Rejuvenate Your Face and Your Life

Welcome to the Living to 100 Club Podcast.

Here's our host, Dr. Joseph Casciani. Good day to everyone. I'm Joe Casciani, your host for the Living to 100 Club Podcast. Our conversations are all about aging well and doing what it takes mentally and physically to live longer and healthier. Our guests share insights and recommendations about successful aging, stories of perseverance, and inspiration about our future. On today's program, we're excited to have as our guest Alice Inoue, often referred to as Hawaii's thought leader. Alice is an award-winning author who shares her strategies for rejuvenating our lives, from finding answers to life, life's challenges, to the practice of face yoga. In this conversation, we'll discuss how our self-image impacts our happiness. We'll talk about face yoga and how it gives a sense of rejuvenation, and we'll also cover Alice's own educational establishment in Honolulu, Happiness University. First, some background. As a nationally award-winning author and life expert, Alice Inoue has dedicated her life to helping others find answers to life's challenges. As Hawaii's thought leader and celebrated expert, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have found clarity over the past 20 years through her work. Her unique brand of life wisdom is featured in her 8 books on self-growth and happiness, as well as her long-running column at Midweek, Hawaii's largest publication. Alice, welcome to our program.

Thank you, and I am so happy to be here. Thank you.

Great, great. I'm so looking forward to our conversation. I always open by asking our guests to tell us a little bit about the journey that brought you to where you are today?

Okay, well, as you mentioned in my, my opening, I have a business or a school called Happiness U, or Happiness University. And sometimes people think, well, Alice, you might have been— you probably were born happy to happy parents, and you grew up and had such a happy life that eventually you opened Happiness U. But in fact, the opposite is actually true. I think I was one of the most unhappiest people when I was born. I wanted life to be something it wasn't. I wanted people to serve me and I wanted life to be easy. And the harder it seemed to me. So I went through a lot of challenges, emotional challenges, mental challenges, eating disorders, all of that, only to find around my 20s or 30s, and now I'm a few years away from 60, that I had more control over my life than I thought. And I began to understand probably in my, not until my 30s perhaps, that what I think about is going to make the biggest impact in how my life unfolds. And fortunately, science started showing that. I found the science in about 2008, 9, 10, 11, right around there. I started really understanding that there's been research done on how we can mindfully create our lives in a very different way. So that led me to wanting to help more and more people to understand it, because I understood I had gotten through it. Now there's science to back it. It seemed like a perfect opportunity to share that in a broader platform.

Great. So all of this has kind of coalesced into your current professional work. You know, that's a common refrain I hear, that we, we eventually learn that we have so much more control over our lives than we had earlier thought. So You're just affirming what I've heard so many times. Yeah, so how do you spend your professional time these days? What, um, what are your activities like?

I'll just say that I've been in this particular life guidance business, and again, I'll say I don't have any degrees as a therapist or psychologist, not a doctor such as yourself, but a lot of just life, life and talking to people. And so about 20 years ago, I decided to, to help people in the way that I could. And it was most personal, little community classes. But over the pandemic, I ended up really serving the corporate community from nonprofits to government to federal, locally, nationally. Businesses started to find that they really needed this softer side of training, not just compliance and how to sell more products. I now spend about, oh gosh, I'm gonna say 70% coaching corporate clients, speaking to companies and organizations. I literally talk to 100 people individually a month. I talk to thousands of people each month over Zoom or in person, but I still maintain my private sort of, I call it my private practice of people. And we have a very large community, the Happiness U community, and we all have this, this, our own little hui, our little group online that we, we meet at and we talk about things such as, such as—

yes, great. I love that. Yeah. So what you're talking about is the, uh, softer side of training. It's kind of the intangibles, right? It's the stuff that we can't always measure or quantify, yet we know how important it is in terms of our day-to-day work and, and personal life. Yeah, that's great. That's great. So, um, tell us about the university, or Happiness U. Um, you're the founder. Why did you start it? What do you offer? Who, who are the students?

