How to Live Gratefully When Life Isn’t Going Your Way with Kristi Nelson

In this episode, Kristi Nelson discusses how to live gratefully when life isn’t going your way. She explores how to learn to cultivate unconditional gratitude – appreciating life itself, even amidst difficulty, aging, or illness. Kristi shares insights from her cancer journey, explores the difference between circumstantial gratitude and deeper gratefulness, and offers practical exercises for embracing aging with self-compassion. Together, she and Eric discuss mindfulness, the impermanence of life, and how to find meaning and presence in each moment.

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Key Takeaways:

• Concept of “gratitude without conditions” and its significance.
• Difference between circumstantial gratitude and deeper, unconditional gratefulness.
• Personal experiences with mortality and illness influencing perspectives on gratitude.
• Importance of mindfulness and living in the present moment.
• The role of impermanence in cultivating a meaningful life.
• Cultural narratives around aging and the pressure to defy it.
• Embracing the natural process of aging with grace and acceptance.
• Practical exercises for self-acceptance and connection in the aging process.
• Shifting perspective from obligation to opportunity in daily life.
• The interplay of joy, grief, and the complexity of human emotions in the context of gratitude

Kristi Nelson is the author of Wake Up Grateful: The Transformative Practice of Taking Nothing for Granted and also The Gratitude Explorer Workbook. From 2014 – 2023, she was the Executive Director at A Network for Grateful Living. Kristi’s work as a consultant includes uplifting the power of gratefulness through teaching, speaking, interviews, and writing. Her current focus revolves around celebrating aging as a miracle, privilege, and opportunity worthy of our celebration and appreciation. Being a long-time stage IV cancer survivor moves Kristi every day to live and love wholeheartedly, and to support others to do the same.

Kristi’s work in the non-profit sector has focused on leading, inspiring, and strengthening organizations committed to progressive social and spiritual change, including the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Spirit in Action, Institute for Jewish Spirituality, Wisdom 2.0, and The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, among others. She has also served as Executive Director of the Women’s Fund of Western Mass, founding Director of the 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. Kristi received her BA from UMass/Amherst, a graduate certificate in Business and Sociology from Boston College, and her Master’s in Public Administration (MPA) with a concentration in Leadership Studies, from Harvard University. Every day she cherishes the blessing of living among beloved friends, family, and farmland in western Massachusetts.

Connect with Kristi Nelson: Website | Sign up for Kristi’s Monthly Museletter

If you enjoyed this conversation with Kristi Nelson, check out these other episodes:

Why a Grateful Mindset Matters: A Conversation with Kristi Nelson (2023)

How to Practice Gratitude For Year Round Benefits: Special Episode!

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Episode Transcript:

Eric Zimmer 00:00:00  Hey friends, we’re working on a special episode of The One You Feed in collaboration with Proxy Podcast with Joe Shaw, and we want to hear from you. If you’re struggling with an addiction that doesn’t often get talked about, or you feel like no one quite understands your experience and you’re feeling stuck. We’d love to hear your story and the questions you’re wrestling with, whether you’re in recovery or just trying to make sense of it all, we’re gathering real voices for a potential conversation on the podcast. If that sounds like you, just head to one UFI dot net slash. Share your story to learn more and fill out a quick form that’s one you feed. Net share your story. Thanks so much and we’d love to hear from you.

Kristi Nelson 00:00:43  This day is not something that I can take for granted. It was not promised to me. So living in that realm of what can you not take for granted is pretty much anything. Life holds everything for us.

Chris Forbes 00:01:03  Welcome to the one you feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts.

Chris Forbes 00:01:09  We have quotes like garbage in, garbage out or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don’t strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don’t have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it’s not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:48  You know how we usually.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:49  Think of gratitude.

Eric Zimmer 00:01:50  We think of it as something we feel when things go our way. When the test comes back clean, when the sun hits just right, when work is going well. But Kristi Nelson, author of Wake Up Grateful and the former executive director of A network for Grateful Living, invites us to a different kind of gratitude, one that isn’t dependent on things turning out right.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:13  She calls it gratitude without conditions. Gratitude for life itself. Not because it’s easy, not because it’s always good, but because we’re still here, breathing, feeling part of the whole thing. That’s what we talk about today. How to live gratefully. Not just when life goes our way, but simply because we get to be alive for it. I’m Eric Zimmer and this is the one you feed. Hi, Kristi. Welcome to the show.

Kristi Nelson 00:02:41  Hi, Eric.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:42  Or I should say, welcome back to the show.

Kristi Nelson 00:02:44  Yeah. Thank you. It’s so good to be here. Thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:02:47  We talked a couple years ago. We talked a lot about your book called Wake Up Grateful. The practice of taking nothing for granted. You used to be the director of a network for Grateful Living. And so we talked a lot about gratitude. And here we are in November, and it’s the month people think of gratitude. And I just wanted to spend some time going a little bit deeper into gratitude, some of the challenges that it causes, some of the misperceptions about it.

Eric Zimmer 00:03:15  And so we’re going to get to all that in a second. But we’re going to start, like we always do with the parable. And in the parable there’s a grandparent who’s talking with their grandchild, and they say, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And grandchild stops a thing about it for a second. They look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I’d like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do.

