138. Don’t Lose Her: Keeping the “Retreat You” in Everyday Life

Search terms: midlife retreat, post-retreat integration, women’s retreats, midlife transformation, personal growth for women 40+, retreat aftercare, School of Midlife podcast

Episode Summary:

Coming home from retreat is magical… and also really tricky. You’ve just spent days immersed in clarity, deep conversation, and the energy of other women doing the same work. And then? Real life comes rushing back—laundry, emails, carpools, deadlines—and suddenly it feels like the “retreat you” is slipping through your fingers.

In this episode, Laurie shares four powerful ways to bring your retreat home with you. Whether you’ve attended a women’s retreat, a leadership intensive, or even just taken a solo weekend to reset, these practices will help you integrate what you learned so you don’t lose momentum the second you unpack your suitcase.

In this episode you’ll discover:

• Why the post-retreat crash is completely normal (and what to do about it)
• Four simple practices to help you stay connected to the woman you became on retreat
• How to bring retreat energy into your everyday life without needing to run away again
• The role of community and accountability in keeping your best-life momentum going

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

You know that post retreat glow? The feeling when you are so inspired and clear and ready to take on the world until real life hits you in the face the minute you walk back in the door. Today we're talking about how to make that post retreat glow last. I'm sharing four simple, powerful ways to bring your retreat experience back home with you. So the woman you became on a retreat doesn't disappear the second you unpack your suitcase. Let's dive in.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach [00:01:00] us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I am your host, Lori Reynolds, and I am thrilled to have you back here today. I, I know it has only been a week since we have been chatting with each other on the podcast or me talking to this microphone and you listening intently, but since then, I have facilitated a retreat and I spent the weekend at a friend's milestone birthday party out of town. And man, I feel like I've been gone for two weeks. There has been so much that has happened in the last week since I have been here that I, I can't believe that it's been less than a week since I have been behind the microphone.

September is busy, isn't it? I mean, every time I get to the end of summer and we roll into September, I think [00:02:00] this is gonna be great. We're gonna get back into routine. We're going to get back into those habits that maybe we got out of over the summer. And then September just comes in and like a wrecking ball, I swear, every single year it is overpacked. It is overscheduled. A lot of great things going on, but still it, it just feels like it's going really, really fast. And on the day this episode drops. It is literally the last day of the month and I, it's like, it's like I have whiplash trying to figure out where September went.

Because I am just getting back from a week away, I wanted to talk about how you can do reentry. In your life after you've been away, particularly if you've been at a retreat or a personal development experience, whether the retreat or the experience is work related or personal development related.

I don't know about you, but it seems like ,you have [00:03:00] this great experience and then you're immediately thrust back into real life.

You have all of these great ideas that have have popped up. You have been figuring out ways to show up more in alignment, more authentically to yourself, and then all of a sudden you're back. There are emails to respond to. Everyone's wondering what's for dinner. You have a laundry to do. I mean, it, it's like real life just hits you upside of the head as soon as you walk in the door, doesn't it? I mean, you just barely put your suitcase down and it, it feels like everybody's still just like before, they want your time and attention.

And I have figured out over the years that there are a couple of things that have worked for me when I get back from a retreat so that I don't just feel like all of that retreat, goodness, that inspiration, that excitement that I'm feeling like it doesn't immediately go away the minute I get home.

This works for [00:04:00] returning from vacation. This works for returning from a retreat. This works for returning from work travel, all the things. But I really wanna focus on the experience as it relates to a retreat or a personal development experience. I mean, I, I feel like we have all had the, we understand what it's like to go on vacation. That's great. We understand what it's like to to leave on a work trip. All the things that we have to prepare for up until we leave. And then we go away, and then we get back and we are immediately back into the same habits. We're back into the same schedule.

And if we approach returning back from a personal development retreat or just a retreat in general, and we fall back into those habits and that routine and that schedule, because it's so easy to do, right?

