Sparkable Moments: Conversations to Feed the Soul

Suzette Conway
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We are here to live our best life after 40... and that includes having Conversations to Feed the Soul! Learn ABOUT THIE PODCAST here: https://bit.ly/AboutSparkableMoments. As you listen to each episode, join the conversation in the Flittersphere™ so we can create Sparkable Moments™ together! Find us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife

Episodes

  1. Ep 5. - Leadership & Flourishing, with Kathy Eastwood

    04/06/2023

    Ep 5. - Leadership & Flourishing, with Kathy Eastwood

    SHOW SUMMARY: In this episode I’m chatting with Kathy Eastwood, the owner of E Equals Why. Kathy is changing the way business leaders connect to their employees, so naturally we talk about what makes a good leader. But we also discuss why creating a business was part of her intentional shift into a happier and more purposeful life, how she knew it was time for something more, and the value of creating circles of people around you and allowing yourself to change the circles at any time. We also dive into authenticity, expectations, living with our values, and the power of our words. It’s a great conversation! Check it out and then join us in the Flittersphere to continue the conversation. SHOW MAP: 3:50 – What it means to Kathy to live vibrantly and what prompted her to intentionally shift her life 8:12 – The importance of looking for the signs that it’s time for a change and more purpose… and how sticking with the familiar and safe isn’t as good for us as it sounds 11:40 – A personal story about divorce, forced life changes, resilience, and being careful not to die in safe, comfortable spaces instead of going for what we want 15:28 – Striving for success and meeting other people’s expectations 17:04 – How Kathy overcame her fears and did what she really wanted to do despite external expectations and pressures; plus, the question she asked herself that motivated her to take action, being afraid to even try, and having made up rules in life 23:26 – Running her own company is a key element of Kathy’s midlife shift into her best life 26:15 – The essential leadership skill of lifting others as you climb - and asking if the golden rule needs an update 30:29 – The trend of prioritizing employee well-being and brining our whole, authentic self to work, including our values so we can feel like we make a difference 36:50 –Changing workplace expectations - people want purpose and meaning at work 41:05 – Other changes Kathy made to live on her terms, true to who she is 44:52 - Creating support circles and allowing yourself to change the circles as needed in life 51:00 – Kathy’s advice for others seeking a midlife shift, including the power of certain words that we should add or remove from our vocabulary WHAT TO DO NEXT: Join the conversation in the Flittersphere™ at https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife Follow Kathy for more great leadership insights! Links below in her bio! Share this episode and spread the Sparkable Moments™!!!  SPEAKERS: Guest Kathy Eastwood is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of experience in driving success through strategic business planning, operational efficiency and employee engagement in both large corporations as well as small, privately-owned businesses. She’s held leadership roles in Human Resources, Operations, Finance, Sales, SaaS, Services, Customer Success, Project Management, Marketing and Engineering. Kathy is often described as a nurturing driver. Kathy knows how to successfully get things done through strong employee engagement. She is changing the way business leaders connect with employees with her E3E Formula: Express + Engage + Execute, powered by Emotions that she has learned and leveraged throughout her life. Website: www.eequalswhy.com Founders Story - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isuiNjwhq-E Twitter: https://twitter.com/equals_why Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EEqualsWhy Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/eequalswhy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/eequalswhyllc/?viewAsMember=true   Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below. Website: www.flittersphere.com/  Ready for a coach? Book a consult Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere   TRANSCRIPT: Suzette Conway  00:05 Hey there, welcome to the Sparkle Moments™ podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul. In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science and personal stories, random ponderings and deep end of the pool discussions. I'm your hostess, Suzette Conway. I'm a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere™, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. The show is part of my mission to raise the world's vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world in beautiful and spectacular ways. I'm so glad you're joining me on the journey.   