Fire Up at 55 Plus
Are you ready to put yourself first in your 55+ years? Your host, Laurie Adams at 60+, successfully did that and is here now to help you discover what you want for your own, full second act in life. She lived in the people-pleasing era where young girls learned to put themselves last and how, as experienced, mature women they can rekindle dreams and realize them. A certified life and weight loss coach, Laurie, along with her variety of guests, share how they have shifted into their best years yet. If you’re stuck on the back burner and ready to fire-up at mid-life and beyond, tune in weekly to hear inspiring conversations and personal journeys with info you can apply to get going. Real self care and moving from hope to success starts here—for a new companion, or career, retirement, mastering weight loss, fitness and more. And if you’d like to work with Laurie 1-on-1, contact her at hello@laurieadamscoaching.com.
Fire Up at 55 Plus
58. Reimagine Retirement to Suit You, with Pat Casello-Maddox
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If your image of retirement is learning or upping your golf game, finally taking that cross-country road trip, volunteering, dinner earlier and earlier in the day, or endless relaxation on a beach, tropical drink in hand—that’s likely a stereotype! And in the 2020s I can tell you, “This is not your mother’s retirement!” It’s all yours. Whether you have a strong vision or no vision at all for what will suit you best in these later, still-lively years, life coach Pat Maddox-Casello, owner of Daily Life Success, is here to help. She’s got the goods and is ready to share them for retirement rejuvenation.
Go to https://unique-inventor-7892.ck.page/97fce2ed5b for Pat’s Women Reimagine Retirement newsletter. She’s got lots in the works for events, workshops, and products, as well as an upcoming book and podcast.
You can reach Pat directly at: admin@dailylifesuccess.com
Also mentioned in this episode:
Pat likes “Margaret” and her Sixty and Me Community: https://sixtyandme.com/
Use: hello@laurieadams.com to request your free copy of Laurie’s “3 Steps to Self-Start Your Weight Loss," or to contact Laurie about setting up a 30-minute exploratory call for a no-pressure conversation about results you can get with coaching, for your best life yet at midlife+.
This episode was produced by The Podcast Teacher.
Hi, and welcome to the Fire Up at 55 Plus Podcast, a show about how to put yourself first in your second act of life. I'm Certified Life and Weight Loss Coach Lori Adams, here to empower you to let go of guilt, take charge of your health, then find and fulfill your dreams. It's never too late, so let's get started. Hello. Hey, if your image of retirement is learning or upping your golf game, or finally taking that cross-country road trip, maybe in an RV, volunteering, eating dinner earlier and earlier in the day, or endless relaxation on a beach, tropical drink in hand, well, those are likely stereotypes. And in the 2020s, I can tell you this, well, this is not your mother's retirement. It's all yours. Whether you have a strong vision already, or no vision at all, for what will suit you best in these later but still lively years, today we have life coach Pat Casello Maddox, owner of Daily Life Success, here to help. She's got the goods and is ready to share them for retirement rejuvenation. Here we go. Welcome back. Today we are so fortunate to have someone who has all the knowledge about a second or third act in your life that sometimes we don't thoroughly examine, even though we're anticipating it. And that is called ta da retirement. So if you're about to retire, we couldn't wait to retire. Have just retired. Well, today's guest is Pat Casello Maddox, has the answers for us, or at least the answers that you can begin to explore to find out what will work the best for you. And Pat has a varied background, so I'm going to invite her right off the bat to tell you a little bit more about herself and how she became a coach helping people to find their best retirement. Welcome, welcome, Pat.
