89. Life Update: I Moved Out of California!
This week’s episode is a little different from usual, as I’m sharing a big life update with you all: I moved out of California! This has been a huge shift in my life and not a decision I made lightly. I love California, and when I moved there, the plan was to stay for basically the rest of my life. But things changed, and I had to rethink my plan.
Putting your home on the market during a time when interest rates are 7%, no one is buying, the economy is going down, and there are talks of a recession is no easy feat. I have experienced a lot of stress, overwhelm, anxiety and uncertainty these last few months, but I went for it. I took the jump toward creating the life I wanted. And I’m so happy I did.
Join me this week and hear more about this huge life change; my successes, my meltdowns, and my experience of moving out of California. I’m sharing one of the best tools I know I have for dealing with uncertainty, and I’m diving deeper into what to do when things feel out of your control, and your brain wants to tell you the worst-case scenario. And, of course, you get to find out where I moved to!
If you want to take this work deeper and learn the tools and skills to feel better, all while having my support and guidance each step of the way, I invite you to set up a time to chat with me. Click here to grab a spot on my calendar, and I can’t wait to speak to you!
What You Will Discover:
Why you might feel disempowered in your circumstances and how to get out of that.
How grateful I am to my past self for advocating for what I knew I would need during this big life shift.
Why you shouldn’t let feelings of anxiety, overwhelm, and doubt hold you back from making decisions to change your life and achieve what you want.
Why you always have choices and why it is so important to remember that.
The importance of knowing how to process your emotions and manage your mind.
What I’ve learned about myself from the big move.
Resources:
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Full Episode Transcript:
Hey, you all, I’m Marissa McKool, and you’re listening to the Redefining Rest Podcast for public health professionals. Here we believe rest is your right. You don’t have to earn it, you just have to learn how to take it and I’m going to teach you. Ready? Come along.
Hello everyone. Happy New Year again. I hope that you are still kind of in the space of optimism and glow I think around this time of year, whether you set formal resolutions or not. I think it’s natural to reflect and really be hopeful for the next year. And what I find for most people is that fades. And I hope that does not fade for you.
I know for students in my How the Patriarchy Robs You of The Rest course, they are not fading at all because they are going through a course that is really setting them up to make this year the year about them. And the year about doing more of what they want and making the decisions and having the mental and emotional capacity to follow through on really creating the life that they want. Now, that class starts today. So we’re closed up if you missed it. You can’t enroll. I'm not sure I’m going to be teaching it again, I really don't know.
It feels right now though it’ll be unlikely, but I might. I definitely have other courses coming out. So if you’re not on my email list, make sure to get on there so you can find out about them. But speaking about really creating the life you want and being able to do so and make those decisions, today's podcast episode is a little bit different. I'm doing more of a life update because there's been a big shift in my life the past four months that I haven’t shared publicly.
If you’re on my email list or you were at the time that this happened then you found out because I shared a little bit about my journey. If you joined later, you probably don’t know. And part of that, it was a security reason why I didn’t share publicly, which I'll get to later on. It wasn’t anything personal, I promise. I was dying to tell you all. There were so many times I wanted to post certain things and then I remembered, yeah, I need to wait.
So today is going to be slightly different. It’s going to be more behind the scenes, me sharing what's been going on for me, my meltdowns, my successes. I'm also going to be sharing one of the best tools I know I have for dealing with uncertainty, dealing with things being out of your control and dealing with your brain wanting to tell you the worst case scenario. I know many of you experience that, whether it's freaking out about worst case scenario over a report you submitted, or a date you went on, or anything else. So you will get coaching out of this, I promise.
But it’s a little bit different, it’s a little behind the scenes. Normally I draft out learning objectives and exactly what I want to teach you, and you get out of it. This time I have a few notes jotted down but really I’m just sharing my experience. I thought it’d be fun. I love behind the scenes stuff. And I really had been wanting to tell you all what's been going on and I finally can. So as you can see by the title of this episode, the life update is that I moved out of California. Now, some of you might not be aware of my back story which is totally fine.
I was born and raised in Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side, if you’re not familiar with Lake Tahoe, it borders the California and Nevada state line. I was raised right on the state line, in the Nevada side, but right on the state line to California. And then I went to undergrad in Arizona, lived in Arizona for about six years. Then I moved to Atlanta for four years. And then I've been living in Oakland, California for five years. And the decision to move out of California completely was not a light one. I love California. And when I moved there the plan was to stay long term for basically the rest of my life.
And even when I was dating I specifically was looking to meet someone who felt similarly, or who had family in the state, and people who felt like it was a stopover place to live. I usually didn’t date them very long because I was really dating with an eye to my future and meeting someone who matched the life I wanted. And my partner he's from California. He's also lived outside of the state, other places. His family also still lives in California. So that was the plan. I owned my condo. The plan when I had bought it, I bought it by myself before I was in a relationship.
The plan was, buy it, have it for three to five years, then sell it and buy a house. Now, I want to acknowledge the ability to buy a condo in the Bay Area as anyone, for any person, let alone, I think I had just turned 30 or maybe I wasn't even 30 yet, single woman who worked in public health, huge privilege that I could not do without the help of my family. I was very, very fortunate. And by the time that it came around to, you know, I was in a relationship, we’re living together, it was time to really think about buying a house, having a bigger space. We’re going to get married, eventually have kids.
The market had changed so much. No longer could I sell my condo and even with now a two person income household, purchase a house that would fit what I wanted and our needs. And that realization was pretty hard to take in. And I looked, I'm always on Zillow. I love house stuff. And I looked for a long time in many different places in California, from Sacramento to San Diego, I never wanted to live in LA, no offence to those of you who do. My partner’s from LA, his family’s there. My sister lived there for a long time. It’s just not for me.
The Sacramento heat is not for me. I lived in Arizona for six years as I said. I really despise extreme heat, I truly do. That wasn’t really for me. Santa Barbara, San Diego also had cost issues as far as cost of living. And the smaller towns that are on the coast are really expensive. And then inland is really hot and more rural. So as much as I would have loved to stay in California, and my partner would have too, our families were close. We loved the weather. We loved the scenery, being able to go in nature and hike. And we had history there.
It just didn't seem like the best choice moving forward, thinking about our future. I'm always thinking five years, 10 years ahead. And if we had stayed we would have made the choice to really live in a much smaller space that really had a small backyard, not updated house, fewer bedrooms, no office space, things like that in order to stay. And there's nothing wrong with that choice, lots of people make that choice and are super happy. There’s no judgment here. That just wasn't what we wanted, not for our priorities. We want space, we want a yard.
I work from home full-time. We want bedrooms to keep guests. We want to have a gym in the house, we want that. And of course it was really hard coming to the decision, that that meant moving out of California. We talked for about a year, and we visited different places. We visited Portland, and Denver, and we looked at a bunch of places. And we had a list of things that were priorities to us. We wanted to live somewhere where the cost of living was better, we could afford a house, that was still kind of on the West Coast-ish.