Kristi Nelson 00:03:56  It is critical. I think that, you know, what comes to mind is the ability to actually hold both those wolves in some kind of embrace inside ourselves. So for me, what that means is acknowledging. Recognizing the bad wolf, isn’t about denial and resistance.

Kristi Nelson 00:04:17  And, you know, so it’s an interesting thing, like how you hold these forces inside yourself simultaneously. And that’s really of interest to me. I think that greed is so different. I think about grief, you know, that we’re all living with grief and we’re all living inside right now. I think a lot of fear inducing circumstances and there’s there’s a lot that people are contending with that they might call the bad wolf. So I think, you know, hatred and greed and those kinds of things are so negative. But I think making the space to actually acknowledge those things and that we can coexist. But what do we what do we nourish? Is really that that question and what do we nourish that can be big enough. And for me, that word unconditional is really important. That can be unconditional enough to hold everything right till the very end of our lives. And so nourishment is probably a good word, like where we offer our attention and what we fill ourselves up with. That also acknowledges the fact that the bad wolf, which for many people it has many different colors and textures and and everything that is still held inside us and acknowledged as part of the human condition.

Kristi Nelson 00:05:35  Right.

Eric Zimmer 00:05:36  Talk to me about unconditional. What is an example of or what do you mean by something that’s unconditional that we can hold to the end of our days?

Kristi Nelson 00:05:46  Yeah, it’s so big. I think one of the reasons why I’ve been so drawn to Brother David Frost’s work is because, for a variety of reasons. But, you know, the idea of what can we hold on to in the midst of difficulty and in the midst of going right to the very last, our very last breath? That, to me is super important because gratitude tends to, for instance, hang its hat on things and people and circumstances that we’re grateful for, like, oh, all the things my body can do, all the things. And yet I’m of the mind, especially having face stage for cancer and survive that, that, that I want to have a way of holding gratefulness, which is gratitude without conditions in my mind. Gratitude for life. so to speak. As a double entendre, I want to be able to hold on to those kinds of experiences while I’m in my last days, while I’m in my last breaths.

Kristi Nelson 00:06:50  So what are the things that are sustainable that don’t rely so much on circumstances and in the conditions around us, because those are all impermanent and they’re going to change. So the unconditional part is super important to me, and there is more conversation about it. Like Liz Gilbert talks all the time now about the spirit of unconditional love. And so I think that’s an important conversation that’s important to uplift. Brother David says that joy is the happiness. That doesn’t depend on what happens, that we can have a reservoir of joy internally that doesn’t tie itself so much to what’s happening in our lives that’s making us happy. And I would say that gratefulness is the same way for me about gratitude, that gratitude is highly conditional and circumstantial for the most part, and fleeting and all those things, whereas gratefulness is something that we can hold on to. It’s basically, you know, as you say, gratitude for life, as I say gratitude for life. But it means that we can be in that space and hold that in our hearts right till the very end.

Kristi Nelson 00:07:58  And I want things that are robust and, as I say, sustainable. That can stand the test of difficult circumstances. And that is really cool to me, you know, to figure out what are those things that we can hold with us that will be trustworthy, that are tested by difficulty and can not just withstand it, but sometimes become stronger?

Eric Zimmer 00:08:23  How do you go about developing that gratefulness for life? Because you’re right. Gratitude is very circumstantial. I have reverted back to first thing in the morning when I wake up. I kind of just before I do anything before I get out of bed. Just a little gratitude list and it is all circumstantial, right? It’s. Oh, I slept well last night. Oh, look at the dog that’s here. Oh, it’s about what’s going right in my life. And I think there’s a lot of value in doing that. write a lot of value in in a world where in a mind where we frequently focus on everything that’s not going right. Spending time consciously focusing on what is going right is really important and valuable, but you’re talking about something beyond that.

Eric Zimmer 00:09:08  So how do we move from this gratitude that is circumstantial to gratefulness for life? And part of what’s baked into that, I think, is that there are going to be times where the circumstances really aren’t good. If you’re, you know, if you’re a week from your death, on one level, there’s a lot of bad circumstances. From another perspective, maybe not, but how do you get a gratefulness for living?

Kristi Nelson 00:09:34  Yeah, it’s a big question. And I think Jane Kenyon has a poem called otherwise, I don’t know if you’re familiar with it, but she was in the midst of active cancer, and she ended up dying of cancer not long afterwards. And what she kind of took inventory of was, you know, today I was able to have lunch with the person I love. I went out and I worked in the barn and I worked in the fields, and I noticed these things that were beautiful to me, and one day I know it will be otherwise. So for me that remembering the remembering of our mortality, the remembering that if we’re going to be grateful for something, to also recognize that it’s tied to particular circumstances and conditions which may be favorable in that moment but are not permanent.

Kristi Nelson 00:10:19  So impermanence, to me, is a really critical grounding in which to plant gratefulness, that recognition that even today. So for me to wake up and expectations are also interesting, what they do to both augment and also detract from. Right. So what we experience, the more that we expect our everything to go a certain way, the more devastated we can be. And yet, I think there is something about waking up in the morning and saying, I’m still here. for me, it’s. It really is grounded in. I get this day, and this day is not something that I can take for granted. It was not promised to me. So living in that realm of what can you not take for granted is pretty much anything. Life holds everything for us, right? You know? And I will mention Andrea Gibson, who I’m sure you’re familiar with, the spoken word poet from Colorado who died this summer, and just an extraordinary human being who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and outlived her prognosis, but knew that they were going to die for years and lived inside, that I’m not going to be living forever.

