“Stop, Look, Go”: Kristi Nelson, author of “Wake Up Grateful,” on transforming her Stage IV cancer survival into a lifetime practice of more grateful living, midlife carpe diem, and an unusual way to embrace that middle-of-the-night restiveness.

• About Kristi
  
• Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted
  
• Nancy’s AAA Playlist on Apple Music
  

Live from Budokan, it’s…

Thanks as always to M. The Heir Apparent, who provides the music behind the podcast – check him out here! ***This is a rough transcription of Episode 105 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. It originally aired on September 21, 2021. Transcripts are created using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and there may be errors in this transcription, but we hope that it provides helpful insight into the conversation. If you have any questions or need clarification, please email dj@midlifemixtape.com ***

Kristi Nelson 00:01

At this stage in life, so many of us have had wake-up calls. So many of the difficult experiences of life actually make it more possible to connect with feeling grateful.

Nancy Davis Kho 00:14

Welcome to Midlife Mixtape, The Podcast. I’m Nancy Davis Kho and we’re here to talk about the years between being hip and breaking one.

[THEME MUSIC – “Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

Nancy 00:38

I just want to make sure that you have all checked out the great new September content from fellow members of the G.A.L.S squad. That’s –  plug your ears little one – G.A.L.S, as in Grown Ass Ladies. Over on tuenight.com, there’s a great essay by my pal, Wendi Aarons, about the joys of going to a movie theater solo. I would actually just love to go to a movie theater. I haven’t done that in a year and a half. Going solo, that would be the icing on top. Jumbleandflow.com has a piece on finding your flow with tarot card readings. Damemagazine.com asks, “Do we have the space to grieve anymore?” That is a dang good question. That’s damemagazine.com. And heyperry.com, that’s H-E-Y-P-E-R-R-Y.C-O-M has the ever popular topic “Perimenopause periods: WTF is happening?” Make sure to check out all these sites designed for people in the years between being hip and breaking one. The G.A.L.S. always have great new stuff coming out.

[MUSIC]

Welcome to Episode 105 of the Midlife Mixtape Podcast! I’m Nancy Davis Kho, host and creatress of the show, and I’m really glad you’re tuning in today. September 21^st happens to be World Gratitude Day, a topic I know a little bit about…but I thought that for a refreshing change of pace, instead of talking to you about Gratitude Letters and the book I wrote, The Thank-You Project, I’d bring in a guest who could share a different perspective on incorporating more gratefulness and grateful living into our lives.

That seemed especially important in a week where two different friends have said to me, “You know what? Relatively speaking, I don’t have anything to feel down about.” And they are kind of kicking themselves for feeling low and I was like, “You are now the human embodiment of that cartoon dog in the fedora sitting with his coffee as the flames rise up around him.” NO ONE IS OK. EVERYBODY HAS SOMETHING TO FEEL DOWN ABOUT AFTER 18 MONTHS OF THIS PANDEMIC – and I recently read that 1 in 3 Americans has been affected by a weather disaster made worse by climate change. It’s ok, and it’s normal, to not be ok.

Speaking of the climate change thing, have you checked out sciencemoms.com yet? Go back to Episode 102 for all the details on that.

Anyway, goes for me, too. Ever since my mom’s memorial service in August, I have to say I have been feeling a lot more subdued and frankly, a little hopeless, moreso than at any other time during the past 18 months. So today’s guest, and her reminder of how these wake-up calls in our lives can enrich them if we look at them from the right perspective, seems especially timely.

Kristi Nelson is the Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living, and the author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. Imagine that?! Kristi’s life’s work in the non-profit sector has focused on leading, inspiring, and strengthening organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change. Being a long-time stage IV cancer survivor moves her every day to support others in living and loving with great fullness of heart.

In 2001 – after five years leading a regional Women’s Fund – Kristi founded a values-based fundraising consulting and coaching company, and in this capacity, she has worked with organizations like Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, among others. She has also been founding Director of Soul of Money Institute with Lynne Twist, Director of Development at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, and Director of Development and Community Relations for the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society.

So take a deep calming breath, and join me as I talk with gratefulness guru, Kristi Nelson.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 04:16

I want to welcome to the Midlife Mixtape Podcast, Kristi Nelson. Thanks so much for being on the show today.

Kristi 04:22

I’m thrilled to be here. Thanks so much for having me.

