Ep 148. Young Energy

I’m Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 148, Young Energy.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hey my friends in podcast land. How are you today? Oh, my goodness, I am back from my Hawaii vacation and I am refreshed and revived and renewed and so happy to be home. Vacation exceeded my wildest dreams and I loved every single minute of it. It was so well done. I’m so proud of all of us. It was amazing in every way. I am not even joking. I know I told you about this because I plan and I talk about things ahead of time so that I can enjoy everything ahead of time so, all the pressure wasn’t on vacation at all.

There was no pressure on vacation because I felt almost like I’d already gone on vacation. That’s how I live my life. I live my life that way. That’s why I’ve been talking about our 40th wedding anniversary so much. We haven’t even had it yet. Our wedding anniversary is August 4th, 2024, and it’s only July 2nd, 2024. And I feel like we’ve already celebrated our 40th anniversary. So, there will be no pressure on either one of us or on our family at all on the exact day of our anniversary. That’s how I love to live my life.

Let’s talk about young energy. I’m talking about young energy right now. I’m talking about tapping into this well that we all have of young energy. And I especially feel it and felt it on vacation being around my 30 year old kids and being around my super young energy grandkids. It was phenomenal how much young energy that encapsulated me all week long and I was tapping into it as I went.

I was paying so much attention to it, especially with my grandkids. And the way that they just see life is invigorating to me, their wonder, their awe, their playfulness, their curiosity. How they just go, go, go, go and then they crash. I kind of love that. They’re just in the moment, all in, 100%, let’s just dive into whatever we’re doing and live in that moment. That, to me, is young energy. So, are they worrying about anything? No, they are not. Are they thinking about the details of it? No, they are not.

They are just enjoying it, enjoying and kind of soaking it up and taking advantage of it. So, we went down, we stayed in this beautiful community called Coconut Plantation on the island of Oahu, in the community of Ko Olina. It has a Four Seasons on the beach right there. It has a Disney hotel, I think it’s called the Aulani Hotel. And it has a bunch of timeshares by Marriott on the sand right there too.

And the coconut plantation is this, oh my gosh, you guys, dreamy, stunning community of homes that two of my cousins, they each live there half the year. And they’re right across the lawn from each other. So, my kids and grandbabies stayed in one owned by my cousin Doug Wicks. And Jeff and I stayed in the other owned by my cousins Bobby and Judy Wicks. And they offered us their beautiful homes, and we took advantage of it. And wow, was it amazing. They have beautiful pools in the community. The community is pristine and the homes are gorgeous.

And then we could walk everywhere and Doug had a big old golf cart and we could take the golf cart down with the kids but mostly we walked everywhere. Jeff was really into counting steps. I think he did my steps one day and it was over 20,000. I don’t even know if that’s a lot or not, but I was just filled with young energy. I’m going to keep circling back to young energy, what that felt like to me. And I didn’t have my Orangetheory there, of course, though I would have loved it if I did. I would have taken advantage of that for sure every single day.

But what I did instead is I planned on running every day. I have several pair of running shoes, but I took my favorite running shoes and just my running shorts and everything. I don’t need very much to run and I’ve always been a runner and so that’s like riding a bike for me. And the island weather is humid, which was beautiful for our skin. We really loved it and appreciated it. It was warm and it was humid.

And the three hour time difference from California, it felt like vacation because really my intention was just to not pay attention to any schedules or pay attention to what time it was or didn’t care what time I went to bed, didn’t care what time I got up. None of that mattered to me, which is the opposite of how I live. So, I feel like that’s young energy because I was watching my babies. They want to stay up as late as possible. They don’t care what time they go to bed. They don’t care what time they get up. They don’t want to miss a minute of the party.

But what I did every morning, we would just walk outside the gates and there is an amazing precious local market there that had every single thing we could ever want. It had all the booze we could want. It had all the fresh food, fresh fruit. It had all the supplies we could want. And then also in the little market complex right there, which is all darling, really aesthetically, darling. There’s a Starbucks with a few really good restaurants which we tried them all and they were all amazing.

But I would walk down. I would get up every morning, whatever time it was. And I honestly don’t even know what time it was, but it was light outside and I would get up and I would put my [inaudible] on or my flip flops even and my shorts and I would walk down to Starbucks and I would get my venti oat milk vanilla latte with half pump of vanilla, extra hot. And I’d get my husband his normal Pike Place coffee with a little bit of milk and then I would walk back and how fun.