Kristi Nelson 00:11:31  And talked about the fact that that woke them up to the most incredible bliss and the most incredible ability to be present for life when they didn’t expect it to always be unfurling forever out in front of them. And I think the biggest thing we take for granted, Eric, is time. So, you know, the idea of getting another day can be something that is the very deepest kind of foundational level where we plant gratefulness. Oh, this is a day like Maya Angelou says, this is a beautiful day. I’ve never seen this one before. So the idea of non expectation, the idea of kind of waking up into this is a gift. How do I live into the idea that my day is a gift rather than something I’m entitled to? I can expect it should go a certain way. I can control it. You know all those conceptions which are real quality of life inhibitors for me.

Eric Zimmer 00:12:49  There’s a lot in there that I’d like to kind of dissect. And I think the first one that I want to talk about is the difference between a grateful way of living and the emotion of feeling grateful.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:05  Yes. Because a lot of listeners of this show listen to this show because, like me, they have they have a tendency towards low moods. Depression, anxiety. They have these things right. And so sometimes thinking if today is a gift, it almost doesn’t feel like that. For some people it’s like, oh here we go again.

Kristi Nelson 00:13:24  I know right.

Eric Zimmer 00:13:26  Here we go again. And I’m a big believer in sometimes you can’t think your way into right action. You have to act your way into right thinking. And so practicing gratitude is an action. Yeah, right. Trying to think about what you’re grateful for is an action. Yes. How do you counsel people when There’s an intention to live more gratefully. There’s even some actions that they might be taking, but the emotions are still not there. What do you do in that case?

Kristi Nelson 00:13:59  I think there is an important place to be able to say it’s a both end proposition. And for me, I wouldn’t say that I don’t struggle with difficult emotions at all.

Kristi Nelson 00:14:12  Like, for me, this is not about the panacea. And, you know, gratitude like skipping along down that’s, you know, but there are so many images of like, if I were only grateful all the time, I would be what? But for me, gratefulness is grounded in taking nothing for granted, including life. So guess what that does? It puts a little bit of, but it puts a little damper on that top. Like. Which is why happiness doesn’t work for me. Happiness just is something that I feel is wildly conditional and pretty elusive. And and it’s not robust enough. It’s not deep enough for me. It doesn’t acknowledge enough for me. And and so having faced death myself, I feel like I live in this place that holds all of it at once. And what I’ve learned is that there’s a way in not taking my days and my life and everything that’s in my life for granted, that I can live what I would call with poignancy, which is the awareness of the preciousness of life at the same time.

Kristi Nelson 00:15:17  So how do you kind of how do you lift up for people who struggle with difficult emotions? How do we lift up that sense of there is a preciousness to life, and that’s also about connecting with what are you grateful for? Right? Like. And that those things are impermanent, that we can’t tie ourselves to the things and the people in our life if we do to do that in this way, that allows it to be poignant, because we also know it’s they’re not going to last. And that’s the deeper level that I think for me works because it acknowledges what’s also hard and what is painful. And in the midst of that pain, I kind of feel like if people know I live near tears most of the time, I just do like I could cry just it. Because when you live in that state of recognizing the preciousness of everything and also the the ephemeral nature of what we love, including life, it renders us into a different space emotionally than what I think a lot of people sell gratitude based on or sell happiness based on, which is you never have to touch those things.

Kristi Nelson 00:16:28  I say fold them all in. You know, they’re all part of the equation for me of the most meaningful way to live my life. I’d rather live my life meaningfully and the way that feels meaningful and real than in a way that feels pretentious and like, you just scratch it, and it just. It pops like a balloon. You know, anything that scratches it. And so then you have to avoid all those conditions. And that’s a hell of a way to live. You know, because right now the world is bombarding us with so many things which are appropriate to live in a state of vulnerability. You know, we’re always living in that. Does that answer your question? Somewhat.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:06  It does. I want to now move on to this idea of impermanence, because impermanence is, as a Zen student for so many years, it’s one of the marks of existence. The Buddha talked about the three marks of existence, and impermanence is one of them, right? It is folded into life. It is just an inescapable fact.

Eric Zimmer 00:17:28  Yes. And we can view that as good or bad. What I find challenging is, and I’m curious if you find this challenging, I can reflect on the fact that my life is going to end, and I don’t know when I can reflect on, like I’m petting the dog. This could be the last time I ever get to pet a dog. I mean, hopefully not, but it could be. Right? Right. So. So I do these things to try and heighten that preciousness. Right. And yet it’s really hard to get anywhere near what happens when someone has cancer and finds out they’re going to live. So for you, I’m sure that, you know, after cancer, there was a very high degree of poignancy. There was a very high degree of the preciousness of life. There was a very high degree that every day is a gift as you moved further from it. How did you keep some degree of that? I’ll use the word you used, the poignancy. How did you keep some degree of that? Grateful for another day? Yeah.

Eric Zimmer 00:18:37  Front and center for you.