Nancy 04:25

Well, it’s a special day today because the day this episode drops is World Gratitude Day. So I wanted to have somebody on who could provide a different lens into the topic of gratefulness and gratitude, and I’m excited to talk about your book, Wake Up Grateful. But first, Kristi, obviously, we have to ask you this question, which is what was your first concert and what were the circumstances?

Kristi 04:47

This has caused me to do research and verification.

Nancy 04:51

Oh. I love giving a guest homework. That’s fabulous.

Kristi 04:54

Actually, it was so great. I believe … because you know now that I’m in my 60s, it’s actually long term memory issues. So I believe that it was Cheap Trick.

Nancy 05:07

Really?

Kristi 05:08

It was 1976 and I couldn’t find their tour dates to confirm, but it was somewhere I think either Springfield Massachusetts or somewhere in the close environs and this is just the funniest thing. Their song that I loved and used to sing at the top of my possible voice spectrum, I’d sing, “I want you to want me, I need you to need me. I’d love you to love me.”

Nancy 05:32

Sure.

Kristi 05:33

That’s like their big song.

Nancy 05:35

And you were what? Nine years old, singing that? No, I’m kidding.

Kristi 05:38

No. Yeah, that’s funny. I was 16, and it was probably one of those things that it was a celebration of my 16th birthday and passing to some kind of new level of trustworthiness that I could go off and I’m sure I wasn’t worthy of it at all.

Nancy 05:53

In the 70s, the bar for trustworthiness in kids was awfully low compared to where it is now. We hear these stories over and over on this show of people doing stuff that they would never let their kids do now.

Kristi 06:05

Yeah, so true.

Nancy 06:06

So I love that concert for you. I’m trying to remember which Cheap Trick song it was… my friend and I were getting coffee at a coffee shop one day and it came on over the Muzak. She and I started singing both sides of it at each other, really aggressively, and the poor coffee girl who was a Millennial just looked at us in absolute horror. Appropriately so. Cheap Trick, you’ve got to sing along. It’s very much a sing along kind of a band.

I wondered if there is a way that music plays into your efforts to live gratefully, playing a song that makes you feel grateful, or amplifying your mood or anything like that. Is there a way that music plays a role for you?

Kristi 06:43

Hugely, I would say. And it’s interesting, because I always say that gratitude waits for something good to happen and gratefulness actually waits for us to just be awake. So for me, what that means when I’m awake is awake and tuned in to what I can create for experiences that bring about more grateful awareness, and so that helps shift my perspective. That’s what I’m a big believer in. So I use music a lot to enhance my perspective. When I come home, and I’m tired at the end of the day, or I’ve done a lot of things that have been exhausting at a particular level mentally or physically, if I put on music, Pharrell William’s, “Happy”…

Nancy 07:26

Sure. The theme song.

Kristi 07:27

It is absolutely irresistible, right? So there’s so many songs like that, that energize me and completely shift my mood and music has an unparalleled ability to do that in my life.

Nancy 07:41

I agree so much. At some point during the pandemic, last year, I made a playlist on my phone called the AAA playlist, and it is only songs that make me get a little shiver when they come on, like I go, “Oh my god, I love this song too.” If it doesn’t elicit that response, I take it off the playlist.

We were driving recently – My husband and I drove down to LA to drop our daughter off at school and it’s been a pandemic, it’s been 18 months of difficult things and we were coming back and I was like, “You know what? I need to listen that playlist right now, because I’m feeling…” I was missing my daughter already. There’re just any number of things that are hard and I knew if I just put this on, oh, it’s so good. I wish you could all listen to my AAA playlist.

But I think the better thing is for everybody to make an AAA playlist that is personal to you, that gives you that little jolt. Because it works exactly like you’re saying. It just kind of puts you in a better space. And that’s something to be grateful for.

Kristi 08:38

You got that. Thank you. I love that and I love that you’ve just assigned us more homework.

Nancy 08:43

Yes, go make your playlist. Report back. Tell me what’s on it.

I mentioned today is World Gratitude Day and anybody who’s listened to this podcast has heard me talk ad infinitum about gratitude letters, which is the tool that I used back in 2016 to kind of acknowledge all the good people around me, all the things that I had to be thankful for up to that point in my life. It was a benchmark birthday and I was really trying to think deliberately about the helpers who had come along the way. And I swear by gratitude letters still, I know how powerful they are and I know from readers who have bought and read my book, The Thank-You Project that they work really well.

