Aloha, love. Welcome back to Becoming You. So I wanna start this episode by painting the very, very real picture. I am literally sitting in my bed with actually pretty terrible posture in Kauai with wired headphones. Like, you know, the old fashioned iPhone that you, you know, with a little jack thing that you plug into the computer or well, now it doesn't even plug into iPhones anymore unless you have a very old one. But there's no fancy mic. There's no perfect
setup. I literally have, like, a pimple pad on my face. But I'm sitting here with good energy and a quiet house while my husband has the kids out doing some boogie boarding. And here's what I wanna say. I almost didn't record this because I was telling myself, let me get everything else done first. Let me check a few more boxes. Let me feel all ready. Or at least this is what I tell myself usually when I'm in my office. My beautiful office. It's, like, 247
looks ready to record a podcast. But what I've been realizing is that's just perfectionism. It's an acuter outfit. We're not calling it that, but perfectionism is a form of procrastination. And it keeps me from what I like to say is my dessert, from the things that light me up, from the things that make me feel creative. It's this idea that, like, I have to eat my carrots first, which is do all the things when really understanding that this
podcast, this conversation, this is the dessert. So here we go. We're eating the dessert first in bed with headphones. Great vibes. So let's do it. So I wanna talk first about redefining balance in real time. Like, I'm literally on vacation and theoretically right now, I'm doing work. But I've been thinking a lot about this phrase recently and and listen, this is not a new phrase. I've been saying it in fact, I've been saying it probably so much in
the last decade. I don't even say it anymore because it feels redundant, but it's life by design. And ten years ago when I left my corporate job, it was so buzzy. It was like Pinterest board affirmations. Here's the thing. It still holds true. And it's not because I'm chasing the Pinterest board aesthetics even though I like those. It's because when I really think about everything in my life that I've that I've done And we're not talking, like, big action scary things, but things that I've
done that hold the test of time. My marriage, my parenting, the house that I built. Like, it's even my business, at least the best parts of my business. It's where I've designed with intention. And this, by the way, doesn't start with, like, the big huge moves. It starts with the days. And what I'll tell you here is I'm not looking for balance. And let's be real, I heard this years ago and I I so buy into it. Balance is BS.
The funny part about this is I literally have, you know, my my listener gift, my freebie is called the balance blueprint, and it's mostly because I love alliteration. I feel like I should have called it the harmony helper, but this doesn't have the same ring. But what I'm searching for and I what I think you're searching for, what basically every woman that I have in conversation with, whether they're clients or they're friends, is we're all searching for some type of calibration alignment.
Right? It's the ability to feel good, steady, energized. I mean, yeah, sometimes we want that, like, exciting rush. But on the other side of that, sometimes there's the lull, there's the drop. It's like when you have the caffeine and you feel really great until you crash. We don't want that. We want to feel that alignment, maybe not a % of the time, but at least, like, on purpose most of the time. And the truth is this episode this episode
is is, by the way, it's not about escaping life. I will probably go join them to boogie board also, but it's about not escaping life. It's about recalibrating life. And it's about how to build a life and days where you feel connected to yourself within what you're building. Because I noticed I I told my husband, I go, there is not much that I love more than being on vacation planning my next vacation. And as I was, like, multitasking in both Chatuchipati, Airbnb, and on Google, you
know, hotels last night, I was like, wait a second. Like, put it down and just be connected. Because, like, even now, I'm on vacation. Not just technically. I really am on vacation. I'm still checking my email once or twice a day. And and I'll tell you, this is by design. It's not because I'm oh, well, I'm probably a recovering workaholic. It's I have an event next week, the Sheo slumber party, and I wanna hold that vision and feel tethered
to it without being swallowed by it, without being overwhelmed by it. So if I need to check-in, you know, twice a day and make sure that the event planner is doing all the things and, you know, the the women that are coming have the right information, like, I can do that in an intentional way. And ironically, we're we're in Hawaii years ago when V was just a baby. I remember we came here, and it could have been the fact I was juggling a just turned four year
old and a no. Just turned three year old and a brand new baby. But I had I remember I asked my husband on that trip. I was like, how are you so chill? And he's like, I deleted Gmail off my phone, and it blew my mind. And I will tell you, I did end up deleting it, and I've left email off for a few years. I can still go to a a browser if I have to, but, like, there's no email apps on my phone.