Kristi Nelson 00:18:38  It’s such a great question. Thank you. Because there really was a period where when I outlived, like, I think the three years that I expected that I might live. And then I kept living. I, boy, it was like a crash of, you know, going into the real world of taking everything for granted again. That’s all I can say, you know? And all of a sudden, the little things became big complaints, things that I would have like before, you know, in the first year. So there is kind of a lifespan a little bit to that, I think. And yet as we get older and we embrace this idea of, here’s the truth, none of us know. So I think for me, it’s not about living in this state of like Zuleika Jawad says that her doctor, you know, she she is living with leukemia. Third occurrence. And she says her doctor tells her to live every day as if it’s her last.

Kristi Nelson 00:19:40  And she says, I can’t do that. I just can’t live that way. And who? Who could? You know, like. I mean, it’s a that’s a tall order. That’s a very tall prescription from a doctor. Especially live every day. It’s like she just said I’d be making this. I’d be running all I’d be, you know? I’d be just useless.

Eric Zimmer 00:19:59  It’s a cliche also, right?

Kristi Nelson 00:20:01  Like it? It’s a cliche.

Eric Zimmer 00:20:02  It is not the sort of thing that holds up to any sort of robust inspection. As an instruction, it points in the right direction.

Kristi Nelson 00:20:10  It points in the right direction, Brother David says. And other people say live every day. And now Zulaikha Jawad says, I’m going to live every day as if it’s my first. But I also that doesn’t stand up for me because I can’t live every day as if it’s my first, because there’s something about the preciousness of life, and also the truths of life that are difficult, that are seasoned by my lifespan and my wisdom.

Kristi Nelson 00:20:34  So how I greet life right is never going to be as if it’s my first, and it’s never going to be as if it’s my last. And even like Steven Levine, who wrote the book in the 90s. A year to live. You know, live as if you have a year to live. Even that that felt it made me so mad when I actually really, truly did have possibly less than that to live. And it was like, wait a minute. And and you’re asking people to fake it? And how do we how do we live inside that? And then I just thought, well, the place that we can live, that is most true, that is not put on like I’m going to live like it’s my first day. you know, you look at Mary Oliver, a bride married to amazement and a bridegroom holding the world in my arms. Those are both things. Those are kind of like, that’s a beautiful way of holding both this idea of awe and wonder and amazement, and also holding the world in my arms is a sense of responsibility.

Kristi Nelson 00:21:29  It’s a sense of, you know, dealing with what is difficult and heavy. The world is heavy. Yeah. Amazement is light, you know, and I think There is something about now. What we have is now. It’s not. We have today. And hopefully we’ll have the whole day today. You know, like that’s a that. That would be great. I’d love to have the dinner and planning. You know, tonight. That would be really awesome because I bought the feta cheese and all that stuff.

Eric Zimmer 00:21:59  So I know I’ll just get there. So there is there’s a high mortality rate on the same day. People, you didn’t know this. We don’t advertise it. Yes. On the one you feed, they don’t last the day, so good luck with it.

Kristi Nelson 00:22:11  Okay. You are hysterical. Jeez, I wouldn’t have said yes. You know, because I was really counting.

Eric Zimmer 00:22:16  No, no, that’s why we. That’s why we have to keep it under wraps. Yeah.

Kristi Nelson 00:22:20  We keep it a big secret.

Kristi Nelson 00:22:21  Right? Well, now you blown it, now you’ve blown it out into the marketplace. So I think that the thing about now and today that is so powerful, right, is that it’s that’s my mindfulness kind of training, and that’s where I lived, which is like, how can you get grounded in this breath, this moment, this here, This delight. This difficulty. This love. This longing. It’s all. It’s all right here. And it’s all that we need. If we can really telescope. Yeah. You know the past, you know. Andrea Gibson again. This is a one of my favorite quotes of theirs. Regret is a time machine to the past. Worry is a time machine to the future. Gratitude is a time machine to the present. So if we can telescope into the moment and live with that experience of like, look at how alive everything is for me right now and for me at least I can speak for myself and for a lot of people who I know that when we don’t take our lives for granted and expect that time is going to unfurl in front of us forever and ever, that we’ve got 40, 50 years to fulfill all of our things and we really bring it in here.

Kristi Nelson 00:23:32  It can be really enlivening. It can make us feel more alive. and to me, the quality that I’m looking to cultivate most. I would say for myself that contains gratefulness is a sense of aliveness. So right to the last breath I can be alive, I can be alive, and I’m no less alive than anybody else, even if I’m lying in a hospital bed. So aliveness is my birthright, in a way. And as long as I’m breathing, aliveness is something that I can enrich. I can, you know, I can seek to kind of enliven aliveness in myself. And then there is also the idea that maybe we can stay alive to people after we’re dead. You know, that there still isn’t aliveness that we can carry on, but happiness. No. You know, you know, a lot of things just don’t stand that test for me of unconditionally. So, you know, back to this idea of just how do we live this way? How do we live gratefully and not just get kind of despairing, like, oh, this might be the last time I pet my dog.

Kristi Nelson 00:24:40  But the last time I hugged this person I love. And yet there’s also something that I don’t know. Quoting so many people. You know, John Hawkes love as a long, close scrutiny. Love is a long, close scrutiny. The more that we pay attention, the more lovingly present that we can be to the things that we love. And we really let ourselves feel that vulnerability and that engagement. And I think this is something a lot of a lot of us are trying to avoid. And certainly the culture prescribes that, and especially, I would say, about aging, that those of us who are getting older, it’s like, oh, you don’t have to age. You can be the optimized age or the super age or the defiant age or the, you know, the you never have to look or feel old. Nothing’s going to hold you back. And I just think, oh dear, you know, that’s such a loss of for me, what’s rich about getting older, which is holding that place of life doesn’t last forever.