We wanted to live in or near a major city, somewhere with lot of access to nature. We wanted to live somewhere that didn't have extreme heat. That was really my call. Jared didn’t want to live somewhere that had extreme gloom, or cold. So we had things we really had to prioritize. And we'd spent about a year talking about it, thoroughly. And we visited some places and then we finally decided last, I think January, that we pick Denver, Colorado to move to. But we didn’t end up moving till October of this year.
So we made the decision, I think we started talking about it December 2021, about that time, in the spring, winter of 2021. We spent a year talking about it and visited places. And then December 2022 we made the decision it would be Denver. And then we didn’t move here until October 2022. So that’s a long time. What is that, nine months, or something? And during that time period essentially we were waiting because our plan was Jared’s going to get a new job and then we’ll move. So a lot of it was out of my control for sure.
Him getting a new job, completely out of my control. He had some control over how much he applied, but obviously when you’re searching for a job there is factors, the organization, what they decide, the market, all that stuff. So it was a lot of waiting and uncertainty. And the hard part about it was it really wasn't going to be on our timeline. So it was so hard to plan for things.
We are planning a couples trip with two of my best friends from college for August to go to Napa. And we spent months planning this trip. And every Facetime call I was like, “I don’t know if we’ll be here.” Because us being in Oakland, we wouldn’t have to rent a car for the trip, they could stay with us. And the whole time I’m like, “I’m not sure. I’m not sure.” And that made it so hard to plan certain things. And I love planning trips, love it. And that just made it really hard of where would we be living? Where would we be flying out of?
So eventually once summer came around we kind of got tired of waiting. We decided what if we could make this on our own terms? And that was a big decision because that meant Jared quitting his job. My job I can move, I work remotely. He would have to quit his job. His job, they wouldn’t allow him working remotely full-time, it also wouldn’t really make sense for what he did. So we talked about that for a little bit. And obviously there’s uncertainty there. If one of us quits our job and then who knows when they’ll get a job, the income, the money, and the finances.
A lot of discussions and uncertainty there as well. And what ended up happening was I kind of said, “Okay, let me talk to my realtor and just see in this situation. We need all the facts of the timeline if we did decide to do this. And we also knew (a) we needed to sell the condo I lived in, in order to buy a house, (b) the real estate market has it’s traditional downturns, times of the year where it’s slower. And (c) we really did not want to be moving in the winter, especially because we knew we would be driving our car out to Colorado. So we really wanted to avoid that.
So I talked to my realtor and after that conversation, Jared and I decided, let's do this, let's make it happen. You quit your job, let’s put the condo on the market. Now, listen, that is crazy, quitting his job, putting the condo on the market at a time where interest rates just went up to 7%. People weren’t buying, the economy's going down and talks of a recession. And then there’s talks of the job market and unemployment going up. That’s crazy.
We decided in the midst of that circumstance of what was going on in the world, in the US where we live, to just go for it. We knew this is what we wanted, this is creating the life we want. It would give us financial flexibility, would give us the lifestyle we want. And we decided let's make it happen. And you could argue, probably at the worst time considering all the factors I just shared with you all. But we just decided, we’re tired of waiting. We’ll make the jump, and it was scary for both of us. There was stress. There was overwhelm. There was uncertainty. There is anxiety.
We made it and we’re happy with our choice, but all those emotions came along for the ride. Recently I’ve been telling my clients, when we think about emotions, let’s think about, we’re in a car on this journey called life. You’ll always have emotions in the car with you. You can have confidence and certainty, and empowerment in the car and doubt, and anxiety, and overwhelm can be in there too. So we were confident and excited about our decision and also some relief of just getting it moving and no longer waiting around, but also anxiety, and overwhelm, and doubt.
That's okay, don't let feelings of anxiety, and doubt, and worry, and frustration, and overwhelm hold you back from making decisions to change your life, to achieve the style of life, the circumstances of life, the experience of life you want to have. I think so many people don't make decisions to change their life in the way they want to because they see doubt, they see frustration, overwhelm, uncertainty, anxiety as a ‘sign’ that they shouldn’t do it. And that’s not true. Those emotions just come in the car for the ride.
So then what ensued when we made that big decision were about a million more decisions. This was so much more exhausting physically and mentally than I anticipated. And actually I remember at one point saying to Jared, “I truly don't know how we could have done this if plan A had worked out where you got a job in Colorado, and we had to move in two weeks.” I truly don’t know how that could have worked. We either would have had to spend way more money hiring help or he would have gone ahead without me, and I would have had to do more of it myself.
Because from the time we decided we’re going to do this, to the time we exited the condo was only about a month. Part of that decision was talking with our realtor about the market. We had our conversation, I think end of August, or some time in September, and basically was like, “Listen, by November the market traditionally slows down a lot. So if you want to sell it before next February you have to get it on the market now.” And we knew we needed time to get the house ready, to pack our stuff, to figure out moving and for Jared to quit his job.
So we couldn’t put it on right away. So we gave ourselves about a month. And in that month timeline there was so much we had to do. Not only did we have to go through everything in this condo that I have lived in since April 2018, so yeah, over four years, go through everything, sell a bunch of stuff, donate a bunch of stuff, pack it all, which is a lot, we had a two bedroom condo. We had to get ready for market. So fix any issues, get an inspection, do any repair work. And then we had to find a place to live in Denver.
We had only visited Denver once. I know two people out here. And we had to figure out where are we going to live? Are we going to live in a house? Are we going to live in an apartment? What kind of lease are we going to get because we want to buy a house sooner than later? What area are we going to live in? We also have a dog. Denver has a lot of strict dog rules, the most I’ve ever been in any city, so that eliminated a lot of places we could live. I mean I had this huge spreadsheet with all of the apartments because we decided to go with an apartment, given we’d have to rent sight unseen in person.
That felt a little more secure than a house from the owner. I had a whole spreadsheet. Jared and I had to call them and ask them a bunch of questions and it was so much work. And then we signed a lease for an apartment that was being renovated, we had never seen in person. We don't know the neighborhoods that well. And it was just like, “Okay, we’re doing this.” Then we had to figure out how to get all of our stuff. Are we going to rent a moving truck and one person drives, and another person drives the car?
Are we going to ship it in a POD? Are we going to ship boxes? What are we going to do? Originally we were going to take Jared’s car and attach a U-Haul hitch on. And so he bought the hitch thing, then we decided, not sure everything’s going to fit on there, plus we want to take a little bit longer of a trip driving since we have Cudi. And the rental was shorter, and we’d be driving to the Rocky Mountains, so that would be a lot. So then we decided to do a POD but we found out that U-Haul does PODS and they were a lot cheaper and the timeline they proposed worked better, so we decide to do that.