But, 18 months into this pandemic, Kristi, I need some backup. I feel like I need more arrows in my gratitude quiver and I think part of this today is going to be like a therapy session for me. I’m just being honest with you and with the listeners: I feel really flat sometimes these days and I’m worn out of working so hard to stay healthy and I’m worn out of watching friends who have suffered and I’m worn out of looking at the bigger world around me and feeling so overwhelmed some days.

And it’s part of why I do this podcast, because I’m always connecting with people every two weeks, who have a different, a dynamic way of looking at the world around them, and that’s one of the things that helps me so much. But you have written this book called Wake Up Grateful, where you talk about how we can have grateful living and you just mentioned the difference between gratitude and gratefulness. Talk a little bit more about that. How do you see them as different things?

Kristi 10:24

Sure. Well, I’m super excited to be here and talk about this and I also want you to know that all of us, I think, are struggling through this time in ways that we didn’t anticipate and could have never imagined, and so it’s all new again, and here we are.

The most important thing I think that helps me is admitting it, and connecting with people around it, feeling the normalcy of it, and how this is the new normal for a lot of us is working through these experiences of feeling more separate from each other. So admitting it is the first part and making a space to really own that this, too, is part of living gratefully…actually acknowledging that having these emotions points us to the things that we’re most grateful for, that we’ve lost touch with. For me to be able to feel strong emotions, is something I’m thankful for, actually. Sometimes that’s grief and sometimes I think – this is the time of great grief actually.

Grief and gratitude are close kin with one another, in my experience. We can always be pointed back to those things which have enriched our lives and which we can connect with in other more creative ways that draws on resourcefulness. I mean, I think we really need to pull out of the bottom of our quiver. It’s not just grabbing the arrows that we’re used to grabbing, it’s reaching for different things.

So gratefulness and grateful living, I think are really important as distinctions. Gratitude is awesome and it’s very difficult to connect with in every moment. Gratefulness is something that allows us to connect with gratitude in every moment, because it’s a state of being grateful from the inside out. As I said, it doesn’t wait for anything. It’s not a response. It’s a proactive approach to life, it’s a way that we orient to life is gratefully.

And what that means is remembering that it’s an inside job, and that we can have a lot of agency over our experience of being grateful. We often see it as kind of a passive thing; I think it’s transactional. It’s relational, but super fleeting, and so finding the ways that we can cultivate an interior experience of gratefulness to deeply ground ourselves in that. I call it many different things, gratefulness. But one of the things is it is “the opposite of taking life for granted.” So the shift for me is, what am I taking for granted right now that I can lift up in my awareness, that reconnects me to how grateful I am for life?

Nancy 12:58

I love the way you put it in your book, “It’s not about whether the glass is half empty or half full. It’s being grateful that you have a glass.”

Kristi 13:04

Yes, exactly. That comes from being a cancer survivor for me, very advanced cancer that I expected it to take my life.

Nancy 13:14

And at a young age.

Kristi 13:15

At 33. Surviving that and recognizing also, Nancy, how easy it is to lose the appreciation for still being alive, that it’s so easy to get sunk, it’s so easy to get down, and yet, then I remember Oh, my God, remember how grateful you were not to have died? WOW! Every single day that we’re alive is another day that we didn’t die.

And so I have to literally remind myself that it’s a gift to be alive, and that every single moment that I can breathe, that I can reconnect with myself, even my heartbreak is an opportunity that I don’t want to squander, I don’t want to miss it, I want to remember I’m alive, recognize I’m alive, celebrate the fact that I’m alive. That’s grounded in what I call gratefulness and grateful living. It’s a distinction from gratitude that I think is important, because we have a lot of concepts around gratitude that can keep us from really taking charge of our experience of that and knowing that it’s very deeply internal.

Nancy 14:21

Sorry, I’m listening to you so deeply that I forgot what the next question was that I was going to ask you.

Kristi 14:27

That’s a compliment. Thanks.

Nancy 14:30

Well, I appreciate the frankness with what you write in your book that grateful living and retaining that sense of gratefulness just as you move through your day is a practice.

I mean, that was a really powerful message, right from the beginning, that you had been a cancer survivor. There was a period of time after you recovered that you were grateful just naturally, just to be alive, just to wake-up every day. But that over time that faded away, and I think that was really relatable because there are a lot of things if we sit and think about them, we think, wow, I am really glad I have a roof over my head and I do really appreciate clean air on a fall day here in the Bay Area. But ask me in two weeks, I might not be actively thinking about and actively appreciating those things.