All righty, so this is what happened. I, I love to just write a book a year. That was kind of— once I realized that I could write, uh, something and share my words, I started deciding to write a book a year. And in 2013, I was sitting there trying to figure out what I wanted to write, and I just couldn't couldn't seem to break past this block. And I asked myself what I would ask any client, well, what do you really want? Because if I really wanted to write the book, I know I would have started to write it. I said, what do you really want? And I just sat with myself and the answer came, I want to teach people about life and happiness. It is not some elusive thing. And I had seen over the course of the 15 years or so that I had worked with people, that it's not as hard as we think. Sometimes we just need to point ourselves in a new direction. So in that moment, and I will say it was one of the most inspiring days, I remember like it was yesterday, I had this vision of having a school and I wanted to call it the School of Life. Everything you didn't learn in school about life. And I was so inspired that I came up with 20 101 courses in the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual realm. Spiritual meaning, What is your meaning and purpose? The physical. I also know how to do something called feng shui and clutter clearing and organization. So classes that just span the realm of life. And I, um, opened the school based on that actual physical location. Uh, all the banks and all the finance people said, that's the dumbest thing you could ever do. Just do it online, do it on the phone. But I wanted a place where people could meet. See each other, hug, connect. Uh, and so I started Happiness Shield 2013. Yes, we are in our 10th year. Uh, 10th year, we just celebrated our 9th anniversary.

So it's really bricks and mortar setup, right? It's not just the online virtual. So you have classrooms, you have—

yes. Well, let me say this, the pandemic really kind of revamped everything because for 2 months or 2 years I couldn't even use our classroom. So we've regrouped online now, which allows us to meet more people. It doesn't mean I won't go back into brick and mortar though.

Yeah, because most schools did close during the pandemic.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, yeah, so it's a school of life. Yes.

But the reason why it's called Happiness U is because everyone said, "School of life? Life is so hard. Why would you want to do that?" And I said, "No, no, no, it's about happiness." So that's how it evolved into happiness. But it's a school of life. It's like, this is what you go through in life.

Sure. And you have teachers and students and they take courses, right? And they— Yeah. Are there exams or term papers?

No exams. No exams. This is all self-study. You know how well you're doing based on how well your life is unfolding. And we have, we actually do have a psychologist and actual therapists to business people to just all people who are experts in their field of whatever it is they're doing. So I kind of hold that space for all these different people too. It could be for a nutrition person, which is the physical health, to someone that's teaching about life Yeah, I love that.

I love that. So you bring a lot of the different perspectives together and people can really learn, learn about not just how they've kind of made it through their own lives, but some new strategies, right, to get over some of those, some of those bumps that I love to talk about too. As we age, there's always going to be bumps and potholes. So here are some strategies to continue to move forward.

Yeah. Yes.

So no degrees, I take it? I mean, certificates? No. Okay.

Yes. None. It really— and also, I think, and maybe you would agree too, that sometimes coming together with like-minded people who are allowing you to express yourself and share your difficulties and offer what has helped them. So I'm not saying I know all the answers. Like, I think our community sort of supports each other through that. And, uh, sometimes our families, our friends may not have the same intentions for us. They have what they think is right. And so sometimes we just need a safe space to just process and go through some of the things that life brings us. Not always easy.

Yeah, no, I like that. It's really helping with the awareness too, what the choices are and what the disagreements or conflicts are.

Yes.

So, um, you said a couple of times that We know life is not as hard as we make it out to be, but we also face challenges, right? There are life challenges that come along. Can you describe a couple of them from your perspective?