SPEAKER_01Thank you, Lori. I'm so excited to be here today because I love talking with women about retirement, whether they you said they're just getting ready to retire or they're already there and kind of wondering what's my next steps. My background is really varied. My resume runs like a river. I've done many different industries. I started out in computer programming and then I started to do design work and I started to do integration of programs for my customers and then training them and became more of a teacher and a mentor. And I think that has really permeated throughout my time as a working adult. After I left that, I actually went into adult public education. And from there I went into healthcare. So I've had a journey in many industries, but all of them have really relied on my being able to be a good communicator and mentor and trainer for people. And when I got into healthcare, I began to train other students. I am a retired chiropractor and Chinese medicine practitioner. And I worked with patients for over 30 years in lots of different clinical environments. I also worked in a lot of business environments because my original work was in the corporate world. So as I got ready to retire, I decided that I wanted to do more one-on-one and group training. And I retired right in the middle of the pandemic. And so it was a great way to move online totally. I had taught online for many years, but to be online and start working with people. But I also, as we started to open up from the pandemic, started to do more live events and worked with women in retreat centers, worked with women in workshops. I also did online Zoom workshops. And what I do is I tap into a lot of the women who are what we call late baby boomer age or the Jones generation, and those who are early generation X, because those are the women who are getting ready or in retirement today. And they had a really interesting life that was different from maybe their older siblings and certainly their parents and their grandparents. So when I talk about retirement today, I'm talking about those that are facing a different retirement from their parents.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I imagine so, because you know, a lot of our parents were going to have pensions and they had a very fixed idea of what their retirement was going to be or where they're going to move, things like that. But I wanted to ask you before we go on to serving these women, if anything during your own early growing up years, because this niche of women who are changing things in midlife have pretty strong recollections of what it was like for them. You just mentioned your parents' retirement. So, what did you kind of discover in your early years growing up about what you could achieve in your life? It sounds like you did a number of different things, which I say, have at it. You know, my resume is like a river, too, and I learned a lot from each thing. But anything that particularly strikes your mind about growing up in a time when women were expected more to be people pleasers and put their own desires on the back burner.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so my family, we had six children and three adults lived with us. I had a great aunt that lived with us, so we had an extended family rather than the emerging nuclear families that were really starting to appear. I was in the middle, I was the fourth, I was the oldest of the second half of the kids. And so my and my younger sister and brother have a little bit of a different upbringing than, say, my older sisters did. And when I was growing up, there was a lot of boys in the neighborhood. And I remember being very active and athletic and playing kickball with them, or playing by myself, or playing with my younger sister. My younger brother was quite a few years younger than I was. And it was a time where I was watching my mother a lot. And my mother went back to work when I was a baby because she had to, both her and my father worked, which was unusual for a lot of the women in the neighborhood who were home raising kids, being homemakers. My great aunt that lived with us kind of took over that role. And so I saw my mom work when many of my friends' moms were at home. And I remember as I grew up more in the middle kind of school years and into high school, where counselors would try to guide us to where we should consider being. Because of course, this is post-World War II time, and women were starting to engage much more into the working environment. And they would say, Well, you should be a teacher or a nurse.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. Right. And there was nothing wrong with those professions. I wanted more options. And so I ended up going a very different pathway. I didn't get married really early. I went to college. I was the first one in my family that really went to college and then took that degree, which was in psychology, and started to work in the field. And then I went into computer programming and I kind of broke all the rules in the family. And my mom would say, Well, you know, you really want to learn to, you know, cook better or do this or that for your husband. And I said, Well, I'm not sure I want to get married. You know, how did she take that? She'd always look quizzically at me, but I think she admired that I would go after things. I was athletic, I was in choir. I did well in school. I went through college. She wanted to go to college, but she got married at 17 and had three kids by the time she was 20. So she never got there. So I think she kind of in a way appreciated that I was doing the things she might have liked to have done.
SPEAKER_00That's really cool. Well, thank you for sharing that. When you advise women at this point in their life who are going into retirement or are newly retired, is there anything pretty common or stereotypical you observe? Or is it, you know, everybody's kind of unique? And do those things have to do with their former career or whether they worked at all, or whether they still want to do something part-time or even volunteer? What are their common questions?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a mix. There's, of course, everyone has their own personal backstory and their personal kind of mindset of what's possible for them. But the common things that I see are for women asking these types of questions. What will be my purpose when I retire? You know, they're coming from a place where they've had a routine, they've probably had some status expertise developed in an industry, and they've had coworkers that they work with. And now suddenly a lot of that's going to change for them. And so they're curious about what will I do now? Where and how will I live now? And the purpose piece is a big thing because they're starting to feel a little bit invisible and moving out of their comfort zone. And that's very common for different reasons for everybody, but that's a really common set of questions.
