In the latest episode of The Fire Inside Her, host Diane Schroeder welcomes Suzanne Campi, an expert coach specializing in guiding women through the retirement transition. Whether you’re considering a major career change or wondering how to handle the emotional rollercoaster that comes with ending a significant chapter of your life, this episode is a must-listen. Suzanne shares enlightening insights about why retirement can be challenging and offers practical advice on reinventing yourself. They discuss why we often "should" ourselves into unnecessary stress and how to replace that with what truly lights up our souls. Discover the importance of community, the power of self-love, and why creating your own rules might be your best strategy yet. If phrases like "finding purpose," "women's retirement," and "navigating transition" resonate with you, don't miss this engaging conversation!
Suzanne Campi is a dynamic and empathetic life transitions coach who specializes in retirement planning, despite initially having no intention to focus on this niche. Her passion for guiding people through major life changes stems from the joy she feels in helping others navigate their often overwhelming emotions during such periods. Suzanne observes that humans naturally resist change, and she finds particular satisfaction in calming the anxieties that come with retirement. Her decision to focus on retirement emerged organically, influenced by the collective uncertainty and wide-eyed looks she noticed among her peers when discussing their own futures. Now, Suzanne offers her expertise and reassurance to those facing this significant life stage. Connect with Suzanne at www.suzannecampi.com
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Diane Schroeder [:Welcome to the Fire Inside Her. A brave space to share stories of navigating life transitions with authenticity. Using our inner fire to light the way and self care as our loyal travel companion. I'm your host, Diane Schroeder, and I'm so grateful you are here. When I retired from the fire service, I had a vision of what retirement would look like. I would instantly start sleeping better, create an online empire, become a best selling author and sought after speaker, and make enough money to retire Josh within a few years. I was wrong. You can listen to my lessons learned after retiring in episode 65.
Diane Schroeder [:Even after recording that episode, I still didn't anticipate how difficult it would be to navigate the transition of leaving a 24 year career and starting over. Fear, unworthiness, and guilt were big feelings I was unprepared to contend with. I knew I would have to grieve the change, my career, and the unmet goals I set for myself. I just didn't think it would take as long to move through it as it did. I learned that slowing down, feeling the feels, giving myself grace, and asking what I want to do has helped tremendously. My good friend and mentor, Gretchen Reid, told me, did this shitting on myself. That was a light bulb moment. I was stuck in doing what I thought I should do to meet my goals, but I was bypassing an obvious step.
Diane Schroeder [:The permission to reinvent myself so I can do what I want, what my soul craves, exploring the what ifs, and pivoting when I want. With curiosity as my navigator and authenticity as my copilot and support from my tribe, I am in such a better place today. Thankfully, there are coaches who could help you through this process, and my guest, Suzanne Campi, is doing that for the women entering the next chapter of their lives. If you're considering making a significant career change, retirement, or are struggling with purpose, this episode is precisely what you need to hear. And I'm taking a podcast sabbatical, which means you can binge all 93 episodes from the last 2 years while I examine the show's next steps. However, I still will be sending out my newsletter, so make sure you are on the list. Go to the fire inside her dot com slash newsletter to stay in the know. Well, hello, everyone.
Diane Schroeder [:Today is an exciting day because we are gonna talk about women, retirement, and whatever else bubbles up in this conversation with Suzanne Campi. Suzanne, welcome to the show.
Suzanne Campi [:Hi, Diane. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.
Diane Schroeder [:Very excited. And because we're recording this just a couple days before Thanksgiving, I would love to know, number 1, if you celebrate Thanksgiving. And if you do, what is your favorite side dish?
Suzanne Campi [:Oh, boy. Yes. I celebrate. I'm going to my niece's house to this year. You know what? I'm really terrible. I'm not a big turkey person. When it's just me and my kids, we don't do turkey. So let me think.
Diane Schroeder [:Side dish. Okay. Side dish.
Suzanne Campi [:I mean, the turkey and the whole thing that goes with it.
Diane Schroeder [:Oh, man.
Suzanne Campi [:Probably, I'm making a salad, and that's what I want. Salad. Oh, big fat salad. Not that I'm a health nut. I just like salad.
Diane Schroeder [:I think it's a good balance because I hate leaving so incredibly full that I'm just uncomfortable. And for whatever reason, I can't stop myself from just continually eating. So a salad's just a nice source of some greens and fiber. I like it.
