104: Campfire Lessons – Did You Fail, or Did You Stop Trying?

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FULL TRANSCRIPT: 

Episode 104 of the Your Empty Nest Coach Podcast

00:00:00

Christine:  You are listening to the Your Empty Nest Coach podcast with Coach Christine, episode number 104: Campfire Lessons:  Did You Fail or Did You Stop Trying?  I work with mothers of high school students and beyond, who are in the trenches with sad and possibly, overwhelming thoughts about what their life will look like when their baby heads to college and begins to leave the nest.  My clients’ big question is what will I do with my time?  Is this you?  I’ve been there, and I get it.  Empowering you to write the next jaw-dropping, amazing chapter in your life is my passion.  I am energized by leading you in the process of exploration and am thrilled when you unlock the power that lies within you.  This podcast is my gift to you.

00:00:48

Hello, my empty nest friend and CEO of Your Life!  If this is your first time here, thanks for checking out my podcast.  If you are a regular listener, I can’t thank you enough.  Today’s episode is primarily my thoughts as I sat by the campfire recently.  You know I love analogies and I’m fairly certain I’ve shared this one in a variety of ways with you but always, I make a small spin that’s different.  Thanks for listening to my casual fireside chat, quite literally, I hope you enjoy it!

00:01:23

Before we dive in, a quick reminder, that if you find yourself talking back to me at any part of this episode; if something resonates with you; or if you have a quick tip to share with my audience, please take the opportunity to leave me feedback either through SpeakPipe or my Google Voice number.  You’ll find the information to do this in the description of this episode: on Apple Podcasts click “Details”; on Spotify click “See More”; on Overcast press the I for information button. Get the idea? Of course I always have full show notes with links to anything I discuss in the episode, and a full episode transcription on my website.  Those reside at YourEmptyNestCoach.com/P (for podcast) and 104 (for this episode’s number).  (YourEmptyNestCoach.com/P104).  I can’t wait to hear from you!

00:02:12

Thanks!  Thank you!  It’s time to thank our sponsor.  This episode is sponsored by my membership community, The GPS Support Flock; Your Flight to Success in the Empty Nest.  If you are ready to find the GPS of your life, sign up to receive an immediate and free download of my PDF, "How to Find Yourself in the Empty Nest," our GPS Life Principles document.  You will also have the opportunity to learn about our community.  See the link in this episode's show notes or fly on over to my website, YourEmptyNestCoach.com.  Click the GPS Support Flock button.  See you soon!   

00:02:55

An extra thank you today, to Dale@CrushCollegeStress who took the time to provide my podcast with a 5-star review on Apple Podcasts!  Thank you, Dale!  She titled her review “Coffee With a Friend” and well, I am going to encourage you to head over to Apple Podcasts and read it yourself.  Maybe leave your own review while you are there.  Yeah, I’m going to make you work today.

00:03:23

I would like to let you all know that I understand the upcoming fall season may not look the way you were expecting it to look. I’m going to add a chat area in the GPS Support Flock membership specific to the Not So Empty Nest, so if you are struggling with your children not leaving the house, that space will be for you. 

All right, let’s get to our campfire chat.

00:03:47

Hi, so I am at a campsite, and I thought I’d share my thoughts with you.  I shared it a little bit on Instagram.  Excuse my stuffed up nose, my allergies are off the charts, but I love being in nature so much, it is worth it to me.  I am at a campsite.  It’s local.  I drive about 28 minutes to get to this place, and last night, my daughter and I came out, did a campfire, we went back home.  That was enough for her.  She does not like the exit of the tent at night or the restrooms, when you come out and it’s suddenly, like really dark.  She is not a fan of sleeping over.  I normally do, but I thought let me try this, with COVID, and everything, any extra time I spend in the public restrooms is probably not good.  I went home last night, slept, came back this morning, by myself.  I’ve been reading, doing a couple posts on Instagram, prepping for an interview that’s coming up in a few weeks, which you would have already heard, with Dr. Jill Grimes, or I guess I say it Jill Grimes, MD, is the proper way to say it.

00:05:04

So many thoughts are with me about building a fire.  When I build a fire, first of all, it took me multiple times to get to a point where I can open my toolbox and easily grab the magnesium and steel, and feel confident enough that within a minute max, I will have a flame on a cotton ball.  So that’s how I start my fire.  But it took me time to get to that point, right?  So that’s like step one.  It’s like leveling up.  If you look at my analogies back with leveling up, and simmering, this whole thing’s a big simmer.  That was level up one.  Then, there’s the wood.  I’ve talked about this, I think in my retreat video, where in other places, fires just used to always be taken care of by the men who were camping, and it’s just something I wanted to be able to do.  Figuring out where the wood is, to purchase.  I’m in Pennsylvania, you can’t bring wood from an outside area in, because of bugs and lantern flies.  The last time I stayed here it took me 10 or 15 minutes to drive outside of the park to find somebody selling the wood.  I knew that ahead of time, now.  I picked that up on the way in, so that was easy. Okay, there’s another level up, and that’s kind of a side later level up, when you think about it chronologically.

