How To Reinvent Yourself With One Tiny Step A Day with Lorie Kleiner Eckert

Welcome And Why Reinvention Matters

Reinvention, resilience, and letting good enough be enough. My guest today is an expert in personal reinvention. Laurie Kleiner Eckhart is a dynamic author, fiber artist, and motivational speaker who has inspired over twenty-two thousand people. In her latest book, and we're gonna play with this because it could be try on life or high on life, she shares heartfelt and humorous essays on navigating life's biggest transitions from an emptiness to personal loss. Described as the magical love child of Nora Ephron, Laurie is here with us today to share her practical, vulnerable, and uplifting wisdom on finding resilience, embracing authenticity, and transforming your life at any age. Hi, which Laurie and I just discussed before we hit record, is a mystical word in Hebrew pronounced high. And this makes this book high on life with a Jewish twist. So welcome to Connect with Inspire Create, a podcast exploring meaningful conversation about life, work, creativity, and ways we can grow. Let's just slow down the conversation enough to notice what inspires us and how those insights can help shape what we create in our lives. These conversations that I share here go beyond just business strategies. We explore living with intention and self-trust, alternative ways of thinking and being, creativity, purpose, and personal growth, and navigating transitions in life. So I am Carol Clegg, your host, your gentle accountability and mental fitness coach. And I invite my guests from around the globe with a wide range of backgrounds to share insights on how they live, think, and navigate the wonderful challenges of just being a human in our world. So welcome, Larry. I am so looking forward to exploring your recipe for a happier life, as you say, doing more of the things that make you happy and less of the things that don't. Do we have to wait until we get to this later stage in our lives to give ourselves permission to do just that?

Well, we many of us act that way, I think, Carol. I'm so happy to be with you. I love it that you are a gentle accountability and mental fitness coach. That is, I love that. That's wonderful. So we should all be gentle on ourselves, but we're not. Absolutely.

I know, I know. And I mean, this has come back to the part, you know, where we need to do more of the things that do make us happy and less of. I'm quite serious when I say it seems to take a whole lifetime until we give ourselves permission. And then we reach the stage in life, we go, I'm gonna do it my way. If only I want listeners who might be younger than us to be encouraged to explore and embrace.

I agree. Yeah, I am the ripe old age of 74. And I tell my children, my son is gonna be 50 this year. I really, that's laughable. But anyway, so 54, he'll be 50 and have one will be 48, and one is 40 something else. I never know how old she is. But anyway, I tell them is that this is the best. It really is. This is the best time, and part of it is is that we've we're a little nicer to ourselves, or at least I am. I'm a lot nicer to

Chai Meaning And A Toast To Life

myself.

Yeah. That we can be so hard at ourselves. But we're I we were talking at the beginning about your latest book called The Chai on Life. And can you just share with the listeners the meaning of Chai and how it has helped you approach your transitions in life?

Oh, sure. So high is, as you said, a mystical word in Hebrew that means life. So if you've heard the toast at a a Jewish wedding, which is also often depicted on the big screen because they like when you stomp the glass, so it's often in movies. But the toast is la Chaim, and the root word is the same, it's life. So with this book, I'm kind of drinking a toast to life, and that word, C-H-A-I, can be, or it can be I like H-I-G-H. So I like to think that at this point in my life I am high on life. And and I like the mysticism of it also, because there's something magical or whatever, and maybe there is something magical as we get older. But I have to tell you, Carol, that I've learned so much from my kids. So my daughter Lisa is a social worker, and we were sharing a hotel once, and I said, I came out of taking from taking a shower, and I said, I'm such a mental midget, I couldn't figure out how to turn the shower on. And she's the mother of three boys, and she said to me, Could you rephrase that so that you're nicer to yourself? And I said, Oh yeah, okay, that shower is really hard to figure out, but I did it, you know. So we learn, we learn from everyone and everywhere. And it's yeah, and it's all a collection when we get, you know, well, at any stage, it's all a collection. We can do it. Yeah. So anyway, I do I love the title, High On Life. And as I told you before we started recording, that another podcaster said, if your book were a food, what would it be? And I said, Well, it would be chai tea, because chai tea, you know, looks like the right word. And that's a comfort food. That's you know, we think of having a cup of chai tea. We're relaxing, we're not frantic and running around like a crazy person. So all of that's rolled up into one in the title of the book. And I want your listeners to think of chai tea so they can find it on Amazon.

