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1:01

All of these friends of yours said well you're

1:03

gonna be so happy when you retire. Psychologists

1:06

like to use this equation that our

1:08

happiness at any given moment is our

1:10

expectations minus our reality. So

1:13

not only is your reality one of real

1:15

grief but your expectations were that this

1:17

was going to be great. So there's

1:20

this huge gap between what everybody said

1:22

that you ought to feel like in

1:24

retirement and what you're currently feeling like.

1:26

Right, right. I've been

1:28

surprised that no one, I mean

1:30

absolutely no one has talked about

1:32

the grief and the sadness. Which

1:34

is shocking to me. Yeah me too.

1:36

I felt that way too. Welcome

1:40

to How To. I'm Courtney Martin.

1:43

People don't like change. While it's pretty

1:45

much the only constant in our lives

1:47

we still don't know how to deal

1:49

with it. Especially when change strikes to

1:51

the core of who you are. That's

1:54

what this week's listener is struggling with.

1:58

My name is Patti. I'm recently retired.

2:00

from 50 years

2:02

in corporate health care administration.

2:05

And everyone was telling me it's gonna be

2:07

great, it's the best thing I've ever done,

2:10

it's just gonna be so terrific. And I

2:13

was surprised how

2:16

sad I was. I was just

2:18

melancholy. Like a lot of us, Patti

2:20

was looking forward to retirement. She's one of

2:22

those like super effective people. You could just

2:25

tell the moment you meet her. She knew

2:27

how to manage people, she knew how to

2:29

make things happen, even in the context of

2:31

the complicated health care system. But she was

2:33

ready for a new season of life, less

2:35

of a grind. Pretty

2:37

soon though, she felt a little

2:40

unanchored and she couldn't help thinking

2:42

about what comes after retirement. You

2:44

know, the end. Take

2:48

us into your life pre-retirement a little bit so

2:50

we have a sense of what you are grieving.

2:52

What were your days like before you retired?

2:56

Oh, you know, it kind of

2:58

centered around my Outlook calendar. I

3:01

had a couple of direct

3:03

reports and making sure they

3:05

were getting the tools

3:07

that they needed to do their job.

3:09

And we were all focused on doing

3:12

something together and getting to the end

3:14

of the week and having had some

3:16

kind of a success or at least

3:18

some camaraderie around a project that we

3:20

were working on. I'm hearing

3:23

you are a woman who loves

3:25

teamwork, collaboration, a woman who loves to

3:28

feel needed, all of which I can

3:30

imagine has been thrown into kind

3:32

of a pot of lots of feelings.

3:34

And Patti,

3:38

will you tell us about a

3:40

moment when you felt

3:42

that melancholy? I think

3:45

it probably hit

3:48

most profoundly after the holidays.

3:51

Come the first of the year when

3:53

I was really settling into not having

3:56

to wake up to a staff meeting

3:58

or plan my day around it. hours.

4:01

It was just me. I didn't have a

4:03

group of people around me. I didn't have

4:07

anywhere to be. Everything was

4:09

on my agenda and

4:13

even though I had a lot of things to do, it's

4:15

like a blank page was sitting

4:17

in front of me. It's like I've

4:19

got to write a book and I have no idea what

4:21

the topic is. It's just, you

4:23

know, 500 pages of blank pages

4:27

and I just started feeling sad

4:29

about that. Patti's

4:33

sadness over her open schedule is

4:35

about so much more than simply

4:37

filling time, right? Like work is

4:39

how we define ourselves. It's how

4:41

we build our days, build our

4:43

identities and without it, as we

4:45

heard from Patti, there's a sense of profound

4:47

loss. But you know,

4:49

Phoenix, Ashes, that's where Patti is at

4:51

in the messy middle of it all.

