. And then one day I was— you know, when you get 2 or 3 signals from the universe, it's somebody tapping you on the shoulder going I got the message of longevity from 2 or 3 very unrelated directions. I thought, oh, that is how I can serve. Now, my business name is Live in Focused Energy, and it's just, it's interesting, all the ways I have served people since I've become a coach, or I was coaching as a bed and breakfast innkeeper, but since I revived it, have all been about helping people bolster their energy. Why do you need energy? Well, because you're going to live a long time. You have a lot to give, that kind of thing.

And energy is the root of everything, right? I'm just reading a book. I just started it. I can't remember the name of the book. Is Spark?

Oh, I just heard about that yesterday.

Yeah. And so I just started reading it a couple of days ago, and I'll have to put in the notes what the— who the name— what the name of the author is, because I can't think off the top of my head.

I can't think of her name either. I just heard her on Drew Perrowitch.

Oh, okay. Or maybe I've just heard her. She's making, she's making the rounds.

Yeah.

I heard her on, uh, Max on, uh, Genius Life with, uh, Max. Um, but she talks about how the mitochondria are, you know, the little batteries and the energy cells of our body. And the root of life is energy because there's apparently a spark when the sperm meets the egg, there's that little spark of energy that creates life, right? That creates a new, a new future, future human, right? And, but that whole foundation of energy is absolutely critical for everything.

Every cell in our body has mitochondria, actually has lots of mitochondria. Yeah, we could take this down quite a rabbit hole. Be fun.

I know.

Yeah, 5 hours, not 3. Yes. So in our American lifestyle, I can't speak to other parts of the world, but we do a lot to damage our mitochondria. Not moving enough, eating the wrong foods like sugar, not sleeping well, not laughing enough.

Yeah. But it's all part, right? It's all, they're all just different pieces of the whole puzzle. Yes. Yes.

And we don't give it enough credit. As science progresses in every realm, we learn more and we, we need to keep updating our operating systems. One of my childhood friends was told when we were 5 or 6 years old, oh, do not go barefoot because that's, you need arch support and you need ankle support and you need all this stuff. To this day, she can't walk barefoot, maybe in the sand. But when I've suggested that she try it, she goes, no, my doctor told me. Yeah, but that was over 60 years ago. Yeah.

Have you read the book Earthing?

There's so many options, uh, things. Dr. Gundry interviewed Steven Sashen, who's the CEO of Xero Shoes. Xero, and Steven talks about the science of why shoes are bad for our feet.

Hmm.

I had explained to people when they were horrified that I was wearing Xero shoes on my Camino, they said, oh, you need more support. And I said, you know, when you break your arm and you're in a cast for 6 weeks, when you take your arm out of the cast, your arm is— it doesn't have a lot of muscle mass.

Yeah.

Yeah, and you have to gently do exercises to build that up again. Well, your feet are the same. Shoes are casts for your feet. I heard Steven say the same thing, and I thought, I hope I didn't steal that from him. I don't think I did.

It's okay, it's okay.

But there's an example of updating operating system that what we've been told and are continuing to be told— shoe companies have to tell us that their shoes good for your feet. Because that's what they do.

Yeah, because we know how well stilettos do for feet with pointy toes. Oh, because that's the natural shape of the foot, right?

Oh, I'm— I must be Neanderthal. I've got spread feet. Those— my feet hurt looking at those. Yeah, my husband calls those sex shoes. I'm going They're, they're sex shoes, you know, stilettos and pointy toes. Yeah, yeah. I was like, no, I don't think so.

Yeah, no, I hear you, I hear you. Um, so tell us a little bit about what— how can I say this— what type of person have you become over the course of your journey? And like, how do you balance taking care of yourself? Because you serve, right? That's what you do. You serve people. So how do you balance taking care of others and also taking care of yourself so you have enough to be able to hit all, you know, all, all the targets?

I took my own advice that I used to give aspiring innkeepers and existing innkeepers. You have to take care of yourself so that you can take care of others. We should be calling ourselves in-givers, not in-keepers.

Okay.