There you go. They'll know how to spell it.

Singlehood After Divorce And Independence

I know, Laurie, that you've written a few books and I was glancing through the titles, and one of them uh you have to tell me more about. I need a man's pants to wash.

Isn't that funny? Yes, that is uh my third book. And I tell you the truth, Carol, I think when I appear in person that people buy that book just for the title. I love the title. Tell me more. Yeah. When I was it was really after publishing my second book that I realized I like to write, which is a crazy thing, and I started to write a slice of life column aimed at being single in midlife, and I syndicated it to little newspapers, regional newspapers all over the country. And and so I need a man's pants to wash is a compilation of the first 52, the first year's worth of those columns. But what it was was you know, so I'm exploring singlehood at age 42, is when I got divorced. And I'm saying, I know you don't want to be single, but you can do it. So I'm your rah-rad cheerleader. I've always been your rah-rod cheerleader. It life is difficult, but you can do it. And and how the book got its title is that when my grandfather died, I said to my grandma, Don't you want to get married again? And she said, I need a man's pants to wash with great disdain. So when I am now single at 42, I'm not really sure whether or not I want a man's pants to wash. So the title has no punctuation. It if I've I punctuated it like my grandma, I would have put a question mark and an exclamation point indicating no way. But it's just left without punctuation so I could explore that topic. And I guess I figured out, I mean, I've been in since divorce, I've been into long-term relationships, and of course I've gone out with lots of Mr. Wrong, but but I haven't wanted to remarry. I haven't found a reason to remarry. And so I've been on my own for a long time. A long time. Thank you.

Well, I I'm gonna have to grab a copy of that because I just as you say the title alone is just an uh and then I love the story behind it that's absolutely

Good Enough Versus Perfectionism

perfect. So Laura, you talk about moving from perfectionism to good enough. And why do you think so many of us struggle with that good enough? And what could good enough actually look like in life?

Yeah, well, good enough, let's see. I I think that we struggle with it because maybe we don't get enough strokes, we don't not get enough pats on the back, and so the only way you can know you did a good job if you did the best job, you know. And and it does us in to go for the best. So the story in High On Life is about making chicken soup. For for years, I put a chicken in a pot, I covered it with water, I threw in whole onion, diced up carrots and celery, and I cooked it for two hours, took the onion out, cut the chicken off the bone, and served it, and everyone loved it. But then my daughter's mother-in-law gave her a cookbook, America's Test Kitchen, and it gave a different methodology for making chicken soup that involved chopping chicken legs into three chunks each, which you have to have a meat cleaver, so that was a challenge unto itself. And it was the craziest, most involved recipe that made me never want to make chicken soup again.

Ah, yeah.

No one had ever complained about the chicken in the pot covered with water and cooked for two hours. They loved it, you know. So we do ourselves in when we go for action.

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, when you're saying the myth thing of having to get a a cleaver and a this and a that and how many pieces, you've just complicated the whole thing of what was so simple.

Really, it used to be so simple.

Quilts As Storytelling And Motivation

So, yeah, and I've done that in lots of things. So I am a uh quilter as well. Yeah. And actually, I started my career as a motivational speaker who so always telling the stories of my life, hoping other people could glean life lessons from them. But I illustrated my talk back then with quilts that have words and symbols pieced into the design, which people can see if they go to my website, which is Laurie Kleiner Eckert.com and look at my art. But anyway, I read a book at one point by another, I mean, I was a professional quilter. I was using my quilts and lectures all over the country, not going to quilt groups. I went to every kind of group from PTAs to Procter and Gamble. But I read a book by another professional quilter, Freddie Moran is her name, and I have her book. And it is, as she says, you know, if ten fabrics look good in a quilt, a hundred will look ten times better. Well, I'll tell you, Carol, it's really hard to make ten fabrics go together in a quilt. A hundred is insanity, but I tried to do it Freddie Moran's way. And before long, the quilts I was making just the rules I had for myself were just too stringent. And so I gave up making quilts for a lot of years until thank goodness I became a grandma. And instead of making quilts with a hundred fabrics in them, I were making simple quilts that were going to be laundered a hundred times. Right.