So I just wonder, what’s your advice for having us continue to keep that gratefulness front and center?

Kristi 15:19

I think it’s about stopping and recognizing where am I right now and how can I remind myself how much I actually treasure life and I want to be reconnected to that treasuring and that’s in my hands? For me, that’s the perspective shift that I’m always trying to invite and that’s the thing that’s so easy to lose. There’s so many things that make us lose perspective, and so many things that make us gain perspective.

One of the things I try to encourage people is, what are the circumstances that take you away from  remembering how much you treasure life and that experience of gratefulness? What are the experiences that take you away from that, and the thoughts that take you away from that? What are the thoughts that re-connect you to that and the kind of circumstances you can create for yourself, like putting on a AAA mix list for yourself?

Nancy 16:17

And stopping comparisons to other people, I thought that was a good one, because that is just such a natural human impulse to look around and say, “Well, how come I don’t have what she has?” It’s not helpful. Comparison is the death of joy.

Kristi 16:31

The thief of joy.

Nancy 16:32

The thief of joy.

Kristi 16:34

It’s such a great thing and yet, I also think one of the things that we can do is compare our own lives to how they could be. Like, I could have COVID and be unable to breathe unassisted right now, as so many people do and that just brings tears to my eyes, literally, to think about it. And yet, I’m sitting here taking the fact that I can breathe and this gift of breath for granted.

Nancy 17:00

Right.

Kristi 17:01

Until I lift it up and remind myself that it could be otherwise, and so that’s true for all of us. I love waking up to another day and all the things that my body is able to do and the gifts that I have in my life and in my home that make my life comfortable. And yet I can walk right past them and just numb out to them so easily until I lift them up in my awareness again, and again. That’s the practice.

The practice is always stop, get perspective, and then move back into your life more gratefully.

Nancy 17:33

“Stop, look, go” as you put it in the book, right?

Kristi 17:35

That’s it. That’s the practice. Basically, “stop, look, go.”

Nancy 17:39

So much of being able to identify those things we’re grateful for comes as a result of hardship. In your case, it was cancer. In my case, I’m thinking about how a year ago, I had been on the East Coast for three weeks, and I came home – and I believe it was this week in September – where we had an orange sky because the smoke was so bad in the Bay Area. And for days, days, we had air purifiers running, we had all the windows shut tight, we were barely going outside. The day that the blue sky came back, it was like people were out on the street. Everybody was walking their dog and it was this real jubilation.

A year later, that’s what the day looks like today. It’s a beautiful day outside, the air quality is great, there’s nobody jubilating. There’s clean air. There it is. But I do find that I think about it.

I do find that having gone through that last year, I’m much less likely to take it for granted and so it just ties back into this idea that’s so prevalent at midlife, we’ve gone through so many twists and turns and obstacles and challenges by the time we hit 40 or 50, but part of the value of those things is that they do give us an avenue for appreciating stuff we probably would take for granted in our 20s.

Kristi 18:56

Well, you are nailing it. This is 100% what I talk about in the book and what I talk about are, as you know, “wake-up calls”. That a lot of us at midlife have suffered wake-up calls and those are deeply life enhancing, even though they’re painful, because they shift our perspective about what could be lost. The fires in California were a huge wake-up call for a lot of people. COVID – so many people have left the cities, New York. Now, Massachusetts where I live is burgeoning with all these people from the cities who are fleeing.

Nancy 19:32

It’s because you have such good doughnuts in that part of the world. I’ve had the opportunity to visit the Pioneer Valley. I’d like to compliment your doughnuts.

Kristi 19:39

Is it the Atkins Cider doughnuts? Is that the one?

Nancy 19:41

Yeah, exactly.

Kristi 19:42

Okay, I knew it because I thought , “Wwhat else is she talking about here? I can’t imagine.”

I think that you’re 100% right, which is Thich Nhat Hanh has a saying and it’s kind of like, “We notice so much when we have the toothache. But we don’t notice when the toothache goes away.” Our attention is everything, and it creates our experiences where we put our attention. So as you say, when the blue sky is a contrast, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s a positive comparison, which is to our own lives and what’s possible.