If we do that, then that post retreat excitement, that is gonna [00:05:00] wear off immediately. And I want to give you, let's see, I jotted down four tips that work for me to keep that retreat experience, excitement and authenticity, and all of the things I learned about becoming the woman who I always wanted to be. How do I take that experience that I had and infuse it into my real life as soon as I get back from the retreat?

I have four things I'm gonna talk about today. If you have others, will you please share them with me? I think the, the beauty of this community is yes, I will. I I will give you frameworks and I will give you ideas, but we are all in this together, and if you have found something that works well for you, then share it so that I can in turn share it to the community.

I'll give you credit. I absolutely, I, I, I'm not worried about credit. Yeah. I just want women everywhere to have the [00:06:00] tools and the information and the support to create their best life so that they can start living it now. Stop waiting for retirement. Let's, let's start making midlife, our best life.

Can we agree on that? So I'll give you four tips today. If you've got more, please reach out to me. Let me know. We'll add them to the list.

These are in no particular order. But I will say number one, I think is maybe the most important. , I hesitate to say it's the most important, but it does really feel like it's, it's probably at the top.

Number one, allow some time and space for yourself. What that could look like is if you're able to take an extra day off of work before you just dive back into the melee of work. I know not all of us have that luxury, but if you get back [00:07:00] on a Saturday or a Sunday, wouldn't it be nice to have Monday to regroup?

And I don't mean Monday regroup as in answer all of the emails that came in while you were gone, or return the voicemails that came in while you were gone, or try and make up for all of the time that you were out of the office. I mean, take a day for yourself. Because chances are, if you have, if you've gone to a really impactful experience, a really impactful retreat, you're tired. You haven't been sleeping in your own bed. You have, if it's facilitated correctly, you've been thinking like deep, deep thinking. You've been doing a lot of that, and that is a whole level of exhaustion that most of us are not used to.

So that means that not only do you have to kind of get your bearings back into real life, I mean, being away at a [00:08:00] retreat, you're already kind of out of your element a little bit. Wouldn't it be great if you didn't have to wake up at the ass- crack of dawn to go to the gym like you usually do? Wouldn't it be great if everyone else went to work and school and you had a day at home to just de brief to decompress, to spend some time just being, without having to jump right into the frenetic end of the pool and get right back into those habits and that routine.

Because my guess is you going away, that has changed something in you. If it's facilitated correctly, you going away to this retreat has changed some things for you. And instead of having that post retreat glow wear off immediately as soon as you walk in the door, [00:09:00] wouldn't it be great if you took some time for yourself to just marinate in that post retreat glow?

Give yourself some time and some space to figure out how are you going to move forward in your life in the new version of yourself, the version who is a little different than the woman who left on the retreat. This, this new version, who has come back home full of excitement and possibility. Who is she? How does she fit into this life that she's living?

I know not all of us can take a day off, but maybe what you could do is on your first day back, don't schedule any meetings. Allow yourself the time and the space to dig out of your email inbox, to get recentered to take a look at your calendar for the week and, and really just kind of ease into it.

If you can't take the day off, try and [00:10:00] keep the the day of return to the office, The day of returning back to your normal life, Try and keep that as open as possible. You know, you don't want, you don't wanna go to the dentist at seven o'clock in the morning after you've gone to the gym at five, and then you've got meetings all day long and you've got a lunch meeting and then there's a board meeting after work.

I mean, to the extent that you're able to, don't do that to yourself because what that is going to underscore in your life is you feel more like yourself when you're busy. And my guess is that's not the woman who left the retreat. The woman who left the retreat is probably armed with some discernment tools, understands the need to take time for herself, and is excited about a life where she's making the decisions and she's running her life and not the other way around.

If you can't take the day off, [00:11:00] if you can't delay all the meetings, when you get back, at least keep your out of office message on your emails. So that automatic email responder, instead of saying, so today's the 30th, instead of saying, I'm back on September 30th, say, I'll be back in the office on October 1st and I'll respond to your messages at that point. If, if you need immediate assistance, contact my assistant.