How fun right there, that is young energy to me to just get up and put your flip flops and your shorts on and walk outside your door and walk to the Starbucks and get your coffee. And by the end of the week they were going, “Hey, Kym, good morning, Kym.” Because I was usually the first one there at six o’clock. They opened at six o’clock and I’d be the first one there, even though I didn’t know it was six o’clock when I woke up. When I found out that they opened at six, it was like that’s a good time for me to get down there.

And then I just walked back with my coffee and then I would sit on my cousin’s veranda and I would play my Wordle, which I love. Jeff and I have a little competition with Wordle and Connections. I know you guys all play Wordle, but have you found out about Connections yet? That’s in the New York Times too as well. So, start playing Connections, you’re going to love it and they just have one a day as well. And we’ve gotten so good at it. I wasn’t good at it at first, but now I’m really good at it. So, we have a good little competition there so I do that in the morning.

And then literally just whatever I felt like and let me tell you the book I read on vacation, you guys called Jackie by Dawn Tripp. It’s brand new. It just came out. When I say read it, I listened to it. Though I just ordered the hardback because I do want to read it or read certain parts of it. It was phenomenal. It was so good. So, I listened to that. I started listening to that on the plane over and then I listened to it at night before I went to sleep and then I listened to it again in the mornings when I’d go on my runs, wow.

I’ve always been a little obsessed with the Kennedy family and Jackie O in particular. She’s been obviously iconic and just not even that much older than me and you probably. But what a life she led and what a legacy she left and a story she left. And what a strong, beautiful, stylish, smart, curious woman that we could all learn a lot from. And what was so cool about this book in particular, because I’ve read a lot of Jackie O stories and this one is different because she wrote it as if it were a novel so it was just magical.

She took some liberties, I’m sure because it wasn’t Jackie writing it but it felt like it was Jackie writing it and I just loved her perspective. I loved the language she used. She’s such a good writer. So, I highly recommend the new novel out called Jackie, and it’s written by Dawn Tripp. And I found that out by my friend Zibby Owens, who is the book queen of all queens. She read it right before I was even on vacation, and she highly recommended it so I was like, “I’m reading this book.” So, I highly recommend that to you.

But back to young energy, you guys, so my new favorite singer, her name is Sabrina Carpenter and she has a few songs out that I’m obsessed with that I love and one’s called Espresso. One’s called Feather. One’s called Please, please, please. And one’s called Nonsense. I love all four of those. That was on my Hawaii playlist. I had a whole new Hawaii playlist. But she’s adorable, she’s super young, she’s in her 20s. She opened for Taylor Swift and you know how I love Taylor Swift.

And Taylor Swift has kept me in young energy for this entire last year since she started The Eras Tour. Nothing has motivated me more than Taylor Swift and The Eras Tour. Even though I haven’t even gone to a concert yet in person, I still am committed to going before December because I know December’s her very last time she’s going to be doing any Eras Tour concerts. So, I am hoping to get to go by myself, I’m planning on it, but we will see.

But anyways, she opened, her and Taylor are friends and she opened for a couple of her concerts, I believe maybe when she was in Europe but could have been when she was in the States, I’m not sure. But that’s when her name kind of came on my radar. And then I heard one of her songs, I was like, “Oh, my gosh, she’s so cute and bubbly and these are so fun. Her songs are so fun.” And in one of those songs, she says, “You’ve got to keep up with me, I’ve got some young energy.” And that’s been in my mind, you’ve got to keep up with me, I’ve got some young energy.

And I’m thinking at 63 years old, am I allowed to say those words? Am I allowed to think like that? Am I allowed to live like that? Is this really possible for me? Can I sing a song like that and really know that that is a real life thing to be in young energy at 63? Who gets to decide that? Who gets to decide if we’re living in young energy at the age of 63? We do. Let me answer that for you, my friend. We get to decide that. I get to decide that.

And I think if I’ve learned, I mean, if you’ve been following along and listening to all my episodes, you have literally listened to me transform before your ears. My whole self-concept has changed dramatically since I started this podcast. This is why I tell you, start a business. Start a podcast. Write a book. Do the thing you really want to do that scares you to death because you think you can do it wrong. And I’m telling you, you can’t do it wrong. And this is what I know for sure. I can’t do it wrong. I mean, I can’t do this life wrong.