4:54

And to help her through this stage,

4:56

I'm bringing in Brad Stolberg. He's the

4:58

author of the new book, Master of

5:00

Change, and he's also in faculty at

5:02

the University of Michigan's Graduate School of

5:04

Public Health. And he's met people like

5:06

Patti before. You're a real

5:08

pusher. Like you were clearly very driven

5:10

and good at your job and very

5:12

affecting at your job. And

5:15

when an elite athlete retires, they almost always go

5:17

through a period of grief, but you can be

5:19

elite in anything that you do. And if it's

5:21

a craft and if it's a big part of

5:23

your identity, moving on from that

5:25

is always going to be hard. And I wish

5:27

that we could do more to normalize it and

5:30

I'm so happy that you called in to help

5:32

normalize it for listeners. So

5:36

on today's show, Brad is going to teach

5:38

us how to bravely face change. So we

5:40

come out of it stronger and

5:43

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5:45

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7:54

Brad decided to take a closer look at

7:56

change, you know, to examine what big title

7:58

shifts do to us After he. Korean

8:00

thing upheaval in his own personal. Life

8:02

I became a father for the first

8:04

time, then again for the second time

8:06

I moved across the country. I

8:09

suffered an injury that took me out

8:11

of the spore. They had just been

8:13

an enormous part of my identity. I.

8:17

Had a book that became a bestseller

8:19

kind of out of nowhere that that

8:21

really is shifted my career. I suffered

8:24

a really painful families strange men It

8:26

just felt like change after change after

8:28

change. And then of course there was

8:30

the covered pandemic. So it is set

8:32

me off to want to better understand.

8:35

Change. In how we navigate these

8:37

transitions In if it's possible to

8:39

find stability through all of this

8:42

chains. And I know you've

8:44

written about that. You are not unusual

8:46

patties, not unusual that the average adult

8:48

will go to Thirty five. big life

8:50

change as retirement thing. just one of

8:53

them. So why do we hate? same

8:55

so much brass ever met that it's

8:57

the constant say as human the human

8:59

condition. Why are we so resistant to

9:02

it? While. I

9:04

think that some of it

9:06

traces itself back to this

9:08

term homeostasis. It essentially

9:10

was this observation. That.

9:12

Living Systems. Really

9:15

like stability. And. They like

9:17

order to whenever we get to disorder. They.

9:19

Wanna get back to order as fast as

9:21

possible? And. That

9:23

had been the prevailing model for

9:25

conceiving scenes for the last couple

9:28

of centuries. More recently, though, the

9:30

research community stepped back in sad.

9:33

When. We look at individuals

9:35

and even entire organizations. That.

9:38

Thrive over the long haul. It in

9:41

the Excel and In burn bright for

9:43

long durations of time. What?

9:45

We find is it the don't go

9:47

through change in that way This new

9:49

models called Alastair says. In

9:52

it's ordered disorder, reorder,

9:54

we create stability it's in our nature

9:57

but we never get back to where

9:59

we were we move

10:01

forward to somewhere new. So

10:04

homeostasis, the old model, comes from the

10:06

Latin root homo, which means same, and

10:08

then stasis, which means standing. So

10:10

it says we achieve stability by staying the

10:13

same. Whereas allostasis

10:15

comes from the Latin root allo,

10:17

which means change or variable, and

10:19

then stasis, which means standing. So

10:21

it says that we achieve stability through

10:23

change. And it

10:25

has this beautiful double meaning, which is we

10:28

can be stable through change, and the way to

10:30

do it is through changing, at least to some

10:32

extent. And

10:34

it really circles us back to

10:36

Patty's experience of grief, right? Because if

10:38

she were just dead set on heading

10:41

back to where she'd been, there'd be

10:43

nothing to grieve. But because she's looking

10:45

forward and trying to evolve and, you

10:47

know, in this reorder model, then

10:49

there is something to grieve because she's not

10:51

going to go back. Right? Exactly.

10:54

It feels like you are in

10:56

the murky middle still in that

10:58

disorder phase. And the

11:01

other thing that I'm hearing is it's only

11:04

been the better part of two months.

11:07

When you're in the middle of disorder, it

11:10

can feel like forever. It's so hard to

11:12

be patient, but this is

11:14

a massive life transition for you.