Kristi Nelson 00:25:34  And in that truth, how do I want to navigate it?

Eric Zimmer 00:25:58  Check in for a moment. Is your jaw tight? Breath shallow. Are your shoulders creeping up? Those little signals are invitations to slow down and listen. Every Wednesday, I send weekly bites of wisdom. A short email that turns the big ideas we explore here in each show. Things like mental health, anxiety, relationships, purpose into bite size practices you can use the same day. It’s free. It takes about a minute to read and thousands already swear by it. If you’d like extra fuel for the weekend, you also get a weekend podcast playlist. Join us at one you feed. That’s one you feed. Net newsletter and start receiving your next bite of wisdom. All right, back to the show. The book you’re working on called Aging Gratefully, kind of probably. I’m assuming you’re making a play off of the phrase aging gracefully. And I think about this a lot because part of me is an aging fighter. I’m going to take as good a care of myself as I possibly can.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:09  I’m going to not allow myself to start restricting my life based on age. I’m like, there’s a bunch of things I’m doing to cultivate an aspect of youthfulness that I think is valuable, particularly to what you’re talking about. Aliveness.

Kristi Nelson 00:27:25  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:27:25  And if I’m not careful, that crosses over into fighting aging, which is a losing battle on some front. What I’m trying to do, and I guess is as similar to other binaries, you know, young, old, masculine, feminine. Right? I’m trying to always sort of thinking like, how do I pull the best of each of those things? Yes. And put them together. Yeah. Right. And and so I think about this aging question a lot. And I do think that there’s a certain point, I don’t know when it is where mortality is in closer view.

Kristi Nelson 00:28:02  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:03  You know it happened to me sometime in the last five years. Like up till then I knew of course I’m going to die you know, blah blah. You know it but.

Kristi Nelson 00:28:12  It’s theoretical.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:13  I’m seeing it. And as I watch people age I see that like that thing just grows bigger and bigger and bigger because you start losing friends. Lots of people start getting sick. You start to age. Mortality is just more in your face.

Kristi Nelson 00:28:31  It is.

Eric Zimmer 00:28:32  And so I think what you’re. Well, let me not put words in your mouth. Talk to me about what I just said and your idea of aging gracefully.

Kristi Nelson 00:28:41  Yeah. So I think it’s an interesting you know, the book is very much in the early stages, and a lot of my thinking is in formation. And yet there is something about I went to a very, you know, groovy new agey bookstore recently and was looking on aging the aging shelf. And it was literally all every single book was about how you can kind of defy aging on some level. And I think that is, you know, there’s a reason this is happening right now because the baby boomers, those of us who are born between 1946 and into the 60s, were hitting an age where right now we’re a big market.

Kristi Nelson 00:29:18  You know, basically people my age over 65, I’m over 65, used to just be kind of put out to pasture. And we weren’t consumers, product consumers or.

Eric Zimmer 00:29:30  You know.

Kristi Nelson 00:29:31  In the same in the marketplace, in the same way that had a lot of money symbols attached to it, I think. So now I look at like all of the prescriptions, all of the possibilities and what that does for me a little bit, that’s, you know, one of the things that’s hard is it seems to kind of blame people who age with challenges. You know, there’s a way that like, yeah, it’s it reminds me of kind of the, the early days. I mean, I don’t want to disparage anybody’s thinking, but some of the early days of Louise Hay and Bernie Siegel and those guys in the 80s where if you died, it was because you didn’t want to live enough. So it was a fault of will. And I feel like the same thing is happening now about aging. So, you know, which is it’s getting younger, you know, so what, midlife is going to start to be an option for people, which is like, oh, you don’t have to hit midlife.

Kristi Nelson 00:30:21  You can just, you know, keep staying in for I feel like there’s, you know.

Eric Zimmer 00:30:25  Stay in your 20s forever. Everybody that’s in their 20s is like, get me the hell out of my 20s. But then I think from there you start, like, slow. Slow it down, man. Slow it down.

Kristi Nelson 00:30:35  Exactly right. Right. So where’s that peak age? It’s like, you know, I’ve had to deal as a result of my cancer, which metastasized to my spine. I have had to deal with a lot of mobility challenges and pain challenges and physical challenges. So limitations. Right. As I’ve and and I had that in my 30s, because the cancer was when I was 32. So I’ve now lived I’m now over 65. I’ve lived more than half my life now since cancer, which is just stunning when I hit that threshold moment. Yeah. And yet what was interesting was a nurse said to me, when I was really sick in my 30s, young 30s. Your peer group is now in their 70s and 80s.