Suzette Conway  00:45 Today I'm talking to Kathy Eastwood, the owner of the leadership development company E Equals Why. We're chatting about how creating her business was central to her midlife shift into a thriving life. And at the end of the show, Kathy shares some great advice for other people who are starting in midlife shift, including how the power of our words can stop us or enable us. We discuss three specific words to remove or add from your daily vocabulary and five ways that you can know if you're ready for your own midlife shift. You won't want to miss it, or all the good bits that lead up to it.   Suzette Conway  01:25 So, Kathy, and I met when we worked together at a software company decades ago, and we've been friends ever since, like literally around 20 years, I think. I think you'll find what I find in Kathy is that she is feisty, and smart, and generous and so much more. I love her energy and her spirit, and I think that you will too. And on top of all that she's a brilliant businesswoman. Kathy is an accomplished executive with over 25 years of experience driving success in organizations through strategic business planning, and operational efficiency, and employee engagement. And she's done this in large corporations as well as small privately owned companies. And she's held leadership roles in everything from human resources to operations and finance, sales and services, customer success, project management, marketing, and even in engineering. She is often described as a nurturing driver, which I have experienced myself in the way that I know her. It's just one of her brilliant skills, if you will, and just part of our true nature and purpose to blend those two things that feel like they're opposing, but they're not, right? So, Kathy is absolutely a nurturing driver. And she knows how to successfully get things done through strong employee engagement. And she's changing the way that business leaders connect with their employees by helping them to see the human side of leadership. She's flourishing in real life, and helping others do the same by leveraging her E3 formula, which is Express, Engage and Execute, all powered by emotions that she's learned and leveraged throughout her life. Among other things, we'll talk today with Kathy about how running her own company factored into her efforts at building her best life, and how she leverages her strong foundation in that area and her background, to build upward and to lift others along with her. Kathy, I'm so glad you're here. Thank you for coming.   Kathy Eastwood  03:13 Oh, Suzette, thanks so much for having me. I'm very humbled by that introduction. But I'm looking forward to this conversation.   Suzette Conway  03:20 I know, I feel like it's been a long time coming, like you've been on my list of people to talk to for a while. But I got a little distracted and kind of nixed the show for a bit. So, I'm glad to be coming back full steam with you, right now, like this is… I feel like our conversations recently have really just been preparing us for this moment.   Kathy Eastwood  03:38 I agree absolutely. And everything you're doing, it's just, it's things that I have gone through, right, and you know, it just feels so natural and so comfortable.   Suzette Conway  03:48 Oh, yay. Okay, so I want to begin by connecting us to the overall theme of the show. So, I want to ask you, what do you think it means to thrive in your life? Like what does vibrant living look like and feel like and include for you?   Kathy Eastwood  04:03 You know, for me, it really is being true to who I am and living the life I want to live as opposed to the life I thought I had to live. And you know, for me thriving is like living with purpose. You know, it is about living my values. And getting rid of the fear that has stopped me through so much in my life.   Suzette Conway  04:30 That's such a great answer. Fear is such a powerful thing in all of us, right? It's our ego’s way of kind of keeping us safe and still and it really does end up locking us into things that don't always line up with what we want. Yeah. Can you, would you be willing to share a little bit about what your life looked like a few years ago… in terms of how that's different from today and what prompted you to make some changes and intentionally shift things?   Kathy Eastwood  04:53 Oh, my God, it's completely different. You know, and I think it's both personally and profe