11:17

Clearly, it's going to take more than six, seven

11:19

weeks. You know, if

11:21

you think about identity kind

11:23

of like a house, Patty, this

11:26

was a really big room in your

11:29

house, and you spent a lot of time in it.

11:31

And now essentially what you're asking yourself to

11:33

do is leave this room or

11:37

renovate and remodel it. You

11:39

don't do that overnight. And of course, there's going

11:41

to be a grief and a sense of loss.

11:44

That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I do, I have

11:47

a growth mindset and I

11:49

have a maker's mindset. So

11:51

there's no end to the kinds of things

11:53

that I want to do and can pursue. But

11:57

like you said, I do. I want to.

12:00

Do I want to remodel or do I want to add

12:02

an extension? Do I

12:04

want to... That

12:06

shed in the backyard, should I turn that into something

12:08

new? Well,

12:11

and even worse, Brad, I feel like you're asking

12:13

her, which I think is the absolute right thing

12:15

to ask her, but you're asking her to sit

12:18

in a half renovated,

12:20

half destructed room.

12:23

It's like you're asking her to sit in grief,

12:26

which is messy and not particularly

12:28

pretty, especially for those of us who like to

12:30

go from order to reorder. That's

12:33

a very hard feeling. I really identify with you,

12:35

Patty. I might be projecting her, but

12:38

my least favorite moment in

12:40

any kind of renovation experience,

12:42

whether real or emotional, is

12:45

sitting with the mess. And Brad, isn't that

12:47

what you're saying, that part of what Patty has to do is

12:49

just sit in the mess for a little while? That's

12:52

right. And there are things,

12:54

and maybe we'll get to them, that

12:56

can help sit with the mess and

12:58

help usher in what's next. And

13:01

I think that your growth

13:03

mindset will be an enormous factor in

13:05

that. But right now,

13:07

I almost wonder if the growth mindset

13:09

is maybe even getting in the way

13:11

a little bit. And what I

13:13

mean by that is when people go through big

13:16

transitions and big challenges, it's

13:18

very easy to say, well, I'm going to

13:20

have a growth mindset. I'm going to practice

13:22

gratitude and think of all the things and

13:24

count all of my blessings. And that's really

13:26

good advice, but sometimes you

13:29

don't feel gratitude in the moment. And

13:31

sometimes it doesn't feel like you're growing.

13:34

And something that I found in my research,

13:36

really over the last five years coming out

13:39

of COVID and where so many people had

13:41

various life transitions, is that growth

13:43

and meaning do follow big challenges

13:46

and big transitions, but

13:48

it has to occur on its own time.

13:50

You cannot force the growth and meaning. And

13:53

if you try to force it or you try to expedite

13:55

the process, sometimes you inadvertently end

13:57

up slowing it down. Very

14:00

good point. I'm kind

14:02

of an aside or maybe part of

14:04

this. I reread for the first time in

14:07

a thousand years. I reread

14:10

Siddhartha and it makes sense.

14:13

But I feel like when I read it at 16, yeah,

14:16

great, interesting book. And

14:18

then I read it at 70, completely

14:21

understand it. And

14:24

that's basically what it is. You

14:26

just have to go through it. Here's

14:30

a line from that book Siddhartha by

14:32

Hermann Hiss. Everyone

14:35

can perform magic. Everyone

14:37

can reach his goals if he is able to

14:39

think, if he is able to wait, if

14:42

he is able to fast. Listen,

14:44

disorder can be really uncomfortable. This

14:46

is not easy stuff. And it

14:48

doesn't help that time slows down

14:51

when we're struggling. A

14:54

researcher named David Eagleman, who's a neuroscientist,

14:56

he took participants of this study to

14:58

an amusement park in Texas and

15:01

had them ride something called the

15:03

SCAD, which stands for suspended

15:05

catch air device. And

15:07

I want you to picture just a mattress that's

15:10

200 feet off the ground and you get on this mattress and

15:12

it just free falls. No,

15:14

no, no. It's like

15:17

bungee jumping without the bungee. The

15:20

funny thing is there's a footnote in

15:22

the experiment that they had

15:24

to go to Texas because this ride wouldn't

15:26

be allowed in any other state. So just

15:29

an extremely harrowing ride. And

15:32

what Eagleman, the neuroscientist did

15:34

is he had participants while

15:37

they were on the ride predict how

15:40

long it took for them to fall. So the minute they

15:42

got off, he said, how long did it take you to

15:44

fall? And then he

15:46

had them gather themselves. And about

15:48

an hour later, watch other people on the ride.