So I mean, everything from saying yes when you really want to say no and how to draw stronger boundaries, not maybe— maybe valuing yourself in the way that you might find greater ease in your life from Things like jealousy and envy, we have it no matter how old we are. Comparisons to other people, stuck on negative thoughts, not knowing what your purpose is in life, feeling just all of those things that we go through that sometimes you just need a little mechanism, like you said, a strategy and some support to kind of move out of those those, those bad— I'll just say bad thinking habits. As many times we— I think people have, um, yeah, those are kind of the things. I mean, and oh, irritating people, that's a big one. People that irritate them, or people that tell them what to do, or just being lost in life sometimes, wondering, what do I do now that my child is off to college? Or now that my spouse has passed away, how do I— do I date again? Am I too old? That just— all of those things that come up for us in life.

Sure. Yeah. And I know when you you and I spoke earlier, there are topics that are themes that are relevant to the 50, 55-plus age group, right?

Yes, yes, yes. I'll tell you one of the new themes that came up for me. So when you're dating, when you're younger, you, you're in your 20s or 30s, you, you ask different questions. Like, you want to know what their financial background is, what their idea on debt and money, and all those things you deal with in your 20s. What I found lately, and maybe you found this as well, that when women and men start to— are in their over 50s, 60s, 70s— I have a woman who's 80 years old that went on Match.com, uh, 20 dates, and found a man that now she's living and very compatible with at 80. So she met him when she was like 78. But anyway, the question that has to be asked now is women especially seem to say that they're done taking care of their husbands in the past. So they want a companion to travel with, see movies with, do things together. So the question you have to ask now is, who is the emergency contact? Do you have someone that— do you have your will, your trust, you have all your, your, your documents in place? Because I don't want to be your caregiver. That's the, that's the conversations that you're having now.

Yeah, yeah, I can imagine. I mean, for, you know, practical purposes, um, who is your contact? Do you have supports? I don't want to be necessarily the primary resource giver anymore. Yeah, caregiver. Yeah, yeah, that's good. So, um, you have, you have students who are in their senior years, 70s?

I do, I do. And it's interesting, I'm, I'm just 2 years away from 60, so I prob— I got into this business in my late 30s, so my people have grown with me. And that's how I got into this. As I'm aging, I'm looking for ways to embrace my place in the timeline of life. And I realized that some of my closest people, even my dear, dear assistant Judy, who helped me when I first started my business 20 years ago, she told me the other day she's almost 80. I couldn't believe it because she looks— she's just the fountain of youth. So I get inspired by people in my own community that are great models of '70s and '80s living, and that inspires me to want to share that with more people. So, yes, my community has really grown.

Yeah, so good role models too. I'm sure a lot of your students— I mean, to me, age is, it's only a number. It's, it's not so important because it doesn't say anything about what we should or shouldn't be doing. Yes, so much more relevant what our functioning performance is rather than our chronological age. So I'm sure people get good role models and learn information that helps them to push forward and get over those potholes, as I like to call them. We have the, the bumps and the, you know, the hurdles that come along. Do you see students then who are kind of inspiring, uh, other people there in your programs?

Absolutely. And I think that I think, as you know, that inspires me to want to serve more. And so what I found, the ones to me, the students or members we call them in our Community, that are thriving in their life, I can see it traces right down to mindset. They look for what's possible, what they can do, what is available to them. Where they can grow, what's next. That type of thinking over time has literally, to me, rejuvenated them. I seriously, I can't— I remember some of these women when they were in their 60s, and I really will say in their 70s and 80s, they look younger, their spirit is brighter, and it is how they look at what is going on on a daily basis. And I don't think that it's— I think all people have a little bit of fear about the future and what's next and what will happen to me. And I think a lot of our members do have— I should say, do not have maybe siblings or children to take care of them. So there's a lot of concern over that. But it's staying on that path of recognizing that we really are the creators. And if we think we're old, we're going to be old sooner than you know it. See yourself as thriving, you will actually thrive. It's so profound when you see it in action, but so difficult when you're not there. It's so difficult when that is not part of how you, how you are raised or how you think, right?