    1 hr
  2. Ep 4. - Flourishing In real Life: Flow, Stories, & Creativity

    01/22/2022

    Ep 4. - Flourishing In real Life: Flow, Stories, & Creativity

    SHOW SUMMARY: This is our first interview show!  It’s part of a series called “Flourishing in Real Life”. In this episode, I have a great conversation with my friend and fellow coach, Tracy Loring. We are chatting about what it means to flourish, how it is different than just getting by, and how it is different in various life stages. We also talk about flow, authenticity, and gardening as a perfect analogy for flourishing!  And you won't want to miss the part about how the stories we create as part of our human experience shape us from childhood on, and whether or not we can or should try to change it. Plus, Tracy shares about her own midlife shift, including how she knew she needed one and how it showed up in her life! Listen in and join the conversation! SHOW MAP: 3:15 - What does it mean to Tracy to flourish in life and how does flourishing change over stages of our life. Plus… a fun gardening analogy that flows throughout the show! 11:26 – We develop our belief structures in childhood and they evolve into our stories. 14:31 - Can we stop our egoic stories from developing? 19:45 - How embodiment techniques help with emotional self-regulation. 24:56 - Our stories are not only cumulative and deeply rooted, they are social. We create them from our engagement with other people. 31:55 – Tracy shares how she knew it was time for her midlife shift, the signs that something needed to change, and how she got started with that change. 39:23 – Tracy shares some of the amazing results she created through her midlife shift. 45:16 – The creative power of thoughts, and how creating what you want, whatever it is, happens in two stages; plus the power of naming your soul. 48:20 - “Joy is a primary sign that what you're doing is in alignment with the truth of who you are, with your spirit.” 50:32 – Making predictions of what you’ll create next. 53:55 – What advice would Tracy offer to people who might be ready for a midlife shift? Hint: It relates to the gardening analogy from earlier! WHAT TO DO NEXT: Subscribe to the show & please tell your friends about it! Join the conversation in the Flittersphere™ at https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife Follow Tracy using the links below in her bio! RESOURCES: In this episode, I referenced a quote that I love but I couldn’t remember it in full detail… and I didn’t know who it came from. So, of course, I researched it! In the process, I found a great site called The Quote Investigator (https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/10/watch-your-thoughts/). They trace the quote or similar sayings to many possible sources, including a grocery store owner named Frank Outlaw, a 1989 Buddhist text, a Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu, and Margaret Thatcher’s dad! So, I have no idea who it really came from… but I still love the quote. It so perfectly captures a creative premise that I believe in… that we create everything in our lives. Here is the full quote: "Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”    SPEAKERS: Guest TRACY LORING is a seasoned facilitator, consultant, and certified Expanding Possibilities Executive Coach. She brings over 25 years of experience in talent management, learning and development, team leadership, consulting, facilitation, and coaching. In addition to being a personal and executive coach, Tracy specializes in working with leadership teams to transform the way they operate. She is also an artist and resides with her husband and daughter in New York state. You can learn more about and connect with Tracy here: Website: https://www.tracyloring.com/Creative Musings Podcast: https://tracyloring.buzzsprout.com/YourTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqSC1OucLBWPGeV4w5gwNMAFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/tracyloringcoachInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/tracyloringcoach/   Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below. Website: www.flittersphere.com/  Ready for a coach? Book a consult Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere   TRANSCRIPT: Suzette Conway  0:05  Hey there, welcome to the sparkle moments podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul. In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science and personal stories, random ponderings and deep end of the pool discussions. I'm your hostess, Suzette Conway. I'm a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere™, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. This show is part of my mission to raise the world's vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world and beautiful and spectacular ways. I'm so glad you're joining me on the journey. Welcome to our very first episode in this special series in this podcast. Everything that I talked about on the sparkle rooms podcast is about how we flourish and thrive in midlife and how it can serve us to create a midlife shift into what is the next best expression of ourselves, right, in this human experience. And as part of that, I want to talk to people who can offer a real life perspective on what it means to flourish and how and why they created their own midlife shift. And that is what this special series is all about. Because we all need to be inspired by great examples of women living on purpose. Today, I am talking to my good friend Tracy Loring. She is a fellow conscious creator and a coaching colleague. We met years ago when we worked together in a corporate learning and development department at a cloud computing company. And I knew right away that we were going to be friends. I love her spirit and her perspective on living, and I love her perspective on living a creative life. And I know that you will, too. Tracy is a seasoned facilitator and a consultant and a certified Expanding Possibilities executive coach. She has over 25 years of experience in talent management, learning and development, team leadership, consulting, facilitation and coaching. In addition to being a personal and executive coach Tracy specializes in working with leadership teams to transform the way they operate. She's also an artist and resides with her husband and her daughter in New York state. You can learn more about Tracy and connect with her at TracyLoring.Com. In the show notes. I'll share some links to her podcast, Creative Musings, and to her Youtube, Instagram and Facebook channels, so you have plenty of ways to reach her. And I promise you will want to. So thank you, Tracy, so much for joining me today.   Tracy Loring  2:28  Oh, it's my pleasure to be here. Thank you for happening.   Suzette Conway  2:31  Oh, it's exciting. I'm so thrilled that for our inaugural show for this special series that it's you. I feel like we have a special connection over podcasting since I've been on your show, and you help me get this show started. But mostly just because your warm spirit just always fills me up. It fills my spirit up. So I'm glad you're here.    Tracy Loring  2:50  Thank you. The feeling's mutual for sure.   Suzette Conway  2:53  Oh, thank you. Okay, so before we dive in, you know me, I have a list of questions for us, and we'll see where the conversation takes us. But before we get to that, I always want to start by anchoring to the theme of the show. And for us, that's all about flourishing. So I want to know what does it mean to you to flourish and thrive in this human experience that you get to live   Tracy Loring  3:15  So flourishing for me and bear with me, I'm I've got a cold. So if I'm extra husky today, this isn't how I always sound for better, very sexy. Again, I can't promise this in the future. But, um, yeah, so flourishing, flourishing... it's such a great word. It to me, it's about living life to its fullest, right, in all aspects of it. So flourishing means tapping into my creative potential. It means sharing my truth in the world, living my purpose, my true nature and spirit, if you will, and doing it in a way that that feels true and effortless that just sort of comes from me without having to think about, okay, how can I take a step back and construct the 13 different ways I can can contribute in the world, right? It's much more effortless, organic, and in flow.   Suzette Conway  4:15  I love that. I love when you talk about true and effortless to me that feels like the very definition of authentic, right? Like just living authentically is what makes it so effortless. And it's just a natural expression of yourself. But it's my beautiful. Thank you.   Tracy Loring  4:30  Thank you. Yeah.   Suzette Conway  4:31  Do you feel like you're living that kind of life these day?   Tracy Loring  4:33

