Ep 45. There Isn’t Better Than Here

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 45: There Isn’t Better Than Here.

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

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

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

Hey guys, welcome back to the show. How are you today? I am getting ready to go on vacation. We are going with our kids and our grandbabies to Lake Tahoe. We love it at Lake Tahoe, it’s so fun. And we just love being together. So, I’m packing up, packing up some clothes and some food and then we’re going to head out. But I want to just offer you a simple thought today that is really helpful to me and has been very powerful in my life. There isn’t better than here, it just isn’t. It’s not why we set goals.

We don’t think that once we achieve our goals that that goal is going to bring us everything that we’ve ever wanted. It just isn’t. Here is the best place to be. There’s nothing better than here. So that’s where we want to focus. We want to focus where we are here right now. If your life isn’t great here right now then you’ve got to get to work making your life great here right now. It’s not going to be better there. But our brain tricks us into that. It’s really good at it. Our brain’s super good at getting us to just wait on things. Just wait for vacation. It’ll be so much better on vacation.

And then everyone just takes their brain on vacation and the vacation, it has a lot of pressure on it. And you just know that there’s going to be complaining on vacation because we’re taking our brain with us. We’re still the same people on vacation. So here has to be where you put all of your energy and you spend all of your resources. So, you get to work making your life great where you are. That’s the trick because there isn’t better than here. The new year won’t be better than it is right now midyear.

Retirement certainly will not be better than here right now. Do you know how many people are so disappointed with retirement and end up just wasting their life away? And if they’re grumbling and complaining in their work life and they don’t make their work life great then they spend their entire retirement which ends up being the rest of their life grumbling and complaining too. So, can you see that? There isn’t better than here. We’ve got to stop waiting on something to happen and we’re going to make it happen here right now, today.

So, what are you waiting on? Really, what are you waiting on? Stop waiting. If you think you’re going to be in a better position to move 10 years from now so you’re going to wait 10 years, I promise you, you’re not going to be in a better position to move. I was just coaching a client on this, I told her, “Move. Move now. What are you waiting for? Make all your dreams come true here right now because there will not be better. There’s not going to be a better time. You can’t make a wrong decision.

So, this morning I got up at my four o’clock hour and I think I told you this last week but maybe not. I have doubled down on all my goals for the rest of the year, just for the fun of it. I just thought, why not, why wouldn’t I? I think it will be fun. So, for my health goals, my body goals I’m very disciplined about swimming, and my trainer, and running, and hiking. And then I just joined a gym called Orange Theory.

And I know a lot of you know what Orange Theory is and I’ve been hearing about it for a long time from a lot of my friends, but I had never taken a class. I’d never even really walked into one. But I found out that there was one just eight minute drive from my house. And I thought, hey, for the rest of the year why don’t I go check out Orange Theory and maybe take a couple of classes a week, just add that on to my swimming, and to my running, to my hiking, to my weight lifting. So, I did that last week.

And I have taken three classes in the last six days and this morning was one of them. So, I love it because they have a 5:00am class which is so amazing. Because I’m done working out at six o’clock. And I’m not really a take a class kind of girl. But now I kind of think I am, I just love it so much, it’s kind of addicting. So, I got a really good challenging workout in, super, super sweaty and I was done at six and then totally way ahead on my day already.

So along with the thought that there isn’t better than here, here is where I need to make it great. I also have the thought that I’m always ahead because I get up so early. So, I do the hard things first, so the easy things are later. And I do think that that goes along with the there isn’t better than here idea. Because we think it’s going to be better than it is now and so our brain talks us out of doing the hard things now to make it better. So, the way we make it great here right now is to do the hard things so that I mean the hard things are why it’s better.

When we choose to get up early and we choose to do the work first, it makes our life so much better now. It does. And it goes along with that carpe diem, that idea of seizing the day, today is full of every good thing that I could ever imagine, I just need to create it for myself. It’s already all available to me. I just need to get up and go seize it because no one’s going to actually bring it to me or provide it for me. I have to create it for myself. That’s why I’m so big on goals because it gives us something to get up and work at today.

And we have something to get up and work at today, today is the best day ever. When we have the best day ever today we’re not waiting on anything in the future to be better than it is right now. And that’s where all the life is for us, it’s now, it’s here, it’s so exciting. Jeff and I was, I think we said it to each other yesterday, there are literally no bad days. I mean no bad days. I have not had a bad day that I can remember.

I mean obviously I told Jeff the day my dad died it was last November and I’ll never forget that day but that was the worst day of my life so far. That was a very, very sad day. But at the same time, I can honestly say there was a lot of joy in that day too because of the dad I had and because of who he is and was. So, it’s so all a part of it. But so many people have so many bad days. And I just want to tell you, that’s optional. The day isn’t just bad. You think thoughts that create feelings in you, that drive actions in you, that give you a reason to say, this is a bad day.

But what if it isn’t a bad day? What if there are literally no bad days? What if we carpe diem all the days? And another line I just read about carpe diem was plucking the day. And I love that. Let’s pluck the day like we’re going to pluck a beautiful flower. Let’s take it. Let’s take the day and make it the best day ever because there isn’t better than here. If it’s not great here that’s up to us to make it great, you guys. You have to know that by now. So, I love knowing that. I love thinking that.

I’m going to take my very happy self, my carpe diem self, my pluck the day self, my enjoy the day self and seize the day self and I’m going to take this self on vacation. And I’m going to have just as great of a time on vacation as I have in my everyday life because it’s totally up to me. The vacation isn’t going to provide the experience for me. I’m going to provide the experience for me. So, there’s just a different attitude. If this attitude seems so foreign to you, I promise you can start changing your attitude today right now, here to make here and now great for you.

It’s not your circumstances, it’s your thinking. So, to wrap up I just want you to remember that here is better than there and now is better than later. Just in a nutshell because you guys, stop waiting, start today, today here now be present. This is everything. Alright, I love you so much for showing up today and for sharing this episode with your family and friends. It means the world to me. Have the best week and I will see you next Thursday.

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