At least that way, You can be in the office, handling the meetings, answering emails without the expectation that you're gonna jump in and handle everything yesterday; Right? Because it feels like anytime you give somebody a deadline or you let them know when you're gonna be back, their expectation is you're back that day, even if you said you'd be back. After business hours, but you're back. You're gonna be responding to emails. You're gonna be back into the thick of it [00:12:00] going, going, going. Right away. Give yourself some time.

It's, it's gonna be really important to carry what it is you've learned to carry what it is you felt to extend that experience as long as you can before you get knocked back into all of that daily craziness that has always been there. But maybe after the retreat isn't suiting you anymore. I don't know. Maybe it is. Probably not. Give yourself some time and space though, whatever that looks like.

Number two, take some time when you're back, especially in that first week, to review some of the retreat content. That could look like 10 or 15 minutes a day with a cup of coffee in the morning or with a glass of wine at night. It could be [00:13:00] riding in your car. Maybe you have some voice notes that you wanna look at.

Um. It doesn't matter when it happens, but if you take just even 10 or 15 minutes a day to review your notes or any journal entries that you made while you were there, or, or review the worksheets and the, the words that you wrote down, maybe even look at your photo roll, if you took some photos while you were there.

Giving yourself just 10 or 15 minutes a day to transport yourself back to the retreat through the journals, through the words you wrote down, through the experiences that you had, just really reviewing what happened you're, you're gonna be amazed at how almost instantly, you are allowing yourself to be transported back to this life changing experience that you've just had.

So, yeah, things might be crazy at busy at home. You might have just jumped right back into the deep end of the pool. [00:14:00] But for 10 or 15 minutes a day, you're back at that retreat experience. You're back at reminding yourself what was important to you when you were able to take yourself away from your life to actually think about your life instead of just react to it.

Because a lot of us do reaction all day long, like we're just reacting in our life to what is coming at us. That was not the purpose of the retreat or the experience that you've just had, that getting away to really think about what you want. Think about what success means to you. Think about what your best life looks like.

You can't do that while you're in the thick of it. You did that because you gave yourself some time away, which was fantastic. Don't you owe it to yourself then to give yourself some time to make sure that all those notes that you took, everything that's in your workbook, it doesn't just go up on a shelf [00:15:00] and you never think about it again.

If you get into this habit, especially the first week back, you spend 10 or 15 minutes a day just looking at what it is you created, what you thought, what you wrote about. It is going to make a profound impact. And a, the, the effect on your life moving forward is gonna be tremendous because it's not going to be something that you experienced and thought that was really great. And then again, you just put it on the shelf and you never look at it again.

Once you get in this habit, 10 or 15 minutes a day. It's really interesting because after the first week, many people continue to still spend that 10 or 15 minutes a day, even if they're going back through the material because it's this great reminder. When you have decades of conditioning, when you have certain habits that you have been building for [00:16:00] 30 or 40 or 50 years, and then you go to this retreat, you cannot expect to build new habits, show up in a different way, live your life in a completely different way, after two or three hours of, say, working on limiting beliefs, that's not how it works. That has to be, it's like a muscle. You have to build on it. You have to keep working at it, and that's what that tiny, tiny, 10 to 15 minutes a day, that's gonna help you do.

Most women they'll come back from my retreats. We talk about how to reintegrate after the retreat. They're gonna spend that 10 or 15 minutes for the first week, and what they find is they wanna keep doing it. Maybe they start journaling on other questions that have come up for them. After the retreat, maybe they came up with some ideas on how they wanted to live their life at the retreat, but now that they're back, they wanna do something a little different. But the catalyst has [00:17:00] been all of the experiences that they had while they were away.

So 10 or 15 minutes a day will make a huge difference, and I would start that the day after you get back. Commit to doing it for a week and see how it feels. If it's good, keep doing it. If it doesn't work for you, don't do it after a week. But promise yourself you will at least try it for a week because you've just spent all this time and money to go away for this great experience. Don't just get home, pack it away and call it good.