When we have that experience of contrast, we can be markedly ebullient and feel that vividness and that kind of aliveliness. Aliveliness is this beautiful quality and yet we experience that when we’re conscious also, of what has been lost, what could be lost, that brings us to life. So we walk around so much the time actually, purposely forgetting that, ignoring that so much of the time, wanting more and more and more, oh, if I only had this and that. There’s easy ways for us to remember. It’s like, “Oh, I could not have the gift of pure air to breathe right now.”

Nancy 21:00

Right.

Kristi 21:01

I could not have the ability to breathe unassisted right now. So how do I allow those things to be sometimes enough? I have to remember that that’s the baseline. Bump up the baseline of what we expect from life. Bump it up. That’s what we’re saying.

What that does is it really says reduce expectations, so that when you get up in the morning, you say, “Oh my, I’m so grateful to be alive!”  Every day you remind yourself that it’s an extraordinary gift to still be here. Every day – as Maya Angelou says, “This is a wonderful day. I’ve never seen this one before.” So every day is worthy of that celebration for us to have another opportunity to still be here. How do we uplift that in our awareness?

Nancy 21:48

Researching the science behind gratitude was probably my favorite part of writing my book, because I wanted to understand why these gratitude letters changed my perspective so thoroughly in the year that I spent writing the letters. I know you know all about this, but it’s all tied into positive recall bias and the way that we train our brains to look for positive things instead of negative things. It really is like a muscle and the more you practice it – in my case, it was because I was going to write a letter every week. So I would just spend a week thinking good thoughts about the person to whom I was writing, what did they teach me? What are the fun adventures I’ve had with them? How have they changed me for the better?

It’s kind of like marinating your brain in positive association and it goes exactly to what you’re talking about. taking the beat to say, “I am glad to wake up.” When I talk about this with school groups, you can imagine, kids don’t always want to write a letter, especially don’t want to hand write a letter, and I want them to get something from this. So I always tell them if this doesn’t feel like a good fit for you… Although for a lot of kids, it’s a great fit. It elicits some really amazing writing!

But if you can’t do that, you can always just stop and take a breath and say, “What are three things I can be grateful for right now?” Like, stop in your tracks, and just say there are definitely three things to be grateful for. I can’t tell you how many days I have woken up and thought. “I love these sheets. These sheets took me a long time to find the right sheet set for this bedroom and I love my sheets now.” Just a little thing like that, it doesn’t have to be a major thing. It can be the sound of the dog snoring in the corner or whatever brings you peace. I love this idea of, like you said, just changing your baseline and just looking around for the things that are right in front of you that you’re not acknowledging.

Kristi 23:38

Yeah, I think that that’s true.

One of the things that I have tried to do, and this was a very big learning for me, Nancy, was to find the unconditional things. So that no matter what happens, so if the house burns down, if I end up with cancer, and I’m in a hospital bed, and these are kind of extreme things – but what is there? What are the things that are constant, that are the riches in life that cannot be lost?

Those are the really important questions to ask, because no matter what happens in our life, no matter what we lose, no matter what changes, no matter who is no longer here, we have the ability to cultivate that experience of feeling grateful by connecting to the things that are the riches that can’t be lost ever.

So for me, something could happen to your sheets and you can buy them again. But one of the things for me is to appreciate, for instance, the ability to have air temperature that is comfortable. Like wow, there’s a lot of people in the world who can’t get cool when it’s incredibly hot outside and can’t get hot when it’s really cold outside, can’t get warm enough. So just to appreciate the very basic things like “Oh, I can feel the air on my skin. It’s so comfortable, and I can…”

Nancy 25:00

Until the hot flash hits.

Kristi 25:03

Exactly. Then you can figure out some way to work with it.

But the ability to work with it even is like, oh my gosh, what a privilege this is to be able to go dunk myself in an ice bath or getting a hot bath, whatever it is. So I think it’s not forgetting. Those are the things that I think are so important. Because even when I was in a hospital room for weeks and actually months on end, and I had connection with almost nothing that mattered to me, I realized, “What do I have agency around? Here, what do I have to be grateful for?” It was like, “Oh, all these people are caring for me. I can’t see my family right now and my friends easily. But I can love the people who are available to me.” It’s like, “Wow, all these people are coming in and bringing me food and cleaning my room.”

 That was a revelation for me, because I didn’t want to be cut off from my ability to be loving and I didn’t want to have that hinge on, “Oh, I’ve got to have the people who I love the most always here with me.” What if that can’t be true? It just is expanding, I think, that reservoir, expanding the places in which you can experience that and as you say, allowing yourself to immerse in that. Even if it’s thinking about it, stopping in your tracks just exactly what you said. That’s such a grateful living exercise. Stop in your tracks at any moment and just think, what are three things I can be grateful for right now?