00:06:38

Then there’s the wood.  Now watching the men in the family build fires, there were two types of wood they always used.  Now, I know that they were using, tinder and logs, and that’s really it.  Sometimes maybe newspapers would be put in there.  Sometimes we’d use firelogs to start the fire, or those little FireStarter packets that would start the fire, and it would go long enough so that a log would catch.  So, it took me a while to actually go, okay, I’m not doing this right.  How am I going to do this?  So, you know, Youtube to the rescue, and discover that tinder, kindling and the log are all needed, and the tinder is what I had prior called kindling, just to confuse you.  Discovering this is awesome.  There’s this middle piece of wood that I have needed.

00:07:43

So then, I went and bought an axe.  This is two or three levels up in camping trips.  I bought my own axe, you know that story if you listen to me.  I love my axe.  It’s green, of course.  And learned that after I purchase the wood, I can split it some more and create some kindling, and then, from that, you can create tinder, or I just pick up sticks from the ground.  All right, so those are the components.  That’s like a whole other level up.  But then, it’s like putting it all together.  I have all the pieces.  I think I’ve camped five or six times solo, that I’ve tried this or with family where I’ve started to learn how to build my own fire.  For the first time, this weekend, I was able to very quickly know what to do, remember all the steps.  I did call tinder and kindling the reverse.  I was teaching my daughter, no, this is tinder and this is kindling.  I was wrong, and I needed to learn another thing because I was having trouble with my axe trying to get pieces of kindling out of the logs for this trip, but I figured it out.  I went home, looked it up and I can consistently, now build a fire.  So there’s the one lesson, is in anything that you do, you have all these steps involved.  And giving up at any one step, doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it just means you stopped doing it.  Right?  I could have stopped at any point and said I can’t make a fire.  It doesn’t mean I can’t make a fire, it just means I stopped trying.  So, there’s lesson one.  Lesson two is once you get to a point where the fire is going, multiple times it will look like it is going out, and if you don’t maintain the fire, and at first, it needs a lot of work.  Just like if you’re losing weight, if you’re building a business, if you’re discovering who you are.  If you want a new career, if you want to learn a new hobby.  The very beginning, there’s a lot of work involved with it.  Learning all the pieces, and it’s the same thing.  Hello, airplane.  Do you hear the airplane?  I will wait ‘til the airplane passes.

00:10:01

Okay, I think the plane’s gone enough.  So, as you build the fire, and you get started, it takes a lot of work in the beginning to get the flames going enough to get the tinder caught, then get the kindling caught to catch onto the log.  Follow me?  Now we have a fire.  Let’s say we got to the point where the fire’s burning.  If you leave it and walk away, it will eventually go out.  It doesn’t mean that there aren’t things of value at the bottom of that fire.  There are those coals.  If you walk up to the fire that looks like it’s out, sometimes all you need to do is blow, give it a little air and it will reignite completely.  That’s just like anything we learn.  Sometimes when we go back to it, we think like it’s gone, we’re not going to do it anymore.  But we go back and it’s so much easier to start because those coals are going there for us.  Sometimes, we let it go so long, we don’t maintain it, we don’t keep up on things, that it’s not just blowing a little air on it.  We also need to move the logs around a little bit, so we need to just flip them.  Move them in different areas.  We don’t even necessarily need to add anything, just flip things around, mix it up and suddenly you have a full fire again.  

00:11:27

So I want to encourage you if you’re working on something whether it’s yourself, it’s a project with others, just know no fire just goes right from magnesium and steel, flick, phoom, into a fire you can now cook over, and take care of yourself, and heat yourself.  No, there’s work.  There’s stages and they are all worth it.  They’re all worth it.  The best part is the skills that you learn in building the fire are now things that you can come back to and utilize again.  You can start a brand new fire in a different area in your life, and you have the skills, the resources and you have the faith in yourself that you can come back and complete it.  Enjoy, there’s your campfire lesson for today.  I believe in you.  You can process through the moments that feel like you’re making no progress.  Sure you can walk away, and that is your decision.  Also know that you can walk away and come back later.  I believe in you, you are amazing.  Thanks for listening.  This is your campfire lesson for today.

[Music]

00:12:39 

I hope you enjoyed my fireside chat, friend.  The questions I have for you in this episode are: do you jump to the thought, “I have failed,” or a similar thought, often?  And two, have you thought about moving some things around to ignite the flames in an area of your life?

[Music]

00:13:01

It is time for a quick tip, advice or thoughts from a listener.  

Rachel:  Hi, Rachel Lancaster here, MidLife Mentor from MagnificentMidLife.com.  Today, I’d like you to remember that even if you feel like you’re stuck in the messy middle of life, you are actually coming into your prime.  And midlife is absolutely the time for you to shine.

00:13:26

Well my empty nest CEO of Your Life friend, if you enjoyed this episode, I invite you to take a moment to subscribe to this podcast.  It’s free. Go ahead. You can do it right now. If you already have and you can take a screenshot of this episode and share it on the socials, that would be incredible.  My handle is @EmptyNestCoach.  As always, I provide content to make you think. My hope is that I am able to provide you with thoughts that positively impact your life.  Well, it is time for me to wrap this up, and you know what that means, it is time for me to remind you that you are amazing!  See ya!

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