You are listening to the Life Coach School Podcast with Brooke Castillo, episode number 532.
Welcome to The Life Coach School Podcast, where it's all about real clients, real problems, and real coaching. And now your host, Master Coach Instructor, Brooke Castillo.
Well, hey friends. What's up? I bet you didn't expect to hear from me so soon, but I'll tell you why. Why I'm here is because so many of you wrote to me and texted me and communicated to me and had so many questions and were so excited that I had done a podcast and were so happy about the podcast that I decided to do another one, answer a bunch of your questions, and also talk about something that's been on my mind a lot. And that is taking a break.
And I have so many thoughts and so many ideas about taking a break from life, from work, from whatever it is that you spend most of your time doing to really re-evaluate your life. And I'm excited to record this podcast for you because I'm excited to invite each of you to do this.
I'm currently in my home in San Diego. I think I told you all in the last podcast, I bought a beautiful house in Lake Tahoe that I'm absolutely obsessed with. But I already have my house here in San Diego, which I'm absolutely obsessed with. So I have these two houses and it's great because San Diego is amazing in the winter when it is snowy and cold in Lake Tahoe. And there are a couple months here in San Diego where it's like pretty gray. They call it like May Gray and June Gloom, and those months are absolutely stunning in Lake Tahoe.
So, I'm balancing between two homes right now and it's like the perfect combination for me. So, right now I'm in San Diego. I came here to take care of some things, namely my hair, and I have extensions in my hair so I come to my person who does my hair here. And I want to check on the house and pay some bills and do some hiking here. So, I'm going to go play some pickleball with my girlfriend and then head back over to Nevada. But while I'm here, I thought, hey, I'm going to record a podcast. I'm going to talk about taking a break, answer a bunch of your questions, and just reconnect with you all because you're so excited and I'm excited. I missed you too. So many of you wrote me such beautiful letters about how much you've missed me and I really do appreciate that and I'm really excited to share with you kind of the work that I've been doing, even though it's not work, right?
So, one of the things that I've been thinking a lot about lately, and I've been experiencing personally, is how important it is for us to step out of our lives to be able to look at them from afar, right? And often times when we go on vacation, we get a little bit of a sense of this. Sometimes for the weekend we get a little bit of a sense of this. If we travel really far away, I don't know why, it seems to give us a much bigger, like if we're in a different culture, in a different time zone, in a totally different experience, that sometimes gives us a perspective where we can really look at our lives.
But I think everyone in midlife, whether you're 40s or 50s, should have a plan to take a break from your life. And I actually think it should be something we plan for from when we're young. You know how we plan for retirement? I think we should also plan for our midlife break. And so we have our 401k for retirement. I think we should have our 401k for our midlife break. And I think it should be a minimum of three months this break that we take away from whatever it is we do for work on a regular basis.
So for some of you that may be all the work that you do at the house to take care of the family, to take care of the home. For some of you, it may be a corporate job that you work at. For some of you, it may be your own business that you're doing. And so I think that if this is planned for well enough ahead of time, it is something that most of us could pull off and plan for.
And I'm going to tell you why I think it's so important to do it, but I'm also trying to be really clear that the break that I'm talking about here is not a break that you take because you are, you know, in immediate need of an escape, or you're feeling overwhelmed by something, or you're going through some catalytic event. That's not what I'm talking about here. I'm talking about a pre-planned break where you step out of your life for a minute and you're in a really good emotional state to do that. You are focused and you are aware. You're not completely in acute need of care. Okay? That's the kind of break I'm not talking about is one where you absolutely need to take a break because you need to heal or you're going through something physically or your health is failing or you're dealing with a lot of drama. Okay? Those situations that require breaks are very important, but that's not what I'm referring to here. What I'm referring to here is a planned break from your life to reconsider your life from a place of abundance.
So, I'll tell you when I decided I wanted to take a break, it was almost three years ago now. And so it took a lot of planning and a lot of preparation for me to be able to get to the point where I could literally unplug myself from work and the work that I was doing and be truly separated from it, be truly free from it. And so it wasn't something I was in a hurry to do. It was something that I was willing to prepare to do so I could have some space to really think about my life.
