If you’re in, or approaching, a life transition and think, “I should have this figured out by now,” this conversation is for you. Today, mindfulness teacher Monique Rhodes shares how to move through that sticky in‑between space of “no longer who you were, not yet who you’re becoming” without beating yourself up. You’ll hear why happiness is an inside job, how to work with your mind when life blindsides you, and practical ways to rediscover joy and purpose with mindfulness—especially in retirement and other big life changes. We also discuss how mindfulness can help Type A people (like me and perhaps you…). Monique Rhodes joins us from Costa Rica. _________________________ Bio Monique is an internationally acclaimed Happiness Strategist who teaches students and corporations around the world how to master their lives. She has spent the last 25 years studying the mind and its relationship to happiness and she believes that happiness is not merely an emotion but a daily habitual practice. Over 70 universities and colleges use her program The 10 Minute Mind®. Her 8-week online course, The Happiness Baseline, has a 100% success rate in raising the mental wellness for every student who has completed it. Monique hosts the daily In Your Right Mindpodcast, where she discusses how a series of small habits determine our well-being. She is also a singer, songwriter and producer born in New Zealand. She has toured the world performing and composing music bridging the worlds of contemporary music with modern spiritual teachers. Monique has produced two platinum selling albums in New Zealand, toured Europe twice with Chuck Berry and collaborated on music projects with some of the most well-known inspirational teachers in the world including the Dalai Lama. _________________________ For More on Monique Rhodes MoniqueRhodes.com ________________________ Podcast Conversations You May Like Retire Happy – Dr. Catherine Sanderson The New Happy – Stephanie Harrison What Matters Most – Diane Button _________________________ Planning for retirement? Chexck out our summaries of the Best Books on Retirement _________________________ About The Retirement Wisdom Podcast There are many podcasts on retirement, often hosted by financial advisors with their own financial motives, that cover the money side of the street. This podcast is different. You’ll get smarter about the investment decisions you’ll make about the most important asset you’ll have in retirement: your time. About Retirement Wisdom I help people who are retiring, but aren’t quite done yet, discover what’s next and build their custom version of their next life. A meaningful retirement doesn’t just happen by accident. Schedule a call today to discuss how the Designing Your Life process created by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans can help you make your life in retirement a great one — on your own terms. About Your Podcast Host Joe Casey is an executive coach who helps people design their next life after their primary career and create their version of The Multipurpose Retirement.™ He created his own next chapter after a 26-year career at Merrill Lynch, where he was Senior Vice President and Head of HR for Global Markets & Investment Banking. Joe has earned Master’s degrees from the University of Southern California in Gerontology (at age 60), the University of Pennsylvania, and Middlesex University (UK), a BA in Psychology from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and his coaching certification from Columbia University. In addition to his work with clients, Joe hosts The Retirement Wisdom Podcast, ranked in the top 1% globally in popularity by Listen Notes, with over 1.6 million downloads. Business Insider recognized Joe as one of 23 innovative coaches who are making a difference. He’s the author of Win the Retirement Game: How to Outsmart the 9 Forces Trying to Steal Your Joy. __________________________ Wise Quotes On Getting Unstuck “So, one of the things that I see with my students is that the place that people get stuck most often is actually that we’re resisting what is. And so let’s say you make some New Year’s resolutions or you’re in the middle of a transition like retirement and you’re in the middle of that change and you think to yourself, this shouldn’t be so hard and I should have figured this out by now. But what those thoughts do is they actually only tighten that knot. So if we’re looking at getting unstuck, you know, the way that I teach is we have to have this willingness to soften, to stop pushing, to actually sit with what’s here, even if it’s uncomfortable. And from what I’ve learned and what I’ve seen, this is really the ground of transformation. Because when we allow ourselves, Joe, just to be exactly where we are with all the uncertainty, with all the doubt, with all the longing, then we begin to loosen the grip on all the old habitual ways of being. And our heart opens. And in that openness, something new can emerge. So I invite you all to not push through, but just to rest in that middle place and let the aspiration be there, but also let the discomfort be there. And let yourself almost be held by this knowing that the moment that you’re in right now is actually part of the path.” On Mindfulness…for Type As “And this energy is very, very powerful, but it can also become a kind of armor and it can protect Type A people from seeing themselves, from vulnerability, from uncertainty. So, if I was talking to a Tai A personality who was a skeptic, I would first of all say it is mindfulness is amazing for Type A personalities. And what if you didn’t need to fix anything right now? What if there was nothing to improve, but just something to notice? Because at the heart of mindfulness, we’re not looking to change our nature or our personality. What we’re doing is we’re inviting you to become more intimate with yourself, to sit beside that aspect of yourself that strives and maybe ask, what am I afraid of and what am I avoiding? Because often as a Type A personality, what we’re avoiding is the discomfort of being with ourselves as we are. But if we can soften that resistance, even for a breath, even for 10 minutes a day, I tell you, something extraordinary happens. And we begin to feel so much more alive, more connected to ourselves. The endless, amazing results of meditation, our relationships change. We just deal with everything differently. We become more whole. So it’s really good for us to understand, which is why mindfulness is used in so many, you know, big companies around the world, is that mindfulness isn’t an enemy of ambition. It’s really a way to return to the ground beneath your striving, to be able to see that ground clearly, to feel deeply, to live more fully, which is why I totally believe it’s a superpower.” On Why Happiness is an Inside Job “The biggest misconception that I know is that people believe that happiness comes from outside of themselves. And that is such a mic drop moment to understand that happiness doesn’t. Happiness is an internal job. And the wonderful thing about that is it means that we’re in control of it. It means that if you want to be happier, you don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be powerful. You don’t have to be the most beautiful person in the world. I remember some years ago going to Las Vegas to hear Lady Gaga sing. And she was doing these kind of acoustic jazz Tony Bennett style concerts. It were really incredible. She was getting paid a million dollars a gig, Joe, and it was extraordinary. Here she is. She’s super wealthy. She’s beautiful. She’s successful. She’s powerful. And it was shocking for her to talk about how incredibly unhappy she is. So I think that’s one of the biggest things we need to understand is that all the things that we’re sold to believe will make us happy actually don’t. Because if they did, we would be able to look around the world to so many of the people that have all of them. And we can wonder why they’re not happy. So when we begin to understand that happiness is an inside job, then we actually have the incredible power to take control of it. So I think that that is probably the biggest misconception, but also the most powerful thing about it. And so that means that we need to learn to work with the thing that drives our happiness and our suffering, which is our mind. And if we can learn to work with our mind, then we can change our whole experience of the world.”