And just so many decisions. There was one moment where we were packing and I was sitting on the floor and I just started crying from the overwhelm because when we started packing, in addition to figuring out logistics. I just realized how long the packing was going to take and I just felt so overwhelmed. How are we going to get all of this done? Mind you, we had a whole month, which sounds like a lot. But we barely did it in the month, truly, down to the wire. And I just was crying, I was so overwhelmed of what we’re going to do.
But I just kept going, I was like, “I can allow the overwhelm, I can cry, I can be here, and I can do this packing.” I can go to the garage and sweep up. I can do this. And so for a couple weeks we lived in true chaos, I mean shit everywhere. And we tried to keep our bigger furniture as long as we could. We were able to sell a lot of furniture but by then you’re sleeping on the floor on an air mattress. And one other things that we tried to work out is, okay, this trip driving can take, I mean I think it was 20 hours or something. So we’re trying to figure out, how are we going to do this driving?
And I still have clients and I'm still working. And I happened to, this was pure coincidence, I try to a quarter ahead, block off a whole week to take off for that quarter. So I already had a week off in October. So it was right around the time we’d said we'd move out, give our keys to the realtor who would do everything, put the house on the market after we moved out, staging, photos, all that stuff. And I had this week off, so we’re trying to figure out how to use it. Do we use it when we’re driving through? Do we go straight through?
And I’m so grateful to my past self because I really advocated to Jared that we would need a week of rest between a month of packing and preparing and driving a week to a new city that we would then have to move into our new place. And I am so grateful we did that. After we moved out completely we took three days and went up to Jenner, California on the ocean. It was so beautiful, so relaxing. We were exhausted. And then we went to Tahoe to be with my family for about a week and we truly did nothing every day, truly nothing.
We were both so exhausted, I surprised him and got us both massages because we desperately needed it. We didn’t hire any movers. We did it all ourselves which is not a brag because it was so exhausting. It was like this is why you hire movers because this is physically and mentally a toll. And Cudi, my dog, the whole time we were moving was so confused, so freaked out. We put her in her crate a lot, which she normally doesn't have to be in because she’s so well behaved. A friend of ours watched her a few times, but it was a lot.
And then the emotional piece of leaving. And when you’re in the midst of all that chaos, and planning, you kind of forget that emotional piece and it just hits you at certain times. So we had a little going away get together. Some friends came and I had drinks and said bye. But it wasn't until the day we left, when we were leaving the complex that it really hit me, and I really started to cry. This is what we wanted.
This is what I wanted but I was so proud of having bought that condo by myself and everything I had accomplished, living in Oakland, from my public health career, becoming assistant director to an executor director, to meeting Jared, to starting my own business. There was just so many memories and goodness there. And we were sad to leave. We loved living there. We loved so much about it. And we were essentially moving mainly because of the financial piece, which was a decision we made, and we stand by.
And we are not bitter, we aren’t resentful, we get it. That’s just the way it is. But there was that moment where it was like, “Can we drive through the complex one more time.” We were both crying, and just to have that moment because there is just so much going on we didn't really have much space or time to reflect in the midst of just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. So then we, after our week of rest, which again so proud of myself for really advocating for that, best decision ever. Then we drove about a week to Denver.
I sold my car to help pay for the moving costs, and then we drove Jared’s car. And we made several stops partly because I needed to work. I had coaching calls I took from hotel rooms. But partly because Cudi, that’s a long time for her to be in the car. And it was the first time we’d driven this route. And let me tell you, driving through Nevada is boring as all hell, it’s so boring. Driving through Utah was a mix, half of it was really boring, half of it was beautiful. From the west side of Colorado to Denver was the most gorgeous drive I’ve ever been on, so beautiful.
And it was really nice to stop and have time to rest and sleep and actually go on walks. We went on a hike one day so that was actually really nice. And we get to Denver, and we were so, so lucky. Our apartment, which again we saw sight unseen, beautiful, the complex, so amazing, so much more welcoming and have such nice features we weren't even aware of. The staff are amazing. We lucked out so much. We love our apartment. We love our neighborhood, so lucky about that, truly. We didn’t even check out this neighborhood when we visited.
So that was pure luck or maybe someone in the universe, or God, or whoever are looking after us. But then our POD from U-Haul which I would not ever recommend using. I have used the actual PODS, this trademark name, and they were great but the U-Haul one was not. It was really a horrible experience, I would not recommend. By the time we got here our POD had not been picked up from Oakland, even though it was supposed to be delivered basically the day after we got here. It had not been picked up from Oakland.
They could not tell us when it would be picked up. Their whole reasoning was, “We have third party drivers so we can’t know.” I can’t tell you how many times I called customer service, and I called different ones because depending on who you got, it was not helpful. And I finally got a hold of someone who actually would help me, and I got their name and their extension. That’s how you’ve got to do it. So you can call them back and talk to just them. You don’t have to explain it over again and you know they’re going to help you.
And I called every single day, and they basically couldn’t give me any updates. When the POD finally got picked up, they couldn’t tell me when it would get here. So we didn’t know how much stuff we had to buy. We bought towels and sheets but we’re like, “Do we buy baking dishes and skillets, or do we just eat out?” There was so much because they couldn’t tell us when it was coming or where it was. That we were just winging it, we had no idea. It was truly so frustrating. And that’s really where I had to self-coach myself because it was out of my control.
There wasn't much I could do. I advocated as much as I could. I spoke to management as much as I could. I gave feedback about the issue but that's basically the extent of what I could do. The POD finally came in a week later. We could access it of course a day it snowed. I was like, “of course, what else?” And unloaded everything, bought all of our furniture, mostly 90% of it used off Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. We were really proud of ourself, it looks great. We love the area.
And then came about six weeks of a lot of uncertainty with selling the condo. Typically if you’re not familiar with the Bay Area, typically the real estate market there is put something on the market, have open house. People are submitting offers within a week, multiple offers. I know during the pandemic a lot of other cities got like that. But that’s how the Bay Area was far before the pandemic, super competitive. We did not get one offer on the condo for a whole month, even more.
There was a couple of situations where they said they were going to put an offer. They even talked to their lender, they even told us how much, then they got cold feet. There was a couple of situations like that. And my brain the whole time was freaking out, playing out the worst case scenario of this is not going to sell. You put it on the market the worst time. The economy's going down. Interest rates are going up. It’s going into the slow season of the real estate market traditionally anyways. You’ve already moved, there’s nothing you can do.
You’ve moved out of state, you still have this mortgage. Now you’re paying rent, you’re fucked. My brain every day went to that. And here is what happens when your brain does that. For the most part it stops at the scariest part. And what you want to do when this happens to you is you want to push yourself to move past that. So say, okay, let’s say that happens. Let's say it doesn't sell. Let’s say we get to December, January, it does not sell, what are your options? Go all the way there. Let’s say the worst case scenario does happen, what are your options?