And I think there were three reasons why I decided that I really wanted this break. One of which is I turned 50, or I was turning 50, and I had achieved my goals beyond my wildest imagination. So I felt in many ways I had reached this place that I never thought I would reach, and I was there, there, right? And I think in a lot of ways so many of my goals that I have set for myself are really about becoming the person that I want to become and not necessarily achieving the goal. But here I was, I had become this person I wanted to become. I had achieved the goal, and the work for me had become a lot less of what I really loved to do.
So, just to explain that briefly, what I really love to do is this, coaching. I love coaching and I love creating content and teaching. And when you scale a business, you have to learn so many different skill sets and you have to learn and spread yourself so much more thin in so many different ways. And when you have a huge corporation with lots of people working for you and lots of people depending on you for literally their livelihood, it changes not only what you're doing every day, but it also changes the level of expectation and dependency. And those were things that I hadn't anticipated, and in some ways, I think that took a lot of the fun out of it for me.
And I tried my hardest to adjust and make it work and coach myself in a way that would have made that work easier for me, but I think it was just like, it wasn't that it was so hard for me to do, it's just like, huh, I don't know if I'm enjoying this as much as I used to. And so I want to take a step back. I want to take a step away so I can really look at this and decide. And I remember thinking like, you take a break from your life, you take a break from your work. Worst case scenario, you just build it back up again, you know, if you decide that's exactly what you want, and you just do it better. You know, I think any time you do something for the second time, you do it better.
And I think the third reason for me personally why I really wanted to take a break and really step back from my life is I wanted to spend more time with my kids, which is so interesting, right? Because I've spent so much time with my kids. And when you send them away to college, it's like, "Bye!" in many ways, right? Like in many ways your heart's broken that they're leaving, and in other ways you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And I think, you know, my kids have both graduated from college now and the next phase of their life is really the last phase I'm going to have with them, really, before they have their own families is kind of what I'm anticipating. And so I think there was a part of me that really wanted to have more time and energy to spend with them.
The years that they were in college, I was working very diligently on my business and building my business, and so I wanted to have time with them that was totally free, where I could follow Christian around that golf course and hang out with Connor and go on vacation with him and help him with his business at any point that he needed it with no one else dependent on me, including them. And so it took me three years to get to the point where I could take this year off and it has been amazing. And so I want this for each of you. I want there to be an opportunity for you to plan for, because if you would have asked me three years ago, "Could you take a year off?" I would have been like, "There's no way." I have way too many people dependent on me. I have way too many promises made that I need to fulfill before I can do that. And so, you know, it's just making sure that you've planned for it.
One of my friends, Joe Polish, took a sabbatical. He took an entire year off and went traveling, and he had a very highly dependent on him business as well. And he was able to pull it off and I think that was like really inspiring for me.
So, the things that I want to talk about that happen for, I think so many of us, that happen to us when we don't have a chance to get a break is that our brain is so filled with all of the obligations of the work that is required of us and the people that are dependent on us and the expectations, that we can't think in a way that is broad enough to redecide our lives.
And so here are the requirements for the break, if you want to kind of take a break the way that I have. The requirements are there can't be any work for at least three months. Now, I'm suggesting three months is the minimum for this type of break, okay? And of course you have to plan on it because you have to be able to afford it. You have to be able to take the time off work and have the money to support yourself. And if, you know, if the three months is, you know, you're going to need to get some care around the house so you don't have to do all that kind of work. Whatever your work is, you need to be able to not do it. And so no work thinking, no work doing, no work stress, no work decisions for at least three months.
And if you're a super ambitious, accomplished, successful winner, which is how I see myself, if you see yourself that way, this will be very challenging for at least the first two weeks because your brain is accustomed to thinking about work, is to thinking about providing, to thinking about taking care of, to thinking about creating. And to not have that is going to be identity-wrecking.