15:51

And what he found is that when the

15:53

participants were in free fall, they

15:56

overestimated how long it took by

15:58

almost 50%. Whereas

16:01

when they were on the ground, when they had stability and

16:03

they watched other people on the ride, they

16:05

nailed the prediction with really good accuracy. So

16:09

it's also this beautiful metaphor that when it feels

16:11

like the ground underneath us has been pulled out

16:14

when we're in freefall, our perception of time slows

16:16

down. And it's so important to

16:18

just know, to be kind to yourself and

16:20

say, this is just my brain slowing time

16:23

down. It feels like forever now. But

16:25

when I look back on this period, one

16:28

year later, two years later, maybe

16:30

even five years later, it won't

16:32

feel like it was so all-encompassing.

16:34

I'm anticipating that. It's the old, you

16:36

know, the days are long and the years

16:39

are short, at edge, right?

16:41

Yeah, I think that's right. And

16:44

you won't be going back to

16:46

the same Outlook calendar and to

16:48

the same team of people. What you

16:50

can take with you are the

16:53

values that undergirded

16:55

your leadership in the healthcare

16:58

system. And

17:00

those values, whether they're drive or

17:03

dedication or teamwork or collaboration or

17:05

mastery, you tell me what

17:07

those values are, but those don't have to change.

17:11

And those kind of become your

17:14

sources of ruggedness that you can lean

17:16

on to navigate through the disorder. I

17:18

get that. I'm curious, Patty, like, do

17:20

you have a sense of what those values are?

17:24

I do. The

17:27

one thing that I enjoy doing, I'm

17:30

very attuned to

17:34

supporting everyone

17:37

who's on the trip with me. Whether

17:41

they report to me or not, I

17:44

don't need to take glory in

17:46

something. It's always going

17:48

to be a collaborative effort and

17:51

that has always been important to me. That's

17:55

so wonderful. I'm hearing contribution,

17:58

mentorship or coaching. some

18:01

mastery, teamwork, collaboration, these sorts

18:03

of values. Right,

18:07

right. And kind of to

18:09

go back to what you were talking about,

18:11

allostasis is when we change, you

18:14

go from something to something different.

18:17

I remember, or made me think when I

18:20

sent my kids off to college and I

18:22

was no longer in mom mode, I

18:25

reframed my role

18:27

as a mother to, I was a mother

18:30

emerita. So it's

18:32

an honorary role. It was no longer a job. It

18:34

was no longer that I had to do on a

18:36

day-to-day basis. But, you

18:39

know, like the professor's emerita, it's

18:41

something that, yes,

18:43

my role has changed. It's still

18:46

a very important title, but

18:48

it's a different way of approaching

18:50

it. So I've taken the change

18:52

and reframed it. I

18:55

love how you did that. Do you think that there might be an

18:58

avenue to do that here? That's

19:00

what I was thinking. Yeah, exactly what I was thinking

19:02

when you were talking about allostasis. No, yeah. I

19:05

love what you're saying about the values

19:09

being able to be constant. Cause I don't

19:11

know if you felt this, Patti, but when

19:13

Brad was describing that, I felt myself breathing

19:15

deeper. Like, oh, okay. The

19:18

grief is about the circumstances,

19:20

the context. It's

19:23

not actually about needing to change some core

19:25

part of who you are. You can still

19:27

be you and evolve into

19:29

the reorder. I like that. There's something about

19:32

that that's really reassuring to me, Brad. I

19:34

think part of our resistance to change is

19:36

feeling like we're being asked to be a different person.

19:39

And it is different, but you can hold on

19:41

to the core of what you've always cared about.