And that was, like, one of the first, I would say, big steps I took in learning how to disconnect from the noise to really reconnect what matters. And so on that trip, I was like, I'm disconnecting, and then it allows me to be connected. And that's where all the magic is. Right? So I wanna talk I'm gonna bring this all together as I I tell someone when I'm in a conversation. I'm like, don't worry. We're gonna come back around if it feels like I'm taking you on a on a
what do you call it? When you're when you're, like, hiking. On a wild not a wild goose chase. Like, on a reroute, don't worry. We're gonna come back to where we need to go. So I wanna share with you four anchors, nonnegotiables, whatever you wanna call them that help me feel aligned. And I've really been because I've I've not just been planning, and I love the planning. I love the design. But often, some of the best design is by going back and looking at, like, what has worked, which do
I wanna bring back, and what isn't working. It's the it's the constant maybe not constant, but it's the intentional auditing. And so I've come to realize that there are four simple things that help me feel really good in my life. In fact, I would say I was gonna say three, but then I realized there's a fourth aspect that is kind of like the thing that really brings it home. And they're how I design my version of alignment whether whether I am home, whether that's in Carmel or I'm
in Palo Alto. I'm traveling. I'm somewhere in between. And the first thing starts with movement. And it's funny because it's 10:00 right now, and I haven't moved my butt. Well, and that's not true. I did a workout. I did a forty five minute workout. I guess I have moved. I really love movement outside, I will say. So I work at a couple days a week with a trainer. I love doing yoga couple days a week. I try to, you know, intentionally do a, quote, workout four or five days a week.
But there is something about moving in the morning that is just and in nature that is it just calibrates the day. And it doesn't again, it doesn't have to be like you're sitting down for, you know, an hour yoga class or or standing up for it or a Pilates or whatever. You know, it can just be like, the last few days has been
walking to the beach barefoot. It's been taking a long walk over to the Sheridan, which is so beautiful here in Kauai to get the almond milk latte that I always feel like is gonna feel really good. Then I get halfway through. I'm like, I'm just not a coffee drinker. And it reminds me why I don't drink coffee. But that movement and and at home, it's walking my kids to school and occasionally remembering the weighted vest that I always commit that I said that I'm gonna wear every day. But
it gets me in my body, and it clears out the noise. And so when you can move intentionally and maybe for you, moving is like, hey. I'm gonna do ten minutes of calisthenics. Maybe it's stretching. Like, it's whatever feels good to you, and you know. Right? It's not about checking a box. But it's doing that, and I think if you can do it earlier in the day and if you can do it with some type of nature or sun on your face, you're just optimizing it
all. Not optimizing to be efficient or effective, optimizing to be aligned. The second is meaningful experience. Now on vacation, like, I noticed I get a bit stir crazy. I need novelty. I need something that stirs me. So in this trip, like, yesterday, we took Luca golfing. It's the boogie boarding We're gonna do, inner tubing. And it's not just to do stuff. It's not to pack the schedule.
It's that I want to have experience. I want to be, like, not just admiring the threads of my life, but, like, actively threading the tapestry of my life. It could be if I'm on a girls trip, a cacao ceremony in Mexico. A Couple Weeks ago, we were in Sedona, and and my husband and I did a UFO tour, which was so cool. And sometimes this could just be sitting under the sun and just noticing, like, my
kids. We'd be doing a lot of that is I'm like, okay. Mom's back can't handle two hours twice a day of boogie boarding or picking kids up out of the surf, but I can handle thirty minutes of it followed by thirty minutes just watching their delight. But it's that experience. And I would say in a day to day basis, this is also connection. It's something at the end of the day, if you do that old, we often do rose, thorn, and bud. If you've heard of that, like, the rose is
something wonderful that happened today. The thorn is maybe something that was challenging, you know, noting it, not complaining about it. And then the bud is something you're excited about. And our roses are almost always related to connection and experience. And then number three is a nourishing meal. And, you know, this doesn't have to be super bougie. I'm not not against bougie at all, but, like, this trip. It was our first meal was this incredible sushi truck with
the freshest sushi. It could be I mean, sometimes it's miss my breakfast. This morning, we made homemade pancakes with banana and Nutella. I know I did have I will say I had a protein shake first because protein before caffeine, but it's it's just about, like, having a nourishing meal. And ideally, that's a meal that feels present where you're not multitasking. Maybe you're in conversation. Maybe you're admiring of you. And I will say yes. Enneagram seven over here, I am often trying to well,
I'm I'm I like to share. So I like to try other people's food or at least I like to order all of the appetizers and then, like, last night, take half my food home. But no solo plates if you and I are eating together. And then last part is mindfulness. Now this can be breath work, sound frequencies, which I've really been into recently, with the Helix app. Check it out or Google it. It's not even out on iTunes yet, but that I'm like, shameless plug that is not a plug. It's
incredible. Or there's sometimes it's just like sitting in silence while everyone is asleep, but it's having that mindfulness that pulls me out of the noise and it really pulls me back to my center. It keeps to the point where we can think and we're not when I say think, I mean, we can actually have a conversation with ourself and we're not just having the drill sergeant version of ourself that is yelling at us or to do list or maybe not even talking nicely.