Flip that one. I know because I love, I was looking on your website that you sort of spoke about when you did the the the the quilts are like a show and tell. Definitely. You brought along. Yeah, which is what a what yeah, so it's so different, such a different approach.

Yes, it it really was. And and I, you know, a motivational speaker, you know, there are dime a dozen, but and I wasn't talking about anything difficult. I was talking, come as you are, you're lovely. These are the words on the quilts, you know, gather all you can, meaning wisdom, not material, you know, possessions, bloom, soar. So it was not rocket science, but but I was telling the stories of my life. So you couldn't argue with it. And and it had back back then Sesame Street has changed a lot. When my grandchildren were watching it, the segments are like 20 minutes long. But when my kids watched it a million years ago, each segment was like three or four or five minutes. It just, you know, just kept pop, pop, popping. And that's what it would be with my lecture. So I showed 12 quilts. If I talked for an hour, each one was shown for five minutes. If you didn't like what I'm talking about now, hold on. I'm gonna change the topic.

You're gonna change the quilts.

So it really worked very well. Yeah.

And I'm sure the visual aspect actually helped people retain what you were talking about.

Yeah, I I I spoke once to Procter and Gamble, and so I had usually I had women's wellness events, but I had equal number of men as women in my audience, and they being corporation, were able to give a copy of my book to everyone in the audience. So I was a little nervous about that with all the men, but one of the reviews that I got afterwards was how compelling the story had been with these visual aids, and he wanted me to know that he was going home that night and telling his wife to put her feet up. He was going to take care of things, you know. So I thought it's wonderful. That is.

A Simple Two Step Reinvention Method

That's that's precious. So I know we've we've referred to this reinvention, and I know that you have certainly shared how you've reinvented yourself powerful ways over time. Can you just share with us some insights on that journey? And for somebody who's feeling a little stuck, you know, how to feel motivated into reinvention. Yeah, it's possible.