When you don't know that's another option. I'm so glad to hear you say this because I, I know we're on the same channel, because that mindset and determination, resilience, that fortitude, whatever it is that keeps us moving forward. And again, it's— the potholes are big and the potholes are small. It doesn't matter how we— how do we interpret these events that happen to us and how do we explain them. And yeah, sometimes it's a, it's a heavy hit and I've got to dig deep to get forward, you know, to keep moving. But, um, it is what, what that self-talk is, and that's going to color how well we cope, how well we cope. Oh, true.

And I always— and people People to me think, oh, I shouldn't be thinking this way, I shouldn't be thinking that way. But I think, and you can share if you are of this mindset or not too, but I always think that we're gonna have negative thoughts, we're gonna have these thoughts, and it's fine to have these thoughts. Allow those thoughts. We don't wanna suppress those thoughts. Be present with what you're really feeling. But now let's focus on something different. So it's almost like allow the negative, but let's emphasize a lot more of what is good, what is possible, what you are doing. So I came up with this thing called the 3 A's, and it's called accept, adapt, and allow. And it just is a simple way to recognize that you cannot fight reality. So we accept whatever age you are, you accept whatever your physical ailments are, we accept it. We accept exactly what is, and then we adapt. If you can't do A, B, and C, 'Can you do X, Y, and Z?' The more that we can accept, adapt, and then allow life to unfold just the way it's going to unfold— we all have a life, we all have a destiny. Some of us may or may not know where, or where that leads us, but if we just allow the journey of life to unfold by having, um, this intention to, to look at a different perspective than perhaps what we've been seeing, then we can allow— and I'll use this word— the universe to bring the situation, circumstances, and everything you need to help you to thrive. And I really know that if we can tender and really cultivate a new way of living in the moment, moment by moment, then it becomes minute by minute, day by day, week by week, month by month. And all of a sudden, here you are saying, wow, a couple months ago I was living in fear of this. My life hasn't changed, but now I'm feeling better. And as we feel better, we manifest more better. And not to say the negative isn't there, it's always there. And I think people have this misconception that I just don't want any bad, I want all good. And that is the biggest fail of all mindsets to me.

Sure.

Your thoughts, please.

That's where that positive thinking becomes toxic. We talk about toxic positivity and we don't recognize any of the negatives. Yeah, you're right, there are going to be the negatives. And how do we interpret the events? Like I said, maybe the hearing loss or The vision, you know, kind of slows down, or we kind of lose some of that acuity that we had. So how do we explain these events? And I like your 3 A's. I always add the importance of awareness and being aware of—

4 A's, yes—

how we're reacting. And how, because it's that awareness that allows us to make some choices, it allows us to say, okay, this happened, how am I going to react? I know a year ago I would do this, maybe today I'm going to try that. So there's some, some awareness that I'm doing something different that isn't the way I used to do it. I'm not defined by who I used to be. I'm who I am today. I'm not stuck in some of the old roles or old patterns or old thinking styles. So I'm, I, I have a fresh perspective today. Yeah, this is good. This is good stuff. You're— yeah, we're— I like that we're on the same channel. Um, You talk about rejuvenation. Can we become young again, or how do we reverse aging? Can we do that physically?