SPEAKER_00And I know that people come to a coach because sometimes they have such scattered thoughts, or they've always put what they've wanted so aside that they really don't know what they want, or they don't know what they don't know about retirement. So is there something uncommon or unknown to them that you think springs up and you realize sooner about them or about the path that they don't that you'd like to share?
SPEAKER_01With each person that I work with, sometimes it's one-on-one and sometimes it's with groups. But what I do is kind of have them take a look, do inventory of their life in different areas. And so one of the areas we've kind of touched on a little bit might be your work or your career life. What has been your past experience? And were you working at home? If you were taking care of kids and doing all the things to keep the family moving forward and helping with budgets and all of that, that was a job in itself as well. So, what are your skills? What are your strengths? And who's your allies and supporter at this point in your life? It might be family members or friends, past co-workers, but I tried to get a sense of who they think they are. And then we start to explore those different areas. And that usually ends up becoming setting some goals. It might be short-term and it might be long-term goals. For example, one woman I worked with, she was getting ready to retire in about nine months. And she was scared to death of having that part of her life end. And she said, I don't know how to proceed and I'm having trouble focusing. And I said, Well, what would you like to accomplish before you leave at nine months? And we started to talk about that. And what she really wanted to do was pass on her knowledge and make sure a good replacement was there so that she could walk away and then pursue others, some passions and interests that she had. And I said, Well, let's focus on that. How could we make that happen? And that really became her living legacy before she left work, which helped her gain some confidence, helped her see that she still had skills she could offer in different ways. And she felt comfortable leaving there and exploring some new pathways for herself.
SPEAKER_00Wonderful. We mentioned the word invisibility earlier. And that's something that just because I'm talking about this stuff so much, I get an awful lot of different opinions on. But I still think there's a prevailing, well, I don't know if it's a myth, but there's a prevailing thought in society that as you age, especially women, maybe diminutive women or women who are introverts, do start to become more invisible. They're not as sought after or looked at as being asked about their own opinions, and they start to retreat a little bit. But then, of course, we have many people who are great role models on this podcast that are doing, doing, doing and, you know, super excited about it. And they don't let any of those societal norms or past expectations define them. Do you have anything that you'd like to share about invisibility and the people that you serve?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you for that question, because I think that's something that women generally face 55 plus and maybe even earlier, but certainly as we start to become older, people see us differently. And I think culture for a lot of us has been that you had certain responsibilities. There were certain things that you were, you were a mother, or you were a guardian for somebody else, or you were a protector, or you know, there were lots of terms that described us. But once we get older, and say maybe the kids grow up and you're an empty nester, or you never married. And a lot of women today in the generations that I work with chose to be child-free. They don't have children. So people have always kind of questioned well, why don't you and why aren't you this? And once you get older, well, you're kind of past child bearing years, they start to like ignore us, you know, and that's very common and still is today. And I would see that a lot. I remember when I first started to be called ma'am versus miss, like, hmm. And then as I got older, men walk down the street, they don't look at you anymore, or you know, whatever it is. But what I found is I've found more about who I am and just being who I am. I'm finding that people are engaging with me more. They go, Oh, you have that interest. I'd love to hear more about that. Or I walk through a door, young men open the door for me. They weren't doing that. And I don't know why, and it's nice they do, they don't have to, but I'm realizing that there's a certain energy now that kind of precedes me. And I think it's because I'm comfortable.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah. The wisdom, the maturity that you have, you carry with you. Exactly. That is very cool. So the other thing about coaching, and I think at any age, people don't quite understand what's going to happen, or they're very excited, and then they commit, and then they're like, oh, what did I just do? Is there a good way to help your clients engage in their own process? Because we know if they don't feel committed enough to respond and interact and maybe do some of the light homework or something that someone suggests, that they're not taking enough ownership to really make lasting change happen. How would you address that to people who want to coach or they think they want to coach and they're not quite sure?