You always have choices. My option was, okay, well, I could rent it out. That might suck a little. I might have to hire a property manager, there’d be a lot out of my control. The renters rights in the Bay Area are really strong, which I'm not against. I’m definitely for that but there are also true experiences of squatters, or people not paying but staying and legally can and all those worst case scenarios. Those things do happen. So it wasn't my first choice, but it was a choice I had.
We also would have the choice to move back, which is not a choice we were going to make, but that is a choice. So every day my brain offered me this worst case scenario of it’s not going to sell, you’re going to have this mortgage. You’re also paying rent. This was dumb, you shouldn’t have done this, blah, blah, blah. I just every single day reminded myself I can always rent it out. I can always rent it out, I can always rent it out. And if my brain said. “But you won’t want to do that. That's a lot of work. You’d have to hire someone. It would cost more money. You could not rent it for that much.”
I would just keep saying, “That’s okay, I can rent it out. I’ll deal with it. Whatever happens from there I can deal with it.” That’s what you have to do when your brain is offering you worst case scenarios because you always have a choice. What feels disempowering isn't having two shitty choices you don’t like. It’s telling yourself you don't have a choice and you’re stuck, which is not true. You always, always, always have a choice. And that really got me through. I actually got to a place where it was like, okay, I’m probably going to have to rent this out.
And I really got to a place of acceptance where my brain didn’t freak me out anymore. It actually stopped kind of offering me that as like a fearmongering scaring me tactic because it figured out that I wasn’t scared anymore because I really accepted, I could do that. We can make it work. It wouldn’t be our first choice, it would suck in some ways, but we could do that, we can make it happen. And the whole time the house was on the market I didn't share, broadly we moved because it was vacant. So it was just a security, safety reason.
Those of you who listen regularly, I absolutely trust you, but you never know when stuff goes on the internet, whose hand it’s going to get into. And it was for the security and the safety, of not just the property but our realtor, anyone visiting, my neighbors, all of that stuff. So that's why I’m not announcing it till now, which means we sold it. We finally got an offer, we accepted it. It took longer to close than we'd like. There were some extensions, some issues that came up, but we stuck with it, and it finally sold. I’m so, so happy.
It feels kind of surreal after the past couple of months of insanity but I’m really proud of how I showed up for myself through all of that stress. I allowed my emotions, sometimes they got the best of me and that's okay. I didn’t judge myself. I coached myself a lot. I managed my mind, and I showed up so we can now create the life that we want to have together. So we're all very happy right now. Cudi’s very happy. It’s snowy outside, she loves the snow. We love our apartment. We have been snowboarding a lot. I love our neighborhood. I am really proud of us for making this happen.
And there’s a lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes. I have started going to therapy which has been really great. I have a lot of exciting travel coming up. I am going to Europe with my sister. I’m going to see Adele in concert which I’m so excited about. I am also trying to make new friends. I joined Bumble BFF which is an app to meet friends. If you’re not following me on Instagram, that's where I share those updates on my stories. There has been some good times, there has been some weird times.
So if you’re interested, come follow, I’ll share more about my experience with that because we don’t really have friends here. I’m also working through, I am on social media more than I would like. I definitely struggle with social media. I don’t really want to call it an addiction, but I definitely notice when I spend time on there, my brain always wants to go back. So this month I’m really working on changing that. I'm also working on a lot of different things for the business side of stuff, which I'm really excited about.
This year in 2022, I am recording this right before the year ends, so I don’t have the exact numbers. But I made about $60,000 give or take in the business which is amazing considering year one. 2021 I made around 11,000, so I almost six times my revenue. I donated almost $1,000. Every year I pick an organization to donate to. And 2021 and 2022 I donated to the Freedom Community Clinic in Oakland which is a great organization. I’ll be looking for Denver or Colorado based organizations to donate to next year.
And this year in my business I’ve been really learning how to discern. I’ve never had a business before. I don't have an MBA. So I've been learning a lot the past two years. And this 2022, I started giving myself permission to discern based on who I’m learning from, what I want to take. Where before I was just taking everything they said and either being like, “Yes, this absolutely is it. I have to follow this to a tee.” Or not listening to some people because I’m like, “I don’t agree with your values. I’m going to ignore everything you say.”
In this 2022 I’ve really started giving myself permission to discern, to listen but decide what works for me. And I think next year will be my real action of transformation, of discerning, and doing things my way, and doing things differently, and giving myself that full permission. I'm going to be doing more courses. The courses I do are typically online, prerecorded. I might change it up or the format but I’m going to be doing a lot more of those.
My one-on-one coaching program I'm still doing but it's going to be much, much more exclusive. There is going to be fewer spots available. Those who do get into the program, you’re going to get much more attention from me and support. It’s going to be higher touch and just higher value. And that’s why I’m kind of keeping it small. So it’s going to be very, very limited. I am hoping to do more work with organizations. I did a training for a CDC team this year, I loved it.
I’ve done a lot of webinars with different organizations, from AMCHP to Public Health Connected, PH SPOT and so many others. So I’m hoping to do more of that, more training. So if your organization is willing, and able, and interested in having a training and coaching around burnout, rest, boundaries, leadership, or anything else, please reach out because I’m really excited about that. I’m in conversation with one organization right now that I'm excited about that might happen. So there is a lot happening, a lot of great, great things happening.
But it doesn't mean I don’t have my down days and I don’t feel anxiety, and I don’t feel stress because I do. The difference is I process it, I allow it, I manage my mind. And part of the reason why I wanted to share this update is to show that deciding to create the life you want is not what it appears on social media. It’s not, you get it all together and then you create the life you want. It’s not create the life you want perfectly with no hiccups. It’s messy. It's chaotic. It's complicated.
There is no reason to wait because whether you do it now or you do it in 10 years or 20 years that part will always be true, doesn't matter if you make 50K a year or 200K a year. Doesn’t matter if you quit your job or have a job. Making big decisions to change your life in ways you want your life to change, to support the life you want to create includes emotions like anxiety, and doubt, and fear, includes some chaos, some uncertainty, some overwhelm. That will always be the case.
Don’t let those things hold you back from creating the life you want because those things come along for the ride. They all get in the car on the road trip to your dreams. It is so, so important to know how to process your emotions and manage your mind because what makes things worse is when you don't know how to think thoughts on purpose that help you feel empowered, or relief, or calm, or certain, or confident, or when you resist or suppress your emotions.
Creating the life you want isn't waiting until everything is perfect to make the changes because that will never happen. It’s about making the decisions now but knowing how to support yourself throughout those decisions no matter what challenges or barriers come up. And that’s the purpose of coaching. That's how coaching helps you create the life you want. It doesn’t just deliver it on a silver platter.