Suzanne Campi [:That's funny you said that because last night, I actually now that you say that, I had a big dream about 2 turkeys sitting there. 1 was deep fried and 1 was smoked. And I was like, which one do I take? So there you go. Apparently, it's on my mind.
Diane Schroeder [:Oh, that's awesome. Fantastic. Alright. Well, we're not gonna talk turkey. I'll show. Let's just dive in. I would love to know why you have kind of latched on to talking about women and retirement, and why is that so important right now?
Suzanne Campi [:It is such a fun topic. It's so funny because I wasn't going to niche out, as I say, on retirement. I love the talk of any life transitions. People going through change and transition just makes me happy because they're always so freaked out, and it's so fun to help them calm down. And we as humans hate change, and retirement's no different. And I niched out on it because that's where my peers are. I sit at a dinner table now, and everybody's got this gets at some point, gets this wide eyed look, and they look at each other and go.
Diane Schroeder [:oh, when are you gonna retire?
Suzanne Campi [:And then they start to look really fearful, and then they're excited, then they're fearful. Then I thought, this is really fun. People are freaking out. And at first, I thought there was no way I could help them, but, oh my gosh. We're really having fun. I'm kinda starting a movement. I'm starting a a women's forum. It's called the Flourish Collective, and it's a forum.
Suzanne Campi [:And we're running beta right now with 10 women bringing together conversations about retirement. And I'm bringing in the questions and a few facts, and they are running away with the conversation. And I've been so pleased. They're just lifting each other up. I told them, I go, You have to be the woman beneath each other's ring wings. And women are so good at that. They're so good at just being each other's best fan. And I said, You don't have to be friends in this collective.
Suzanne Campi [:You just need to be a safe space. People need to be able to be vulnerable. Somebody who's gonna take off with their husband for a year needs to be able to say, I'm freaked out about being with my husband alone for a year. We need to be able to voice our fears and our loves and our wants and mostly fears about retirement. So in this beta, we have people who haven't retired yet, who are newly retired, who are just actually retired from the big job, like the corporate and are heading into maybe a coaching role or something different. And then people who I have one that's been retired 10 years and wants to come and join and have join the conversation and join a group of women who are just they have choice. They're choosing their retirement. They're creating their retirement on their own terms, and they need they need support.
Suzanne Campi [:So festive.
Diane Schroeder [:I love it. And, you know, it's we were talking about this briefly before we hit record. This is really a new uncharted territory for women. I know my mom, she retired as a school teacher. And in her generation, it was like you could be a school teacher or you could be a nurse. And so you put in your time and then you retired, and she just chose to retire for financial reasons. Didn't really, like, process it, didn't really tell anyone. It was like, surprise.
Diane Schroeder [:I'm not gonna teach anymore. And I was like, I I think I need to do it a little differently. And so it's just it's kind of like this it's not uncharted, but I know a little bit for women to have their own agency. And what have you seen what are some of the stories that women tell themselves that aren't true when it comes to retirement, when they're in that space of fear?
Suzanne Campi [:I think they don't realize that they can absolutely reinvent themselves. And I'm not sure exactly what's going on inside of their heads, but they don't realize they've got a whole new chapter. They might have another 30 years. It's very highly likely. I know my dad did after he retired. Their only role model, as you and I said earlier, could be their mom that left a teaching job and went, hey, I'm sick of little kids now, but didn't really plan. People didn't our boomers and xers and millennials parents didn't plan their retirement. They plan the financial piece.
Suzanne Campi [:So this is what I saw. They got the financial piece. I sat at a woman of probably 10 table of 10 women, all had that financial piece. That wasn't the point. The point was, what the hell am I gonna do? What's my purpose gonna be? Who am I gonna be? And especially the difference in women is they typically had to fight 2 or 3 times as hard. Man, you as a firefighter, I bet you had to work 10 times as hard to prove yourself as the good employee, good firefighter you were. Right? So did they. There wasn't a place at the table for you.
Suzanne Campi [:You had to create that place. These women have been doing that for 45 years, and all of a sudden, click switches off. I mean, that's weird. So they've paved this way for themselves. They've got this killer business card, killer title. I've even seen friends where they get on a Zoom call and it's all, hi. You know, everybody's all alert and trying to impress the boss, and, you know, she can go into a meeting and the sees part. I've watched it happen.