Kristi Nelson 00:31:20  Your peer group is in your in their 70s and 80s. And I was there I was like 33 going, whoa, that. Where is the comfort in that? And yet I did find comfort in that, which was interesting, which is I feel like people who are older don’t take what they have available to them for granted. So it’s kind of like you can’t because you know that the lifespan of what you have available to you is shorter, whereas we can convince ourselves at any age, all the time. Oh, I’ve got, you know, I’ve got years and years and years and years to fulfill on this. Yep. And whether that’s forgiveness or whether that’s fulfilling a dream. But, you know, so aging gracefully. Yeah. You know, I think that that’s a prescription. There’s a lot of things that are prescriptions. And I’m trying to kind of get into this idea of how can we connect with the miracle of being alive, that there is something actually truly miraculous about the body still being alive after any number of years, and the number of things that could have gone wrong and had to go right just for us to be here right now in this conversation for both of our lives.

Kristi Nelson 00:32:26  Like there’s something about kind of Defying the odds. Already that, I think, is worth celebrating. Like there’s an improbability for me to make it to 65 years old, whether I had been in cancer or had a cancer experience or not. So there’s something about celebrating. What the hell is your body doing in every single moment to keep you alive? Like, to me, that is worth like getting up in the morning and going get, oh, Jesus, that’s the biggest Hallelujah.

Eric Zimmer 00:32:52  Yeah. I love to learn about how the body does some of the things it does, and it’s just incredible. Like you said, the number of things that are working in harmony and synchrony, the intelligence embedded in it is mind boggling mind. And that’s it for me. That’s a beautiful way of taking it less for granted. Yes, absolutely. When I think about just like what a single cell can do and I don’t know how many I have, I have a lot of them. Yeah, there’s probably more than more than most people.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:25  I don’t remember the data points. No, but.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:27  I don’t think anybody count. I’ve got more cells than the average person. That’s going to be the next aging marker.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:34  You can have you can have Snell and.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:36  You can have more healthy cells.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:38  We’re gonna inject you with cells.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:40  Other people.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:41  Give.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:41  You more. Well they are doing.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:42  They are and.

Eric Zimmer 00:33:43  All kinds. Absolutely.

Kristi Nelson 00:33:44  You can get injections of all kinds of things. So one is kind of the idea of connecting with the miracle of actually waking up in the morning and what the hell your body did overnight just to keep you alive. So for me, going through life gobsmacked is a great way to go through life. And that is in some ways gratefulness for me, right? So one is, whoa, this is incredible. Just to be able to do the things that we do the most basic things. And right until our last breath, there’s so many things that our body is still doing right. So we can marvel at the body all the way to the very end.

Kristi Nelson 00:34:16  It’s just a miracle. It’s miraculous what’s happening, as you say, in concert, in harmony. What’s happening inside our bodies, all the ways the systems work together. So the book is going to have a bunch of that. Then there’s also just the the improbability in a way. Right. Like, look at the actuarial tables on 65. It was not that long ago that 65 was beyond the age that most people, most women were living men to like.

Eric Zimmer 00:34:43  Oh, yeah, not too long ago. And by a long shot, I mean exactly. Both of us, you know, a hundred years ago, were probably not here.

Kristi Nelson 00:34:49  Absolutely not. So the actual acts, those kinds of things to like, wow. You know, my grandmother, look at look at the ancestors who died at such young ages and what they went through. So there’s something about resting in the thing. This is not taking things for granted, really understanding the body in the miracle body, really understanding the improbabilities and kind of what we’re doing just to be alive every day is.

Kristi Nelson 00:35:12  So if you want to defy the odds, you can live in that space, you know, in a way like, wow, look at what here I am. And then to me, there’s something what I call privilege, which is the privilege of getting to be alive because there are so many people who would give anything to be alive today and who are not. And that really to me is a heart blower. So it’s like there’s mind blowing and then there’s heart blowing. And to me, that blows my heart open because I’ve lost really dear people in their 40s, 50s and 60s who wanted desperately to be alive, who did not fall under the rubric of what was being said in the early 80s, about like, if you want to live, you can live, you can defy cancer, you can defy, you know, all those things. They would have given anything to be here. And what I think if we live into that sense of man, how do I live my life in honor as an honoring of the truth, that there is a privilege to being alive and all these people who are.

Kristi Nelson 00:36:14  There’s a lot of people around the world suffering and who are not getting to live. And I get to age. And so we talked last time about this practice of, you know, what do you have to do? And switching that to I get to do it, I get to do these things, I get to run errands. I get to take care of people. I get to do the things that and what I call obligations to seeing them as opportunities, the opportunity to age. I get to age, I get to get older is what I’m really encouraging people to live into, which is this is an extraordinary opportunity. And how do we then wake up once we see the miracle and the privilege of being alive in a way, and don’t take it for granted? How does that wake us up to live differently? Not like, oh man, I’m going to go make the longest bucket list. I’m going to go to every country in the world. I’m going to climb every peak. I’m going to win world records.

Kristi Nelson 00:37:08  I’m going to do all this. I’m going to, you know, I don’t know what all the different dreams that people might put in their bucket list, but it’s like, first of all, what’s my bucket filled with already? Like, let’s take inventory in stock of what’s been extraordinary in our lives already. That’s really worth doing. And then what can we put in the bucket that really comes from what do we want to generate? What’s the meaning that we want to generate that can be more unconditional rather than what do I want to produce? What do I want to construct? What do I want to achieve? What do I want to accomplish? Because not everybody who’s aging has the same abilities to do all the kinds of things, and we are dealing with more limitations and more constraints and how to honor those and still feel like you can be a worthwhile human life is to be able to do things that are coming from that place of what do I want to generate? What meaning? What connection?