19:45

That's exactly right. The central construct

19:47

in the book, Master of Change,

19:49

is this notion of rugged flexibility.

19:53

And the ruggedness, those are

19:55

your values. Those are the things that make you who you

19:57

are. The flexibility

19:59

is... is the roles in

20:01

context and environments in which you

20:03

operate and apply those values. That's

20:07

beautiful, I love that term. Does that term

20:10

do things for you, Patti? Yes, very much

20:12

so, yeah. So it's

20:15

a loss of a part of you, but

20:18

the deeper, more underlying part, the values,

20:21

that is ultimately, like that's how you

20:23

are stable through change is by constantly

20:25

leaning on those values and holding on

20:28

to them tight. And then the

20:30

hard work, and it is hard, is

20:32

figuring out new ways to practice

20:34

those values and to apply them.

20:38

If we're going to go back to the

20:40

house metaphor that Brad used, Patti's foundation is

20:42

still there. Her core values are still intact

20:44

and providing stability, but we still

20:47

got some work to do. After the

20:49

break, we're gonna don our hard hats and

20:51

hammers because it is time to renovate that

20:53

room that used to house Patti's work identity.

20:56

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states and situations. We

24:12

are back with Brad Stilberg, author of Master

24:14

of Change, who is helping our listener Patty

24:16

figure out how to think about retirement. I

24:19

think a big part of what professional satisfaction

24:21

is for a lot of people is

24:24

that you get to work at the height

24:26

of your powers if you're lucky, doing something

24:28

that you're good at and you care about, and

24:30

you actually get to affect change that you can

24:33

trace back to yourself. And it's

24:35

so satisfying, right, to be able to

24:37

exert your will on something and

24:39

have it change in a direction that you want it to

24:41

change. And when that's taken away,

24:45

it can lead to a significant

24:47

loss of fulfillment. And

24:49

what oftentimes people find helpful is other

24:52

ways to experience mastery, whether

24:55

it is learning to power lift, whether

24:57

it is running your first 5K, whether

24:59

it is gardening or tap dancing

25:01

or learning the clarinet, but some kind

25:04

of activity that allows you to see

25:06

that tangible improvement that maybe you got

25:08

at work that now you're starting to

25:10

miss. Yeah,

25:13

that's definitely something that

25:16

is part of me. I took a break

25:19

from my professional

25:21

world with a small p and

25:23

I started a restaurant. I

25:27

mean, it's like a complete 180 and then

25:31

the recession hit. So

25:33

I was in it for a little over

25:36

two years and the

25:38

world just fell out from under me.

25:41

I found myself at

25:43

loose ends with that

25:45

one for the first time,

25:47

feeling like, oddly,

25:50

feeling like a failure. This is my

25:52

livelihood and I had just fallen

25:54

through. And I

25:56

started taking on other types of

25:59

things. of things to try to

26:01

try to give

26:04

me a world to stand on again.

26:06

So I took, you know,

26:09

I took acting classes and improv

26:11

classes, something to get my confidence

26:13

back and that

26:17

really seemed to help a lot.

26:22

Feeling fulfilled is a great way to start.

26:24

If you're not sure what to do go

26:26

back to your values and ask yourself for

26:28

each one, what's a new way to practice

26:30

what I care about? Your answers can lead

26:33

you to new pursuits that either fill the room

26:36

or become new rooms. You can also go back

26:38

to previous interests and see if there's still a

26:40

spark there. You might not have

26:42

the final design and that's okay, you just have

26:44

to start building. In the

26:47

research literature that the term for this is

26:49

behavioral activation and it essentially

26:51

says that during times of change and

26:53

transition, we don't have

26:55

to feel good and motivated to get going.

26:57

Often we have to get going to give

26:59

ourselves a chance at feeling good and motivated

27:02

or we don't have to know the answer to start.