Suzanne Campi [:It didn't happen with me. I was never that much of a bigwig, but watching it happen to friends, they know they're gonna lose that. And when you're a 60, 65 year old woman, we become a little invisible. I mean, it's just I don't wanna be a whiner, but I'm not whining. I'm just stating a fact. We become invisible, and they know they are so seen in that workplace. And now in life, it's gonna be you're not gonna be that important. It's a mental trip.
Suzanne Campi [:There's so many mental hurdles that they don't you can't think about until you leave. You can't.
Diane Schroeder [:Well, you don't know.
Suzanne Campi [:No. You can't know.
Diane Schroeder [:One of the stories that I told myself is that it was no longer my identity. And so I decided I was gonna break up with the identity of my job, and no matter how it was really cool, and I did. I had influence. I had a great group of people that worked for me, but I wasn't I was gonna break up with the identity. Turns out that there was a little it was wrapped a little tighter than I anticipated, first of all. But what I didn't anticipate was my sense of worthiness that somehow, after working so hard for so many years, that grind, that providing, that, you know, whatever it was, that how would I to be worthy of not doing that anymore and to just relax? And I was like, well, that totally caught me up. That was a few extra bonus sessions with my therapist to try to process that one. So I just I wonder if that's, like, a common theme of, like, sometimes when you do work really hard in a profession whatever the profession is, but you get to a top part of your career, and then you're like, okay.
Diane Schroeder [:Now I'm gonna just make it all about me.
Suzanne Campi [:Yeah. That's hard. Imagine that. That's something big we talk about. You know? That's where the self care comes in. That's where the health and fitness comes in. That's where the friends and family you're gonna start nurturing things that float your boat as opposed to just trying to work for this corporation and do the things that they want you to do. Now it's a turnabout.
Diane Schroeder [:So how do you coach, or what advice would you give women who are considering that? Like, where do you even start? Like, yes, they're gonna retire. Yes. The financial piece that everyone's focused on, because that's, I think, what the patriarchy tells us to do or has conditioned us to do. Money, money, money. And we do need money to live. I'm not a pooh pooh ing that, but the other stuff, how do you where do you start with that?
Suzanne Campi [:We start with where they are because everybody's in a different place. I can't say that 2 people have ever walked in my proverbial door Zoom door in, the same place. Quite often, I start them off and it sounds a little juvenile, but I have on my site, you can click on the retirement wheel, and they can fill that out. And it's really classic in coaching. It's a wheel of life where you look at all these you look at money and your job, the happiness levels of each. I took those money and job out. We've got purpose. We've got health.
Suzanne Campi [:We've got other spokes to this wheel. And when you can't really turn the wheel too well when something's way off. So what I do is have them fill that out, and we see where they are. And we see if, you know, if whatever they're low in is something they wanna work on. But typically, it is. Typically, it is. And then they're to be commended for what they have done right. Another thing we do to start is to see if they at all honored themselves for what they just ended.
Suzanne Campi [:Now, I mean, I may have just pointed out some of your badassery when it came to being a firefighter. You probably know your badassery. You know how the shit you had to put up with. Just like them. What they pulled off, you know, if you pulled off working, raising kids, dealing with sick parents, taking care of your mom every day while you were still working, all of the things women do to multitask. Keep the freaking house clean because it was probably still her job. Cook me all the multitasking. What they pulled off if you really stop and look back at that, I want them to write themselves a letter of gratitude or do whatever would work for them because there was an ending that happened.
Suzanne Campi [:As a society, we tend to just gloss right over it. Somebody dies. Go back to work in 3 days. You know? Yeah. We have an ending, and we are just expect to suck it up, buttercup. Right? That's just bullshit. We're we're missing some great opportunity to be nurtured. And with my group today, somebody said something beautiful about when she left work, she wrote everybody there a thank you note for how beautiful they were to her.
Suzanne Campi [:So anything that works for you, we really we touched on this today, and it was really fun to hear people's different ideas on how they would really you know, because sometimes they get a crystal ball or something from the company. It's so stupid. But they have to look at their value intrinsically. They can't look at what the company gave them. Screw that. They need to take a look at just their general level of badassery and thank themselves for it, big time. And now with that being done, they can take those traits now and really focus on them. You know what? I was just badass.
Suzanne Campi [:I can take that and move it into my new life.
Diane Schroeder [:Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you for sharing that. Well, it's grieving it. Right? It's it's a change in acknowledging it and knowing that it's not a linear process. It's not gonna just go away, that it might be sometime down the road, something's gonna something's gonna hit you and you'd be like, wow. I did not see that coming. Okay.