Yes, we can. I think so. And I think if nothing else, you know, trying, uh, trying versus accelerating yourself towards, uh, towards, um, more, more things you don't want is better. So I think it really, like, I think it's all about what we're talking about. And I'm sure you talk about this in as part of what you do, it's that awareness of, hey, you know that whole thing they used to say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks? I think you can. Like, I don't feel like— I will say my father, if he was alive today, he would be 106 years old. So he was born way back in the day, had me very late in life. But he used to always say, oh, I'm too old to learn. I'm too old to learn anything. And I heard that when he was like 50, 60. So I really think that, yes, rejuvenation is possible. For me, it's all what are you focusing on? What are you talking about? What are you thinking about? That's, that's really it. That to me is, is absolutely it. I also think that if we start looking at the end being whatever it is, like 70 or 80 or 90, whatever that end is, we're going to see ourselves, oh my gosh, we only have 20 years left, only 10 years left. So what if we saw ourselves living? And it's— I think we would fight it internally to say this, but what if we said we're living to 120 years old? Then you're just getting going at 60 or 70. So it really, it's a mindset. And yeah, and I, I think, I think that anything is possible if you just give it a chance, really. And I think we just don't give it a chance. We don't think it's possible for ourselves. We might see these other people, like in my community, like the few women I'm thinking of and men that seem to not age at all. They just have that youthful vibrancy. Others will look at them and say, oh, that's them. That's not me. And right there is where I think we have to stop and say, why not? Why not you? And we have so much more control. Stubborn sometimes.

And it's a good point. I would say it's, it's, uh, we have to be very careful about comparing ourselves to others because there are always going to be people who are better off and people who are not as well as, as we're doing. So that's a trap. All we can do is compare ourselves to who we were last year.

Exactly.

Yeah, that's where the comparison comes in.

Exactly. But I will say something about physical rejuvenation.

Yeah, please.

Over the— I think we all look in the mirror and we wanna look our best. I don't know anyone who wakes up and says, I wanna look old, be old, act old, be sick. Like, I think we all intrinsically have a desire for our goodness, for our best self. And I've noticed as a female moving from my 40s into my 50s and now nearly in my 60s, I would notice when I looked in the mirror that I was always looking at what's wrong, like, oh no, another wrinkle, another jowl, more eye bags, my hair's graying. Like, I used to look in the mirror and actually knowing all that I know, that would be my first go-to. And it was interesting because over the pandemic, I thought it would be fun to maybe get a group of our community together and do this 2-month-long Youthify course. Course. And Youthify, I just made up that name, it's not trademarked, I just made up Youthify. We're going to do a Youthify club. And we would meet once a week on Saturdays on Zoom. And I gathered all kinds of research on reverse aging that I could, rejuvenation studies. I found vision exercises, I found face exercises, I found that drinking water in the morning. And so I found all these things. So we all kind of agreed as a group to go through this. And because I spearheaded it, I needed to go and learn a little bit more about this stuff. So, I learned about vision exercises. And I had learned about them years ago and had tried it. And I'm not sure if you're familiar at all, but there's eye exercises that can be done that actually start to help to rejuvenate the lens in your eye. And I actually went from using readers to not using readers. They're just a series of exercises that you do. And so I brought that back into our Youthify class. And then I found this thing called face yoga. And it's the craziest thing. I had never heard of facial exercise. I exercise my body. I understand that. But it never occurred to me that we could exercise our face. So out of curiosity, more than anything, I started, I bought a book called like 5 Minute Face Yoga. And I did a couple exercises while we're watching TV at night. And then I bought an app and I did a couple exercises. And one day, my other half, I woke up and said hello, and he looked at my face. He says, "Wow, you really look great." And then I ran to the mirror and I looked and I noticed that all of my droopy skin had sort of lifted because the muscles on our face are attached to our skin. If we tone our muscles, it makes sense that it lifts the skin. So I went full bore on this whole thing. I bought the books, I got the videos, and I really did learn about facial yoga, so much so that I went and got certified, and I now, I started a face club. But anyway, just to share with you what it is. We have 57 muscles in our neck and our face. If you don't exercise them, the only time you use them is to make an expression. The more you make a certain expression such as frustration, because our emotions show up on our face, you know how when you pinch your eyebrows together, you get what we call the angry 11s between the eyebrows? Well, if you're constantly frustrated or squinting, your face will freeze with those muscles. So if we learn how to relax the muscles and then tone the muscles, we actually learn to, we get a healthier face. So part of face yoga is about relaxing the facial tension that we have. We store it a lot in our masseter, which is our chewing muscle, our neck, right in our forehead. So you learn to relax the face. You learn to tone the face through a series of funny looking, make funny faces to tone the muscle. And then we massage the face to bring in blood flow and increase collagen and elastin. My before and after pictures are ridiculous. And it's not just inspired. So I, so I started a face club.