What it does is it gives you the tools for you to create what you want and for you to follow through and commit to it, no matter the challenges or barriers, even with difficult emotions, even with your brain freaking out. So you can actually achieve the life you want. So with that, that was a long update. This is probably a longer episode than normal. I wanted to share what’s going on with me as an example of why this work matters and how it can have an impact on your life. And also show you it's not perfect, it’s still messy. I’m still human, so is everyone who gets coaching and that’s okay.
But we’re humans who are moving towards creating the life we want or actively creating the life we want rather than humans who are staying stuck, and stagnant and not living the fulfilling life we deep down truly want. So with that you all, I hope you enjoyed this, a little behind the scenes. I will talk to you next week. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
Hello everyone. Happy New Year again. I hope that you are still kind of in the space of optimism and glow I think around this time of year, whether you set formal resolutions or not. I think it’s natural to reflect and really be hopeful for the next year. And what I find for most people is that fades. And I hope that does not fade for you.
I know for students in my How the Patriarchy Robs You of The Rest course, they are not fading at all because they are going through a course that is really setting them up to make this year the year about them. And the year about doing more of what they want and making the decisions and having the mental and emotional capacity to follow through on really creating the life that they want. Now, that class starts today. So we’re closed up if you missed it. You can’t enroll. I'm not sure I’m going to be teaching it again, I really don't know.
It feels right now though it’ll be unlikely, but I might. I definitely have other courses coming out. So if you’re not on my email list, make sure to get on there so you can find out about them. But speaking about really creating the life you want and being able to do so and make those decisions, today's podcast episode is a little bit different. I'm doing more of a life update because there's been a big shift in my life the past four months that I haven’t shared publicly.
If you’re on my email list or you were at the time that this happened then you found out because I shared a little bit about my journey. If you joined later, you probably don’t know. And part of that, it was a security reason why I didn’t share publicly, which I'll get to later on. It wasn’t anything personal, I promise. I was dying to tell you all. There were so many times I wanted to post certain things and then I remembered, yeah, I need to wait.
So today is going to be slightly different. It’s going to be more behind the scenes, me sharing what's been going on for me, my meltdowns, my successes. I'm also going to be sharing one of the best tools I know I have for dealing with uncertainty, dealing with things being out of your control and dealing with your brain wanting to tell you the worst case scenario. I know many of you experience that, whether it's freaking out about worst case scenario over a report you submitted, or a date you went on, or anything else. So you will get coaching out of this, I promise.
But it’s a little bit different, it’s a little behind the scenes. Normally I draft out learning objectives and exactly what I want to teach you, and you get out of it. This time I have a few notes jotted down but really I’m just sharing my experience. I thought it’d be fun. I love behind the scenes stuff. And I really had been wanting to tell you all what's been going on and I finally can. So as you can see by the title of this episode, the life update is that I moved out of California. Now, some of you might not be aware of my back story which is totally fine.
I was born and raised in Lake Tahoe on the Nevada side, if you’re not familiar with Lake Tahoe, it borders the California and Nevada state line. I was raised right on the state line, in the Nevada side, but right on the state line to California. And then I went to undergrad in Arizona, lived in Arizona for about six years. Then I moved to Atlanta for four years. And then I've been living in Oakland, California for five years. And the decision to move out of California completely was not a light one. I love California. And when I moved there the plan was to stay long term for basically the rest of my life.
And even when I was dating I specifically was looking to meet someone who felt similarly, or who had family in the state, and people who felt like it was a stopover place to live. I usually didn’t date them very long because I was really dating with an eye to my future and meeting someone who matched the life I wanted. And my partner he's from California. He's also lived outside of the state, other places. His family also still lives in California. So that was the plan. I owned my condo. The plan when I had bought it, I bought it by myself before I was in a relationship.
The plan was, buy it, have it for three to five years, then sell it and buy a house. Now, I want to acknowledge the ability to buy a condo in the Bay Area as anyone, for any person, let alone, I think I had just turned 30 or maybe I wasn't even 30 yet, single woman who worked in public health, huge privilege that I could not do without the help of my family. I was very, very fortunate. And by the time that it came around to, you know, I was in a relationship, we’re living together, it was time to really think about buying a house, having a bigger space. We’re going to get married, eventually have kids.
The market had changed so much. No longer could I sell my condo and even with now a two person income household, purchase a house that would fit what I wanted and our needs. And that realization was pretty hard to take in. And I looked, I'm always on Zillow. I love house stuff. And I looked for a long time in many different places in California, from Sacramento to San Diego, I never wanted to live in LA, no offence to those of you who do. My partner’s from LA, his family’s there. My sister lived there for a long time. It’s just not for me.
The Sacramento heat is not for me. I lived in Arizona for six years as I said. I really despise extreme heat, I truly do. That wasn’t really for me. Santa Barbara, San Diego also had cost issues as far as cost of living. And the smaller towns that are on the coast are really expensive. And then inland is really hot and more rural. So as much as I would have loved to stay in California, and my partner would have too, our families were close. We loved the weather. We loved the scenery, being able to go in nature and hike. And we had history there.
It just didn't seem like the best choice moving forward, thinking about our future. I'm always thinking five years, 10 years ahead. And if we had stayed we would have made the choice to really live in a much smaller space that really had a small backyard, not updated house, fewer bedrooms, no office space, things like that in order to stay. And there's nothing wrong with that choice, lots of people make that choice and are super happy. There’s no judgment here. That just wasn't what we wanted, not for our priorities. We want space, we want a yard.
I work from home full-time. We want bedrooms to keep guests. We want to have a gym in the house, we want that. And of course it was really hard coming to the decision, that that meant moving out of California. We talked for about a year, and we visited different places. We visited Portland, and Denver, and we looked at a bunch of places. And we had a list of things that were priorities to us. We wanted to live somewhere where the cost of living was better, we could afford a house, that was still kind of on the West Coast-ish.
We wanted to live in or near a major city, somewhere with lot of access to nature. We wanted to live somewhere that didn't have extreme heat. That was really my call. Jared didn’t want to live somewhere that had extreme gloom, or cold. So we had things we really had to prioritize. And we'd spent about a year talking about it, thoroughly. And we visited some places and then we finally decided last, I think January, that we pick Denver, Colorado to move to. But we didn’t end up moving till October of this year.
So we made the decision, I think we started talking about it December 2021, about that time, in the spring, winter of 2021. We spent a year talking about it and visited places. And then December 2022 we made the decision it would be Denver. And then we didn’t move here until October 2022. So that’s a long time. What is that, nine months, or something? And during that time period essentially we were waiting because our plan was Jared’s going to get a new job and then we’ll move. So a lot of it was out of my control for sure.