    1 hr
  3. Ep. 3 - Dream Analysis For Self-Awareness

    01/06/2022

    Ep. 3 - Dream Analysis For Self-Awareness

    SHOW SUMMARY: Dream analysis is a powerful tool for developing self-awareness, which helps us live more intentionally. In this episode, we’ll look at what dream analysis is and how to practice it by examining one of my dreams. We’ll also unpack the levels of consciousness in the human mind and introduce you to your inner egoic beast, which we all have. At the end, I'll share a simple way for you to experiment with analyzing your own dreams!   SHOW MAP: 1:40:  What is dream analysis?  4:04: How T.H.E.  B.E.A.S.T.  inside all of us (ego) keeps us safe. Learn about it and why you don’t need to kill it to get rid of your limiting beliefs in order to be happy. 6:38: Learn the 5 levels of consciousness in the human mind before learning to analyze your dreams. 7:55: The subconscious mind is the part of our minds that makes decisions without our needing to actively think about them and often it does so without our awareness or involvement. 15:30: What does it mean to be awake, to live consciously and at a higher vibration? 17:00: Step 1 in the dream analysis process and a look at why brainwaves make it an important step 19:10: Step 2 in the dream analysis process 19:53: The dream! I’ll tell you about it so we can analyze it together. 24:42: Step 3 in the dream analysis process. 25:37: The context behind my dream, which helps us interpret it. Also “Your dreams are your subconscious mind’s way of processing things you are dealing with, recently or repeatedly.” 28:04: Why am I having this dream and how does grace factor into it? 31:18: Analyzing the dream and understanding the meaning of the symbols. 35:00: The big symbol in the dream and how it shows me that trying to figure things out isn’t the best way forward. 40:10: Step 4 in the dream analysis process. 43:27: The “in real life” 5x5x5 challenge to help you analyze your dreams. WHAT TO DO NEXT: Take the 5x5x5 challenge and do your own dream analysis! Keep a bedside journal for 5 days. When you wake up each morning, spend 5 minutes capturing as many details as you can about the dream you remember.  Then spend 5 minutes picking out sections of the dream, finding the symbols, and guessing at what they might mean. If you have more time, break the entire dream into chunks and analyze each one.    RESOURCES: Grab your free copy of the 4 Steps of Dream Analysis at https://flittersphere.mykajabi.com/lp-podcast-3-free-gift-jan-2022-1 Join the conversation in the Flittersphere™ at https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife   SPEAKERS: Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below. Website: www.flittersphere.com/  Ready for a coach? Book a consult Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere   TRANSCRIPT: Hey there. Welcome to the Sparkable Moments podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul! In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science, personal stories, random ponderings, and deep-end-of-the-pool discussions. I’m your hostess Suzette Conway. I’m a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. This show is part of my mission to raise the world’s vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world in beautiful and spectacular ways!  I’m so glad you’re joining me on the journey!   Ok, be sure to stick around until the end of the episode today. We’re actually interpreting one of my personal dreams and I’m sharing the steps for how to do it so that you can apply it to your own life. And at the end of the show, I share a real-life experiment that you can try that only takes five minutes a day. You won’t want to miss it. It’s so much fun and so easy to do! On today’s show, I’ll be talking about using dream analysis as a tool for developing your self-awareness, which is a foundational skill for intentionally creating your most vibrant life.  Now, like the other Vibrant Living Tools™, I teach my clients, dream analysis is rooted in self-awareness because when you understand the workings of your inner mind and see the truth of yourself, you can use what you find to shift into higher states of being, where it’s easier to create the things you want in your life.  So, what is dream analysis?  