Yeah, the face club. That's great. That's great. So can you talk us through an exercise or two?

Yes.

Yes.

And you know what I, what I'll do is for your, for your, for anyone who's listening.

Sure.

I'll give you a link and you can go on there. And I actually have like a 40-minute free facial workout that you can actually do. So one of the things that you, that you can do that's really, really good, it's such a visual thing that it's hard to show via a podcast. But if you, so there's a muscle, everybody knows that muscle that is, it's called the platysma, but it's a muscle that attaches from your jaw. It's your whole neck. It's your neck muscle. And one thing that people, none of us like is turkey neck. You know, we don't like those lines that start showing up in our neck as we start to age. You can actually just say the word E, like E, and when you say E, it starts to lift that chest muscle. E, and you say E, and then you'll pretty much learn to control that platysma, that muscle. I do it in the video. Anyway, you could just do it a couple times while you're watching TV. The muscles on your face are so thin that they respond so quickly. Unlike a bicep, you have to work out for months before you see some toning. Your facial muscles are so responsive that people within our, at our club, within a month you start seeing like lines reducing. And it is reverse aging at its best. Wow. And yeah, it's exciting. And we have men, we have a gentleman with Bell's palsy that prior, and he still had a little, kind of immobility in his face and he's gaining some mobility back. Yeah, it's, it's, it's inspiring to see yourself look better. Now when we look in the mirror, we look for what's better versus what's worse. So when we have that awareness of putting attention, positive attention on our body and taking that time to work out our face together on Zoom and just— we have a small group. It's not a big group, but It really does help us to focus on getting to where we want instead of feeling like, oh gosh, I have no choice but just to slide to the grave from here.

Yeah, sometimes we feel so helpless, we throw our hands up and say, what will be will be. But in fact, there are things that we can do to really take some initiative over what happens to us in our future. Yeah, so I know we'll get to the details in a minute, but Your free facial workout is— what's the link?

Oh, it's, uh, your— Y-O-U-R— happiness and the letter U. So it's yourhappinessu.com, and it just says backslash gift. So if you go backslash gift, and maybe I'll give it to you and then we can post it under, uh, this, this talk. But it's— you go there, it's just— and then it also talks about our Happiness U community if somebody is looking for Yeah, being around like-minded individuals who are there to support you no matter what. We have young people in there that are very inspiring. Our oldest is 80. I'll say most of our community is 50 to 80.

Yeah.

And it's kind of nice. I come on every week. I do talks like this every week on different topics. And there's, you can watch videos and you can join in. The other day we had a sleep expert come on to talk about insomnia. I do classes on irritating relationships. I mean, you live with people, you love them, but they still irritate you. So how do you, how do you minimize the challenge?

Yeah, great, great. Well, I'll be sure to review the website and the links before we wrap up. But great information. That sounds like great resources too at Happiness U. And I know one of your Your background specialties was in clutter, and as you mentioned, Feng Shui.

Yes.

Help us understand clutter. I mean, we know what physical clutter is. Is there mental clutter? Is there emotional clutter?