Him getting a new job, completely out of my control. He had some control over how much he applied, but obviously when you’re searching for a job there is factors, the organization, what they decide, the market, all that stuff. So it was a lot of waiting and uncertainty. And the hard part about it was it really wasn't going to be on our timeline. So it was so hard to plan for things.
We are planning a couples trip with two of my best friends from college for August to go to Napa. And we spent months planning this trip. And every Facetime call I was like, “I don’t know if we’ll be here.” Because us being in Oakland, we wouldn’t have to rent a car for the trip, they could stay with us. And the whole time I’m like, “I’m not sure. I’m not sure.” And that made it so hard to plan certain things. And I love planning trips, love it. And that just made it really hard of where would we be living? Where would we be flying out of?
So eventually once summer came around we kind of got tired of waiting. We decided what if we could make this on our own terms? And that was a big decision because that meant Jared quitting his job. My job I can move, I work remotely. He would have to quit his job. His job, they wouldn’t allow him working remotely full-time, it also wouldn’t really make sense for what he did. So we talked about that for a little bit. And obviously there’s uncertainty there. If one of us quits our job and then who knows when they’ll get a job, the income, the money, and the finances.
A lot of discussions and uncertainty there as well. And what ended up happening was I kind of said, “Okay, let me talk to my realtor and just see in this situation. We need all the facts of the timeline if we did decide to do this. And we also knew (a) we needed to sell the condo I lived in, in order to buy a house, (b) the real estate market has it’s traditional downturns, times of the year where it’s slower. And (c) we really did not want to be moving in the winter, especially because we knew we would be driving our car out to Colorado. So we really wanted to avoid that.
So I talked to my realtor and after that conversation, Jared and I decided, let's do this, let's make it happen. You quit your job, let’s put the condo on the market. Now, listen, that is crazy, quitting his job, putting the condo on the market at a time where interest rates just went up to 7%. People weren’t buying, the economy's going down and talks of a recession. And then there’s talks of the job market and unemployment going up. That’s crazy.
We decided in the midst of that circumstance of what was going on in the world, in the US where we live, to just go for it. We knew this is what we wanted, this is creating the life we want. It would give us financial flexibility, would give us the lifestyle we want. And we decided let's make it happen. And you could argue, probably at the worst time considering all the factors I just shared with you all. But we just decided, we’re tired of waiting. We’ll make the jump, and it was scary for both of us. There was stress. There was overwhelm. There was uncertainty. There is anxiety.
We made it and we’re happy with our choice, but all those emotions came along for the ride. Recently I’ve been telling my clients, when we think about emotions, let’s think about, we’re in a car on this journey called life. You’ll always have emotions in the car with you. You can have confidence and certainty, and empowerment in the car and doubt, and anxiety, and overwhelm can be in there too. So we were confident and excited about our decision and also some relief of just getting it moving and no longer waiting around, but also anxiety, and overwhelm, and doubt.
That's okay, don't let feelings of anxiety, and doubt, and worry, and frustration, and overwhelm hold you back from making decisions to change your life, to achieve the style of life, the circumstances of life, the experience of life you want to have. I think so many people don't make decisions to change their life in the way they want to because they see doubt, they see frustration, overwhelm, uncertainty, anxiety as a ‘sign’ that they shouldn’t do it. And that’s not true. Those emotions just come in the car for the ride.
So then what ensued when we made that big decision were about a million more decisions. This was so much more exhausting physically and mentally than I anticipated. And actually I remember at one point saying to Jared, “I truly don't know how we could have done this if plan A had worked out where you got a job in Colorado, and we had to move in two weeks.” I truly don’t know how that could have worked. We either would have had to spend way more money hiring help or he would have gone ahead without me, and I would have had to do more of it myself.
Because from the time we decided we’re going to do this, to the time we exited the condo was only about a month. Part of that decision was talking with our realtor about the market. We had our conversation, I think end of August, or some time in September, and basically was like, “Listen, by November the market traditionally slows down a lot. So if you want to sell it before next February you have to get it on the market now.” And we knew we needed time to get the house ready, to pack our stuff, to figure out moving and for Jared to quit his job.
So we couldn’t put it on right away. So we gave ourselves about a month. And in that month timeline there was so much we had to do. Not only did we have to go through everything in this condo that I have lived in since April 2018, so yeah, over four years, go through everything, sell a bunch of stuff, donate a bunch of stuff, pack it all, which is a lot, we had a two bedroom condo. We had to get ready for market. So fix any issues, get an inspection, do any repair work. And then we had to find a place to live in Denver.
We had only visited Denver once. I know two people out here. And we had to figure out where are we going to live? Are we going to live in a house? Are we going to live in an apartment? What kind of lease are we going to get because we want to buy a house sooner than later? What area are we going to live in? We also have a dog. Denver has a lot of strict dog rules, the most I’ve ever been in any city, so that eliminated a lot of places we could live. I mean I had this huge spreadsheet with all of the apartments because we decided to go with an apartment, given we’d have to rent sight unseen in person.
That felt a little more secure than a house from the owner. I had a whole spreadsheet. Jared and I had to call them and ask them a bunch of questions and it was so much work. And then we signed a lease for an apartment that was being renovated, we had never seen in person. We don't know the neighborhoods that well. And it was just like, “Okay, we’re doing this.” Then we had to figure out how to get all of our stuff. Are we going to rent a moving truck and one person drives, and another person drives the car?
Are we going to ship it in a POD? Are we going to ship boxes? What are we going to do? Originally we were going to take Jared’s car and attach a U-Haul hitch on. And so he bought the hitch thing, then we decided, not sure everything’s going to fit on there, plus we want to take a little bit longer of a trip driving since we have Cudi. And the rental was shorter, and we’d be driving to the Rocky Mountains, so that would be a lot. So then we decided to do a POD but we found out that U-Haul does PODS and they were a lot cheaper and the timeline they proposed worked better, so we decide to do that.
And just so many decisions. There was one moment where we were packing and I was sitting on the floor and I just started crying from the overwhelm because when we started packing, in addition to figuring out logistics. I just realized how long the packing was going to take and I just felt so overwhelmed. How are we going to get all of this done? Mind you, we had a whole month, which sounds like a lot. But we barely did it in the month, truly, down to the wire. And I just was crying, I was so overwhelmed of what we’re going to do.
But I just kept going, I was like, “I can allow the overwhelm, I can cry, I can be here, and I can do this packing.” I can go to the garage and sweep up. I can do this. And so for a couple weeks we lived in true chaos, I mean shit everywhere. And we tried to keep our bigger furniture as long as we could. We were able to sell a lot of furniture but by then you’re sleeping on the floor on an air mattress. And one other things that we tried to work out is, okay, this trip driving can take, I mean I think it was 20 hours or something. So we’re trying to figure out, how are we going to do this driving?
