The Art Of Change with Nancy Levin

Michelle: Welcome. This is Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff. I’m Michelle Passoff.

Michelle: This is the place to come for news you can use to get things done in life without anything in the way on the road ahead. Too many papers, clothes, and other stuff are clutter, and we will address that here on these podcasts. But that’s not all. Areas of life we baby boomers sweep under the carpet to address another day or never, because they’re too confounding or confronting, also are clutter.

Michelle: Maybe you need to make a decision about the right for you exercise and eating regimen. Dealing with digital devices driving you dizzy? You want to share your life story with the next generation, but you don’t know how. Time to reignite old relationships or create a new? Does getting your financial house in order drive you under the covers?

Michelle: Choosing where to live and what to do in retirement have you stumped? This is the place to be. The conversations we have here are meant to help you gain clarity and take action. They intend to enliven your life so that nothing is in the way for you to create a legacy, not a mess. I hope everyone out there is sitting on the edge of their seats today because I think you’re going to want to hear what today’s guest is going to say.

Michelle: Allow me to introduce to you Nancy Levin. Nancy not only wrote the book called The Art of Change, but this book is an eight week journal to guide you in making a meaningful shift in life. Since action is the only thing that makes a difference in the world of getting free from clutter, I love that this book guides readers through the process of actually achieving their intentions.

Michelle: Nancy has written several books and is a podcast host and founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, coaching coaches to coach. Based in out in Colorado. Welcome Nancy. And thank you so much for being with us today.

Nancy: Thanks for having me.

Michelle: Oh, I’m so glad I’m even got up early to be here when I, when I think about it, though, folks, 55 plus, I’ve always thought that it’s time to settle down.

Michelle: At least that’s what I thought, but I find that it’s a big fat myth. There’s all kinds of changes ahead.

Nancy: Nancy, when I think about it, by the time folks reach 55 I’ve always thought that it’s time you settle down. But I’m finding out that it’s just a big fat myth.

Michelle: That there’s all kinds of changes. And what do you say to that?

Nancy: I find with so many of my coaching clients and my students in love and life coach academy, who are all over the world, that the biggest changes are around career. So I know, for example, my parents generation. My father had one career from, you know, his twenties to his eighties and in our generation, we are more agile.

Nancy: We are not sticking with one thing all the way through our life. And that can be career. That can be relationships. That can be. So many things are up for grabs when we sort of hit that 55 point and beyond, we are reassessing, we are recalibrating with the changes that are happening, whether we like it or not.

Nancy: And the changes that we decide we want to invite in.

Michelle: Well, how do you face change? What’s people’s, what’s, what’s common for people to, how, what is their common reaction to change? Let me put it that way.

Nancy: I would say for the most part, people fear change. Change makes people feel anxious. Makes people feel, uh, uncomfortable.

Nancy: Uh, makes people feel uncertain. Mm hmm. But the truth is that we always have a choice, even if a change happens that we’re not in charge of. Let’s say it that way. So I look at change. Yeah. I look at changes.

Michelle: Hurricane hits and your house blows away or somebody you’re, you’re widowed or you get fired from a job.

Michelle: You might not be envisioning that going toward a goal, but it happens to you,

Nancy: right? So And the truth of the matter is, most of us wait for a crisis before we make change. Interesting. And so, What I see over and over again is these, you know, we can call them catastrophic, you know, events, whether it is a hurricane or a divorce or death or whatever it is.

Nancy: What I’ve seen over and over again is that there is a quiet voice that has been whispering about wanting to make a change that now feels it has permission to be louder. And even if something happens that we’re not aware of. That we’re not expecting or that we’re not even essentially welcoming. The truth is that it be, that the catastrophe becomes a catalyst and we then take it into our own hands to see what is possible, where do I really want to be?

Nancy: Who do I really want to be? Where do I really want to go? What’s next for me? And it’s not about leaving the past behind, but it’s about integrating the past into the future.

Michelle: If you don’t, um, embrace that and say, okay, this is my moment. What, what’s the consequences of not making a change when that’s what’s called for?

Michelle: Even if it’s hitting you over the head.

