SPEAKER_00 0:18

Coming up on this episode of Media Rebel Unplugged. It's never too late to find out things about yourself to reimagine your life. Now when I think of, I can just picture myself where I was walking my dog thinking, well, other people do it. Why not me? How did you start that journey on my 50th birthday? My friends insisted on taking me away for the weekend, which was amazing because it was the first time in my adult life where I didn't have to worry about anyone else but me. It is never, ever too late. I have discovered, I believed a hundred percent that I did not have a creative bone in my body. And after 50, I said yes to things I never would have said yes to in my life. My mother always talks about her regrets, and I thought, I don't want to be that person who gets to the end of their life looking back with all these regrets.

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Welcome back to Media Rebel Unplugged. I'm Janice Becker. Today we're talking about rebuilding in midlife, especially after loss, caregiving, or a long stretch of putting yourself last. Joining me is Debbie Weiss, best-selling author, speaker, and podcast host. She's the author of On Second Thought, Maybe I Can and the Sprinkle Effect. And she hosts the Maybe I Can podcast. Debbie, I am so happy to have a fellow podcaster here today. Thank you so much, Janice. I'm really excited to be here. Tell our audience a little bit about you and you know, take us back to what drove you to be in this new season of life.

SPEAKER_00 2:00

I became a family caregiver at 17. My father, who was only 46, had a massive stroke and survived but was permanently disabled. And my parents were divorced, so I became his caregiver for the next 30 years. And then when my oldest son was two, he was diagnosed on the autism spectrum and gained some other diagnoses as well. And when I turned 50, just found myself overwhelmed, exhausted, like on that hamster wheel. And but yet from the outside, because I also have a small insurance agency, I live in a nice house in a beautiful neighborhood. Like from the outside, everything looked great. But inside, I was truly dying and didn't even know. Exhausted is not a strong enough adjective to really represent how I felt. And when I turned 50, it was something about that number that really hit me hard. My dad had passed away a year before I turned 50, and he died with so many regrets. And my mother always talks about her regrets. And I thought, I don't want to be that person who gets to the end of their life looking back with all these regrets. But the thing was, I had no idea what I wanted to be or do. I wasn't someone who always dreamt of writing a book or becoming a musician. I had nothing. I I felt like I have no talent. I didn't have any specific drive to do anything. So I've been at this for over a decade.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

I cannot imagine being so young and becoming a caregiver for a parent. And I can't even imagine the level of exhaustion by the time you hit 50 and go, I've spent my whole life taking care of everybody but me. I've heard from other women when they hit either 40 or they hit 50 and they go, Oh, wait, what am I doing at this stage of life? This isn't what this isn't what I want. And they don't always know what that is.

SPEAKER_00 4:17

So, how did you start that journey of discovering? On my 50th birthday, my friends insisted on taking me away for the weekend, which was amazing because it was the first time in my adult life where I didn't have to worry about anyone else but me. You know, when they said, What do you want to do? I was like looking over my shoulder, like, me? Are you you're asking what I want? And one night at dinner, one of my friends said, Okay, let's go around the table and talk about our hopes and dreams. And I thought, hopes and dreams? Like, I'm done, right? I'm 50. Isn't it over? I have hopes and dreams for my kids, but nothing specific for myself. And between that conversation and that feeling about regrets, I came back from that trip and I thought to myself, if I was being honest and I looked at everything, I knew that the first thing that had to change was my health. So I have struggled with my weight literally from the moment I was born. At 50, I found myself over 100 pounds overweight and um here for my kids and my future grandchildren. And so then that help piece is a bit more of a motivating factor than it is when you're 20, 30, 40. So I had been successful on Weight Watchers many, many different times. And I said, I got to do something differently. Every time in the past, I had these goals that were pretty specific. It was like I'm going to lose 25 pounds in three months. And if I only lost 10 pounds in three months, well, then I didn't achieve my goal. And I would mentally berate myself. What a loser. You know, you can't do this. What's wrong with you? That kind of thing. And then that was the end of it. Instead, I said, I don't care about losing weight, how much weight I'm going to lose. I don't care about what I eat. The only goal I'm going to set for myself is that I'm going to go to a meeting every week. That's it. None of those other things matter. I'm just showing up. And I did that for about two or three months. And every week when I showed up, I felt really good because I achieved my goal. And after a couple months, I was good with it. And then I said, What else can I add? What else small and manageable? And I kept building. And about three and a half years later, I had lost 90 pounds. I have completely changed my mindset around my weight and weight loss and weight management. And when I saw that, I thought, it's by changing the way I thought, changed everything. Where else in my life can I apply this? And so the next thing that I went to tackle was my money situation, which was something that I wasn't being honest with myself about. I didn't share with anyone else just how bad my situation was, including my husband. He knew a little, but not to the full extent. And um I said, all right, I've got to do something. And and that's kind of how that all started. And that realization is what led me down this new path, this new purpose in my life, start of looking at what I can do financially.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