Keep working on the skills and the information and the tools that you learned and developed while you were away. 10 or 15 minutes a day can make a huge difference.

Number three, I call this an alignment audit. Um, when we go to these personal development retreats, [00:18:00] A lot of times we discover that how we're living our life is a little out of alignment with the woman who we aspire to be. Which means it's great for us to have that realization while we're away. But then how do we integrate what we've learned and where we're going into our life once we're back home? And you can do that with an alignment audit.

I would start with your calendar. I would start with your daily to-do list. You have an idea of who you wanna be. What's important to you in this season of life? Does your calendar reflect that?

If you say, if you decide at at the retreat, that personal wellness, that your health and wellbeing are number one priority for you, and I look at your calendar and you don't have any time at all scheduled for [00:19:00] exercising, meditating, stretching, moving your body, being still, being outside, whatever it means for you on your, on your health journey.

If your calendar doesn't reflect that, then what's gonna happen is you're gonna get back and you're gonna allow other people to schedule over that important time for you because your calendar looks like it's open. When you are doing your daily to-dos if your personal health and focusing on that is number one on your priority list, It better be number one on your to-do list as well. Do you see how you can't have an expectation that my health is number one on my priority list, but you don't allocate any time for it and you don't make it a priority when you're doing your to-do list?

How often do we do that, right? That we, we think that we are making ourselves a priority, but what we end up doing is responding to everybody else who wants to fill up our [00:20:00] calendar with all the things that they think are important. If we don't set our own boundaries, if we don't carve out time for ourself, then we're just gonna get pulled right back into all of the busyness that we experienced before we left.

So do an alignment audit. Start with your calendar and your todos. I did touch briefly on boundaries. The women that I worked with on this last week, um, we talked a lot about boundaries and I think a lot of times women think, especially, especially if you've had any people pleasing tendencies in your past, and most of us have, that if I set boundaries, I'm, I'm gonna make people mad. How can I do something for myself without seeming like I'm being selfish? Boundaries are for your safety and security.

And yes, it may [00:21:00] require some tough conversations because what you're essentially doing when you're setting boundary is you are changing the balance of power in a relationship. Think about that. Um, I don't mean that all of a sudden, you know, you're gonna be the king. And what I say that, you know, that goes, that's not what I'm talking about.

But if you have been in a relationship, whether that is your marriage or a friendship, or even a relationship with your kids or your coworkers, and your automatic response for anything that they have ever asked you to do is, yes, I will do that. Without even taking a step back and thinking, how is this going to impact me? Your automatic default response is, yes, absolutely. I will do that. Even when you don't want to. I think we've all experienced that.

What that tells me if your automatic response is yes, is that you don't have healthy boundaries because you need to be able to prioritize your own health and wellbeing [00:22:00] first. That doesn't make you selfish. That doesn't mean that you are self-absorbed or that you don't care about the other people in your life. In fact, it means that you care a lot about the other people in your life.

But just like when you're on an airplane, you have to put your oxygen mask on first, saying yes to everyone doesn't actually serve everyone. Because what that does is it depletes you. You cannot show up and serve yourself and everyone else if you are burned out or overworked or overwhelmed or resentful. That doesn't work that way.

The best way to protect against that is set and hold some healthy boundaries.

Now that may lead to some uncomfortable conversations at first because again, you are changing the balance of power in the relationship. Instead of being somebody that the yes woman that everyone we, we tell ourselves that they rely on us, and that's true. But are they [00:23:00] relying on us or are they walking all over us because we have taught them that that's okay with us.

And most often than not, you go away for this retreat or this experience and you realize, Hmm, that's not working for me anymore. If I really want to accomplish things that I wanna do in my life, if I want to be the woman who lives her best life, I do have to start saying no to things. I do have to start setting some boundaries.