Now, some of you have gone on vacation for three weeks and you feel like, oh, that was a break, but it wasn't because if in the back of your mind you're having to think about your business because your business is still running, or you're having to think about your job or you're having to think about what's going on at work, you're not freeing up the part of your brain, the subconscious part of your brain that needs to relax in order for your true desires to be able to settle in, your true wishes. So, I highly recommend that those first two weeks you are very strict with yourself. And I know it sounds funny, but you have to be super disciplined with no work phone calls, no work notes, no checking in, nothing. You are completely offline. Turn off all your apps that have anything to do with work. And of course you have to prepare for this because you have to know, like if you're going to keep your business going and you're going to take this time off, you have to know that they can cover it, right? And you have to set yourself up so you can really have that time off.
Now, for me, those first three months were the first three months of this year, it was really challenging for me because I have worked for the past 20 years solid doing the same work. And creating podcasts and creating content and thinking about my employees and thinking about my clients and thinking about my students, all in the background on a hum for 20 years. And so it was kind of like when my kids went away to college, I kept thinking like I was forgetting something. Like what's going on? Why is the house so empty? Why is the car so empty, right? All of those things. That's kind of how it felt for me in the beginning. But then eventually it relaxed and I was able to focus on my kids, which specifically, I was really trying to help Christian in this part of his career, right? Really try and focus on what I could do to support him. And in some ways he didn't want my support. Like, okay, mom, enough is enough. Hi, I'm here. And then in other ways he did need my support, and same with Connor. Like really wanting to support him in the ways that he wanted me to support him.
And so it was a huge shift and I'll tell you, I felt like a fish out of water a little bit. And I had to let myself be a little bit of anxious, a little bit of confused, a little bit of frustrated in the beginning. And I also really enjoyed my time and just, you know, it's okay. I had to like keep reassuring myself. No, it's okay. You don't have to do anything. There's nothing, there's no homework that's due. You don't have to take care of everything. We spent a lot of time in hotels during that time traveling, so that was great too. I didn't, in the very beginning, I didn't have any kind of responsibilities but, you know, putting on a bathing suit and walking out to the beach or going on a hike or something, playing pickleball. Those were really my only requirements.
And it really allowed me to see my brain in a new way. And I'll tell you what I suggest you allow yourself to think about during this time, and it's what I thought about during this time. I thought about how far I had come and I reflected on actually my whole life, not just the past 20 years, not just the past five years, not just since I had hit my goals, not just the extraordinary success, but like focusing on like the past 20 years of my entire life from my childhood all the way until now and really stopped long enough to really appreciate how far I've come and celebrate myself.
And it's interesting, since I did that, I've come up with a whole new series. I think it's going to be a podcast series, probably three episodes that I will drop next month for you, based on looking at how far I've come and what I've survived and how I survived it and what I got through in my childhood and what I got through in my teenage years and what I've worked through life coaching on myself and how that has completely transformed what could have been a train wreck of a life.
And so that was the first thing I did. I stopped long enough to really appreciate how far I've come. The second thing that I did is I reflected on some decisions. I reflected on some of the mistakes that I've made in my life. I reflected on some of the misjudgments I made and I just allowed myself to see how much I've learned from the mistakes that I've made and the failures that I've had and the wrong turns that I've taken and the misjudgments that I've made, right?
I'm a very future-focused person, but I really allowed myself to reflect back. And I think this is important for all of us at midlife, right? Even if you're, you know, in your 30s to be able to look back and be appreciative for how far you've come and to acknowledge the mistakes and the wrong turns that you've made and to kind of, for me, what I did is I brought it all together into a complete story instead of having like these little pieces of my life that I would reflect on separately, I brought it all together as a story, kind of like a memoir that is my life so far and reflected on that. And it made me feel amazing. It made me feel great about myself and it made me feel like forgiving and loving and accomplished and full of pride and full of gratitude and a little bit of an out of body experience, right? To be now my future self that my past self so much wanted to be is like an incredible, powerful experience.