It is the process of examining and interpreting your dreams to gain clarity on things your unconscious and subconscious minds are processing, the things that may be hampering you in your conscious, daily activities. It helps you to see your underlying thoughts, and feelings, and assumptions, and beliefs, and so forth, so you can work with them and move past them as you address whatever issues need your attention in your day-to-day life. It’s a powerful tool for understanding the workings of your inner mind. Dream analysis is rooted in mainstream psychological techniques, and it was pioneered by psychologists like Carl Jung, who believed dreams were your mind’s attempt to communicate important things to you.    But you don’t need to be a Jungian psychologist to interpret your own dreams. I learned it from my own therapist who was trained in Jungian methods. But it’s a skill you can learn, and I believe there is no way to get it wrong because the intent of it isn’t to get a perfectly correct answer to some deep-seated struggle. The intent is to practice self-awareness by asking the questions and being open to receiving insights that come from exploring your subconscious mind – all without making any of it mean anything about you. With dream analysis, self-awareness is both the skill you are practicing and the outcome you are creating.  To understand this, it helps to have some knowledge of the levels of consciousness in the human mind, so let’s start with a primer on that!  So, your conscious is your awareness that you exist and that things exist inside of you and outside of you.    Your consciousness is knowing that you know you exist. It’s tied to how you understand and experience yourself and the world around you  It’s your inner life – it is your awareness of your thoughts, and feelings, and memories, and your awareness of your mental processes, like how you perceive stuff – which is taking in information, and identifying and ordering it, and assigning it meaning and value and that kind of stuff. Everyone perceives things and we all kind of have our own mechanisms for how we do that. So your consciousness is involved in how you perceive things. It’s also about being aware of how you learn, how you manage your attention. And critically, it’s the ability to be aware of that inner life – all of that stuff - and the ego that is part of it. So, I call the ego THE BEAST. This is an acronym – T.H.E.  B.E.A.S.T.  – that represents your thoughts, your emotions, your beliefs, your experiences and expectations, your assumptions, your stories, and your strategies, the structures and habits that you use in life, and your triggers. And, yes, a beast can be a large scary monster, but it’s not trying to harm us. Its job is to protect us from dangers. That’s our ego’s job. Our mind sees danger as anything unpredictable or unknowable. Like wanting to start your own business or moving to a new country. In an effort to keep you safe from the dangerous unknowns of those experiences, the beast rises up and sends you thoughts like “I can’t do this.” “I’m not smart enough to figure it out.” “I don’t deserve it.” “See, I’m not allowed to have what I want - something always gets in the way.” These limiting beliefs are one tool of your ego’s efforts to keep you safe. Now your instinct may be to just kill the beast, to eliminate those kinds of beliefs and thoughts and stories, right, so it doesn’t get in your way of starting that business or moving to Paris. This is the goal of most self-help programs - to get rid of the limiting thoughts and feelings. But remember, the beast, your ego, serves an important function. And while it can be scary to look at, it doesn’t need to be killed. It needs to be befriended, it wants to be seen, and understood, and valued, and supported. So put another way, your limiting beliefs and habits, and feelings don’t need to be eliminated to ‘fix’ you. They are part of you and there is no need to deny or destroy any part of you. In fact, there is freedom and power in honoring all of ourselves, in seeing all the parts of us as valid and valuable, without judgment or labels, or fears. Befriending the beast is an essential tool in living a good life because your consciousness includes more than your awareness of your beast, it includes your awareness of how you and other people are influenced and impacted by the beast and how their influenced and impacted by your reaction