The key to setting boundaries is you have to communicate them to the people that the boundaries are set for. What I mean by that is we need to tell them why the boundaries are important to us. We need to let them know what will happen if they don't honor the boundaries that we've set.

Boundaries could be time boundaries. Uh, they could be emotional boundaries. They could be physical boundaries, they could be monetary boundaries. There are all [00:24:00] sorts of different boundaries that we can set.

But we have to communicate them because we are changing this balance of power in the relationship. So people are going to be surprised if you always said yes to something that they wanted and then all of a sudden you say, no. You have to tell them why you're saying no.

In my experience and in the experience of most of my coaching clients, yes there might be some friction up front, but by and large, the only people who are upset about you setting, and holding healthy boundaries are the people who benefited from you not having any boundaries in the first place.

Most of the people in your life, yes, they love that you do stuff for them, but they also want you to be happy yourself. And that my friends is gonna start with some boundaries.

So we're still talking about an alignment audit. We've done our calendar and our to-dos. We've looked at boundaries that we need to [00:25:00] set, and the last thing I would think about when we're doing an alignment audit is any limiting beliefs that we are living our life subject to that, maybe we're not even aware that we're doing it.

And for the most part, when something becomes a limiting belief, we're just taking it as fact. Like, I'm too old, I'm not smart enough. I will never be good enough. All of those things that we're telling ourselves that are keeping us small, that are limiting our growth.

For those of you who are spellers and are like, how do I spell belief? You know, is it the I before E except FC, the word lie, LIE, is actually in the word belief. Because when it comes to limiting beliefs, they aren't true. They're just something that we have been conditioned to think about ourselves for a very, very long time. So much so that [00:26:00] the thought has become a belief, and a belief is just something that you take as fact, like you don't even think about it anymore.

It's just, it's just the way it is. I'm not good enough. I'm too old. I'm not athletic, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good with money. Whatever it is that you're telling yourself that is holding you back. Chances are you have worked through some of that shit at the retreat. Don't bring that back into your life.

So when you're looking at your calendar and you're trying to figure out what it is that you wanna do, you also have to be aware of where the limiting beliefs are showing up in your life in, in ways that are no longer serving you. There was probably a reason that you adopted them to begin with, most likely when you were quite young, most likely as a protection mechanism. But they no longer align with the women that you're becoming.

Hopefully you have actually been given some skills and some resources and [00:27:00] some tools to be able to undo those limiting beliefs once you get back into your real life. So part of that alignment audit is how can you take those thoughts, those beliefs, those automatic default taken as fact beliefs? How can you take those, rewire them in such a way so that they're no longer holding you back from becoming the woman who you are trying to become? That's all part of the alignment audit. That's gonna take a little bit of time, but put that in part of your 10 or 15 minutes a day. It will pay off in spades, I promise.

The last one that I came up with was keep the lines of communication open with your family members. You have had this incredible experience, and it is not uncommon to [00:28:00] be a little edgy when you get home. Um, many of the women I talk with, many of the women that I coach, talk about coming home and immediately picking a fight with their spouse; right?

And what's interesting is you've had this incredible experience and they haven't, they have still been living life as you have always lived with them, right? So you went away, you had this great experience, you decided to set some boundaries. They don't know about them. You have to talk to them about it.

You don't have to tell them everything about the experience, but you do have to let them in, particularly into the parts that are going to impact them going forward. Whether that is boundaries, whether that is ideas that you have about who you're going to be as a woman who lives her best life.

She travels, she tries new things. She quits her job. I, I don't know what [00:29:00] those things are, and they're different for everyone, but you owe it to yourself to make sure that you are talking to the people around you that matter the most to you. Not only so that they can support you, but so that they don't feel like they're being left behind.

And a lot of them, honestly, they're, they're a little nervous. They see you focusing on your own personal development, and they get a little worried that maybe they're not gonna measure up. Maybe, is she still gonna think that I am worth being married to, or that I'm a good friend or am am I enough for her?