And so learning to set boundaries and say, I can't do that. Setting priorities. Um, as I've— I don't know if what it is that has helped me be this way, but as I've gotten older I have gotten more relaxed, so I have— I let me shine more. I don't think I have to fit a certain corporate look. I laugh more, much more playful, like I was as a kid. And I think it's a refreshing thing to bring to business. And if people don't like it, I'm sorry, go away.

You know what though, we can't be everything to everyone, right? We—

no, that's right.

Naturally will attract some people. We naturally will repel something. Thank you. Repel is a good word because the word that I was coming up with was repulse, and I know that was, that was not necessarily the word that I wanted to use.

Or reject. I mean, either way.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, and in some cases it may be a strong enough reaction to who they're watching, it is a repulsion, but Yeah, repel.

Yeah, that's a better one.

I am— because one reason I didn't have kids is because I didn't feel I had a good role model for being a good parent.

Okay.

And now I feel I could be a good parent. Not going to, but yeah. So I feel like I'm kinder and more patient, more loving, um, give nurturing for little kids. Nurturing, probably a good term. Yeah, for who I have become.

Yeah, and I can see that, because if your why is to serve, right, then being able to—

you—

it's part of that is nurturing, it's caring, it's, you know, absolutely all fits together.

Yep, it does. So, and if you don't take care of yourself then you, you get a shorter temper, you know, you're a shorter fuse. So you have—

you—

your sense of humor is out the window, your anger's flaring all the time, and that's not very helpful to you or anybody around anyone.

No, for sure.

Right, right.

So yeah, it's, um, you know, people always say— I always hear, you know, you can't pour from an empty cup. Or from an M— you, yeah, from— you can't pour from an empty teapot, but whatever, one of those things. But it's true, you can't, you can't. If you don't have— you can give, give, give, give, but there will come a point where you break because there is no more to give. Yeah, so I like that nurturing. I think that's You know, it's— it also meshes with our nature as women, right? Because that's what we do naturally.

Yeah. And it serves well for coaches. I mean, coaches are nurturing people.

Totally.

And we— you and I are dealing in very different markets.

Yeah.

But we are nurturing our clients.

No doubt, no doubt. So if you had to say, this was my biggest lesson along the way, what would that be?

Listen to the messages you get from the universe or your higher power or your gut, wherever those messages are coming from. That's probably my biggest lesson.

It's, it's interesting, because as I've gone through my journey from corporate into entrepreneurship, and as I look back, there were so many signs along the way that said, Maybe you need to look at this. Maybe you should think about that. Maybe have you considered this? And I was so focused on my career. This is what I need to do. This is where my future is. This is that. I would have become a coach years ago if I had just stopped long enough to take a breath and pay attention.

My curiosity has gotten bigger and more broad through my years, and I'm realizing that with that I can pay attention. I, I see the signals and pay attention to them and think about them. So what is that for me? What is that telling me? So apply good healthy dose of curiosity to your life.

Yeah, and I like that you used filter, right? Because our filter definitely influences how we see something, because we can see something as— I was dialoguing on LinkedIn with someone recently who was having a hard time with his current employer, and we were talking about opportunity versus the current situation, and it's interesting because when you're in the middle of the fight, it's hard not to see something as they're doing this to me, right? Or yes, it's something that because it has a lot of— it carries a lot of emotion because you start to worry about, am I going to be able to provide for my family? Am I going to be able to do, you know, medical—

about health insurance, you know, all of those things.

But when you've had a the chance to kind of just settle in and really you take the time to think about, this is what I've done, this is where I am. Do I want to continue in the same direction, or might not this be the perfect time to do something different? Whether it's chasing a dream, pursuing a passion, taking a year to travel, whatever, right? Yeah. But often I think it's difficult for people to sit in that spot of personal inquiry.

And it would help if we would all learn to pause, to breathe, and let things mull around so we can process them. And instead of having the pity party of, look what they're doing to me, it's look at the opportunities being presented. And what is it, the, the Chinese character for challenge is opportunity. And so all those opportunities come from challenges.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because when things are running along smoothly, you don't ask yourself any questions, you just go with the flow. You have no reason to second-guess anything. You have no reason to question anything because, hey, things are just hunky-dory.

You don't even have to listen to what your gut's telling you.

You know, it's true. You don't. Oh la la. So almost just last one, one question and then we'll wrap up. But what would you tell a woman who is struggling to find her purpose?