And so, if I know that, I am so much braver with the things that I say every day and the things I talk about on my podcast, the things that I talk about on my Instagram, the way that I coach my clients. I can’t do it wrong. And this young energy of curiosity, of fun, of being motivated, of being in the moment, of being playful, of taking chances and risks, not playing it so safe, of not worrying at all, not worrying at all what other people might be saying or thinking.

I even think it’s so interesting now, it’s like well, I’ll just give people something to talk about. If they want something to talk about. I am so happy to provide that for you if you want to talk about something other than what you’re creating in your own life. I’m all about what I’m creating in my own life. I am not even thinking about what other people might be doing. I’m not talking about what other people might be saying or thinking or doing.

It is so not interesting to me other than the women in the arena with me doing the scary things, who are transforming before my eyes, who are doing hard things, who are putting themselves out there. Who are not playing it safe and sitting in the stands and finding something critical to say about us women in the arena, we’re the ones. So, if you’re in the arena with me, if you are really doing the scary work of changing and growing and evolving and becoming the next best version of yourself and tapping into your young energy, ready to fly, ready to soar.

Ready to even change the way that you are doing your life with your husband. If you don’t follow me on Instagram, I really want you to follow me on Instagram. I gave everyone a tour of my closet yesterday. Hey, listen, I’m obsessed with my life. My life is my dream life because I work very hard to make sure that I have my dream life because I know it’s 100% up to me. So, I’m not worrying or thinking about what other people, I’m not keeping up with the Jones’. I’m not keeping up with anybody but me.

I get ideas from people. I get ideas from women. I am obsessed with Instagram, I follow amazing people. And now I’m curious about TikTok so we’ll see. But I’m going to figure out how to do TikTok. So, I can’t wait to start putting stuff on TikTok. That’ll be fun too. So, you can follow me on TikTok. I actually do have an account. I haven’t done anything on it yet but you can be one of my very first followers. I don’t think I have any. I might have two, I don’t know but I haven’t done anything. But you can be a part of me starting something new.

My whole point is, if you want to start something new, you’ve just got to be able to trust the process. Maybe you’re a little wonky at first, a little wobbly at first. Who cares? It doesn’t matter. This is what I know for sure after this being my 148th episode of my podcast. I was a little wobbly at first. I was a little wonky at first. I was a little nervous at first. I had no idea what I was doing at first. I was worried about doing it wrong or being able to keep up with it and all of that. My brain was just freaked out about this podcast.

And now I can’t wait to sit down and just talk to you, tell you what’s going on and how excited I am about life. And I just know I just want to infuse you with young energy, with happiness, with joy, with enthusiasm, with a curiosity about what you can create in your own life if you just are willing to do scary things. And I say this all the time, everything you want is on the other side of being scared. Just be willing to be scared and not know what you’re doing at first.

And then if you just are willing every day to keep practicing it, you’re going to get good at it. It’s inevitable. There is no doubt. I’m 100% sure of it. If you practice it every single day, you’re going to get good at it. So just be willing to feel scared. It’s a vibration in your body. It’s totally fine. I saw my grandbabies scared, I saw my granddaughters scared and do it anyway. We would just cheer them on, and they would do it anyway. And then they loved it, and then they would keep practicing it. And then all of a sudden, they were just doing everything that they were scared to do at first.

So that’s young energy. That’s why first graders move to second grade. Second graders moved to third grade. Third graders moved to fourth grade. Fourth graders moved to fifth grade. But when we graduate college, we stop moving. We have to keep moving, you guys. So, I’m 63 now and I kind of like this age, I can’t wait to be 64. That to me is like moving up a grade. So, I’m going to move up a grade.

I am challenging myself to tap into all the things available to me in this life. It doesn’t matter what my husband’s doing. It doesn’t matter what he’s thinking. Back to my closet and my little tour yesterday that I gave you guys on my Instagram, it was on my stories. So, by the time you hear this, if you missed it, you missed it, but let me tell you about it. I gave you a little tour of my bathroom.

I have this darling suite in my house and it’s a big bedroom and it’s super clean. There’s hardly anything in it. There is a desk with nothing on it, and there’s a bed and there’s a nightstand and there’s a darling picture over my bed and a couple of really cute sconces and that’s it in my entire bedroom. And then I have a closet that only has the clothes, and everything in my bedroom I love, that’s it. There’s not a bunch of stuff in it.