    46 min
  4. Ep. 2 - Are You Ready For Your Midlife Shift?

    12/14/2021

    Ep. 2 - Are You Ready For Your Midlife Shift?

    SHOW SUMMARY: In this episode, I'm talking about midlife shifts. Tune in and learn what the shift is, whether or not it's a midlife crisis, and how to know if you're ready for your shift. Then I’ll share 9 tips for starting your midlife shift and 5 tips for overcoming the fear of doing it! SHOW MAP: 15:16: The big moment I decided to shift my entire life!     17:00: The big action I took to start my midlife shift. 18:05: Did I do the right thing and what was my plan? 20:21: Key Lessons from my midlife shift 22:05: How I became more strategic with my midlife shift. 24:28: How to know if it’s time to create YOUR midlife shift into a more vibrant YOU. 26:52: How to start your midlife shift + a quote: “It’s time to stop resisting the call of your soul, to do the inner and outer work of crafting the life you are meant for instead of settling.” – Suzette Conway 31:34  - tips for hacking the normal fear functions of your brain.   WHAT TO DO NEXT: Download the tips and tricks for starting your midlife shift and overcoming the fear that will naturally arise as you do that work. Find it here:  https://flittersphere.mykajabi.com/LP-8StepsToYourMLS-Oct23 Subscribe to the show & please tell your friends about it!   RESOURCES: Flittersphere community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife Psychology Today Blog "Fulfillment at any age": https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age   SPEAKERS: Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below. Website: www.flittersphere.com/  Ready for a coach? Book a consult Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere   TRANSCRIPT: Hey there. Welcome to the Sparkable Moments podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul! In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science, personal stories, random ponderings, and deep-end-of-the-pool discussions. I’m your hostess Suzette Conway. I’m a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. This show is part of my mission to raise the world’s vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world in beautiful and spectacular ways!  I’m so glad you’re joining me on the journey At the end of today’s show, I’ll share some tips for how to identify if you are ready for your midlife shift, and if so, what you can do to start it, and how to overcome any fears you have about this pursuit. Be sure to stick around so you don’t miss it! In this episode, I’ll be talking about midlife shifts and how to know if you are ready for yours.   I’m going to share the story of my own midlife shift, including what lead up to it, when and how I knew something big had to change in my life… and what I did about it. And we’ll talk about how to find the courage to take action in support of a midlife shift if that is what you want in your life. And I’ll share some specific actions that you can start with. So, let’s jump into this by first considering the language that we use around this topic, specifically the idea of a midlife crisis. Is what we experience in midlife really a crisis or just the ebb and flow of life that naturally leads to questioning our human experience? Is it a problem or an opportunity, an inevitability or an anomaly?    The concept of a Midlife crisis is not new. We hear about it all the time. We hit our 40s and kind of go nuts making radical life changes. We buy fancy cars or have affairs or quit our jobs and move to Paris in response to some internal struggle over how we define ourselves and our lives.   I’ve been fascinated by this concept for years. I’ve tried to define midlife crisis for myself and I’ve even explored how researchers and experts in the field would define it. It’s not easy because there is no single answer to it. The term “midlife crisis” was coined by Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965 and it became popular because of a 1984 book by Gail Sheehy called Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. Sheehy claimed that we will inevitably experience a crisis between the ages of 37 and 42 and that it’s a predictable experience she defines as an anxiety around the truth of our own mortality. It’s when we start to ask questions like “is this all there is?"  I’ve also seen it described as a panic over not achieving life goals and questioning our purpose.  Susan Krauss Whitbourne is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and she’s a psychologist, and the author of the Psychology Today blog "Fulfillment At Any Age". She suggests that midlife crisis might more accurately be called an "ego integrity" issue because it is centered on confronting our morality and our sense of meaning and purpose and connection to others and concern for our own welfare. Based on all this and my own experiences, I would sum up a midlife crisis as an angst-filled state of existential uncertainty and worry, a time of questioning our purpose, what we find meaningful, our role in life, and whether we’ll achieve our goals before we run out of time and die. The crisis may send us on a desperate quest to attain goals, regain our youth, or to find answers to life’s mysteries. And it’s all in an effort to make sense of our human existence.  I think if it as more like a midlife angst than midlife crisis. Either way, I don’t know about you, but that is what I felt like for most of my adult life! It intensified as I got older and it showed up as a ton of fretting over whether or not there was more to life and a deep fear that I would wake up at 85 and regret the life I’d lived.  But is that a crisis? And is it inevitable that we all have this kind of crisis? Do we all have it at the same age? How long does it last? Does it look the same for all of us?  Professor Whitbourne questions the very premise of a crisis altogether. She says it is pretty much a myth and that only about 10% of adults experience a true crisis, though I’ve seen reports that put it as high as 40%. But we’ll just go wither 10% for right now. She also says the label itself can be destructive and misleading, in part because there is no clear definition of midlife. I agree with her on this. Sheehy’s book, for instance, suggests midlife includes ages 37-42. In generations past when we only lived to our 60s, 30 would have been squarely in midlife. But we live longer now than ever before. So, is midlife our 30s? 40s? 50s? Maybe it dips into our 60s when we retire and start a whole new career or life chapter with still another 25-30 years of life left in us, If we can’t agree on where the middle is, how can we even use the term ‘midlife’ with the word crisis.   Whitbourne also suggests that the label is problematic because we might adopt it when we face challenges in midlife as an easy way out. It’s simpler to just label it as a midlife crisis than to look inside ourselves and do the work to figure out what is really going on.   Whitbourne also suggests that often what we label as a midlife crisis is just an unhappy event that could and does happen at any age in adulthood… whether it’s a divorce, an accident, losing a parent, struggling with a serious illness, or losing a job. These are serious moments, but they often don’t create a deep existential crisis.  I understand her point here, but I can’t help but wonder, how many of these events can someone tolerate before it does become a crisis for them? And how much does our ability to process it affect whether or not it is an existential crisis, making us question the quality and purpose of our existence? Here’s what I think. The answer to what is a midlife crisis and does everybody have it and when do we have it… is “who knows?”.  From a science and research perspective, and as someone who enjoys using words thoughtfully, I agree with Whitbourne that we haven’t universally defined what midlife is and it’s likely unhelpful and maybe even unhealthy to use of cliché terms like Midlife Crisis. Not just because it isn’t scientifically accurate, but because it minimizes the meaning of the words when we throw it around as a casual cliché.  But from a more human perspective, with less interest in word precision and more interest in experience, I think the answer is… well it’s still “who knows?”.   Midlife is different for all of us. The duration of our lives varies. And so does our experience of it. We each have different levels of resilience and fortitude, unique perspectives, and even different internal and external resources for responding to life’s circumstances. All of these things contribute to whether something is a crisis or just a life event we must manage.  New York psychologist Vivian Diller, Ph.D., suggests that because we live to be older now, this quan