Yeah. Well, I think that name that you go by accountability is a part of it. So first of all, I want to say that people have invented themselves scans of time, so they have lots of experience. Because I think that you reinvent yourself even for happy things. So when you graduate college, well, you've got a degree, but now what? Now you have to become the accountant or the attorney or whatever. You only have a piece of paper now. And it really isn't easy to move on to the next step, even though that's a very, very happy, you know, reinvention. And so we've reinvented ourselves when we got married, when we graduated college, when we had a baby, all of these happy things. And we've also reinvented ourselves when we've broken up with a boyfriend when we flunked out of a class, when we experienced the death of a loved one. When oh, here's a good one for my age, when we get a medical diagnosis that changes things. You know, these are all in all of these cases we need to reinvent ourselves. But we have so much experience. So my plan for reinvention is a two-step plan because often when you're reinventing yourself, it is over something terrible, loss of a loved one being so major. But it's two steps. So so even though you just want to be on the sofa with your head covered under the blanket, you can do these two steps. The first one is whatever your normal healthy routine is when you're flying high, which I would assume means taking a shower, brushing your teeth, doing your hair, doing your laundry, exercising, eating right. Whatever is your normal routine when things are good, you really have to do that routine, especially when things are not good. So you have to have a healthy routine, you have to have a routine and stick to it, do it every day. And then the second thing is to take one teeny tiny step a day in the direction of your new life. And that's where an accountability log comes in. It doesn't have to be anything fancy. A spiral notebook from the grocery store will do. You just need to write down today's date and what you did as a step in the new direction. And and you'll find out, you know, that some of those steps are going to be missteps, some are gonna be side steps, you didn't know it at the time, but you're still taking steps. And if you do one a day, you're fine. Now, when you're doing a happy reinvention looking for that first job out of college, maybe you're a little bit more emotionally prepared to do stuff. So maybe set a timer for 15 minutes and see how much you how many phone calls you can make, how many emails you can send, whatever. And but then the next day, so maybe you did 12 things today. The next day you don't have to do 12 things. You don't have to top yourself. You don't you just have to do one thing a day. And it works. So one of the first times that I remember being so distraught and really pinned to the sofa because the silence in the house from Empty Nest was like a weight holding me to the sofa next to my tissue box. And so that I I so remember doing that. I have a green notebook, spiral notebook from Kroger. And really all I did was make phone calls over a few days. It it didn't take long. I was looking I wasn't looking for a new job or anything. I was looking for volunteer work, just a reason to get out of the house and be with other people. And I went to volunteermatch.com, and I'll be darned if I didn't find the March of Dimes, was looking for someone to stuff envelopes, and there were just so over several days I invented a life for myself, which is marvelous, and I was able to get off the sofa. So so that accountability is just really major. So if you're stuck, if you're stuck, just do one thing. And sometimes it's so hard to do the one thing. So it's like, well, how long is it gonna take me to make a phone call? Set a t really setting a timer for the phone. Right, but you're overthinking it. Yeah, set a timer for 10 minutes and go do it. You know, don't think about it, don't make yourself crazy, just go do it, and that works. So one of the things so I I still write slice of life stories that I post on my website. I post them twice a month. And one of them that I wrote recently was about cleaning out the house, you know, just uh which it's time to do that at my age. And it's such a hard thing to do. And I make the decisions in the same philosophy. Throw out, give away one thing a day. Well, I'll tell you, one at one thing a day is gonna take a long time to move through this house, but it's very easy to do. You know, like I in this room that I'm sitting in, there's cra there's a chest of drawers that has craft supplies for the grandkids. Well, the grandkids are too old for craft supplies. So I can really, I know exactly where to go to throw away one thing. And and I keep an accountability log. I write down what I threw out. Is that hysterical? But one thing a day, it's the accountability, it's making yourself that that's the important part if you're stuck. Right. One thing a day. And write it down. See, I'm a gentle accountability coach myself.

There you go. I I would I call it my my brave next step recently. And just trying to try, and it doesn't have to be huge, you know, it doesn't have to be a big thing. Uh but recently I I took a vacation in in Miami and I wanted to ride one of the bicycles that were, you know, they've got all these stations that you can rent bicycles and you can drop them off at a different station. But the whole process I allowed it to overwhelm me. But then what I did is I got up really early in the one morning where it wasn't gonna be all the tourists on top of the bicycles, and I had to put the app on my phone and I figured it out, and I released the bicycle and I rode off and I parked it somewhere else. And yeah, I went like that's my brave step for today. And then the next day I was able to pick up the bicycle because I didn't have to go through those steps, you know, that I'd yeah, that's wonderful.

And then you have to be both grateful that you were able to do it, and you have to really pat yourself on the back. You know, I mean you and don't tell a man that you did that, they'll look at you crazy, but all your women friends will understand that was major and you did it.

Therapy As Normal Ongoing Support

Oh, so Laurie, I know you we're talking about everyday resilience and these things that we're doing, but you speak openly about therapy and emotional support. And I'd love for you to share, you know, why is it important to normalize that and not just in a crisis but in everyday life?

Oh, yeah. I to me it's a kind of silly question. Why is it important? So forgive me, I'm not saying you're so. No, I hear what you said. No, I'm not sure. But it's just because it's it's just such second nature to me that it's no big deal to get counseling. So uh I it must be a story in high on life, but anyway, yes it is, that I sought counseling when my son was 14, so he's the one that's turning 50.

Right.