You have some really good points when it comes to goal setting. We sometimes create these really big goals for ourselves. And the big goals aren't a bad thing, but it's important to have these micro goals along the way so that we don't feel discouraged. We don't look at this mountain. And I always use the analogy of I feel like I'm climbing a mountain. And when you first start climbing up the mountain, you're off to a good start. And you get about halfway there, and it really starts to hurt you. You start feeling the aches in your muscles, and I don't know if I can get there. And the closer you get to the top, the harder it becomes. And then you get there and you feel successful. But the thing is, is if we were starting down here at the bottom of the mountain and just staring at the top, that mountain seems so big as opposed to all right, let's take it step by step. And so those micro goals keep us moving forward. And I love how then you were able to take that in one area of your life and apply it to other areas as well. Because we could do that, and a lot of times we do not.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

Yeah. Once you see success, and and do you realize but that small micro goal, like going to the Weight Watchers meeting? How is that helping me achieve? I have to lose a hundred pounds. It seems like it's a little drop in the bucket that's not making a difference. But at least it's the domino effect, right? You feel good. I achieved that little goal. Okay, great. Now what else? It's I turned it into a game. It was like exciting. Yeah. Let's see what else I can do.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Maybe I can do this. So once you you the way now, how do I make money? Is that how you start speaking?

SPEAKER_00 9:23

And and you wrote these two books. So it turned out that I originally, when I started down the money thing, I did the same thing, you know, starting really, really small. I actually started selling some of my things on Facebook Marketplace. And even when I made like three dollars, I was so excited because I was doing something about my trouble, my problem. Where for years I was just sticking my head in the sand and just taking responsibility, taking ownership, and taking action, even though it was so small, even though, you know, I would save whatever I, you know, cash I got from Facebook Marketplace and I had enough to pay for my haircut every month, you know, or I didn't have to take it out of my regular budget or whatever it was. And that started to feel good. So I decided that I was going to sell these health supplements for this network marketing company because I really loved their product and had been using it. And through a podcaster that I listened to, whose course I took on mindset, she was talking about how important it is to be part of a mastermind. And I had no idea what that meant. So I thought, okay, I'll join this mastermind and they'll tell me how to sell this network marketing thing. But that's not what happened. 150 people online in this mastermind introductory call. People were saying, I'm a divorce coach, I'm a money coach, I'm a relationship coach coach. They were using terms I never heard of. I I literally felt like I fell down the hole in Alice in Wonderland or landed in Oz. It was just very eye-opening. That's when I realized, my goodness, I can take my experience and help other people. And so I ditched the whole network marketing thing, and the book books were never part of it. I started as a coach for family caregivers to help them learn to prioritize their own self-care. And then it morphed from there.

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I love how you hear what other people are doing and get inspired by that because caregiving, there I don't feel like there's enough coaching for that to focus on yourself. I've witnessed family members of my own who have taken care of people, and I've seen how it deteriorates their own health.