Diane Schroeder [:Pause, love myself, reflect. Is it really true? Is it a thought, or is it just that transition, that messy piece? And I think to your point that, you know, we just endings as a society, we just move on, move on. We've really taught ourselves to not go through the messy parts. We just have taught ourselves
Suzanne Campi [:We don't wanna feel anything. Right? Like, okay.
Diane Schroeder [:Shut that door, move on to the next Ievel.
Suzanne Campi [:I think I'm feeling something. I know.
Diane Schroeder [:Yeah. The challenge is you still gotta go through it. You can only outrun it for so long before it catches up to you.
Suzanne Campi [:It will catch you, and it will bite you so hard in the butt. Yeah. A lot of people find that as well, which is a little sad, but it's okay. It can be worked through, is that they haven't done any morning. They could have lost a mom, siblings. They could have lost I know I were I lost both of my parents while I worked. Did I spend time on that, or did I just say, oh, gotta be back at work on Monday? I remember with my dad since I was working a contract position that somebody called me and said, oh, can you get me blah blah blah? And I said, oh, my dad just died, so it had not gone through. Nobody else spread the word for me, number 1.
Suzanne Campi [:And then I said, I'll be back Monday. Oh, okay. Sorry. Thanks. That was it. That's the love you get when you freaking lose one of your favorite people on God's green earth. So it's sad. It's us trying to suck it up, and it's all of society doing it to us.
Suzanne Campi [:It's what we're expected to do. I don't even think you asked me a question. I don't know where I came up with that.
Diane Schroeder [:No. No. It's I do. I think it's the grieving is very important. So when you work with your clients and, you know, specifically women, which I love, what other advice do you give, like, you know, do is it the long game? Is it, you know, try things out? Or is it you know, I I just envision you know, I again, because it's so recent for me. The 1st 6 months, I was like, I'm just gonna learn how to sleep because shift work for over half my life wrecked.
Suzanne Campi [:That was my ability to your adrenals up.
Diane Schroeder [:Yeah. So I'm like, alright. I need to get healthy. I need to focus on health, but I just couldn't just focus on one thing. Like, my body and brain did not know that I could slow down, that I could rest. So you acknowledge that they were a badass, but how do you coach or what advice tools would you offer for that just trying to slow down and be present and really, you know, it's not a race anymore?
Suzanne Campi [:Right. That takes constant reminder. I have a client like that right now, actually, and on the treadmill for I can count. If I counted, it was 50 years of a treadmill for her, and it is understanding that that's okay. I think understanding you probably studied that transition model of, William Bridges. That whole messy middle part just it zigs and zags, and you've got to figure stuff out on your own. Your coach is here as a guide. I don't give advice.
Suzanne Campi [:I don't tell people what to do, but I make it okay for them to do what they're doing unless it's harmful to themselves. But if what somebody needs is what you did, which is learn to sleep, then you need to learn to sleep. And your body literally will get sick if you don't if you kept up at that pace. You would get yourself sick, and I've seen it happen over and over. You know, in my age, in my early sixties, people get sick if they've been screwing with themselves too long. This is when it really gets you. The bite in the butt happens in your late fifties sixties. So that along with other things that you like to do.
Suzanne Campi [:So what else could you do to nurture you? And I heard your talk with, oh my gosh, I liked her so much, Lisa Wessel. Oh, yes. Just I mean, she's getting into the woo too, you know. Go listen to singing bowls, go get your massages, all of that. And if you could take a year, I even say take a gap year. It's not only, you know, 20 somethings that get the gap year, you get the gap year, because it's gonna take you a while literally to calm your nervous system. So I am a huge fan of all things woo, and I can give you lots of ideas on retreats and people to follow and Buddhist people to follow, all spiritual. I really encourage people to find their spirit, whatever that is.
Suzanne Campi [:If you're a devout Catholic, go there. If you're a Buddhist, go there. Just double down on what your spirit brings you.
Diane Schroeder [:That gives me goosebumps because that is so true. And I think that that connection to spirit to the bigger universal energy and life force is so healing when you realize you're not alone. And I think it also requires some healing of whatever religious baggage you may have. You can let that go when you retire too.
Suzanne Campi [:Might be recovering. Yeah.