Yeah, let me talk about this. Thank you for even asking this question. So clutter are things— I define it as unused, unloved, unorganized, and unfinished. Unused, unloved, unorganized, or unfinished. So we over time build this up in our environment over time. So we're gonna start with physical clutter. Now, we as human beings are attached to everything in our environment. We are attached to the people, we're attached to the books we like, we're attached to our cell phones, we're also attached to our things. When we go to clear our clutter, and every so often we do this, we go to our closets, we want to donate, we see there's a lot there. It's very hard to let go because we are attached, whether it's valuable or not, we are attached to these things in our environment. Now, the older— oh, wait, wait, let me go back. So we're attached to everything. We are living human beings. We have energy. Clutter has dead energy. We like balance. So what happens is we end up sort of fueling our environment with our energy and our clutter ties up our energy because it's dead. It's unused. Whenever you clear out clutter, you release energy back to yourself. That's why it feels so good when you clear your closet. You could be somewhere else but still feel lighter because your things are not— these unused, unloved things are not in your environment. When we go on vacation, what do we do? We take a suitcase and we enter a room that has no history, no clutter. So we have more energy to go and sightsee and do things because we're free from our things. So the older things get in our life, the more they drain our energy. The more energy is drained, the older we feel. Do you get it? So that every day your things are aging, Every day your things are getting older. So are you. And these things are tying your energy to the past of 1980, 1990, like all of those things. So when we release our clutter, we bring energy back to ourselves. We rejuvenate ourselves. So that's just the physical clutter. Mental clutter, the way that I define it, is anything you've committed to that you haven't done sticks in your head like clutter. If you walk in your house or you're opening a drawer and it's messy and you say to yourself, 'Oh my God, this drawer is a mess. I can't find anything. I better clean this drawer out.' But you've been saying that for 20, 30 years. That is clutter in your brain. You may as well just say, 'I am never going to clean that drawer out. It's as good as it gets. I find what I need when I want it.' Close that up because anything unfinished becomes clutter because it drains our energy. As we get older, we need all the energy we can get. We cannot afford to just finance our environment with our energy. Emotional clutter. Talk about emotional clutter. If you're holding on to resentment because of something someone did or didn't do to you in the past, that is clutter. That ages you. That to me is clutter. So what we wanna do is we want to see how every single thing in our life has served us. I mean, you are who you are today because all of the disappointments and disagreements and love and joy and and resentments you have, you are who you are today. So if we can be thankful for our life and those people that betrayed us because we got lessons from that, we can find the gifts in all the past. We live in the present. That's youthfulness, not being tied down by all of the stuff in the past, physical, mental, emotional. That's sort of in a nutshell.

Yeah. Wow. That's incredible. So yeah, the past, we have great memories and vacations and holidays and photographs and all that, and people kind of hold on to those good old years, right? I mean, we don't want— and meanwhile, we're depriving ourselves of enjoying today.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

In front of us. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what you're talking about, some of that, some of that clutter that just kind of hangs around. It also serves as kind of a protection because it's familiar, it's comfortable, it's cozy, and Tomorrow, I don't know. So tomorrow's a little bit unknown, maybe a little bit anxiety arousing. But I, you know, the whole notion of kind of reminds me of bucket lists and making these lists of what they need to do and what they need to accomplish. And to me, we're never going to, we're never going to do everything we want to do, right? We're never going to accomplish everything that's on our list. And somebody talked about the joy of missing out instead of the fear of missing out. So, you know, it's kind of accepted. I love that there's some joy of missing out, that we're not going to be able to go after everything. So accept that and enjoy what we can. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The other line that I'm reminded of is from Dan Sullivan. He's a motivational speaker, and he says our future should be bigger than our past.

Yes, yes, yeah.

So that's, uh, letting go of a lot of that clutter and being open to what's ahead, right?

Yes. And so I have this saying that's on my office, um, like on the entrance of the office. It says, your whole life has prepared you for what lies ahead. And I really feel like the older we get, the more we have, the more value we have, and the more value we can— we have to spend on the, the tomorrows of our life. So it's such a— it's such an inspiring conversation to have Now that I am almost 60 and I need to start really living, living it more than ever. And I can tell you, if I showed you a picture of myself at 40 and today, you might even say I look younger, not necessarily physically, but my spirit. I have found a greater joy in my age than I ever, ever could have imagined, honestly.

That's great.

Yeah.