Nancy: Yeah. I mean, what I see is most often the reason we don’t, Voluntarily make a change is ultimately we’re afraid to tell the truth to ourselves. So I really see, I’ve seen it in my own life. I’ve seen it in the lives of others. We create chaos when we avoid telling ourselves the truth.

Nancy: So the, the consequences are that we end up really making a very big mess of things, and it’s very impactful for us. And it’s very impactful for others around us. we have this idea that the goal of relating and not just intimate partnership, but even in any of our relationships, that the goal of relating is harmony at all costs.

Nancy: And What happens is, for those of us who have, who have identified as people pleasers, or peacekeepers, or conflict avoiders, don’t want to rock the boat, the, the cost, the cost is high, and it, it’s the cost that we pay for not being honest and truthful about our needs. And so we end up staying in situations longer.

Nancy: Then is healthy for us and we don’t jump. We don’t make the change that would be best for us and if it’s actually best for us, it will be best for everyone because we’re telling the truth.

Michelle: So if what I get it, if I get it right, what you’re saying is sometimes change might be on your agenda or it may happen to you, but other people around you may not be ready for the change you’re making.

Um,

Nancy: Absolutely true. Wow. I see this time and time again, and what I, you know, if one person is, you know, is evolving, is inviting change, embracing change, and the people around are, are not doing the same inner work, let’s say, what can happen is it essentially holds up a mirror to the people around us. And what they see is the way that they are not changing while the other person is.

Nancy: And that can be very confronting. Also, in relationships of any kind, we have an unspoken, usually, we have an unspoken set of rules of engagement. And if we are, if we are changing, we’re changing the rules of engagement. And Upsetting the apple cart. Exactly. Rocking the boat.

Michelle: Yeah, so if you’re able to make the change and embrace it and look within yourself and see what’s next and How do you encourage those around you to either?

Michelle: Accept that or go with a new flow as well. How does that work?

Nancy: Yeah, so to me this comes down to boundaries So I define boundaries as the limits that I set around what I will or will not do, will or will not accept, and will or will not tolerate. So it’s very important for me to know what’s okay and what’s not okay for me.

Nancy: And my boundaries are personal. So my boundaries are actually between me and me, even if they involve someone else. And only I can cross my boundaries. So we often hear the phrase, so and so crossed my boundaries. It doesn’t work that way. No one can cross our boundaries. We cross our own boundaries by what we allow.

Nancy: And so, in terms of other people getting on board with us, That’s really not the focal point because if we are trying to manage someone else and that’s really what ends up happening. I’m crossing my own boundary into your territory, trying to manage your experience of me, trying to mold your perception of me, trying to manipulate what you perceive.

Nancy: Experience of me and really, that’s yours. So I am much more focused on what do I need to do to flourish. This doesn’t mean I’m not taking you into account. It simply means I’m shifting gears and I’m willing to consider my needs first.

Michelle: And how do you go about if you’re, if the change isn’t happening to you, but you’re generating that change, let’s say you were in a job and now you’re retiring and you want to either get another way of earning a living or volunteering, or, you know, if you were overweight and now you’re going on a health and reg health regimen to, um, look different.

Michelle: How do you, um, how are you, how do you take that into your own hands and generate that change?

Nancy: Great. Yes. So I have what I’ve coined my transformation equation, which is change equals vision plus choice plus action. So if we want to make a change, We need to first envision ourselves on the other side of the change.

Nancy: So we need to have a sense of what it will look like when we’ve achieved the change we are desiring. Whether it’s how we feel, how we look, how we engage with others, what we’re doing, who we’re with, all of that. We need to actually be able to envision what it is that we are.

Michelle: Do you write that down? Do you do a collage of what the future looks like?

Michelle: How do you envision that?

Nancy: Yeah, you can do a vision board. Uh, I also have in my book that you mentioned, The Art of Change. In The Art of Change, it guides you through a process of Looking at different areas of your life. I personally get overwhelmed when it’s sort of just blue sky vision. So I sort of take our life as a pie and section out.

Nancy: Let me get clarity on my vision for my health vision for relationships, vision for environment, vision for finances, vision for career, you know, get really clear on what it is that I am wanting to move toward. Once we have that clarity of vision, vision becomes the gauge by which we take our, we make our choices and take our actions.