    39 min
  5. Ep. 1 - What A Vibrant Life Is And Why It Matters

    12/13/2021

    Ep. 1 - What A Vibrant Life Is And Why It Matters

    SHOW SUMMARY: In this episode, I’m talking about what it means to live a vibrant life and why it is so important to create your life intentionally. It has a little something to do with your purpose, science, magic, and your divine nature!   SHOW MAP: 3:03: It’s clear that we get unhappier in midlife. Why is this the case and why isn’t it a midlife crisis? 5:30: What it means to live a vibrant life. 7:40: The elements of Vibrant Living, including defining JOY and how it is different than happiness. 11:15: How are meaning and wellbeing part of a vibrant life? 13:58: What is the value of a vibrant life? Why should you make it a priority? 15:25: Purpose is powerful and it’s not something you “find” 16:45: The biggest reason to create your vibrant life and how it connects science and ancient wisdom. 19:47: The egoic human part of us isn’t less important than the spiritual part of us. 23:18: Thriving is a choice. You can craft your own best life using a little science and magic!    WHAT TO DO NEXT: Complete the free Vibrancy Reflection Activity to explore what you want in each area of your life and what holds you back. Find it here: https://flittersphere.mykajabi.com/LP%20-%20Podcast%201%20Free%20Gift%20-%20Dec%202021 Join the Flittersphere™ online group and the ongoing discussion about vibrant living! Find it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife Write down the SYVL15 coupon code and watch the group for the launch of the new program that will help you create a midlife shift into the next you!    RESOURCES: Root meaning of words: I’m endlessly fascinated by words and the meaning we give them. If you are too, check out this website that helps you find the historic meaning of words. https://www.etymonline.com The study: Here is the research that found unhappiness peaks in midlife.https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268120301414 Another fun study – the world happiness report. https://worldhappiness.report/ed/202   SPEAKERS: Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below. Website: www.flittersphere.com/  Ready for a coach? Book a consult Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere   TRANSCRIPT:  Hey there. Welcome to the Sparkable Moments podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul! In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science, personal stories, random ponderings, and deep-end-of-the-pool discussions. I’m your hostess Suzette Conway. I’m a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. This show is part of my mission to raise the world’s vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world in beautiful and spectacular ways!  I’m so glad you’re joining me on the journey!  In today’s show, we are talking about what it means to thrive as human beings. At the end of the show, I have a fantastic gift for you and a heads up on a new program that’s launching soon! And, I also have an activity you can do in under 20 minutes to help you live more vibrantly. Be sure to stick around to hear all the details and grab the gift! Ok, this is the first episode of my new podcast!  Whoo Hoo!  You can’t see it right now, but I’m doing a little happy dance as I record this show. I am beyond excited to put this into the world. It has been just under a year since I admitted to myself that I wanted to create the Sparkable Moments™ podcast and seeing it come to life brings me immense joy and satisfaction… and honestly, a little fear and some nagging concerns about my ability to commit to things... but mostly joy and satisfaction! And I think that's so fitting since joy and satisfaction are central themes of today’s episode. So, let’s get started… because I want to talk about something important. I want to talk to you about living a rich, full life in which we flourish as human beings. I call this living a vibrant life and it has a little something to do with being happy, so let’s start there. Very few of us are happy all the time. It’s normal for emotions to fluctuate, and happiness comes and goes throughout our lives. And not just day to day, but in stages of our life. For instance, data shows that young kids are pretty happy, but unhappiness grows as we age. Midlife, especially, is a time when happiness tends to take a dive. A study published in the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization analyzed over 14 million participants and found that for people in Europe and the United States, unhappiness increases and hits a high in our late 40s. They looked at indicators for unhappiness like anxiety, worry, loneliness, sadness, stress, depression, and pain. They even looked at confidence levels, feeling like a failure, feeling left out, and being under strain. They factored in age, marital status, political views, education, the economy, and so forth. And what the research tells us is that it’s clear that we get unhappier in midlife.  Why is this the case and why isn’t it a midlife crisis? The researchers in that huge study suggest there are three possible reasons. First, we learn to adapt to our strengths and our weaknesses over time and start to see our realities change… so in mid-life we start to think we won’t realize our dreams and aspirations from when we were younger. Second, it may be that cheerful people live longer than miserable people and there is sort of this “survival of the fittest” effect in which we see higher levels of happiness as we age past midlife because there are simply more happy people left at those older ages. And third is that as we age past midlife, we recognize that people around us are getting sick and dying and we start to be grateful for our blessings and good health and, therefore we become happier. Simply put, we CHOOSE happiness more as we age than we do in midlife. Other research shows us that we are happiest at ages 33, 55, and in our 70s, on average. Thirty-three because we have the energy and knowledge to pursue our dreams. 55 because we’ve built up enough assets and authority to be comfortable. And seventies because we’re free at that age of many stressful responsibilities that we have at younger ages, and we have the time and room to reflect on our accomplishments. And these findings support that we are unhappier in midlife, and it adds to possible reasons why. In midlife, many of us lack the energy, assets, and freedom that we have at other points in life. It makes sense. Our energy and assets are going to our families and our careers, and everyday life is full of stressors we don’t often have when we are younger or older.... like kids to raise, mortgages to pay, etc. There is tons of research on this issue and it is clear that we get unhappier in midlife. Some people may see this data about midlife unhappiness and think it is evidence of a so-called midlife crisis. Personally, I’m not a fan of that concept. I prefer to see it as a call to create a midlife shift that helps us to be happier and healthier and to thrive again, on purpose. It’s an opportunity to look honestly at our current reality and ask ourselves what we want, and then choose to create a life in line with that. We don’t lose the ability to be conscious creators just because we age into midlife. We simply need to reconnect to those creative skills. This is a primary focus of creating a vibrant life. Now, the details of what makes a life vibrant will be different for each of us. But I think I can define vibrant living in a way that most of us can relate to and that still gives us the room to paint our own personal picture of it. So, what is a vibrant life?  I define it as a life that is full of joy, meaning, and wellbeing, in which we are aligned to our gifts and strengths and to our true nature and purpose, a life in which we live intentionally and function optimally, in service of our highest good, honoring what our genius spirit wants for us. I love that definition. It speaks to my soul. What a life to aspire to! I developed that definition of a vibrant life for myself after years of practicing intuitive, spiritual, and creative principles in the pursuit of my own best life. It’s got all the good stuff in there – the stuff that lights us up and lifts us into our best selves… I mean, look at it! We’re using our gifts, tapping into our strengths, knowing and honoring our essence and purpose, embracing intentionality and choice and all the personal power and responsibility that entails, and functioning really well, more than just getting by, it means thriving. And it’s all in SERVICE of our inner spirit.. of something bigger than our human selves. I find the notion of knowing about that something bigger, and honoring and connecting to it.. to be awe-evoking. When I let myself rea