Eric Zimmer 00:38:02  Yeah, that’s a beautiful way to think of it.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:05  And I do find the slightly less capability than I had when I was younger. Peace to be. One of the real challenges for me of aging is I think about energy a lot. I’ve always thought about energy. For some reason. Having energy feels really good and being really tired feels really bad to me, and I’m working to kind of unwind that a little bit. What I don’t know is like, what’s the appropriate energy level for a 55 year old who’s healthy, right? What is it? Because it’s not what it once was.

Kristi Nelson 00:38:41  There are people who would tell you that it could be and it should be. And if you only buy this and take this, that it would be.

Eric Zimmer 00:38:47  Yes, 100%. And I just think I don’t buy that. All right. And I don’t want to limit myself by thinking at 55 I’m starting to lose capacity. Right. It’s this it’s just something I think a lot about how to do that. So as I mentioned earlier, I’m always kind of trying to split the middle.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:04  So I did this thing recently. It was a four day backpacking trip where we covered 75 miles in pretty mountainous terrain. Wow. And a lot of the guys were a decade younger than me, and many of them were two decades younger than me. So I thought about, I mean, there was a couple of guys my age who early on were like, this is nonsense. I’m not. I’m not doing this. And for me, I wanted to do it. That was my not not buying the I’m too old to do this argument. Yeah. And I realized I don’t have to keep up with the 35 year olds. Like, I’m going to do this thing in at the pace I’m going to do it. And for me, that was bringing together the middle way of those two things, right? Like I’m going to acknowledge that I don’t have the body. I did it 35 and I’m not going to try and try and do that, and I’m not going to let being 55 be the thing that tells me, oh, that’s too hard for me to do.

Eric Zimmer 00:39:55  Yeah. And and so I think that’s, you know, where I’m trying to, to figure these things out.

Kristi Nelson 00:39:59  It’s beautiful because it’s in the gray area. It’s not all or nothing. It’s not like all of a sudden, you know, I hit 65 and it’s not like I put myself out to pasture now, you know, and I am, but I, you know, there are people who do, you know, my I just remember talking to people who were in their 50s who was like, I’m retired, I’ve done enough now, I’m now I’m done. But then I think we’re also in the other extreme, which is I did a workshop with Liz Gilbert recently who said, we are a culture of purpose anxiety. Like we really live in. It’s like, what’s my purpose? What’s my purpose? And so it’s got to be like, right to the bitter end that we have the sense of purpose that drives us. And I think it’s the drivers that are really worth questioning. Like, what are we driven by? And she said, you know, is it possible to be kind of preoccupied with the idea of being present versus having the sense of purpose, which is often tied to what’s the impact I want to have, which can be very ego ish, and what’s the legacy I want to leave, which is also egoic just, you know, it’s like, what do I want to leave behind me? So like this idea of how can I live into what’s true now? And to honor that which is your body, its its limitations and its lack of limitations, to be honest about that, to say what wants to emerge, what wants to arise from that place, that for me, I think Comes most meaningfully from seeing that miracle of being alive.

Kristi Nelson 00:41:27  And also, where does that kind of miraculous nature and the privilege and not taking it for granted, what opportunity doors does it open for us? My really good friend Ruth, just finished hiking the Camino, the Camino 500 miles for her 70th birthday. And she’s somebody who’s. Yeah, she’s incredible. And she’s she’s somebody. And she walked it, and she walked at her own way, at her own pace, like you say, listening. I think the big thing is how do we listen well to ourselves? How do we listen to what? Yeah, to what is both challenging and to honor that and to also what can we still do? What can we do, because we get very identified with what we can’t do. And but being honest, I think that kind of and honest inventory is something that a lot of us are really moved by and is important. And so that honest inventory has to keep taking place. And I think it’s really easy to hurt ourselves to and to hurt other people and do stupid, stupid stuff.

Kristi Nelson 00:42:30  you know, as we get older that we’re trying to prove something, yet there’s also something like what happens if we take away what having to prove, you know, like proving and producing, like, I don’t have to produce or prove. What does that do? Does it render me like I just want to die? Or does it say something else wants to arise and emerge from me and my life?

Eric Zimmer 00:42:49  Yeah, I think it’s. Well, the thought that popped into my head was the Hindu religion has has a concept of life stages. They’re very clear about there’s a time for you’re young. There’s a time for pushing for career, for family, for. And then there’s an age where your priorities ideally should shift and they shift towards more of a spiritual bent. And I’ve always loved that acknowledgement that there’s something to an appropriateness for the age that you are or or I don’t like that word appropriateness that they’re honoring. Maybe that maybe that is the right word and an honoring a recognition that different stages of life bring different challenges and gifts.

Kristi Nelson 00:43:42  Yes. Yeah. And it makes me think, Eric, just what are the gifts that we could be offering that we often are kind of just riding right over in order to continue to prove something or whatever that really is, to go beyond what our capacity truly is or our passion truly is for what we want to contribute. And and a lot of that has to do with relatedness and relationships and connections. And, you know, so just I think the deep inquiry, the self-reflection is also it’s still important to give ourselves time for those kinds of things as we’ve hit particular junctures as well, when the body is changing, the mind is changing and and not to miss those opportunities for reflection and refinement about how we’re living our lives. And I think a lot of people who are interested in this work that I’m doing now are really interested in feeling permission to do that, because the culture’s not granting it so much right now. You know, as what I would say.

