Ep 38. The Life You Live

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 38: The Life You Live.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own wellbeing and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s gonna be fun. Let’s go.

Hey friends, how are you today? It’s an early Thursday morning. It’s raining outside here at the beach. I am loaded up in my car and I’m about to head down to Newport Beach for a long weekend with Jeff and with friends. And I’m really looking forward to that. Also, in light of the recent shootings in Texas I have just been very sad and very heavyhearted. And so, I have struggled with recording this podcast. I just want you to know that along I’m sure with you that I just am holding a lot of space for this horrific, tragic, useless thing that happened. And that’s what I want to say right now to you.

So, I just want to share some thoughts with you this morning about the life that you live, the life that I live. I almost called it how we show up. How are we showing up to our life, our one and only life that is so precious and so not to take for granted? I just want to every day be present in my life, that’s my job. And I want you to be present in your life every day. I don’t want to numb out. I don’t want to not face what is going on in the world. And I don’t want to not face what’s going on in my life.

I want to be a part of all the good and there is so much good. I want to do my part to help to overcome all the evil in the world. And I know for sure that I can, and I know for sure that you can. So, the life we live is important and the life that we have been given is of course such a gift, such a beautiful gift. And I want you to know that the tools that I have, that I practice, the habits that I have and that I practice every day matters so much in my mental health, my emotional health, my physical health, and the energy that I show up with every single day.

And I really want you to be aware of that in your own life, the energy that you bring to your life every single day, matters. And I really want you to start paying attention to that, the way that you think, the stories that you tell in your mind, the things that you ruminate on, the things that you worry about, I want you to be aware of.

And I want you to know that you can think thoughts that will give you feelings, that will drive actions in your life, that will give you the results that you really, really want, that will make a difference in your life. That will make a difference in your family’s life. And that will make a difference in the world’s life at large. We all matter in the energy of the world. I know that for sure.

So okay, I just wanted to share with you a few things this morning about being present in your own life and showing up exactly the way you want to. So, the last couple of weeks have been very full for me. And the next couple of weeks are going to be very full for me. And I’ve learned how to hold space for things that are a little bit outside of my control that are of course bringing me a lot of negative feelings, a lot of sadness, a lot of sorrow. And I’m sure you’re feeling the same way.

So, I wanted to share with you what’s happened in the last couple of weeks. So, we, of course it was mostly all really good things, but I have always had a tendency to get overwhelmed with my calendar. If my calendar has a lot on it I will look at it and my brain will start panicking, and will start spinning, and ruminating that it’s all too much for me. And I’m not going to do it very well, and I’m not going to get my proper sleep, and I’m not going to show up the way that I want to because there’s just too much on my calendar.

And I’m very aware that my brain tends to do this. So, I did it all different this time. And it just was so amazing. I decided every day to just stay present with what I was going to do today. And I decided that the way that I showed up to each thing was the only thing that mattered to me. It didn’t have to be perfect. I didn’t have to have all my ducks lined up in a row. I can just show up with the energy, and the focus, and the listening, and the engagement that I really wanted to show up with. And I loved the way that I did the last two weeks of a very full schedule.

And then it really paid off and it really worked for me, and I loved it. So, we went to Disneyland. Well, first of all, so two weeks ago we, along with my work schedule and my normal everyday life schedule, I added a lot of social things in that I had to kind of just be unready for. And I feel like I did it all so well, I was so proud of myself. And of course, I coach my clients a lot on this because we’re all kind of the same way.

When we have a lot on our schedule we tend to get anxious ahead of time and that never works for us. It actually, that anxiety keeps us from showing up fully engaged and present. We kind of just put a wall up and we don’t experience the day the way that we really want to. And I want to tell you, this morning that I experienced every day with full engagement, without numbing, without anxiety, just enjoyed every day that I woke up to. And it was all intentional and I loved it.

So, starting a couple of weeks ago, of course I had my normal work week and doing my podcast, and just doing all my normal things. And then we went to Bakersfield for a wedding on a Friday morning. And that was exactly two weeks ago tomorrow. And then we spent the night with friends. Then we got up and had breakfast with our friends and got to tour our old neighborhood and see some other friends. And it was just such a fun Saturday morning. And then we headed home around noon.

And about 30 minutes out of town I got an alert on my phone and the alert was from my bank, the bank I have in Bakersfield that I never moved over to where we live now. It was one of those alerts that said, “Have you purchased this amount of money today? And if not, click this link.” Well, I hadn’t, and I wasn’t thinking, and I clicked the link. And it was a fraud, it was not my bank, it was one of those fraud things that everyone’s always warning me about, but I’ve never clicked the link before.

And so, what happened is I got locked out of my bank account. I have a separate bank account and then I have my business account. And my business account is in a different bank and it’s local where I live now. And then we have, also we have our joint account, Jeff and I have our joint account. So, this is my own separate account that I’ve been saving money in for a long time now. And so, I had my little savings in it. And it’s my everyday money. Well, the fraud people, whoever they are, locked me out of my account.