    30 min

  6. SEASON 1 TRAILER

    About This Podcast

    Hey there! Welcome to the Sparkable Moments™ Podcast. In this podcast, we are going to laugh and play and also get into the deep end of the pool with some amazing conversations as we focus on creating and sharing the Sparkable Moments™ that I believe are the cornerstone of a full, rich life. So, what exactly are Sparkable Moments™? They are the moments that light up your soul and make you feel alive! It could be a laugh-til-you-pee conversation with a dear friend or a deep sense of connection to a total stranger. It might be a blast of insight from a passing comment or a big breakthrough on a project you’ve been working on for a while. It could be a moment of stillness as you take in a sunset. It could even be a moment when you push yourself past a fear and don’t die from being who you are meant to be - you know, like skydiving, or asking someone out… or say… starting a podcast! Whatever it is for you, if the experience leaves you feeling alive and fully engaged in your life right in that instant - it’s a Sparkable Moment™. My hope is that the stories, techniques, and conversations on this show will lead you to Sparkable Moments™ in your own life. Like me, the podcast will be all over the place! The length and format of each episode will vary as I move between solo shows, interviewing guests, and maybe even hosting panel discussions. That’s because this podcast is an exploration and an experiment that feeds my free-spirited soul! And I hope it serves your soul, too! I’m Suzette Conway and I’ll be your hostess on the show. I’m the founder of the Flittersphere, a community of women intent on creating vibrant lives by cultivating an explorer’s heart, getting real, and embracing the fullness of life - the beauty and the mess. I’m also a transformational coach and trainer, a speaker, writer, and now a podcaster! My background is in corporate learning and development. But these days I’m running my own business because my heart is in exploring the human experience through the lens of science and magic - the crossroads of facts, research, emotion, storytelling, flow states, intuition, feminine and masculine energy, creative principles, and practices… It all just lights my soul on fire! I created my business and I do this work because I believe that the world needs the best version of each of us and we all deserve our best lives and those two things are related. So I’m determined to live my most vibrant life while I help other people do the same thing. I know that in doing that we can raise the consciousness and energy of the world and create amazing human experiences. You can find me and learn about the programs I offer at Flittersphere.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode! I’m so glad you’re joining me on this adventure! Go on, check out the latest episode!

    3 min

Trailer

About

We are here to live our best life after 40... and that includes having Conversations to Feed the Soul! Learn ABOUT THIE PODCAST here: https://bit.ly/AboutSparkableMoments. As you listen to each episode, join the conversation in the Flittersphere™ so we can create Sparkable Moments™ together! Find us here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife

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