SPEAKER_00 12:02

Once I started, I was in a period of my own caregiving. At that point, my husband's physical and mental health had started to deteriorate, and my oldest son's as well. And when I was talking to caregivers, of course, they wanted to share their caregiving story with me. And I would get off feeling very drained. I was in such a season of struggle with my own caregiving that it was just too much for me emotionally. It's never too late to find out things about yourself to reimagine your life. No, when I think of, I can just picture myself where I was, walking my dog, thinking, well, other people do it. What what do they do or what makes them different or special? Why not me? I wouldn't I won't know unless I try. And I think what happened too was it became less about the money and now more about helping people and my overall mission. And as a matter of fact, I have to say, in this aspect, I'm probably not the best business person because I keep forgetting I'm supposed to be doing any of this to make money.

SPEAKER_01 13:35

That is a great thing. When you can help people and still you benefit from that monetary gain from helping, is I feel like that's the best way to do it. I I can relate. I come from the tech world. I'm doing digital marketing. I have a couple agencies, but it wasn't fulfilling. And so when I was 40, when I turned 40, that was my eye-opening theme of how do I take everything that I've been through in my life, repurpose it to help other women, inspire other women. Um, that's kind of the idea was formed to do the podcast because I had felt so alone as a female leader. Other women are probably feeling the same way. We go through really difficult, challenging things that we still have to lead our teams, our companies, even our families, when inside we're internalizing and we're going through a lot of different struggles. I mean, leading a company where you're going through a divorce is not an easy thing. Being a single parent, going through those things, and I was just like, what? Why not? Why not? Really? Why not do it? Why not try it? If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. But I tried it. So for other women listening like us who have been in that season of uncertainty and are hitting a milestone and they're feeling like maybe it's too late.

SPEAKER_00 14:50

What would you say to them? Well, I would say it is never, ever too late. I have discovered after 50, as I was taking these steps, I said yes to things I never would have said yes to in my life. And I was scared out of my mind. But almost every time I learn something about myself, something that I like, something that I enjoy that I never would have known about myself. It's like I've uncovered a new side of myself. And through this journey, especially when I wrote the first book, I was in some group, just a day, a day kind of thing, with other authors. And I was one of the youngest. There were people there in their East who wrote their first book. And isn't that what we all want? Like, I don't know. I mean, retirement sounds great, and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that. And I enjoy a lot of leisure activities, but I can't imagine not now that I know what it feels like to do something that I'm passionate about that's fulfilling, helping other people, I can't imagine saying, Yeah, well, I'm just done with this for now. I I I want to keep learning and growing and helping until I draw my last breath. So I don't believe it is ever too late. Ever, regardless of your circumstances, because for the majority of my life, I blamed it on my circumstances. It's never impossible. It's a story we tell ourselves to make ourselves feel better or keep our keep what we think is keeping ourselves safe, but it's really keeping us stuck.

SPEAKER_01 16:37

It's great advice because we are we're creators, we're naturally creators. We create our either the the story that we tell ourselves or we create the opportunity that gives us a new path or who knows what doors could be opened. And I was on social media yesterday and just saw a video. Uh it was very inspiring, and it was just talking about how Ford, I think he was almost 45 when he created the Ford Company. You've got Colonel Sanders, I think he was 75 when he launched KFC. She was the other one. Martha Stewart. Martha Stewart was in her mid-40s. She wasn't really well known a household name until she was about 50. The list goes on and on, and I think those are really great examples to help motivate people because they're who we can easily identify with when they're like these bigger celebrities. But the only thing stopping you is you.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Couldn't agree more.

SPEAKER_01 17:30

So let people know where they can find information on you because I know you offer speaking and you have your books online, and I feel like you have all these other amazing things that are probably in the work. So where can people learn more about you?

SPEAKER_00 17:43

Thank you so much. The best place is my website, which is Debbie Rwiss.com. You're on I am all the socials.

SPEAKER_01 17:51

All the socials, all the links are on the website. Perfect. All right. So make sure you connect with Debbie. Debbie, I want to thank you so much for being on today and for inspiring so many people with your story and everything that you're doing. Well, thank you again for having me. It's been great. You're welcome. Thank you for listening to Media Rebel Unplugged. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or share it with someone who needs it. And we'll see you next time.