27:04

Sometimes we just have to start and then learn the

27:06

answer. So I think lowering

27:08

the bar from I need to be passionate about

27:11

this or I need to know that this is

27:13

right for me to I

27:15

find this interesting or this

27:17

is an activity or a pursuit or a

27:19

community that I'm curious about and

27:22

then pursuing those curiosities and seeing what

27:24

happens. I like that. Just

27:26

the energy of moving, taking that

27:28

first step. Whether that's the final step or

27:31

not, it doesn't matter. It's just doing that

27:33

next thing. Yeah, you give

27:35

yourself a chance because I think

27:37

that passion is something that we think

27:39

that we just find. It's like lightning

27:41

striking but far more often

27:43

than not, we develop it over time. Mm-hmm.

27:46

Don't you think there's a role for pleasure and delight

27:48

here, Brad? Yeah, I do and I

27:50

think it's something that folks like us and I'm

27:52

categorizing with three of us together here. So type

27:54

A pushers,

27:57

growth driven. Sometimes

27:59

we forget to experience joy. Yeah, there's

28:02

the pleasure that comes from running a marathon

28:04

or leading a department of 100 people or

28:06

launching a podcast. The

28:08

hard work leads to pleasure. But

28:11

then there's also the pleasure that comes from

28:13

dark chocolate or a comedy or just giving

28:15

yourself permission to just enjoy life

28:17

and be giddy for no other reason

28:20

that you're here. In

28:23

as odd as it is to say, that can

28:25

be challenging for really driven people. Yeah,

28:28

and especially

28:32

when I'm in the middle of like, I'm

28:34

just in the middle of grief and in

28:36

the middle of sadness, I keep thinking, yeah,

28:38

I'm looking forward to being out of this.

28:40

And I know there isn't an end to

28:43

this sadness. I don't

28:45

know where it is. But I'm really looking forward

28:47

to that sliver of

28:49

chocolate up on my tongue. Just all

28:51

I need is just the essence

28:53

of it. And I'm fine. They

28:55

can also co-occur. And

28:57

then I don't mean to say that they will.

29:00

But you can feel deep grief and

29:03

sadness at the same time that you

29:05

also start to experience joy, like there

29:07

will probably be some overlap. Yeah, you're

29:09

right. Of those two things. And just

29:12

because you're giggling or you're experiencing

29:14

pleasure, doesn't mean you're not honoring the

29:16

grief and the loss and the sadness

29:19

of this transition. You

29:22

can have both of those emotions in

29:24

the same week in the same day, maybe even in the same

29:26

hour. Yeah, yeah,

29:28

good point. Why

29:33

does it feel like we have

29:35

to learn this incredibly basic lesson

29:37

over and over again? You can

29:39

feel two feelings at once. Lord,

29:41

I swear I have to be

29:43

reminded of this like at least

29:45

twice a week. So Patty, you're

29:48

not alone. Well, I actually wanted

29:50

to dive into something here, Brad,

29:52

which was the physical. I

29:55

actually also hear in what Patty

29:57

shared, like a muscle memory issue.