I'll start by saying pay attention to what you're passionate about. Hmm. Um, bring in— do you know what ikigai is?

Yeah. Okay, don't ask me to describe it, but I, I do know the concept.

It's the Japanese approach of Purpose of four, uh, a Venn diagram of four circles and how they help you know your mission, your vision, your passion, etc., etc. And so if you apply that, um, to your— what you're good at, what you love doing, even if you're not good at it, if you love doing it, then that helps. And you can talk to friends and get some input from them. And you can always do a discovery to find out what they think your why, how, and what are, which doesn't tell you— that tells you your YOS. It doesn't tell you your purpose. I think you can overlay the Ikigai and the YOS, okay, and paying attention to yourself to know, oh, I should be a Girl Scout leader, I should be whatever. Um, though, that's my sense of how we all can figure out what our purpose is. Yeah. And I don't think we have one purpose. I think we have many.

Could very well be. Yeah.

Yeah.

So tell me a little bit more about that. How do you feel you've had more than one purpose in your life?

Yes, I've only had one why. Okay, serve, contribute. But my purpose has changed. In junior high school, I was teaching swimming lessons. Um, in high school, I picked up a Campfire Girls troop with two of my girlfriends to be their, their leader. And these are just little things, but examples. Um, I was a bed and breakfast innkeeper, as computer programmer. Um, I mean, I was an EMT till recently. So you can see, look at the number of ways I have served.

Yeah, that's true, true. Very cool.

And I have no idea what's going to hold— the future is going to hold for my purpose.

You'd be in a heck of a good position.

Well, it'd take the fun out of going zigs and zags in circles, but I have my seat belt cinched down so that, you know, I can ride that bull.

You're good to go. All right, so, um, we're gonna wrap up in a couple minutes. Um, share with us, if you would like, a recent win.

Oh, I very much would like. My decision to walk the Way of Saint Francis which is a 350-mile walk through the middle of Italy alone, took a lot of courage. I again had to coach myself through it. Like, I have no problem being alone, but walking in the middle of nowhere where I don't know the language— I've been studying Italian and I'm going, oh yeah, I can kind of make sense of the words on the page. Speak it to me, I'm probably going to go, but But to me, that was a huge win to say, yes, I can and will do it. Nice.

Nice. Good for you. Good for you. And what are you grateful for?

I am grateful for my husband. He has my back. Nice. He is my supporter. He will challenge me. I'm the wife all men would love to have in the sense of when I say, do I look okay in this? If I don't, he doesn't hesitate to say no. Good. So that kind of thing, I'm very grateful. He supports all the projects I pick up or want to pick up. He goes, yeah, and here's how, you know, let's talk about how you could do it. So I'm very grateful for my husband, and I don't mean that to sound trite. I'm grateful for my husband. No, I'm great. He's, he's my biggest and bestest cheerleader.

Nice. That's the word I was— that was coming to mind as you were describing him. So that's awesome. Cool. All right, so, um, tell us a little bit about where we can find you if people want to get in touch with you.

If—

tell us a little bit about that before we wrap up.

Okay. Okay, my website is liveinfocusedenergy.com. Um, there are a couple of things that I offer that people might want. My coaching includes the YOS Discovery and one-on-one coaching on redefining your new phase of life, uh, as you get older, the new trend, the new thing you've transitioned into. But, and I also have two workshops that I love leading, and I do each one of them monthly. I have a workshop called Energize Me. It's a quick 1-hour class, and that one's free. And then I've got a 2-hour workshop that's really a condensation of a 6-week class I taught in early COVID. That class was called Transform Fear into Action. Now I call the workshop Face It to Change It, because people will say, I don't have fear. Well, do you have stress, anxiety, uncertainty, feeling a little edgy? Yeah, face it to change it.

Cool.

And that's a 2-hour class for what I think is a nominal fee, and you can find all of that on my website. Awesome.

Great. Well, Kit, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for spending this time with me and with my peeps. I can't thank you enough. It's been So much fun. And I guess let's see where this journey takes us.

Thank you for having me. This is— we see we did zigs and zags and circles in your interview, which was very carefully outlined. It was a lot of fun.

True to form.

Very good. Thank you very much, Alex.

Thank you. Talk to you soon.

Bye. Bye.