Nancy 26:30

Your dog can always be the right answer, by the way, every single time.

Kristi 26:34

Yeah.

Nancy 26:35

Are there any other special abilities of people at midlife with regard to grateful living? Is there anything that – when you talk about the wisdom of gratefulness, and obviously, wisdom is something that accrues with age, so are we really good at being grateful? I love to share the message of the things midlife people are really good at.

Kristi 26:56

I think we’re way better than we are when we’re younger. I honestly do.

I think that’s because at this stage in life, so many of us have had wake-up calls. So many of the difficult experiences of life, actually make it more possible to connect with feeling grateful. It’s not easy, but it’s a practice. So I think COVID and this pandemic in the past year and a half has reconnected a lot of people to the things that they took for granted before that now they’re not taking for granted anymore.

Nancy 27:28

Agreed.

Kristi 27:31

That is really building that spiritual musculature of gratefulness, which I think is a place that as we age, we are much more connected to that internal state, the ability to not miss so much because we don’t take our futures for granted in the same way. That’s really important.

Nancy 27:53

Right. We can actually see the sell-by date approaching.

Kristi 27:58

Yeah, our expiration date. Exactly.

There’s a reason why there’s a lot of treasuring and savoring that happens in elder communities. They’re very in touch with what matters, there’s a refinement about what matters and a deeper recognition about what’s important in life. And I think we’re able to access that more readily at midlife, and we can accelerate that process – not the aging process, but the reconnection and the deeper connection and finding those things that we can have fidelity to. Like, what are those things in life that we can commit ourselves to, that are the things that matter the most that we can put ourselves in touch with that don’t let us forget as readily that life is really precious these moments are to be savored?

Sometimes that’s getting outside, reconnecting with nature, connecting with music, the people we love, but it’s a proactive approach to life. It’s not passive and the return on the investment is huge.

Nancy 29:00

I couldn’t agree more. It’s all very well said and very well written in Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted. The book came out in 2020. Is that right?

Kristi 29:11

Yeah, in November. It’s a COVID baby. It’s my COVID baby.

Nancy 29:13

It’s a COVID baby, aaaawwwww. I love COVID babies. When I see them around, I think, “Good for you, parents. You did it!”

So what made you decide to write the book when you did  – and I want to make sure people know where to go to find it?

Kristi 29:26

Well, it’s pretty easily findable these days. We do so much online. It’s kind of amazing. What made me decide to write the book is that Brother David Steindl-Rast founded the organization I’m the director of and it’s called A Network for Grateful Living. We have a website at gratefulness.org.

Nancy 29:42

I’ll put links in the show notes to everything.

Kristi 29:44

Thanks.

Yeah, our website is accessed thousands of people every day, 100,000 people a month, honestly, from around the world. One of the things that Brother David says is that we have to practice to practice grateful living, but he doesn’t give us examples.

So one of the things I wanted to do is write the book and say, “Here’s how we can arrive at a grateful perspective. Here’s how we can remind ourselves, here’s a lot of little practices around the body, around our emotions around relationships, how can we stay connected and what are the little practices we can do that keep us there?” That was really important to me was to say, “Let’s help people” – not a paint by number kind of equation and it’s not exactly formulaic, but – “here’s some ways to reconnect to the things that matter most to you and to remind yourself of those things.” Everybody has a different pathway there, but here’s a lot of hints about how you can get there.

Nancy 30:45

Right. It’s very actionable, I thought. There were a lot of thought exercises and just those moments when you’re reading and you just stare off into the middle distance ago, okay, let me think about that for a minute. I love the way you wrote it.

Kristi 30:58

Thank you.

Nancy 30:59

We’re going to be back with Kristi Nelson of A Network for Grateful Living in a Moment. But first, a word from our sponsor.

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[MUSIC]

And we’re back with Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful, and Kristi, I want to talk about your own midlife mixtape, starting by asking what has surprised you most about incorporating grateful living in your own day to day? What are the lessons that really kind of came out of the blue for you?

Kristi 32:18

I unabashedly, out loud, savor and appreciate pretty much everything now. I don’t let things pass me by and I try more and more to put myself in the path of joy.