And I still have clients and I'm still working. And I happened to, this was pure coincidence, I try to a quarter ahead, block off a whole week to take off for that quarter. So I already had a week off in October. So it was right around the time we’d said we'd move out, give our keys to the realtor who would do everything, put the house on the market after we moved out, staging, photos, all that stuff. And I had this week off, so we’re trying to figure out how to use it. Do we use it when we’re driving through? Do we go straight through?
And I’m so grateful to my past self because I really advocated to Jared that we would need a week of rest between a month of packing and preparing and driving a week to a new city that we would then have to move into our new place. And I am so grateful we did that. After we moved out completely we took three days and went up to Jenner, California on the ocean. It was so beautiful, so relaxing. We were exhausted. And then we went to Tahoe to be with my family for about a week and we truly did nothing every day, truly nothing.
We were both so exhausted, I surprised him and got us both massages because we desperately needed it. We didn’t hire any movers. We did it all ourselves which is not a brag because it was so exhausting. It was like this is why you hire movers because this is physically and mentally a toll. And Cudi, my dog, the whole time we were moving was so confused, so freaked out. We put her in her crate a lot, which she normally doesn't have to be in because she’s so well behaved. A friend of ours watched her a few times, but it was a lot.
And then the emotional piece of leaving. And when you’re in the midst of all that chaos, and planning, you kind of forget that emotional piece and it just hits you at certain times. So we had a little going away get together. Some friends came and I had drinks and said bye. But it wasn't until the day we left, when we were leaving the complex that it really hit me, and I really started to cry. This is what we wanted.
This is what I wanted but I was so proud of having bought that condo by myself and everything I had accomplished, living in Oakland, from my public health career, becoming assistant director to an executor director, to meeting Jared, to starting my own business. There was just so many memories and goodness there. And we were sad to leave. We loved living there. We loved so much about it. And we were essentially moving mainly because of the financial piece, which was a decision we made, and we stand by.
And we are not bitter, we aren’t resentful, we get it. That’s just the way it is. But there was that moment where it was like, “Can we drive through the complex one more time.” We were both crying, and just to have that moment because there is just so much going on we didn't really have much space or time to reflect in the midst of just running around like chickens with our heads cut off. So then we, after our week of rest, which again so proud of myself for really advocating for that, best decision ever. Then we drove about a week to Denver.
I sold my car to help pay for the moving costs, and then we drove Jared’s car. And we made several stops partly because I needed to work. I had coaching calls I took from hotel rooms. But partly because Cudi, that’s a long time for her to be in the car. And it was the first time we’d driven this route. And let me tell you, driving through Nevada is boring as all hell, it’s so boring. Driving through Utah was a mix, half of it was really boring, half of it was beautiful. From the west side of Colorado to Denver was the most gorgeous drive I’ve ever been on, so beautiful.
And it was really nice to stop and have time to rest and sleep and actually go on walks. We went on a hike one day so that was actually really nice. And we get to Denver, and we were so, so lucky. Our apartment, which again we saw sight unseen, beautiful, the complex, so amazing, so much more welcoming and have such nice features we weren't even aware of. The staff are amazing. We lucked out so much. We love our apartment. We love our neighborhood, so lucky about that, truly. We didn’t even check out this neighborhood when we visited.
So that was pure luck or maybe someone in the universe, or God, or whoever are looking after us. But then our POD from U-Haul which I would not ever recommend using. I have used the actual PODS, this trademark name, and they were great but the U-Haul one was not. It was really a horrible experience, I would not recommend. By the time we got here our POD had not been picked up from Oakland, even though it was supposed to be delivered basically the day after we got here. It had not been picked up from Oakland.
They could not tell us when it would be picked up. Their whole reasoning was, “We have third party drivers so we can’t know.” I can’t tell you how many times I called customer service, and I called different ones because depending on who you got, it was not helpful. And I finally got a hold of someone who actually would help me, and I got their name and their extension. That’s how you’ve got to do it. So you can call them back and talk to just them. You don’t have to explain it over again and you know they’re going to help you.
And I called every single day, and they basically couldn’t give me any updates. When the POD finally got picked up, they couldn’t tell me when it would get here. So we didn’t know how much stuff we had to buy. We bought towels and sheets but we’re like, “Do we buy baking dishes and skillets, or do we just eat out?” There was so much because they couldn’t tell us when it was coming or where it was. That we were just winging it, we had no idea. It was truly so frustrating. And that’s really where I had to self-coach myself because it was out of my control.
There wasn't much I could do. I advocated as much as I could. I spoke to management as much as I could. I gave feedback about the issue but that's basically the extent of what I could do. The POD finally came in a week later. We could access it of course a day it snowed. I was like, “of course, what else?” And unloaded everything, bought all of our furniture, mostly 90% of it used off Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist. We were really proud of ourself, it looks great. We love the area.
And then came about six weeks of a lot of uncertainty with selling the condo. Typically if you’re not familiar with the Bay Area, typically the real estate market there is put something on the market, have open house. People are submitting offers within a week, multiple offers. I know during the pandemic a lot of other cities got like that. But that’s how the Bay Area was far before the pandemic, super competitive. We did not get one offer on the condo for a whole month, even more.
There was a couple of situations where they said they were going to put an offer. They even talked to their lender, they even told us how much, then they got cold feet. There was a couple of situations like that. And my brain the whole time was freaking out, playing out the worst case scenario of this is not going to sell. You put it on the market the worst time. The economy's going down. Interest rates are going up. It’s going into the slow season of the real estate market traditionally anyways. You’ve already moved, there’s nothing you can do.
You’ve moved out of state, you still have this mortgage. Now you’re paying rent, you’re fucked. My brain every day went to that. And here is what happens when your brain does that. For the most part it stops at the scariest part. And what you want to do when this happens to you is you want to push yourself to move past that. So say, okay, let’s say that happens. Let's say it doesn't sell. Let’s say we get to December, January, it does not sell, what are your options? Go all the way there. Let’s say the worst case scenario does happen, what are your options?
You always have choices. My option was, okay, well, I could rent it out. That might suck a little. I might have to hire a property manager, there’d be a lot out of my control. The renters rights in the Bay Area are really strong, which I'm not against. I’m definitely for that but there are also true experiences of squatters, or people not paying but staying and legally can and all those worst case scenarios. Those things do happen. So it wasn't my first choice, but it was a choice I had.
We also would have the choice to move back, which is not a choice we were going to make, but that is a choice. So every day my brain offered me this worst case scenario of it’s not going to sell, you’re going to have this mortgage. You’re also paying rent. This was dumb, you shouldn’t have done this, blah, blah, blah. I just every single day reminded myself I can always rent it out. I can always rent it out, I can always rent it out. And if my brain said. “But you won’t want to do that. That's a lot of work. You’d have to hire someone. It would cost more money. You could not rent it for that much.”