30:00

you, right? When you're in the disorder phase,

30:02

you're used to waking up, you

30:04

know, getting your coffee or your tea, figuring

30:07

out what your meetings are for the day,

30:10

getting yourself dressed and ready for, you

30:12

know, a packed day. And it's like,

30:14

Patty has just stepped into the abyss,

30:16

right? She's, she's waking up and her

30:19

muscles are all poised for that experience

30:21

and they're not having them. So is

30:23

there something actually like

30:26

somatic and physical about being in the

30:28

messy middle that you could help us

30:30

figure out? What you

30:33

called muscle memory, the coffee, the meeting,

30:35

the opening, the calendar, the commute, those

30:38

are all ways to mark the passage of

30:40

time and to delineate one

30:43

thing from the next. And

30:45

when those things are missing, time just feels

30:47

warped. One thing bleeds into another and there's

30:49

often a feeling, a loss of meaning

30:51

that comes with that. So

30:54

I think that a good

30:56

place to start there would be trying

30:58

to develop or come

31:00

up with some, some new rituals that

31:02

you could start inserting at regular points

31:04

throughout your day and then building around

31:06

those, those introductory ones. So maybe it

31:09

is a morning coffee, which maybe you

31:11

still have. Maybe it is

31:13

you read for 30 minutes at a certain

31:15

point of the day, or you take a

31:17

daily walk at XYZ time, but just building,

31:19

building in some structure. If you haven't done

31:22

that yet, could be really beneficial. Have

31:25

you been playing with ritual, Patty? Yeah, and I

31:28

really appreciate that. I was

31:31

thinking dehabituating, if

31:33

that is even a word. You

31:36

know, I've, you know, for 50 years, I've had

31:38

this, you know, these habits,

31:40

these, you know, get the coffee when

31:43

I was commuting, commuting, grabbing the

31:45

bus, you know, looking at

31:47

outlooks and stuff. So I have these habits

31:49

that I would go through every day, as I think

31:51

a lot of people do, and it's

31:53

changing those habits to new habits, but

31:55

I think the idea of a ritual

31:58

is, is a lot of people are doing it. more

32:00

approachable to me. It's not so,

32:04

I think it speaks to that growth mindset or

32:08

the progress mindset of making

32:10

something sacred. The

32:18

other thing I was thinking about is community

32:21

and just wondering, you know, it seemed like

32:23

you got so much community through work and

32:25

I'm wondering do you have friends or neighbors

32:27

or other folks around you who are also

32:30

in this stage of life and is there

32:32

any way to sort of accompany

32:34

each other through the messy middle of all this?

32:36

Yeah, they're the ones who say it's gonna be

32:38

really really great.

32:40

It's like, wait wait

32:42

you're ahead of me. I

32:45

want you to feel sorry with me here for a minute.

32:48

Yes, that's so

32:50

interesting. Are they ahead of you longitudinally?

32:52

Are those people that have been retired for

32:54

a longer period of time? Yes, yes. And

32:57

did they experience this intern period and maybe they've

32:59

just forgotten about it or was it a glide

33:01

path for them? I think it was a

33:04

glide path. I don't know one

33:06

has mentioned it and I mentioned the melancholy

33:08

and the sadness and the grief and it

33:11

just goes over the top of

33:14

there. Yeah, that's

33:16

so interesting. I

33:18

found it pretty interesting. I think

33:21

that there is an element in it's

33:23

not a way to problem-solve but maybe

33:25

you'll find some consolation in this and

33:28

I can't speak for your friends. I

33:30

don't know them but it sounds like

33:32

you really cared very deeply about your

33:35

work and that

33:37

is such a blessing to have work that

33:39

you care deeply about that you have identification

33:42

with but the

33:44

inevitability of that is that the things that you care

33:46

about those are the things that break your heart. And

33:51

I think that this heartbreak it

33:53

gets back to like the patience and the

33:55

expectation and then not beating yourself up it's

33:58

going to take time and

34:01

it's completely normal what you're going through.

34:05

There's this other concept, a psychological immune

34:07

system. I don't know if you've heard

34:09

this, but essentially, yeah, much

34:12

like we have biological immune systems,

34:15

we also have psychological immune systems. This

34:17

term was first coined by the

34:19

Harvard research psychologist Dan Gilbert. Our

34:23

psychological immune systems, their job is

34:25

essentially to integrate big changes and

34:27

transitions into our narrative, into the

34:29

story we tell ourselves about ourselves.