But these rituals are nonnegotiable. First of all, these are not about being good or perfect or even disciplined. What I've realized and and I believe me. I love to have a checklist, and I can write down all the things that make me feel great. Like, I had my probiotics this morning. I'm drinking my I don't even know what this green drink is right here that I'm drinking. It's more gut stuff. And these are about helping me be available. Now I would say I can be available
without the probiotics. So over time, they help me feel great. But but the mindfulness, the nourishing meal, the connection or experience, the movement, they're about helping me be available for the moments I want to live for, the moments that make it all worthwhile. So now let's talk a little bit about cycles. Because as I'm talking about nonnegotiables, these nonnegotiables are, like, the critical building blocks, foundations
regardless of what you're going through, the cycle, the season, the identity. And so speaking of that, I'm about to hit a five year cycle. And I've noticed this in my life. And I've noticed how my identity shifts. And what I'm really leaning into this time is not trying to burn it all down, which I know how to do really well. So as part of that cycle, we're coming up on one year in Carmel, literally on May 31. So we're just, I don't know, ten days out ish. And I can
feel it. This five year rhythm in me starts to stir. It's it's like, oh, there's an itch that needs to be scratched. And in the past, every five years, I've I've made some pretty big switches in real estate in the, I don't know, thirteen years I was, like, full time in real estate. I had two different companies I worked for for five years. I've had career pivots. I've had these big reinventions.
And right now, the pitch club is turning five this fall. I mean, I started working on it February of twenty twenty, but I launched it August, September of '20 '20. So I'm coming up on that time, which is really significant. And stay tuned because I will be sharing something. I am I'll say I'm incubating it now, and I don't even think it's gonna be ready to launch quotes quote in, in August, September, but it is interesting how this five year cycle is is
happening again. But what I'll share is this time, I don't feel like I need to burn it all down or blow it all up. I don't wanna start over, but I am feeling a big evolution. And and by the way, in online entrepreneurship, you can come out, especially now with AI with a new program, a new offer, a new master class, a new whatever, like, literally daily. And and there are people that are doing it. But this is about going deeper. It's about solving more of the right problems because I've spent
years chasing a combination of things. Part of my life, it was achievement. Maybe that resonates with you. Part of my life, it was novelty. I mean, always. I like I am not made to twist the same widget onto the same part over and over for my life. But it's also been chasing mastery. And now I'm building something that's rooted in more of me, and I invite you into that too of whatever it is that you're doing. Like, how
can it be more of you? Not to, again, to admire the threads of the tapestry, but to be part of weaving them. So speaking of the past year that since I've been in Carmel, the past year if we go back to February of twenty twenty four to
February of this year has been a lot. I got very up close personal intimate with my own shadows, with my own dark night of the soul, with slowness, with grief, with identity unraveling, the type of feeling that doesn't look good in photos, like, the type of feeling you do not wanna show up talking about unless you love feeling like a hot mess. And I think part of this move to Carmel and out of the go go go
Palo Alto. And listen, now that I wanna go back to Palo Alto, I I can feel, like, that get shit done energy, and it can be very useful to tap into and also very, very challenging for my nervous system. Because I get there and I'm like, oh, yeah. I'm feeling it. I wanna, like, build things. I wanna launch things. I wanna build all the things. I wanna do all the things. And then I'm like, oh, and my Oura ring says that, basically, it looks like I have COVID on how
bad my sleep patterns and my HRV and all the things are. And I get this from someone who doesn't drink and, like, isn't eating chocolate at midnight. So in what I've realized is in the slowdown of moving to Carmelon and working less and going deeper is, one, I needed it. I had to stop doing for a while, and I had to allow myself to pause. And what's really interesting is when you slow down, you end up dealing with or uncovering grief. Like, you remember how to be, but here's what