Diane Schroeder [:You can you can explore and be curious, and I just think that's a really beautiful way to honor getting that wisdom and that intuitive that we pass along to other generations. You know, there's a reason why in so many cultures, wise women are revered and they're the sages and the elders because they have all that. And I think that connection with spirit really fortifies that intuition with yourself. So, yeah, I'm I'm a 100% with the woo on that.
Suzanne Campi [:Yeah. But just yeah. It's so grounding. It is. They'll think we're up in the air, but we're not. We're actually grounded.
Diane Schroeder [:Right. You You
Suzanne Campi [:know, I encourage people to play too. We forgot to play. Totally forgot. And, you know, what did you do as a kid? Sometimes that will reveal what you might wanna do next. Of course, I can't make mud pies for a living, but dang it. I mean, my running around factor. I still I just got off my mountain right back there because I will get up there at some point most days with my dog running around. I have a hula hoop here.
Suzanne Campi [:So I had a meeting recently, and everybody had a hula hoop. You'll go back to that stuff. I kinda don't recommend a pogo stick. It could be accidental.
Diane Schroeder [:But Yeah. Pogo sticks would be that would be more of a challenge.
Suzanne Campi [:Amazingly survive those. I know.
Diane Schroeder [:Always wear a helmet. I also am a little leery of the scooters that you can rent sometimes in the cities downtown.
Suzanne Campi [:Oh, me too. I haven't done that before. I just haven't done it.
Diane Schroeder [:I look at everything through a trauma lens. Right? That's part of my my body.
Suzanne Campi [:That would be you.
Diane Schroeder [:I'm like, are we sure?
Suzanne Campi [:Every accident you've seen. I'm surprised you walk out the door.
Diane Schroeder [:My thankfully, my son is like a good level set to me and be like, oh, come on, mom. Live a little. Have fun. But that joy, that connection to joy is so important. And I heard one time a gentleman say on a podcast that we can all go back to elementary school. You know, not everyone goes away to college. Not everyone, you know, may or may not finish high school, but we usually can can bond over elementary school stories and what it was that brought us joy. So I do.
Diane Schroeder [:That is such good advice. And dancing. So I love to dance.
Suzanne Campi [:Oh, there you go.
Diane Schroeder [:And I'll just dance around the house. I don't care. I look ridiculous, and I can't sing to save my life, but I don't care. I love music.
Suzanne Campi [:I don't care anymore either. I don't care. I just everybody around me has to suffer or walk away. I don't care. That is the beauty getting older too.
Diane Schroeder [:Mhmm.
Suzanne Campi [:There is a I used to stay in my little box, and I'm like, I
Diane Schroeder [:don't care. Exactly. Exactly. So do you notice that you know, is there used to be you have to retire, I don't know, 65, 70 years old now.
Suzanne Campi [:Mhmm.
Diane Schroeder [:Are you noticing that more women are retiring sooner or realizing that they've saved enough where it might be different and they retire from one career just to find joy and have fun later on in life? Or do you see what are you seeing with that trend?
Suzanne Campi [:Wow. Talk about all of the above. It's all of the above. Quite often, they get off the corporate wheel in their fifties and then do something more they something they choose, something more that aligned with their their soul later. Some people do that several times in re retirement. So get off the corporate rat ladder, reinvent, then reinvent again. And then you know what? There's no rules. Somebody said it to me in my forum today.
Suzanne Campi [:You know, well, I've had, like, 3 or 4 careers. Like, shameful. I'm like, who said that's a bad thing? I mean, either you wanna stay in a in a box for she's like, god. Everybody here has been in the same place for, like, 15 years. I'm like, I'm me. So Just a certain personality. And I think the biggest thing is to get just get comfortable with who you are. Investigate yourself.
Suzanne Campi [:Screw everybody else. There is no right or wrong way to retire. And if you wanna, you know, hang out and watch movies all day, that's your jig. I mean, I would try to stay healthy on some level, but you gotta do it. Float your boat. Just what suits you. There is no right or wrong. There like I said, there's not even that many role models for us.
Diane Schroeder [:No. I'm thinking of the reprogramming. Like, I'm just like, there's so much reprogramming that we have to do as women specifically to really embrace that and to set the example for our peers, for the younger generations, for our daughters, our granddaughters that making our own rules as we go. And that's just so, like, butting your pearls because there's rules, there's structure. You're supposed to follow it a certain way.
Suzanne Campi [:There's just not. That's hard to get used to.