And then you walk into my closet and my closet, it’s a walk through closet. There’s two doors in my closet. You can walk in one from my bedroom, and you can walk out another into my bathroom. So, it’s a pretty dreamy situation. So, everything in my closet is exactly my style, is darling. It’s what I love to wear. Everything looks good on me and everything fits. There’s nothing in my closet that doesn’t fit me because I get rid of things that don’t fit me. I get rid of things that I don’t love anymore.

So, I don’t care how much money I spent on it, if I don’t love it anymore, I get rid of it. It is not in my closet anymore. That’s why I love going into my closet every morning and getting dressed. This is young energy. I get a thrill every day and excited. I love to feel excited. That’s young energy, feeling excited about what I’m going to wear, just like my little granddaughters, Goldie and Dolly, they get excited about what they’re going to wear. They love to be fashionable, and it’s so cute.

Especially Goldie, loves to accessorize. She always has all of her accessories all put together. They’re both so fabulous and stylish and enthusiastic and excited about all things life.

That is young energy. And so, getting dressed as a woman of 63, I love style. I love my style. I love my fashion. I love walking into my closet. Listen, it’s not fancy, but it’s perfect and it’s so fun and it’s so exciting. So that’s why I gave you a little tour of it is because I’m so ruthless.

I will not keep things that I don’t love because it takes up space in my life. It takes up space in my head and then I start avoiding my closet and I start not looking forward to getting dressed anymore. And I don’t ever want to do that to myself. So that’s why I gave you that little tour is I want to encourage you. I want to motivate you and inspire you to be ruthless with your clothes. Take out all the things you don’t wear.

And I give mostly, always give all my clothes to my daughter. She knows what to do with them. She sometimes sells them. She passes them on and so, I don’t worry about that. I just take her big bags full of clothes and she does very useful things with those clothes. So, I love that part. So whatever useful things you want to do with your clothes, it’s fair game. There’s no shame in whatever you decide to do with your clothes that you want to give away. Give them away to whoever you want to give them away to. You get to decide that.

So, you don’t have to pay attention to anybody else or anyone’s judgments or any of that. That’s all nonsense. And then l gave you a little shot of my new bathroom, which is pretty dang dreamy. I’m so lucky. And then of course, my bedroom. And then I had a bunch of you DM me and say, “Where’s your husband?” Because everything’s all mine in my suite. And people said, “Does your husband have his own bedroom?” I was like, “Heck, yes.”

So, if you’ve been following me and you’ve been listening to this podcast from the beginning, you know that my husband has his own bedroom and he has his own closets. He actually has the two smaller bedrooms. And then he has a gigantic bathroom with a huge steam shower. We remodeled his bathroom and it’s just so cool. But he loves his situation. I love my situation. And obviously it has helped us stay happily married for 40 years because I needed my own space.

And he didn’t know that he needed his own space but now he knows he needs his own space and he appreciates it and loves it so much. So that keeps us happy. That keeps us healthy. That keeps us thriving. And that’s what we’re all after, my friend. That’s what you’re after. That’s what I’m after. And I think this young energy that I’m going to keep tapping into the rest of the year, I keep finding more of it. And I really want to rediscover some new things to add to my everyday life.

I’ve been very focused on my business, which has been amazing and great. But I think I’m going to be a little more playful with my business. I’m going to be a little more playful with my everyday life. I’m going to go to the beach more because hello, I live at the beach and I hardly ever go to the beach. I’m just going to do more vacation, playful young energy type of things that I have been doing lately. I’ve been going with my husband on walks. I just felt a need to lighten up and tap into a more energetic, enthusiastic way of being in my everyday life.

And so that’s what I have discovered. I’ve been more curious about things. I’ve been more excited about things. I’ve been looking for new music to listen to, new places to drive to. I have been engaging more with strangers, which is very unusual for me, asking more questions, engaging in more conversation, getting more curious about my neighbors. And so, I’ll just keep you posted on all of that.

I just have noticed when I’m on Instagram, my feed is all very positive and just filled with really cool women doing really cool things. And so, I just noticed, there’s some new ways that I can use Instagram and be more transparent with all of my followers. And that’s why I took you on a little tour downstairs, just be more transparent in my everyday life, which will be kind of fun. I think I will totally dig that and just engage more with my audience. And then figure out TikTok and find some new audience there. I don’t know, just kind of live a little bit differently the last half of the year.