And Jeff pulled over on the side of the road and he was, “This is not good because you just gave them all your credentials to your account, they’re probably able to get in there and wipe you out.” So, I kind of panicked and long story short we ended up jamming back to Bakersfield and we made it in the nick of time to get to my bank and they were open until one o’clock on Saturday. I was able to, the fraud people did not get any money out of my account. I was able to get a cashier’s check, clean out my account before they could.

And then we made it back home. And so, nothing bad happened in that story but I told that story several times. And I was kind of telling it like something bad happened. But you guys, nothing bad happened and I was just so fascinated by how dramatic my brain was about that story. It actually ended up being a good thing because I needed to get my money out of that account anyways, and open a new account where I am now. And it all worked out beautifully, but my brain really wanted to camp on this was a bad story.

And that’s just kind of a sidebar to all of this story that I’m telling you. But actually, it’s a really good story that nothing bad happened. So, then we get home and then we get ready, and we get up early Sunday morning and we go to Disneyland. And we got to spend three days in Disneyland with our son, and daughter, son-in-law, and our two grandbabies and we had a blast. It was so fun. And then we got home, Tuesday, I had moved all my Tuesday clients to Thursday. And so, I worked on Wednesday and Thursday.

And then we had friends come and stay at the bungalow on Thursday night and we got to spend the evening with them. And then Friday they left and went home, and my brothers flew in from Germany on Friday to stay at the bungalow. So, I have a housekeeper for the bungalow, and I do the beds. And so, we did a quick cleaning of the bungalow and redoing of the beds. And then my brothers got here until Monday and we on Saturday we had planned, so our dad passed away last November 4th, and he was cremated. And my stepmom had his ashes.

And we had planned to do a scattering of his ashes at sea. And of course, we didn’t know what we were doing. We just kind of made the decision it sounded like something beautiful to do. And we wanted it to be intimate and just us siblings, and my stepmom, and my stepsister, and her son, and our kids. And it was just a beautiful memorial at sea. We all had flowers and we told stories. And it was beautiful. And you know that feeling, we were sad, and we were kind of dreading it a little bit, but we knew we really wanted to do it.

And we’re so glad we did because you know if you’ve been following me for a while, you know how I feel about my dad and just what a beautiful man he was, and how lucky we all were. And my siblings feel exactly the same way. And this year has been filled with grief, and joy, and all of that. And he lived such a good life. And so anyways we did that on Saturday. And we just had a full weekend of family. On Sunday it was my daughter’s daughter, my granddaughter, Goldie’s fourth birthday.

And my daughter and son-in-law threw her the most adorable mermaid party. And so, we did that on Sunday and that was beautiful. And then spent the day with my brothers again on Monday. And then they flew out Tuesday morning and then I had a full day coaching on Tuesday, so this last Tuesday and then Wednesday. And then I have people coming into the bungalow this weekend for the long weekend. So, I had to get the bungalow all ready.

And then we leave to go to Newport this weekend. So just a lot going on and the next couple of weeks I have my mastermind. And so, I’ll be gone for that. And I just want you to know that I have learned how to manage my thoughts and my emotions in such a way that I thoroughly was present for everything. And I just feel this is how you live a life you love. You learn how to be present and to show up to your life exactly the way that you want to, not to mirror anyone else’s emotions but to show up in your integrity and with the energy that you really want to bring, the essence of who you are.

It’s all so possible even in the midst of hard things. You can celebrate and hold space for the hard things too. It’s 50/50, it’s who we are. And I’m just proud of the way that I’m living. I’m proud of the way my clients are living and the way that they’re working on managing their own thoughts and emotions as well. The habits that we decide on purpose to practice every single day matters so much to the way that we show up to our life on a daily basis.

And so, to enjoy your plans that you’ve made and to honor yourself and the people that you love the most, to honor your calendar. To decide on purpose what you want to do and to make sure that everything on your calendar is aligned with your values, the things that you value the most will give you the exact life experience that you want. To not worry ahead of time, to not feel anxious about your calendar ahead of time but to know that you are choosing to spend your time in these ways on purpose. That these are the things that matter the most to you in life.

And this is how you create a life that you love. This is how you live on purpose. It’s between you and you, who are you? How do you want to show up? Are you showing up the way that brings the most goodness to the world?

So, I’m going to get in my car right now and I’m going to drive to Newport Beach. And I’m going to meet my husband later and I’m going to meet my friends. And we’re going to just have a sweet weekend together and I’m sure we’re going to have a lot of really good conversations and I can’t wait. Just looking forward to just taking a big deep breath, and being present, and enjoying whatever the day brings.

And I want you to do the same thing. I want you to bring your unique self to the world, your unique life, your unique goodness, your unique personality and all the ways that you see things to the world because all of it matters. So that’s it for you today. Thanks for showing up. Thanks for sharing this episode with your friends, and with your family, and the people that matter most to you. And I love you. And I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.