Yeah. You have a great spirit. You have great spirit. Yeah, I love it. So, um, you've written a lot of books, Alice. Um, can you recommend one or two to our listeners, uh, kind of pertaining to all you're doing?

I will recommend one that actually just came out last week. I didn't even have a chance to update my bio, and it's called The Best of Mindful Moments. The Best of Mindful Moments. It's on Amazon just as of last week. And what it is, it's this nice little book of, um, it's a book, it's a little square book. It's a great book for gifting, but it has like a page of wisdom. Every page has some kind of wisdom. And, uh, one of the favorite— I might not say it the way I wrote it, but one of the things it says, be thankful for your eyesight when you look in the mirror and all you can see are bags and wrinkles. So it's just ways to look at life that maybe open up a different perspective. And there's hundreds of these little moments to read. These are, this is, these are like little fortune cookie books to me. So yeah, that's my favorite one. It just takes, it takes about 30 seconds to read one, and sometimes they can be exactly what you need, exactly at the right time, to move you out of a mindset that might be not really healthy.

Yeah, yeah, just that little catalyst that we need sometime, right? Yeah.

So that's the one I would recommend, the types of books that I have. I have one that might be of interest. It's, uh, It's called Feng Shui Your Life. So we know of Feng Shui because of the environment, and it is, it has some, how do we clear out clutter and how do you, where do you start? How do you start? But every chapter relates it to the inner Feng Shui. So Feng Shui, if you don't know what that is, it's a philosophy about arranging your environment for greater energy flow. And it's based on traditional Chinese principles as well as environmental psychology. But anyway, this book talks about how to kind of set up your environment while you're simultaneously recognizing where in your inner environment do you need to clear some clutter. So it's sort of a mind, body, spirit clutter clearing. Very, very simple, easy to read. Nothing fancy in any of my books. They're just really simple.

Good. Feng Shui Your Life.

Okay.

Yeah. I'll be sure to list both of these on our program notes as well as the links So, um, great conversation. Just great. I love this.

I love talking to you.

The spirit and energy that you offer. So, but I'm sorry to say we're out of time for today, but before we wrap up, I just wanna remind our listeners to visit my website, livingto100.club, to sign up for our email list and download a free copy of my 9 Tips to Make Living Longer Enjoyable. While you're on the website, be sure to peruse our library of blogs. And podcasts. We've been talking today with Alice Inoue. Alice, thanks so much for being a guest on our show. For those who might want to contact you, how can they do that?

Wow, we would love for you to contact us. Now we have a— our website is yourhappinessu.com, and on there you'll see corporate offerings. But what I wanted to talk about was the Happiness Yuhui which is simply— hui is a Hawaiian word that means group or community. And we have a group of like-minded individuals, and I'm on there weekly. And it's just a nice little community that we enjoy being a part of. So I just want to invite your listeners to know about it in case that's of value. It's a subscription, and you can join in, join out anytime. It's $30 a month. The value is really significant if this is of interest to anyone.

And that's Happiness Hui, H-U-I?

It's called, yeah, it's called H-U-I, Happiness U Hui. And it's actually, we have a website, it's called happinessuhui.com, but you can get it through our main website. And if you're interested in the face yoga, it's all on the main website, that yourhappinessu.com.

Well, great, great information. Thanks so much for being on our program today. I really enjoyed this. I'm sure my listeners enjoy it as well.

Thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed this. Thank you so much.

Great. And thanks to all of our listeners for tuning in. Hope to see you next time.

Hey everybody, Jared Sylvester here, host of Retire Repurposed. This podcast is dedicated to help people transition into fulfilling and purposeful retirements. Retirement is a big life change. In fact, the two most dangerous years of a person's life are the year they were born and the year they retire. Few people could just flip the switch from working a career 30 or 40+ years, retiring on Friday, without methodical steps to living what we call a repurposed retirement. To listen now, search Retire Repurpose on your favorite podcast platform, Senior Resource, or Life Audio.