I've also realized in that in in actually allowing the grief to come. When I say grief, like sorrow, grief, like, all of the things. I mean, from not having grieved my my boyfriend that passed of cancer fifteen years ago to, I don't wanna say emotionally bypassing, but I have. Things that have been really hard and just allowing myself to sit in it. And in that, I remembered how to be. And not from a intellectual standpoint, but from a
somatic standpoint. But recently, I've been really something else is I don't wanna stay in the sand. Look. No. I want my feet in the sand. I can sit still. I can breathe. I can soak in the moment, but I also wanna get get up. I wanna wade into the water. I wanna move and not from hustling, not to prove anything, not to achieve, but to be engaged in that threading of my life. And that's that's what becoming you really is. That's what it was when I started it years
ago. And of course, it's evolved, but it really comes back to that core that it's not just about being. It's about that rhythm of be, do, have. And guess what? The doing can be dessert. It literally was yesterday when I was on this golf course with my nine year old son, and I was looking at my husband. And I'm like, I'm so effing grateful for you, and I'm so effing grateful to be a parent with you. And I was
telling my son I, like, effing love you. And we don't, like, use a lot of profanity in our family, but, man, sometimes it can be really effective when you just really wanna communicate. I know. Using profanity can be a sign of a smaller vocabulary. I swear I've got a vocabulary, but sometimes it just feels good. And I was saying this, and my son was, you know, he was it was his first golf round ever, and the weather was incredible, and the view was incredible. And it was just one of those
memory points. And I was like, I love being a parent that does things with my kids while also being really present, And not all the time. And it's been an adventure. It's been a journey. It's been a it's been a lesson. But as I sat there yesterday, I was like, this is literally what it's about. It's having these memories with my yesterday, it was just my son. And tomorrow I'll take my daughter to an animal rescue and we're gonna go doing this
like lazy river tubing through a sugar clean cane plantation. And I'm like, I know it's gonna be memory points, but that's what it's about. That type of doing is dessert. And so this is your invitation as I as I wind things down and get my swimsuit on and go hang out with my family is if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I wanna feel like myself again. I wanna create a life I don't need to escape from. I'm tired of living for the weekend. And by the way, this is not an
employee plight. This is a plight if you are feeling like you have to work so hard to deserve a breath. That today could be the day that you let go of perfection, that you can close the tabs, that you could stop waiting to feel ready, and you can just start designing something that feels really good from the inside out. So if you want a tangible, simple place to start, ironically, I've got the balance blueprint.
Alliteration aside, you know, I couldn't resist, but it's really not about the balance. It's about the reconnection. It's about the audit of what you want and building a life around that. Think of it as your harmony helper. You can go get it, on my Instagram at rebecca caffiro. I believe it's on my website too, but I'm gonna go check because I've got a new website coming out in a couple of weeks. But this is a way for you to intentionally design that
life. And by the way, if you are craving a deeper place to recalibrate, a deeper space that's not just a retreat, but a reset with real community. Now by the time you hear this, I think the Sheo Slumber Party, we're gonna literally be there. It will literally we're gonna be there this next week, but there's another one in, September. Go to go to rebeccacaffiera.com or go to my Instagram. I have the details there. It's two days, so much heart, zero
hustle. Yes. Strategy, more important soul connection. And you can you can find all the details there. It's the last event I'm having this year, at least for now. We'll see. Then the last I just wanna tell you is you're not behind. And I'm literally on this vacation going like, am I am I feeling behind? But you're not behind and you're not too much. And by the way, you're not meant to shrink to fit. You're just becoming. Until next time. This is Rebecca. I'll talk to you soon.