Honestly, I think that’s one of the things that I’ve recognized. I have the ability to do and so I’ve definitely stepped way up at this stage in my life. I’m now past midlife, actually. Hopefully, that’s okay, that I’m still a guest on your program.

Nancy 32:50

We welcome the 30 year olds and the 70 year olds, even 80 year olds, who knows?

Kristi 32:55

Excellent. I mean, you never know how long you’re gonna live these days, right?

Nancy 32:56

Exactly.

Kristi 32:57

So I think well, if I live to 125, I’m at midlife.

So for me, I think I am actually savoring more and more the moments that are mine, because I never thought I’d make it to 60 years old ever. It was unfathomable to me. And so now I tried to remember that this is something not to take for granted.

Nancy 33:20

When you say, “You put yourself into the path of joy,” what does that look like?

Kristi 33:24

I often get myself outside. That’s one of the most important things and midlife… I often get woken up in the middle of the night by the need to go to the bathroom. Hopefully, that’s okay to mention on this program.

Nancy 33:39

Hashtag relatable. That’s all I’m gonna say.

Kristi 33:43

Okay. Good.

Sometimes, many times in the night, I’m up and I used to just begrudge it and I hated it and I thought it was the worst and I would get so grumpy about it that it was really hard to get back to sleep.

Now, what I do is I actually look out the window and if there are really vivid stars, I go right out onto my deck and I lay down in my chaise lounge. I have one of those zero gravity chair things, and so I’ll go outside, and I just put myself under this extraordinary sky, this canopy of stars that takes my breath away every single time. It doesn’t have to look very different or anything major, no big huge shooting stars have to come across the sky or comets, but it helps me get perspective immediately.

It’s one of those things that now – I used to think about doing it but I’m much more likely to do it now. I think that’s one of those things that seizing the moments, Carpe Diem, is so much more active and alive for me at this stage in my life than it was even 20 years ago. So I think those are moments, those impulses that are profound, which is to see something and just go towards it as something beautiful. To want to really examine it, to look at it, to let it blow our minds. I love those things and that’s pretty myself in the path of joy.

Nancy 35:01

So we live in Oakland, our house backs up to a canyon here and we often hear owls and it’s one or two of them. Sometimes they’ll hoot back and forth. We’ve seen them occasionally. They tend to congregate in the redwood tree in my next door neighbor’s house.

But the other night, I was sitting outside on my patio, and it was dusk, and everybody had gone inside and I heard the hooting, and I glanced up, and there was a gigantic owl sitting in the beech tree like 20 yards away from me, and my mouth fell open because I mean, they are huge birds and I’m sitting watching. And the second one flew up and landed next to it, and they were just hooting back and forth at each other.

I was like, “This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” and I sat there for a few minutes and watched them and then they eventually flew off. But I was like, “That was a miracle that I got to see that.”

Then a couple nights ago, I hear the sound again and I said to my husband, “Oh my God, the owls are back” and I went creeping out as fast as I could onto the front patio and we repeated the whole experience. They were both sitting there hooting, and I’m like, “This is my new favorite thing. This is my Netflix binge. I am running out every time I hear the owls hooting.”

Because I never paid attention to stuff like that before the pandemic. I did not take notice of the birds around. I had too much going on and sometimes I still have too much going on. But to be able to witness something like that… it just doesn’t take a lot to be able to let your breath be taken away, I guess is my thought.

Kristi 36:33

I could not agree more. You’re saying all of these things so beautifully and I think that’s owls at twilight kind of your new Netflix series. But I do think that that’s because you actually let yourself look up. How many things don’t we…

Nancy 36:50

They’re pretty loud. These owls had an amped up to 11.

No, that’s true.

Kristi 36:55

You saw them because you dared to let… So it’s something about kind of opening our senses more. You might be able to hear them vividly all the time. But I think there is something about letting ourselves look up, look out further, listen more intently. To really listen to birdsong sometimes, is just one of the most extraordinary things and so recognizing with our senses, what we have available to us at all times, I think is pretty extraordinary.

How do you want to wake-up your senses? How can you wake them up? I think those options are available to us a lot with smells, with touch.

For me, I am reveling – and I don’t know about other people, but during the pandemic, I’m cooking a lot more. And especially when I listen to music that I love, I find it gives me a whole new way to enter into the evening when I used to just be exhausted, and would throw myself down flat and that was it for the day.

Nancy 37:53

Right.