And then after that, after I kind of stopped and reflected, you know, and the first two weeks, you really have to be disciplined into not doing any kind of work. But then I just started to allow myself to do whatever my heart led me to do. And I recommend you do the same thing. Whatever your heart leads you to do without your brain getting involved with any kind of judgment. There's nowhere to be, there's nothing you have to do, there's no work you have to. There's also no one giving you a bunch of accolades, there's no one complaining at you. It's just gone, all of it. It's just silence and you can just experience your heart.
And I'll tell you guys, because so many of you have asked me this, like, what did I end up doing? And I surprised my own self in what I ended up doing. One of the first things I did was I got very organized. I had been for the past five years very supported, should I say? I had a team of assistants, I had a team, you know, running the company, I had, you know, other people kind of managing my life. And that was great. I didn't have to be organized because they were, but once I kind of settled in and I didn't have that support, everyone had gone on to other jobs and I was really the one supporting myself. I decided the way that I wanted that to be and I set it up that way.
So I went through everything in my personal business life. I went through all my bills, I went through all my credit cards, I went through all my passwords. I just cleaned up everything. I went through all my bank statements and I created sheets where I was just incredibly organized and I felt like I had taken back control kind of everything in my life for a minute. And I think it's like the things that you don't necessarily have time to do when you're working so hard for all of your customers and all of your employees, all of a sudden you can kind of bring back to yourself. I don't know, for me it was incredibly gratifying. I think I talked about this a little bit with you all that when Liz and I, Liz is my CFO, when we went through the business expenses over the past two years, really downsizing the company so I could take this break, there were so many things that we were able to organize and get a hold of and understand in ways that I hadn't before. And it just felt like I was in control and it felt so clean.
And I think for a lot of you, if you feel like your life is, you know, at all chaotic or you're not, you don't know where things are or you don't know how to organize things. Like when you have space like this and you can just take an entire day and just be like, "Okay, you know, this is what I did. I was like, where is the link to the garbage company? And what credit card pays that bill? And right?" Some of you already have this like dialed in, but for me, I think because I had people taking care of that for me, I didn't. And so, I don't know what kind of came over me. All my friends were laughing at me so hard because it was just like, I was so excited to like be the one paying all my bills, be the one kind of back in touch with that. It was so awesome not doing that for a while and then it's interesting, it's like so awesome coming back to it.
I started cleaning my house in a way that I haven't done in a long time. I started doing all the laundry. I was cooking a lot. I just, these are things that, you know, I was kind of led to do. I was cooking for me and Elijah, and we were picking recipes and trying new things. We have like this amazing Evo. Do you guys know about the Evo? I have this Evo like huge surface in my backyard that I can cook on. If you don't know Evo, you got to look it up. It's like, it's like a huge iron pan that's like flat that's built in to my outdoor barbecue that I was like cooking on.
I laid in the sun in my backyard and relaxed and I watched a lot of TV. And if you've been listening to this podcast for a long time, you know that this is not me. If I'm laying down, I'm reading a book, and I'm typically reading a book that's non-fiction that is going to help me learn something that I can then apply to my life and then teach you. That has been my past 20 years. And so taking this break and reading, I've been reading fiction and memoirs and not doing anything, just laying around, like thinking and talking to Elijah and talking to my friends. I've been hosting my friends coming over and just hanging out with them and just talking to them and just relaxing and doing dinner parties and traveling. We went to a festival. These are just, it's like, who am I? Like this, just allowing myself to not be in my old patterns, just to try brand new things.
One of the things that's really cool for you too, if you take a break, is you have time to do those projects that you're never really able to do. And for me, the project that I really wanted to do, and I was really focused on, was my photographs. I have taken all of my childhood photographs that my mother has given me. So it's not just my childhood, but her childhood and my grandparents' childhood, and scanned all of those photos in and put them all in my current photo folder, right? So every picture that I own is now inside of my photo folder.
And I just had time to do that. Like I was able to import it, but not just import it, but go through and get rid of the duplicates and go look through all of those pictures. And I organized them. I went through and got like all of the pictures from my childhood and really looked at myself as a kid and from this perspective, like from this level of accomplishment, from this level of growth, from my current age to look back and kind of spend time with those relationships, meaning my relationship with my two-year-old self, with my four-year-old self, with my 15-year-old self.