And Carol, I was in counseling for like 20 years uh until the therapist finally retired. And you know, and during those 20 years, sometimes she'd say, I think you're done counseling, and I'd say no, and vice versa, you know. But we but she became my my paid professional friend. You know, like I could hear her in my head. I knew what she was going to say. And she just kept me on track. And during those 20 years, yes, there was a time or two. I mean, she saw me through divorce, so there was a time or two when I fell into an emotional black hole and really needed counseling. But for the most part, I just needed some gentle guidance. And she was wonderful. And why not? You know, why not? But so, and as I say, my problems with my 14-year-old son, he was it was he wasn't in a gang, he wasn't flunking out of school, he wasn't doing drugs. The terrible thing that Scott was doing is he was getting himself and his friends to the mall after school and needing me to drive him home when it was time to cook dinner at rush hour, you know. So my problems were really small. And in the story in High On Life, I really apologized to those women who I mean, I was a stay-at-home mom then, and moms who are working who don't have money to put gas in the tank or a reliable car. I mean, I had everything, and it still was just so trying for me. I just had so painted myself into a corner with picking my son up from the mall. And Pam helped me get out of that corner and then a million other things through the years. So, you know, I when I wrote that story uh for the book, it was at the time that Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade had back to back committed suicide. So, really, I mean, they both look like they had everything. Why? Why? And so I encourage, I mean, at the end of that story, I give the suicide prevention hotline and promise my readers that if I needed counseling again, I would certainly go for it. And I I I see absolutely no stigma attached to it. I don't mind telling you this, I would tell anybody this. I hope your podcast goes to millions and millions of people. I don't I I I don't find anything wrong in doing this.

I agree with you a hundred percent. And having you know almost sometimes a neutral person who's not a family member, who doesn't, you know, who who's can from the outside looking in, and then also that opportunity for you to talk, of course. Because how often when you're talking that you kind of help yourself solve some of what you're presenting, but then to have a professional who's trained, my daughter is also a a clinical health therapist, and she asks the most beautiful questions, which gets you thinking and changes, you know, changes your past. I have a live-in.

Well, you do too. So don't you dare say that you're a mental merget and can't run the shower because it shouldn't be on your case.

There you go.

Flawsome Authenticity And Self Credit

This has been a wonderful conversation. I wanted, as we close out, you describe vulnerability as a strength and you talk about being flossome. So, what does living authentically look like for you now? And what would you invite my listeners to gently try this week?

Yeah, well, I like that word flossom. So each of the stories in High On Life has a full color illustration and uh one line to go with at one line takeaway. And one of them is about being flossom. So, yes, we all have flaws, but we're awesome just the same. So I really encourage everyone to be gentle with themselves. And, you know, like your story with the bicycle, you did it. Now, now be grateful that you did it and give yourself credit for doing it. So all of that goes in there, you know, and and always I say, you know, I've always professionally been the cheerleader to say life is difficult, but you can do it. But life is difficult and you can do it. We have to say that. And if not, call a therapist.

Well, Laurie, this has been wonderful. I will be sending listeners to make sure they can find out more about you at your website. So I have that Laurie Klein Eckhart, and I will put that in the show notes. And so just remember that Laurie has a selection of books, blogs, and artwork. She shares stories of her life. I had a peek myself and the books that you're reading, which is wonderful. And then her newest book that we have been discussing here, High on Life, is available on Amazon and anywhere else that quality books are sold. So all those links will be in the show notes. And then we'll find you on LinkedIn and Instagram. Are those the best spots to find you?

Yeah, I'll I'm everywhere. I'm on X, LinkedIn, Facebook. I'm I'm there. Just put your recliner record in a search engine and you'll find me.

And then we'll find you. Well, that sounds perfect. So thank you, Laurie, for being my guest today and for sharing wisdom and inspiration and happiness. So I appreciate you.

Where To Find Laurie And Carol

And for those that are listening to us today, if today's conversation sparked just a little something in you and you can think of somebody else who would love to listen to what we've been talking about, please share this episode with them. And if you are a woman coach or a business owner, just craving some focus, connection, or a little bit of gentle accountability, there are a couple of ways that you can work with me. I host a monthly mindset to Momentum Circle. It's complimentary, and you come with your goals and your challenges and get support from the group for business and life. Otherwise, I offer a 90-day accountability package for more personal support. So you can find out more about what I offer on LinkedIn, Carol Clegg, or you can look for me on my website, CarolClegg.com. So until the next time, may you have ease and flow to end your week. Thanks for being here.