Kristi 37:54

Now, I feel like I have this opening into evening by doing things that I love to do.

So I think there is something very powerful at this time of life. I go out much less than I used to go out, but actually in my near environs, I’m much more intimate. In the close environments, what we can access, what we can see out our windows, what’s close by, I feel like I have a much more committed relationship with where I live, with how I live, and I hope that serves me forever no matter what.

Nancy 38:26

I love that. Kristi, we always ask the same final question on the Midlife Mixtape Podcast. What one piece of advice do you have for people younger than you, or do you wish you could go back and tell yourself?

Kristi 38:37

As a young woman, I was beleaguered by self-doubt and self-criticism and I wish that I could have just said to myself, “It’s okay to stop looking outside yourself for approval.”

It’s important to find that tuning fork internally where you can actually tune in and find that connection with yourself that gives you the approval that you’re looking for. I had externalized it so much of my life, always wanting to have other people’s approval and caring too much what people thought about me. I think the gift of midlife for me has been finding that inside myself and finding that beyond myself, and not relying on other people to give me permission to feel as wonderful about myself and about life as I always wanted to feel when I was a teenager, and when I was a young adult, and I just could never figure out quite how to get there on my own.

That’s, I think, the gift and the blessing of aging, is if we can create a deeper interior reservoir for that well-being that’s less conditional. Then we’re free. And that’s something we can access at any time.

And that’s a gift that I would never trade for anything.

Nancy 39:57

I love that concept of the internal tuning fork. That’s such a nice way to put it, that reminder that we can follow our own instincts and keep our own counsel and still be okay. We don’t need everybody outside in the world to love us, as long as we’re pretty good at loving ourselves.

Kristi 40:12

Makes a big difference and certainly, my learning to trust intuition is a huge thing. That’s the tuning fork. It’s what is speaking to me and what’s it saying and listening much more deeply and intently and trusting what’s there. It’s pretty an awesome experience of getting to be at this stage in life.

Nancy 40:31

Don’t we all wish we’d learned that in our mid-20s instead of having to wait another 20 plus years to figure it out?

Kristi 40:36

Exactly what I’m saying.

Nancy 40:37

Everybody should listen to this podcast. Send this to your Gen Z friends.

Kristi 40:42

I spent so much time feeling separate from that ability, but it was there all along. And there’s a lot of time spent on that and so I think, just cut that short. Let’s just move ahead more quickly into that place.

And that’s sometimes what these wake-up calls do in life. Don’t wait for a wake-up call. Be who you want to be now.

Nancy 41:03

Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful, so glad to have you on the show today. Happy World Gratitude Day! I sent you a fruit basket! No, I didn’t. But I feel like… should we like be exchanging gifts? Hallmark might have a section. I don’t know.

Check out Kristi’s book, Wake Up Grateful. And it was wonderful talking with you, Kristi. I hope you have a great day.

Kristi 41:21

Nancy, thank you so much. You too. Have a grateful day.

[MUSIC]

Nancy 41:28

Because this kind of thing bugs me to leave as a hanging thread, I need you to know that the Cheap Trick song my friend and I sang to the barista was “Dream Police.” I sang the melody and Andrea stood off to the side going, “Police! Police! Police” at the appointed moment and I’m pretty sure the barista quit the same day.

I hope my discussion with Kristi helps you focus on some of the irrevocable blessings in your own life, and I’d love to hear what those are, and what you thought of the episode!

You can always email me at dj@midlifemixtape.com or get in touch via social media on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram where you will find me as @midlifemixtape.

I also thought I’d go ahead and link to my AAA playlist from Apple in the show notes in case you want to check it out, but I really do encourage you to create your very own, the songs that send a shiver of delight down your spine when you hear the opening notes or maybe they are the ones that drive you to pull out your air drumsticks or your air guitar.

Speaking of guitar! I am SO excited about the next episode. I’ll be interviewing one of my very favorite singer/songwriters, Bob Schneider. He hails from Austin, Texas. If you know him, you love him. If you don’t know him, it’s time to get on the Bob Schneider train.

We’re going to be playing tracks from his brand new album, In a Roomful of Blood with a Sleeping Tiger. I love this album. It’s so good. You don’t wanna miss this conversation or the music drop!

Take care, everyone, and hope you have a wonderful week!

 [“Be Free” by M. The Heir Apparent]

The post Ep 105 Grateful Living Guide Kristi Nelson appeared first on Midlife Mixtape .