The other thing I did, which was such a trip, is I went back and reread so many of my journals from when I was a kid and just went through and sobbed for the young girl that I was and what I went through and what I was experiencing and how afraid I was that I was never going to make it and that I wouldn't end up here. And so that was like the most powerful. And because I was on a break, it wasn't like I was reading these journals and being like, "Oh, I should be doing something else. I should be working or I should be cleaning some office. So, you know, because the journals are all over the place, I should be cleaning this up so I can get ready for my work day tomorrow." There was just nothing that I needed to do. And so there was space and time for me to really just spend in that energy of revisiting all of that. That's what I wanted to do.
I spent so much time on the golf course with Christian. And for those of you who don't understand golf, first of all, it's 18 holes of golf. It takes at least four hours to do 18 holes of golf. And when you're watching someone do a golf tournament, it's very different than when you're just out there, you know, golfing. So even though I have spent many, many, many hours watching Christian golf, I was also able to go out there with him on his practice rounds and be in the cart with him and talk to him and talk about his game and talk about his life and just be present with him and hang out with him.
And that was really awesome. When he came to San Diego, spending some time with him, talking about what was going on. He had just did a swing change and he had just got new clubs and, I don't know, it was just like, it was a different feeling for me to have the space and time to just go out on that course for as long as I wanted with nothing in the back of my mind, not, you know, on my phone trying to coordinate with anything with work. I'm just fully able to be there. And I understand like there's many times where you can go and be at a place, but you know when you get home, you're going to have to go to work. It's a different feeling than when you go and you can be with someone and you know you have nowhere to be afterwards. So there's no sense of urgency at all. That was what I did. I traveled with him. I played a lot of pickleball. I already told you I read a lot of memoirs.
And it was very different than the time that I had taken off in between work days, right? I feel like when you have one day in between work days, or you have, you know, three days in between work days, it's like, you need to plan that time better. But when you have like three months and nothing planned, you can really just follow your own whims. And, you know, there was a day I just wanted to, you know, lay in bed and watch movies and order room service and just sleep and just relax. It was amazing. And I would have let myself do that five days in a row if I had wanted to, right? It was just really letting myself tell myself what I wanted.
And I think for me, and I think this is a really important thing to remember, because I'm the type of person that works very hard and I love work. I love the privilege of working, that taking a break for me was a good balancing act, right? I don't think if you're not someone who has worked really hard or you're someone that's pushed yourself to accomplish something or whatever, it may be a different experience for you. If you're someone, you know, you may be at a point in your life where you're like, I don't need a break, I want to start something, I want to begin something. I'm ready. I know what I want. I want to go for it. That's perfect for you, right? You've already had your break, you already know what you want. But for many of us, we're already on that moving train to be able to stop the train long enough to be like, okay, do we want to start this back up again? Where do we want to go?
And so that's what I really wanted to do with my break is redecide everything. You know, really look at, is this the person I want to be? Is this the person I want to be with? Is this the house I want to live in? Is this the day-to-day life I want to continue? Is this the future I want to create? And for many of you, maybe you take this break and you say yes to all of those things. You're like, yes, I want to recommit to everything. I love everything about my life and I'm on the right train and we're going in the right direction and I want to just speed it back up again. And for some of you, you're going to be like, hell no. What am I doing? I don't want to do any of this. And if you're someone who doesn't feel like you know what you want, then taking this break can help that kind of bubble to the surface.
I didn't have any expectations of myself or anything that needed to happen during this break. I had delivered my programs and my work was done. I had completed my promises. So I just gave myself the opportunity. If I wanted to journal, I would journal. If I didn't, I didn't. If I wanted to do thought work, I would, but if I didn't, I didn't. If I wanted to work out, right? I just kind of let it just be anything that I wanted it to be.