Eric Zimmer 00:44:40  Before you check out, pick one insight from today and ask, how will I practice this before bedtime? Need help turning ideas into action? My free weekly Bites of Wisdom email lands every Wednesday with simple practices, reflection and links to former guests who can guide you even on the tough stuff like anxiety, purpose and habit change.

Eric Zimmer 00:45:02  Feed your good wolf at one you feed. Net newsletter again one you feed net newsletter. So you recently taught a workshop at Kripalu about this idea of of aging gracefully without telling us the whole curriculum of everything you did. What’s something that you asked participants to do or exercise that they did, or something that maybe we could offer listeners that they could do?

Kristi Nelson 00:45:31  Oh, thank you. That’s such a great question. It’s quite profound. And one of the things that is extremely powerful for people. There’s two exercises, I would say. One is really looking at themselves in a mirror and and taking basically three minutes. And we give everyone a mirror on the wall. Right. And they stand there and then they three full minutes of gazing at your face, and then you draw your face on this piece of paper and you draw all the lines that you see, even the little lines, even the faint lines, you draw your lines and then you. I call it the love lines exercise, where you write the names of the people who have loved you and who you’ve loved, who have brought those lines that not just from suffering, but from joy, from passion, from concern, from afar.

Kristi Nelson 00:46:26  yeah. You gave me this line. You know, I swear, I think.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:30  I.

Kristi Nelson 00:46:31  Said that.

Eric Zimmer 00:46:32  I’m going to allocate 70% of these to a previous marriage, so.

Kristi Nelson 00:46:36  Okay. But there. But calling them love lines. So, like, you know, when I’m joyful, I see my, my lines are all, all over the place. So it’s like, what are the experiences that people who have brought expression to my face, who have helped me become the person who I am and how I look today. So love this love lines exercise. And then that kind of goes into this very deep thing with an about holding, an exercise that often does, which is holding our face in our hands and to be held. And so we have people trace each other’s hands around the faces and, and to feel held. And then what are the qualities with which you want to hold yourself as you age? And you write one in each finger so you have ten qualities. holding this beautiful, this crazy self-portrait.

Kristi Nelson 00:47:27  Because, of course, I make people not try to do it. They have to do it really quickly and with their non-dominant hand. So it looks like a wild cartoon character. And then, you know, you use your, your dominant hand when you write the little lines in and the names and stuff. Otherwise it would just be like a big mush pile. But it’s extremely moving to people. And then they introduce themselves to each other and, and talk about this as a way of introducing this is, this is my life. This is how I’ve been loved and this is who I’ve loved. And the people who show up here on my face in this way. And then here’s how I want to hold myself as I age. So it’s a beautiful way of introducing ourselves to each other. And then there’s another thing that I want to say, but I won’t emphasize it too much because we don’t have time. But it’s an ancestor’s meditation about how our ancestors would see our lives right now, see us right now, and the amount of joy and want that we have lived to the age that we have, that we’ve got the privileges that we do, and to feel that sense of just awe and responsibility just to be held.

Kristi Nelson 00:48:39  Held in the space of our ancestors. And then to write ourselves a letter from one of those people who died younger than we are. And to imagine what kind of wisdom would be imparted about how it makes sense to age, given the lives that we have and what they would wish for us. So it’s very that’s very kind of cathartic.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:05  yeah.

Kristi Nelson 00:49:06  It takes courage to age and it takes courage to age with consciousness and awareness and open hearted and open minded, and to age gracefully is really how I want to age, you know? And I think a lot of other people do, too. Which is recognizing and honoring that life doesn’t grant all of us the same opportunity. And it might. We have no idea how long we’re going to be granted this opportunity. So in the field of that truth, how do we want to live our days and our hours and hug the people we love? It’s a good question.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:38  Well, I think it’s an excellent question for us to end on. You and I are going to continue in the post-show conversation, where I want to go a little bit deeper into some practical aspects of of a gratitude practice.

Eric Zimmer 00:49:52  Great. The things people can do to make their gratitude practice a little bit more alive. Or how to start one if they don’t have one. Listeners, if you’d like to get access to the post-show conversation where we cover those things and you would like to support this show because we always need support.

Kristi Nelson 00:50:09  Yes.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:10  Please go to one. Kristi, thank you so much. This has been such a pleasure. I’m so happy to have had you on again, and I’m really excited to see your book when you get there, so I’m sure it’s going to be wonderful. Your previous ones have and this is a great topic. So thank you.

Kristi Nelson 00:50:28  Thank you so much Eric. It’s a joy to be here. And I hope everybody joins not just to listen to me and you, but just to support the beautiful work you’re doing. So thank you.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:37  Thank you so much for listening to the show. If you found this conversation helpful, inspiring, or thought provoking, I’d love for you to share it with a friend.

Eric Zimmer 00:50:46  Share it from one person to another is the lifeblood of what we do. We don’t have a big budget, and I’m certainly not a celebrity, but we have something even better. And that’s you just hit the share button on your podcast app, or send a quick text with the episode link to someone who might enjoy it. Your support means the world, and together we can spread wisdom one episode at a time. Thank you for being part of the one You Feed community.