I would just keep saying, “That’s okay, I can rent it out. I’ll deal with it. Whatever happens from there I can deal with it.” That’s what you have to do when your brain is offering you worst case scenarios because you always have a choice. What feels disempowering isn't having two shitty choices you don’t like. It’s telling yourself you don't have a choice and you’re stuck, which is not true. You always, always, always have a choice. And that really got me through. I actually got to a place where it was like, okay, I’m probably going to have to rent this out.
And I really got to a place of acceptance where my brain didn’t freak me out anymore. It actually stopped kind of offering me that as like a fearmongering scaring me tactic because it figured out that I wasn’t scared anymore because I really accepted, I could do that. We can make it work. It wouldn’t be our first choice, it would suck in some ways, but we could do that, we can make it happen. And the whole time the house was on the market I didn't share, broadly we moved because it was vacant. So it was just a security, safety reason.
Those of you who listen regularly, I absolutely trust you, but you never know when stuff goes on the internet, whose hand it’s going to get into. And it was for the security and the safety, of not just the property but our realtor, anyone visiting, my neighbors, all of that stuff. So that's why I’m not announcing it till now, which means we sold it. We finally got an offer, we accepted it. It took longer to close than we'd like. There were some extensions, some issues that came up, but we stuck with it, and it finally sold. I’m so, so happy.
It feels kind of surreal after the past couple of months of insanity but I’m really proud of how I showed up for myself through all of that stress. I allowed my emotions, sometimes they got the best of me and that's okay. I didn’t judge myself. I coached myself a lot. I managed my mind, and I showed up so we can now create the life that we want to have together. So we're all very happy right now. Cudi’s very happy. It’s snowy outside, she loves the snow. We love our apartment. We have been snowboarding a lot. I love our neighborhood. I am really proud of us for making this happen.
And there’s a lot of other stuff happening behind the scenes. I have started going to therapy which has been really great. I have a lot of exciting travel coming up. I am going to Europe with my sister. I’m going to see Adele in concert which I’m so excited about. I am also trying to make new friends. I joined Bumble BFF which is an app to meet friends. If you’re not following me on Instagram, that's where I share those updates on my stories. There has been some good times, there has been some weird times.
So if you’re interested, come follow, I’ll share more about my experience with that because we don’t really have friends here. I’m also working through, I am on social media more than I would like. I definitely struggle with social media. I don’t really want to call it an addiction, but I definitely notice when I spend time on there, my brain always wants to go back. So this month I’m really working on changing that. I'm also working on a lot of different things for the business side of stuff, which I'm really excited about.
This year in 2022, I am recording this right before the year ends, so I don’t have the exact numbers. But I made about $60,000 give or take in the business which is amazing considering year one. 2021 I made around 11,000, so I almost six times my revenue. I donated almost $1,000. Every year I pick an organization to donate to. And 2021 and 2022 I donated to the Freedom Community Clinic in Oakland which is a great organization. I’ll be looking for Denver or Colorado based organizations to donate to next year.
And this year in my business I’ve been really learning how to discern. I’ve never had a business before. I don't have an MBA. So I've been learning a lot the past two years. And this 2022, I started giving myself permission to discern based on who I’m learning from, what I want to take. Where before I was just taking everything they said and either being like, “Yes, this absolutely is it. I have to follow this to a tee.” Or not listening to some people because I’m like, “I don’t agree with your values. I’m going to ignore everything you say.”
In this 2022 I’ve really started giving myself permission to discern, to listen but decide what works for me. And I think next year will be my real action of transformation, of discerning, and doing things my way, and doing things differently, and giving myself that full permission. I'm going to be doing more courses. The courses I do are typically online, prerecorded. I might change it up or the format but I’m going to be doing a lot more of those.
My one-on-one coaching program I'm still doing but it's going to be much, much more exclusive. There is going to be fewer spots available. Those who do get into the program, you’re going to get much more attention from me and support. It’s going to be higher touch and just higher value. And that’s why I’m kind of keeping it small. So it’s going to be very, very limited. I am hoping to do more work with organizations. I did a training for a CDC team this year, I loved it.
I’ve done a lot of webinars with different organizations, from AMCHP to Public Health Connected, PH SPOT and so many others. So I’m hoping to do more of that, more training. So if your organization is willing, and able, and interested in having a training and coaching around burnout, rest, boundaries, leadership, or anything else, please reach out because I’m really excited about that. I’m in conversation with one organization right now that I'm excited about that might happen. So there is a lot happening, a lot of great, great things happening.
But it doesn't mean I don’t have my down days and I don’t feel anxiety, and I don’t feel stress because I do. The difference is I process it, I allow it, I manage my mind. And part of the reason why I wanted to share this update is to show that deciding to create the life you want is not what it appears on social media. It’s not, you get it all together and then you create the life you want. It’s not create the life you want perfectly with no hiccups. It’s messy. It's chaotic. It's complicated.
There is no reason to wait because whether you do it now or you do it in 10 years or 20 years that part will always be true, doesn't matter if you make 50K a year or 200K a year. Doesn’t matter if you quit your job or have a job. Making big decisions to change your life in ways you want your life to change, to support the life you want to create includes emotions like anxiety, and doubt, and fear, includes some chaos, some uncertainty, some overwhelm. That will always be the case.
Don’t let those things hold you back from creating the life you want because those things come along for the ride. They all get in the car on the road trip to your dreams. It is so, so important to know how to process your emotions and manage your mind because what makes things worse is when you don't know how to think thoughts on purpose that help you feel empowered, or relief, or calm, or certain, or confident, or when you resist or suppress your emotions.
Creating the life you want isn't waiting until everything is perfect to make the changes because that will never happen. It’s about making the decisions now but knowing how to support yourself throughout those decisions no matter what challenges or barriers come up. And that’s the purpose of coaching. That's how coaching helps you create the life you want. It doesn’t just deliver it on a silver platter.
What it does is it gives you the tools for you to create what you want and for you to follow through and commit to it, no matter the challenges or barriers, even with difficult emotions, even with your brain freaking out. So you can actually achieve the life you want. So with that, that was a long update. This is probably a longer episode than normal. I wanted to share what’s going on with me as an example of why this work matters and how it can have an impact on your life. And also show you it's not perfect, it’s still messy. I’m still human, so is everyone who gets coaching and that’s okay.
But we’re humans who are moving towards creating the life we want or actively creating the life we want rather than humans who are staying stuck, and stagnant and not living the fulfilling life we deep down truly want. So with that you all, I hope you enjoyed this, a little behind the scenes. I will talk to you next week. Bye everyone.
If you found this episode helpful then you have to check out my coaching program where I provide you individualized support to create a life centered around rest. Head on over to mckoolcoaching.com, that’s M-C-K-O-O-L coaching.com to learn more.
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