So that was really like three months of anxious peace in the beginning, right? So it went from anxiety in the beginning because I didn't know what was happening to complete peace. And just paying attention and looking and listening to myself. This is like the most incredible experience to be able to have that time to have that break. And I think these are kind of the components of it. I think you have to stop first, and you have to be disciplined. Second thing is celebrating your past with gratitude. Third, reflecting on your past in an honest way and acknowledging the mistakes that you've made. And then just making sure that during that time you don't make any decisions about anything.
Because what will come up is desires. What will come up is whims. What will come up is dreaming and scheming, right? And you don't want to decide anything, you just want to allow for the dreaming and scheming. You don't do the work that you normally have to, but you can do other work that you want to explore. Like you could garden or cook or work out or read or sleep, like whatever it is that you most feel yourself called to do. And you should just say no to everyone. You're on a break. You're on a sabbatical. Don't do anything that you would normally do out of obligation or people pleasing or anything. Just say no to all of this. I want this so much for you.
And then after three months, you let yourself start to scheme a little bit more, right? So the dreaming has happened and now we can start scheming. We can start doing some plans, we can start making some conclusions, we can start reflecting. And one of the things that really was surprising to me and really exciting to me is to acknowledge that I love working, but I also love not working. And I think that's like a huge epiphany for so many people because I think a lot of people love to work, work, work, but they don't love not to work. And a lot of people love not working ever, right? They don't appreciate the work, but I love both and I love that balance of both for me in terms of the big picture of my life.
And I started to know some things for sure, right? As I started to come out of this first three months, I started to really know that number one, I absolutely want to coach my clients. That's where the love of this industry started with me. You have to remember, I started as a life coach, and then I became a life coach teacher because of demand. So many people wanted to become life coaches. So many people wanted to have the career that I had and they wanted me to teach them how to do it. And I kind of got led into that career through coaching. But coaching is my truest love. Reading and learning about self-help and coaching my client. Those are my truest loves.
And something happened to me, weird thing happened to me around 50 is my voracious need, my voracious desire to read books and books and books every week completely waned. It was the weirdest thing. It's almost like, I talk about this with food, right? Once I did my work on food, my obsession with it went away. And for some reason, I think achieving this point in my career where someone had offered me 200 million dollars to buy my business, it was just like, I don't know, for me, I don't know if it was that or the hormones of turning 50 or what, but it just, it just changed me, right? And so it's not so much about the reading and the creating for me anymore as it is about the coaching and the passing on the knowledge and the helping, supporting people in their dreams and helping people believe in themselves and helping people change their lives in the way that they want and to show them that what they think's impossible isn't, and to, you know, hang out with all my people who want to have the growth lifestyle and want to hang out in a space of creation. That, I definitely know that I wanted to do that, and I want to coach and I want to do it at least weekly.
And I also really love the idea, and I talked about this in the podcast, my last podcast on potential, I really definitely want to create something brand new as a beginner. I want that feeling of beginnerness, I want that feeling of challenge, I want that feeling of ambition again. And so I'm allowing myself to kind of be in the space of letting that develop into what it is. I have been very fortunate to have made a lot of investments and made a lot of really smart money, business decisions that have set me up for a life where I can really create whatever I want in terms of I can invest in a business, I can spend money on developing a business, I can coach as much as I want for as much money as I want to charge. Like I've really created that. So it's great in some ways, but it's also so unconstrained that it's so many options. So I'm giving myself time to really kind of let that percolate.
I think for so many of you... and by the way, I just want to make sure, I've been talking about dreaming and scheming, I want to make sure that you're all familiar with Martha Beck's book, Finding Your Own North Star. The cycle of change is what I'm referring to there. And there's like these four squares in the cycle of change and the one is like the catalytic event that changes everything. And the second one is, you know, and then you're kind of nobody nowhere. And then the second one is really dreaming and scheming and planning. And then you have the hero's journey to achieve it, and then you have the promised land. And I feel like for me and for so many of all of you, it's like sometimes you get to the promised land in one area and that is a catalytic event. That changes your identity. Like when you win the gold medal, when you have accomplished that thing that you've always wanted to accomplish, then it changes you in a way that you kind of have to revisit. And being able to take a break during that time and to breathe during that time and to reconsider who you are is really powerful.