Diane Schroeder [:Yeah. It's permission. It's like, here's your permission slip ladies. You can do whatever the hell you want. Mhmm.
Suzanne Campi [:Free will. Yeah. And I talk about creating a lot. You get to not only create some new things, you get to create a new you. You don't have to be that high powered treadmill person. You just don't have to. So if you don't have to, what do you wanna take that you really like about yourself and move forward? You wanna take a slower version? Who do you wanna take? So we'll do a lot of work on those traits, on what really drove you. What made you so good at what you did? Let's take a look at that.
Suzanne Campi [:What do you wanna take forward? Because you might not wanna take it all. And then what do you wanna leave behind? There's a lot people wanna leave behind. It's like, I don't have to be that amped and driven and get up in the more blah. You know, I wanna do something, work with little kids. There's so much to do. So much.
Diane Schroeder [:I love that. So how do you incorporate self care into your world on a personal level?
Suzanne Campi [:That's so funny you said that because I was just thinking, I have a I gotta book that massage. I literally thought that before I got on this call. And I don't do that very often, but my daughter gave me a gift certificate. So I love my yoga. I have a yoga studio 5 actually, 4 and a half minutes away, and I love it. It's just my time. And I hike my mountain with my dog, so she gets in on that one, gets her exercise. She's a 12 year old shepherd, and she's doing really good.
Suzanne Campi [:So I think I say that's because of the mountain mountain there and I always say mountain therapy. I leave my leave my problems on the mountain. And I just I knew I was leaving out, what do you call it, weight lifting, and I know better. I actually owned a gym for 5 years. I know better. And especially at my age, and I'm feeling like my legs are getting scrawny and stuff. So I found a gym I like. I'm a little new to the area, so it takes some jostling around for position.
Suzanne Campi [:But I found a a y that I like, so I thought, okay. I'm gonna actually go after I talk to you. Good. And friend time. I love my friend time, and it's becoming more and more important even as I run this forum with the women. We have a part. In fact, we talked today about nurturing those friendships that are important to us, really nurturing them, really putting them on your calendar, really loving on those people that have always been there for you. And then sometimes dumping ones that you realize are never about you.
Suzanne Campi [:I just had one of those. If you never ever are about in my court about me, it's time we have a little break up. Mhmm. A
Diane Schroeder [:friend of mine told me years ago, in fact, we just spent the weekend together. We had a little girls weekend. She's like, it's you gotta weed your friend garden.
Suzanne Campi [:Yes. That's a good one. Writing that down.
Diane Schroeder [:And, you know, I'm like, gosh. That's so true. And I think especially after retirement, that transition, that who you know, you've gotta build new community oftentimes if work was a lot of your community, and, yeah, what a great time to weed the garden. And it can also be exhausting. I'm such an introvert, like, making friends
Suzanne Campi [:You are?
Diane Schroeder [:I know. I'm an extroverted introvert.
Suzanne Campi [:I do pretty good runs of podcasts.
Diane Schroeder [:But it's like, put me in to make friends. I'm super sensitive and, like, get nervous and probably a little awkward about it because this can be hard making friends as an old
Suzanne Campi [:woman. Yeah. It can. And there are places where, you know, we're always afraid that everybody's weird except us. I know. We are. Honest. Right? We are.
Suzanne Campi [:Like, everybody's so weird. They're so picky. And I'm weird. You're freaking weird. I have to find my peeps, and I have a a few places I do. 1, when I moved to new areas about an hour away from my old area. So it's everything new socially. I joined meetups for hiking.
Suzanne Campi [:So you kinda look look at what you like to do. If you're a quilter, there's meetups for quilting. Whatever you do, there's a meetup for it. So I would go there'd be, like, 40 people every Wednesday night, Saturday morning, so people put together these hikes. There's that. And there's a something called Modern Elder Academy, and I'm I'm actually the colead of the East Bay chapter here in California, and it's run by Chip Conley. And there is a lot of courses on being a modern elder, which none of us really groove on that name, but it said very respectfully because we're so cool and we know so much who are modern elders. There's a lot of courses.
Suzanne Campi [:There's over 6,000 alumni, I think, there now. There's courses online. They're in Baja, and they're in Santa Fe now. It's pretty cool. There, I have met some more people. You know, there'll be a group of 50, but out of those, you'll gravitate towards 2 that will be your buds. So I've found some really cool people in my new area. I'm proud of that.