SPEAKER_01Everybody's different. You had mentioned earlier about introverts and you know, extroverts. I'm an introvert by nature, but I've worked a lot of extroverted jobs and positions, and that's taught me a lot, you know, to get out there and take leaps of faith and try different things. So, with my folks, what I do is try to learn more about what has worked for them in the past. You know, I'll give them maybe ideas or ask them questions about similar situations in the past to see what help them move. And then I have some things. I have some exercises I go through with them, and I have various tools that I use with them. For example, with some of the people, some of my folks are very spiritual in nature. Maybe they've been interested in meditation. They might be able to do things like want to do labyrinth walks. And so I take different pieces that I bring back because I'm I'm a pluralist spiritually, I have a lot of spiritual practices, and I can bring a lot of different pieces to the table. And so I look for what are they willing to do at this point and then focus in. So if I have to go really short term with the goal to get them moving forward, then that's what I'll do.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, just to take enough action to get them moving. But now I have to ask, what's a labyrinth walk?
SPEAKER_01Labyrinths are uh older Christian ways of being able to put out spiritual questions and to wait for information to come back from God or whatever your higher power is. And we have a lot of them here. I'm from Minnesota here, I'm in the Twin Cities, but across the country too, and many parts of the world, they developed them. They may be outside or inside walking platforms, basically. And you can enter them and do different types of processes, be able to get answers. So maybe you walk in and you have an issue that you're just ruminating on and it's making you crazy. First part of your walk might be about exploring how are you feeling about that? What's coming up for you about that? When you get into the center of the labyrinth, then you kind of let go of that, you kind of let the slate be opened up to get some feedback from the world, from your thoughts from God. And on the way out, then you look at the things that maybe came to you in that process and say, How could I maybe make those happen?
SPEAKER_00So that's reimagining retirement right there. That's so interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us. I don't know if many people know about that. I sure didn't. And one more thing I want to ask about a detail before we get back into kind of the meat of things of what you offer. Technology. You know, I know probably a lot of women this age have a love-hate relationship. Probably a lot of people at every age have a love-hate relationship with technology. You know, I really don't think that that needs to interfere with anything anybody wants to do, they can do. But do you find that that's a concern of people, you know, as they enter a new phase, that they're going to have to find friends on Facebook, or that they just don't want to get engaged in a lot of emails when they haven't done that? Or does it just not come up?
SPEAKER_01But technology is a big thing, especially for the baby boomer women. So they get into Gen Xers and certainly we get down to millennials or whatever, they grow up on it. But I would say technology is being used today for so many things that to have maybe a limited amount of technology either available to you or knowledge of is helpful. I mean, you have people that maybe are disabled, so they can't get out. They can't get to the grocery store, for example, or they can't get to the bank, but online apps can help them, or if other people are available that are living with them, can help them with that. I had a really unique situation here in this last year. I had a woman who had lived with her parents for 65 years, taking care of them, didn't have a phone, didn't use computers, and they had passed and she had to move. And so what we did is we worked with her to help her contact places so that she could look at rentals, understand what the rental situation was, get her moved, get a phone set up, those types of things, because she really didn't have any of that and was scared to death, you know, about how she could accomplish that. And we also talked with the family members to say, how can you continue to help her? Because she did have some sisters and siblings that she would work with.
SPEAKER_00See, that's such a great service that you offer that because we always talk in this podcast about doable life change. And when it's a mindset thing, it's not always that you need to know the details of the how. You need to get your mind thinking forward and positively first. But there are a lot of situations where you do need details and support. And for you to offer that to her, I'm sure that was so much more reassuring. And that she was, you know, much more likely to think she's going to have a successful transition than to be fearful.
SPEAKER_01You and asked earlier about, you know, how do we motivate them? Part of what we did for her was I brought the listings kind of of what the places that were renting offered. And I said, What are your priorities? Let's go through these. And I had her walk through them. And she said, Yeah, that would be important. I wanted to know what she wanted, and that helped us, you know, kind of limit for her, but also helped kind of inform her a little bit about what was out there at the same time. So I watched her kind of become more comfortable with the move. And it wasn't, I'd love to say that everything just went smooth. It didn't, because she had a lot of reframing to have to do and still today doing that. But we were able to help her make the next steps and start that path.