34:33

Similar to a biological immune system,

34:36

for small insults or injuries,

34:39

minor scrapes, cuts, common colds,

34:42

our psychological immune system works really

34:44

quickly. One, two

34:46

days we feel fine. But

34:48

for novel changes or

34:50

for large changes, for

34:52

a new virus or a big

34:55

gash that requires multiple stitches, it

34:57

takes time, no different than our biological immune

34:59

system. I

35:02

really think that all of these little nudges, rituals, reflecting

35:04

on your values, these are all going to help, but

35:06

at the end of the day, I think

35:08

it's just accepting that your psychological

35:10

immune system is going to need

35:13

the time to integrate this big

35:15

change. The

35:17

more that you judge yourself for not feeling happy

35:19

or try to rush the process, even though it's

35:21

inadvertent, the more that you risk getting in your

35:23

own way. Getting in my own

35:26

way. Yeah,

35:28

which is so hard for a pusher that

35:30

likes growth in it for the last couple

35:32

decades. You made things

35:34

happen and it's so

35:36

cliche to say, but it's like our ultimate

35:38

strengths become our kryptonite. In

35:41

here, I don't think that you can make

35:43

meaning suddenly happen or make growth happen. I have

35:45

no doubt they're going to occur. My guess is

35:47

we have the same conversation a year from now

35:50

and you'll look back on this period with all kinds

35:52

of meaning and growth, but when you're in

35:54

the thick of it, you just have to be

35:57

gentle to yourself and nudge your way towards those things,

35:59

not try to force them. Yeah,

36:01

yeah, you make me want to cry. I appreciate

36:04

it. Oh no, I don't know. Tears

36:09

are not bad. We believe in tears on the

36:11

show. But you have to be patient with

36:15

yourself and it's so, so, so hard

36:18

to do. I

36:27

learned this personally in my own

36:29

life in a very different situation, but a

36:33

while back I had sudden

36:35

onset, obsessive compulsive disorder, and

36:37

secondary depression. And it

36:40

just completely rocked

36:42

my world. Just

36:45

devastated me. Really

36:47

debilitating and I remember

36:50

maybe being two or three months into

36:52

therapy and telling

36:54

my therapist that I

36:57

just want to grow from this. You

36:59

know, I had read Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning.

37:01

I just want to find some meaning in the suffering

37:04

and yet it all feels so pointless.

37:07

And God bless her heart what she

37:10

told me is that sometimes things can

37:12

just suck and the meaning and growth, if

37:15

they're gonna happen, they'll happen on their own time.

37:17

Like your job is just to do the small

37:19

things to get through. And

37:22

that's life-changing advice for me and it comes

37:24

from Brooke to me and if I can

37:26

pass that on to you and if

37:28

you find that helpful, it's

37:30

just so important. Thank

37:32

you. Yeah, I will take that and embrace

37:34

that. Okay,

37:38

well I really want to make sure that

37:40

we have helped you today,

37:43

Patty, because we do have our

37:46

our growth mindset type A

37:49

approach here at HowTo. First of

37:51

all, has this felt helpful and

37:53

are there any lingering questions on

37:55

your mind that Brad might be

37:57

able to answer? I think this has

37:59

been fabulous. I was joking with

38:01

Rosemary that it could turn into a

38:03

therapy session and it's given me

38:05

a lot of food for thought it's it's definitely

38:08

made me feel supported and That

38:13

the the grief and the sadness is actually

38:15

recognized. Thank you very much Yeah,

38:18

and I'm so sorry that the

38:20

others didn't allude toward that happening

38:22

I'm not at all surprised that you're feeling this way.

38:25

It doesn't make it easier for you But

38:27

of course you feel grief and sadness

38:29

at this loss and at this transition

38:32

And I really think just giving yourself

38:34

permission realizing that that's normal. That's okay

38:37

Being gentle and kind to yourself Well at

38:39

the same time nudging yourself towards action and

38:41

the direction of these values and curiosities And

38:44

then overlaying all that with patience I I

38:47

hope we can talk in a year and I'll give you

38:49

my email offline or whatever But um, I

38:51

have a high degree of confidence that in a year from

38:53

now You'll look back on this and it

38:56

won't seem as all-consuming and you'll have grown quite

38:58

a bit from it. Thank you, Brad. Thank

39:00

you, Patty I appreciate your vulnerability

39:02

and entrusting me with this conversation.

39:05

Thank you. Oh my pleasure Thanks

39:11

to Patty for sharing her messy middle with

39:13

us I think we've all learned

39:15

a lot from her vulnerability and thanks to

39:17

Brad master of the helpful metaphor man Be

39:20

sure to check out his book master of

39:22

change how to excel when everything is changing

39:27

Do you have a metaphorical house that

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39:57

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40:00

Duhigg created the show, Carvel Wallace

40:02

is my co-host, and I'm Courtney

40:05

Martin. Thanks for listening.