I’m really excited about that and continue building my body, making it even stronger and I can feel it getting stronger. I don’t know if I told you. Did I finish that conversation about running three and a half miles every day around the lagoons in Hawaii? Well, I did, and that was really fun. And that was hard. It felt a little bit challenging to me because I haven’t just ran like that every single day. I don’t run that distance at Orangetheory. I’ll run a minimum of a mile and a half and a maximum of maybe two miles at Orangetheory.

So, three and a half miles a day in the humid heat was challenging, but I did it, drenched with sweat, but it was pure delight, pure joy. I listened to my book and I listened to my playlist and it was just a really, really refreshing time. And I just think that we all need to get away from our everyday life so we can look at it and we can reevaluate it and we can tap into some young energy on purpose. Maybe we can see where things have gotten a little old and stale.

And we want to kind of reinvent our everyday life, is what I did. So, I call it working on our life when usually we’re working in our life. So, we have to pull ourselves out and take a look at it like we’re watching a movie and do I like my routine? Maybe I need to readjust my routine because it’s just maybe feeling a little old and stale and I can add some younger energy to it. So, if we just go on repeat and if we go kind of makes us a little bit unaware and unconscious and that’s what the brain loves.

The brain loves to just get in a routine and stay in that routine. And I noticed that when I was on vacation, my brain was freaking out about well, what time is it? What are we supposed to be doing? You don’t even know what are you going to do today. My brain loves to have a plan, and we just didn’t ever have a plan other than we were going to go to the pools. And then we were going to go to the lagoons and we were going to swim and hang out and play. And when we got hungry we were going to go eat.

And I had one delicious pina colada every single day, you guys. Every single day on vacation, my son-in-law, Kyron, makes the most delicious, he’s a bartender, a cocktail genius. And he made me the most delicious blended pina colada. And if we went to dinner and I had a cocktail, that’s what I would order. But I would only have one cocktail every single day, and that was perfect for me. So, I didn’t come home feeling icky. I ate pretty dang healthy, even though we did eat out once a day. It didn’t seem to bother me at all.

So, I stayed super hydrated, they had a green juice place right there in our little community, which was super helpful. And I just drank a ton of water and ate my almonds every day and ate fresh papaya every day and fresh pineapple. And just kept up my healthy eating and ate a lot of fresh fish, which was so fun. And we went out on a boat on the last day, got to see the island from the ocean side, which is beautiful. You know how Hawaii is the lagoons. The water was just a turquoise see through blue. We saw fish and turtles, and we just did it up and had the best time together.

I love my family. I’m obsessed with my family. I love them all so much. I’m so proud of all of them. But it is fun to come home and everybody go back to their real lives and I just appreciate that. I just feel so healthy as their mom. I don’t worry about them, which is a miracle. I’d love to help you with that. I’ve worked on that so very much. I really don’t think about them unless I’m with them and having conversations with them. I just know that they’re living the exact life they’re supposed to be living and I’m very concerned with my own life.

And I just know that that is exactly how it’s supposed to be in the second half of life as a woman. And that’s how we can tap into our young energy, by just enjoying our kids instead of fretting about them. I just don’t worry about people. I know that everybody is on their own journey and I hold everybody in the highest esteem, with the highest regard and in the highest power. I don’t see people as victims.

Even if you think you’re a victim, I just will not treat you like that because I don’t think that’s what’s best for you. I want you to be able to tap into your own power, into your own young energy and figure out the kind of life you want to live and to actually be brave enough to live it. That’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m a life coach. I really want to infuse you with self-confidence and help you change your self-concept if you have a story about yourself that’s no longer serving you.

And I don’t want you to worry about other people. I don’t want you to think that you have to be a certain kind of wife, a certain kind of mom. I want you to get into your own life, stay in your own lane, put your blinders on and start creating the exact beautiful life that you want to live. That’s what I’m doing. And that’s why I do this podcast, so I can just share with you what is actually possible at 63 years old. It’s incredible what’s possible. And I really do believe I’m only tapping into it and I will just keep doing my thing and I’m so glad you’re here following along. I love you so much.

Okay, my friends, that’s it for today. Young energy, you’ve got to keep up with me, baby, I’m just getting started. And have the best week and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.