Nancy: So, first of all, I’ll say that in terms of choice, I believe that where we are right now, you, me, everyone listening, where we are right now is the culmination of a series of choices we’ve made. Now, certain things may have happened that we didn’t expect or want. We still put ourselves in a situation of fertile ground for things to happen.

Nancy: And just by being human, we, uh, change is what’s going to happen. So,

Michelle: so instead of thinking of change as an interruption to the way things are, think of it as inevitable. Things will change. Things will

Nancy: change. I mean, everything changes. Yes. So it’s whether or

Michelle: not you direct the change or have a participate in the change or cause the train or right.

Michelle: Or your first, your first thing is to envision what happens next.

Nancy: Yes. So then we need to make choices that are in alignment with our vision. So, as I was saying, here we are, the culmination of all of our choices. This goes to prove that the choices we make predict our future. So, I look at our present moment choices as our crystal ball.

Nancy: If we want to know what our future is going to hold, we need to be paying close attention to the choices we’re making today. Every single choice we make does only one of two things. It serves our vision or sabotages it. So it’s very important to be, have conscious choice to serve the vision and the same with action.

Nancy: We have to move into action for anything to happen. We have to mobilize. So again, The choice and action needs to align with the vision. And that is most simply put how we get where we want to go. And I’ll also say when I talk about action, I’m really talking about micro action. So that we set ourselves up for success.

Nancy: Most of us set a lofty, you know, some big lofty action, you know, whether it’s, I’m going to run a marathon every day this week, or I’m, you know, going to lose 50 pounds this week or whatever, you know? And so I really work with people to reflect on that. actions to something that is doable, realistic, bite sized, in their control, that is going to set themselves up for success.

Michelle: I guess that doesn’t make you feel as if, um, the change has to be all at once. You make it step by step.

Nancy: Absolutely. I’m a big step by step. Can you give

Michelle: me an example of somebody that you may have worked with who made a change in how that happened?

Nancy: Sure. Uh, so, I mean, we can work with money, which is something that is a big, you know, a big issue for people.

Nancy: So I had a client who came to me and, you know, her vision, you know, the change she wanted to make was to move out of a rental and into a house that she owns. And so the vision, you know, she was able to really uncover and craft her vision around what it would look like, feel like, what would be happening.

Nancy: Then we had to move into choice. And this is where it gets, it gets a little tricky because then we start dealing with the unconscious. Because as much as she was committed to putting away money each month toward the down payment, she also had a hidden commitment, an underlying shadow commitment To immediate gratification, which meant that she would find herself late at night scrolling and buying shoes on Instagram.

Michelle: But of course,

Nancy: right. And so we, then we got to really look at, okay, you see your vision. You want to be able to buy a house. You have made an outward, you have made an outward commitment to saving money, but there’s an unconscious part of yourself that is more committed to the immediate gratification than the saving.

Nancy: So we had to work with rewiring that so that her true commitment was in alignment With what it is that she wants and from there, I find

Michelle: sometimes like if you made that commitment to save that money, even if you didn’t shop, um, in the middle of the night on Amazon, that all of a sudden you find yourself doing it because you’re, you’re saying, no,

no, I’m doing it.

Nancy: Right, right. And so that’s why it’s important to look at, you know, we have, we have a commitment that we are thinking. We’re, you know, we have a, we have something we think we’re committed to, and then we have a commitment that’s even deeper that usually tracks back to childhood that we are actually serving instead.

Nancy: So that first needs to get in right relationship. We need to see, and then listen, if she decides to buy shoes at midnight, At least she’s consciously sabotaging instead of conscious, you know, instead of unconsciously sabotaging. But the truth of the matter is happy ending. Once we were able to sort of rewire this, she was able to align her commitments.

Nancy: Save the money down, down payment. She now owns two houses. Oh

Michelle: no. Wow. Yes. You can teach an old dog new tricks. You can. Moral of the story, but sometimes there are no magic wands out there. So, um, there you have it. It’s the thought of that your days of changing are over. You can now kick back and relax.

Michelle: Think again. Change is in your future. So rather than resist it, the message here today is important. Brace it and be curious if you want to send your thoughts, reactions, questions, or success stories to the show. Please visit our website, www. decluttering55plus.

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Michelle: Thanks for joining us and have a clutter free day.