Diane Schroeder [:Well, congratulations on that. I think it's just really good advice and something to also keep in the back of your mind when you're making these big transitions that shift and change because you may change too, and you may realize that what the 5 people you're spending your time with are not the 5 people you should be spending your time with.
Suzanne Campi [:Right. Right. Yeah. It's really something worth examining.
Diane Schroeder [:Absolutely. Alright, Suzanne. I'm gonna ask you 2 more questions. The first question is, if you could go back in time and give your younger self advice on growing older in these career transitions and life transitions, what would you say? Mhmm.
Suzanne Campi [:Well, number 1, you're gonna be exactly the same as you are now, so don't expect to be an old person. Yeah. You know what? Be okay with changing careers when you're in the mood because that was just my personality. It's not even on my resume that what I tell you I did. Oh, I did the running race organization for a while. I owned a fitness studio. I did sold real estate, and I recruited. I did and then I would always beat myself up for it.
Suzanne Campi [:I, like, spent a lot of time beating myself up for it, and now people kinda wear that as a badge. It's like, oh, I have a portfolio career. It's like, damn. I wish I had thought of a groovy name for it.
Diane Schroeder [:I know.
Suzanne Campi [:That's just who I was. I'm fairly ADD. I was good at a fair amount of things, so I did them. That's okay. I mean, I wish I had been a firefighter for 24. I love to have that in my back pocket. I'd be like but I didn't have any stick to itiveness. I got born too fast.
Suzanne Campi [:And, like, you know, I was just listening to Lisa Wessel when she said, you love it, and then you don't. You love it, and then you don't. And that's exact that's the way I roll. Yeah. For me yoga, I have to go every day. I love it. All of a sudden, what the hell? It's too hot. Yep.
Diane Schroeder [:I'm gonna do a yin class today instead of the hot yoga. Switch the yin. I think that's just great advice because I do think we're pretty hard on ourselves. And when you get through whatever the bumps are, you realize, god, I was a real dick to myself.
Suzanne Campi [:I probably should have been a
Diane Schroeder [:little nicer.
Suzanne Campi [:That's the number one thing. And bottom line with both of those being said, it was just lacking love of myself. I just didn't give myself any credit. Everything I did, I beat myself up for. So love yourself. 100% love yourself. And now I think it's such a big thing with me that that's why I'm passionate about helping women turn to loving themselves. It's my it's my shtick.
Diane Schroeder [:Because it's never too late. Mm-mm. Mm-mm. And it's hard sometimes.
Suzanne Campi [:So hard. I mean, especially now, you know, you've got a list. I'd be like, what did I do that was wrong? Let me pull out a scroll. You know? That's when it's top of mind for me. It's just stop. Just stop.
Diane Schroeder [:Yeah. Yeah. That's I mean, I just I really that is just the perfect way to end this because at the end of the day, you've gotta love yourself. No one can love yourself for you. You can't take it in a pill. You can't pay someone to do it. You've just got to love yourself, and it's possible.
Suzanne Campi [:Yeah. They can even tell you how great you are and that they love you, and you still won't listen. So
Diane Schroeder [:Exactly.
Suzanne Campi [:It's an inside job, Diane.
Diane Schroeder [:Oh, I know. I love that. I say that all the time. You gotta you just gotta do it. Just prioritize yourself, love yourself enough, or respect yourself enough to do the work to learn to love yourself enough.
Suzanne Campi [:100%. Beautiful. Awesome. Beautiful.
Diane Schroeder [:Suzanne, thank you. And I will list all of your contact information in the show notes, but what is the preferred way that you like to connect with people? Is it through LinkedIn? Is it through Instagram? Is it through I don't know.
Suzanne Campi [:I love when you will ping me on LinkedIn, but I also love for you to look at my site, and both are exactly the same. They're just my name, Suzanne Campi, c a m p I. So it's Suzannencampi.com or Suzanne Campi on LinkedIn.
Diane Schroeder [:Perfect. Awesome. Well, Suzanne, thank you for sharing your wisdom, and thank you for helping women transition into, like, the best years, the golden years, really, in my opinion.
Suzanne Campi [:Yeah. They should be having fun. Just want them to have fun.
Diane Schroeder [:Yes. Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you, Diane. Thank you for joining us. I am grateful you are here. If you're curious about how speaking to ourselves is a form of self care, head over to the fire inside her.comforward/audio for a free recording on self care. Until next time.
Diane Schroeder [:Be safe, be kind, and be authentically you.