So, I'm not in a hurry to create a new impossible goal, but I am definitely creating a new impossible goal for myself and I have some ideas that are percolating and they've been percolating for a couple years and I'm just letting it kind of be what it is.
I have a very fun announcement. For many of you, I don't talk too much about my personal life, but Elijah has been the man that I've been dating for the past three years. And when we first started dating at about three weeks, he asked me to marry him. He said he wanted to get married to me and I told him, ask me again in three years. And so we did get engaged. It was, it's like a very interesting way that we got engaged. I'll tell you that story sometime, but we are going to get married next year. And so that's like such an crazy, exciting, identity-shifting experience. And I just want to enjoy that ride. I don't want it to be any kind of work. I don't want it to pass me by. I want to just enjoy him and the blessing that he is in my life and how much he has made me a better person, how much he has shown me what it means to be in love and to love someone and to live a life that is about love and fun and not just working and ambition has been so amazing. He's taught me a lot. So I'm really excited to be getting married to him. I can't wait. I you know, I've been married before, but this is a completely different version of me that's getting married, a completely different person that is getting married. And I just love how much my kids love him and actually how well he gets along with Chris, who is the kids' dad. And I think I told you guys all in the podcast, we all spent Christmas together, we all go to golfing tournaments together, and it's just such a beautiful experience to be able to share with my chosen family and my actual family. So that's going to be exciting. I'll keep you guys up to date on that exciting thing.
So, I know that some of us don't see the possibility of taking a break. We don't see that as something that we can do, but I just, as I do with everything, I want it to be something you should consider. And I really do feel strongly about the three-month period. And maybe you can't do it for another five years, maybe you're going to have to make some sacrifices now and to be able to afford it. I think whatever you have to do, it's worth it because you can step back from your life and revisit it and rethink about it and not have to make, like I'm in such a beautiful position right now where I don't have to make these big decisions. I can make, okay, this is what I know I want to do. I want to create this program for my students. I want to coach my students. That's what I want to do for now. And who knows? You know, maybe there will be a certification 3.0. Maybe I will create that. At this point, I'm unsure and so I'm letting myself just be in that space without being in a hurry of having to know. And, you know, in the meantime, learning a lot about these other options that I've created for myself and these investments and these other deals and partnerships that I've involved myself with and also just being in love and enjoying my kids before they go off and have their own families and I'll enjoy that in a whole different way.
So, life is beautiful. And I know that so many of you, because I've read your emails, so many of you are struggling and so many of you are frustrated and you feel lost. And I just want to remind you that's all part of life, right? That's all part of the experience. We come here to be handed the assignment of suffering. We can't develop ourselves until we learn how to feel pain and experience pain and endure the pain of being a human being. And my goal of working with all of you has been to reduce the unnecessary suffering. I can't take away suffering. Suffering will be a part of your life, but I can help you take away the unnecessary suffering and I can help you handle and endure the suffering that is part of life inevitably. I think I can help you do that in a way that doesn't hurt quite so much, right? Because you're not in pain about the pain, you're just in pain.
So, for those of you who are feeling like you're all alone and you need support and you need help. First of all, I am coming back 2026. I am going to be there. I'm going to be coaching you weekly, so be ready for that. But also, it's okay too that you're in this space and I want to really encourage you all to consider this idea of taking three months in the middle of your life to look back and look forward and redecide so you can have the exact life that you are meant to have on purpose.
So I hope that answers a lot of your questions. I mean, this is the longest podcast I've recorded in a long time. So I hope that you guys like it. I hope that it answers some of your questions about my break. And I will see you guys next month. I'm creating a series for you that I'm going to put out there. I'm excited about it. It's a little bit of a risky one. It's a little bit, it's got some swear words in it. So I'm excited to share it with you. Until then, I'll talk to you later. Take care everyone. Bye-bye.