SPEAKER_00That's so great. So before we wrap this up, I want to give you a few minutes to talk about what you think is the most important that you offer, or something maybe that we haven't touched on. I'm sure there's many, many other things that happen in retirement, just like happen in life. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I offer several things. One, because I'm working with people moving in retirement. What I don't offer is I don't offer financial advice. I'm not the wealth management person. They need a good financial advisor and look at their planning process for their money. What I work with women on is what's beyond the money? What's really your purpose, your passion, what lights you up? What will help you feel you are fulfilled in this third stage of your life? And so I work with women from that point kind of going forward. I offer courses, workshops that focus on very specific parts of that journey. I also curate lots of people. So I'm developing a podcast. And for me, I'm going to bring various experts in that can give the people some additional pieces because I can't do all of it. I can't do one-on-one for people moving and, you know, so I'm trying to broaden the expertise that I can bring in, the resources that I can bring to my audience. So I'm both coaching, which I love to do. I love live events and workshops both, but I'm also really developing kind of the information channels to help people gain even more expertise beyond what I can offer them. And I learn and grow in the process too. I learn to be able to help other people's audiences, which I love too. I love the reciprocity, I love the collaboration.
SPEAKER_00Well, great. And your business is called DailyLifesuccess.com. Daily Life Success. And I know you have a way to sign up for your email letters. I'm going to put that in the show notes. And then when you uh get your podcast up and going, please be sure to let me know and I will share that where I can too. I like to close with just a few typical questions that I'm interested in from coaches. Do you have a role model? And if so, who and why? And is this someone you can follow on social media or is it someone from your past that you admired that kind of helped you set a path?
SPEAKER_01My mom certainly was a role model for me. My early years. But I would say these days, a couple of role models that I have. One is a woman named Margaret Sixty. She's in the United Kingdom. She does blogs and podcasts. And she has wonderful guests and articles on all sorts of things relating to women in the retirement years that would be of interest. And I just love her energy and her compassion that she has. So she's one of my role models. I also have found that I have some younger role models because I'm moving more into digital marketing and podcasting and that. And we share a friend, Julia Levine, who has been instrumental in helping me begin to learn more about that avenue for marketing for my business. And I'm watching her journey. Another woman is Monica Fries, who does a lot of digital products.
SPEAKER_00How do you spell her last name?
SPEAKER_01It's F-R O E S E. Okay. And she got her start when she was in the corporate world and went on maternity leave and it wasn't covered. And she started to do advocate work for that. And her blog was all about redefining mom. And then it went from there, and she has built a wonderful business, but it was all based on saying, hey, this isn't fair, this isn't right. And yeah, she has a great backstory. So there's some wonderful people out there, Benny, that I really appreciate.
SPEAKER_00That's how women get things done. They find a solution to their own problem and they share the wealth. And then do you have a morning or other routine or habit or a hobby that helps you to kind of ground yourself and be ready for this coaching work?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I have a routine I've used for a while. When I get up in the morning, I do meditation and I do a workout that's a combination of stretching, yoga, breathing exercises. What I try to do is really kind of calm and clear my mind in the morning so that I'm ready to start on the pieces that I need to focus on.
SPEAKER_00Great. Okay. Well, it's been a pleasure to have you, and I'll be excited to hear as you're continuing to grow, because I know you have so much to offer. And I just have to say, I mean, I'm more of a hybrid coach. I love the mindset work and using the model and such, but teaching, I just think is wonderful, especially when someone does it from a background like you have, with expertise and intentionality. And having done this in-person stuff, I think is very, very valuable as you do online coaching as well. I think you just get those insights into people. So thank you, Pat, and I look forward to speaking with you again in the future.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. It's been a pleasure to be on here. And I wish for all of you that you will pursue your passion and purpose in life.
SPEAKER_00No one-on-one coach in your life yet, no problem. Besides this podcast, I've got you covered with my free three steps to self-start your weight loss like a boss checklist. To get a copy, just send an email to me with the subject line steps to Hello at LoriAdamscoaching.com or use the same email to contact me with podcast ideas or to set up a quick and easy consultation call if you'd like to know more about working one-on-one with me. And to keep the transformational information coming each week, please follow, fire up at 55 plus wherever you download your podcasts. And if on Apple, share a review and a star-worthing rating. It's much appreciated. Hey, thanks for listening. To contact me directly, please reach out via email to hello at laurieadamscoaching.com. And I invite you to take a look at my flaming hot webpage, fireup at fiftyfiveplus.com. That's fireup, the word at 55plus.com. And until next week, make the most of your sizzling second act.