Who is this woman who's already been incredible and now she's, she's like taken it up a notch. She's, she's exponentially better, so they're nervous. Maybe they aren't doing the work that they see you doing. Maybe they're nervous that [00:30:00] there's not room for them in your new life, and there might not be. To be perfectly honest, there might not be.

There are women that I coach who go to retreats, Who are able to take a look at their life and realize, you know what? I have outgrown this marriage. We've had a lot of conversations about whether the two of us are going to continue to be in this marriage together. I've given a lot of time, I've given a lot of attention, and it, it's, it's just not gonna work.

That's okay. I, I would caution you against making any huge, big life decisions. Like, give it a, give it a month. Be back. Be back into don't quit your job, don't leave your spouse. Spend a month before you really rip off the bandaid and become somebody else. But in the meantime, know that you are coming back a different person, and they can sometimes be [00:31:00] nervous about that.

You don't have to go outta your way to make them feel comfortable, but you do have to communicate with them. You do have to be honest with them. You do, and this might be new and different for some of you, especially those people pleasers or recovering people pleasers in the room, you have to tell them what's on your mind.

What are you thinking? What's coming up for you? What is different for you now that you have been away? What aren't you gonna tolerate anymore? What are you willing to fight for? What is a non-negotiable going forward? I mean, you think about it, you have spent days kind of really in your head figuring out who best life you is, and they're exactly the same person as they were when you left.

What we need to do is just open up those lines of communication, and it could, it could even be, I've had a, I've, I've experienced a lot. I don't have the bandwidth [00:32:00] to talk with you about this right now, but let's set a time over the weekend. Or let's go out to dinner on Friday and we'll talk all about it because you might not be able to get into all the feelings and the emotions, right when you get back. You might not be able to allay their nervousness because you are back into life and you're both, you know, trying to keep small humans alive or trying to get back to your job or whatever it is. But you owe it to yourself and the other person to make sure that you sit down and you have the conversations that need to be had.

I would love to hear other things that have worked for you when you returned from these big life changing experiences. Uh, I know I talked a lot about a retreat. I don't know about you, but I've been on vacations that have changed my life. And these principles work exactly the same way. [00:33:00] It's all about giving yourself some time and space when you get back, reviewing what it is that you have done, doing an alignment audit to see if who you're becoming matches, the woman who's showing up in your everyday life, and opening the lines of communication with everyone else in your life so that they can support you. And be there, If that is a relationship that you want to continue.

I would love to hear what else you would add to the list, because like I said, I'm always compiling tools and tips that we can pass along to the listeners so that we can continue to build this community. So that we can, I mean, think about the ripple effect of high achieving midlife women everywhere, stepping into their own power, living their lives as the women that they were always intended to be. I mean, think about the power in [00:34:00] that. Man, we could think about how we could change the world if we all lived that way. And it starts with just doing a few small things that can be really big things.

But you gotta start with yourself. You gotta, you have to make time for yourself. I mean, that's, that's the reason that you even go away to a retreat or an experience, right? So that you can figure out things about your life without being in your life. And that that is probably the best gift that you can give yourself some time for yourself.

I am hopeful that listening to this podcast each week gives you that time for yourself, whether it is in the car, whether you are listening to it while you make dinner. Or I always listen to my podcast while I'm out on a walk. I love it. There's something about being, moving my body, being out in nature. Listening to inspirational [00:35:00] podcasts, some comedy podcasts too, but a lot of inspirational podcasts that really set a, a beautiful tone for the day. And there's something about coupling the listening to the walking and moving my body that really seeds the message. So, um, hopefully the School of Midlife helps give you some weekly inspiration that you look forward to in your daily life on your walks whenever you've listened to it.

It is my pleasure to talk with you every week and I am so grateful to get to spend just a little bit of your time each week with you. So thank you so much for being here. I will see you right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session.

And until then, take good care.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the [00:36:00] word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.