Ep.104 The Art of Midlife Reinvention: New Horizons in Creativity and Energy Management

Susie deVille, anthropologist and human behavior specialist, is the Founder & CEO of the Innovation & Creativity Institute. She joins me to impart her wisdom on building a 'moat' around yourself to concentrate energy on fresh endeavors and allowing our innate creativity to shine through.

As we move through the seasons of life, creativity often blossoms in the most unexpected places. Susie uncovered her artistic side amidst a period she terms her "nuclear winter," which included battling personal and professional turmoil. The revelation of hidden talents in watercolors and sketching became her sanctuary, leading to an incredible rebirth of joy and creativity. Susie provides us with the framework of her 'five M's' strategy that fueled her recovery, proving that the spark of creativity lies within us all, ready to ignite during life's transitions.

Finally, we address the key to achieving fulfillment through managing our energy. We discuss setting boundaries from the drain of overcommitment by conducting an energy audit. Tune in for a heartfelt conversation filled with strategies and stories that promise to steer and uplift anyone looking to enrich their life with creative energy and purpose.

Susie deVille has graciously offered a free seat at Journaling Without Words to any Asking for a Friend listener.

May 18th 10 am - Noon Eastern
Step into a sanctuary of self-discovery tailored specifically for the modern woman in midlife. Through introspection and reflection, you'll learn how to craft a visual vocabulary that articulates the essence of your true self, illuminating the path to renewal and reconnection with unparalleled clarity and purpose. Here is who it is for:

* Those who have always wanted a journaling practice but found it too hard to get started/stay with it.

* Those who are on a creative journey and are stuck and/or want to tap into their authentic voice in new ways.

* Those who have lost contact with joy, freedom.

* Those in a transition of any kind, seeking clarity, courage, and comfort.

 If you are a journaler extraordinaire, that is great! This workshop will add to your already-rich practice.

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85025258682?pwd=sbbPcVSbkbdeRMw2p8xyya4qbHOYLU.1
Meeting ID: 850 2525 8682
Passcode: 902472

Her award-winning book,

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Are you ready to reclaim your midlife body and health? I went through my own personal journey through menopause, the struggle with midsection weight gain, and feeling rundown. Faster Way, a transformative six-week group program, set me on the path to sustainable change. I'd love to work with you! Let me help you reach your health and fitness goals.
https://www.fasterwaycoach.com/?aid=MicheleFolan

Have questions about Faster Way? Feel free to reach out.
mfolanfasterway@gmail.com

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*Transcripts are done with AI and may not be perfectly accurate.

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Transcript

Michele Folan: 0:00

At the age of 59, I wasn't looking or feeling my best. I had low energy, I was tired all the time and I was losing muscle, gaining fat, and what I had done in the past for my diet and exercise were no longer serving me. I wanted to do better for myself and started doing some research and landed on the faster way. This science-based nutrition and fitness program is like no other. It includes both food guidance and daily workouts that are tailored to fit your goals, and it's perfect for midlife women. I'm excited to start working with clients and introduce you to a sustainable, healthy lifestyle that can lay the foundation for this next phase of life. Are you ready to prioritize you? Check the show notes of this episode and let's connect. Now on to the show Health, wellness, fitness and everything in between. We're removing the taboo from what really matters in midlife. I'm your host, michelle Follin, and this is Asking for a Friend. Welcome to the show everyone.

Michele Folan: 1:18

When I first spoke to our next guest at the end of 2023, I was mentioning to her my possible plans for a career pivot and how I needed to find some time to get my ducks in a row. I was going to have to find some balance, as I did not want to get overwhelmed starting a new business, and she said, Michelle, you need to put a moat around yourself, take the time where you have no obligations to focus on launching your new venture. And you know what I did just that. Thank you, Susie DeVille, for the wonderful, much-needed guidance. Susie deVille is an award-winning author of the book Buoyant the Entrepreneur's Guide to Becoming Wildly Successful and Free. She is also a business coach and creative strategist and great at giving advice, and I wanna say that this conversation today is a must listen for anyone who wants to find their innate creativity, protect your energy and and set boundaries. Welcome to Asking for a Friend, Susie deVille.

Susie deVille: 2:30

Thank you so much. I am so happy to be here and see you again.

Michele Folan: 2:34

Yeah, so I have to tell you that advice you gave me. You probably didn't even realize how much that meant to me and my success at being able to juggle the launch of the business and do the podcast and finish up my career. So thank you.

Susie deVille: 2:57

Oh, I'm delighted to hear it and congratulations Thank you Thanks.

Michele Folan: 3:01

Yeah, it's been a lot, but I'm actually really enjoying it. I talked a little bit about you, but I would love for you to tell the audience more about where you're from and also your career path, because you've had some pivots yourself.

Susie deVille: 3:21

Yes, so I grew up in the mountains of North Carolina in a mountain resort community called Highlands, which is where I live now, and I grew up in an entrepreneurial household. I went off to college and pursued a degree in anthropology and then traveled up to Boston and started working in the financial industry and learned very quickly. That was not my thing, so I left and decided I was going to figure out how to break into the publishing world, and of course Boston is incredibly competitive. So I began doing a lot of temping as a legal secretary, which I could write a book about that all by itself. But that gave me the opportunity to start to save money and also travel to all kinds of exotic locations when I wanted to, and then it afforded me the bridge to get into publishing.

Susie deVille: 4:24

So I stayed in publishing throughout my time in Boston, then moved to London, worked for HarperCollins in London, worked for University College of London Press, before I came back to Highlands and started over and thought, oh, I'll go into education because my mother and my brother are in education. I've always loved to teach, so I thought I'll do that. And to make a long story short, I discovered that through my volunteering over at the local high school that a lot of people who were in the 11th and 12th grades were not reading on grade level, and so I worked with local people to launch the Literacy Council of Highlands in 1993. And that sort of set me on a path of nonprofit leadership, and I was in that world until just a couple of days before my son was born in 1999. And I stayed home with him for a couple of years and then decided to get into real estate.

Susie deVille: 5:25

So I've been licensed as a real estate agent since 2001. I had my own company for about seven years. I sold it, had a very nice, successful, profitable exit, and in the meantime sort of between all of that, I had my nuclear winter period, which began in 2008 and lasted for about five years, and that was a time that was certainly not my most favorite thing in the world, but it's really responsible for all the work that I'm doing now, including the book that I wrote, so I'm incredibly grateful for it, and it was my path out of overworking and perfectionism and controlling and into a world of freedom and joy and color and creativity, and so the work that I'm doing now is really a culmination of everything that I've done in my life, and it's a combination of working in the business world, working with creativity, working with entrepreneurs and visionary leaders, and all with a mission to having an impact in a positive way in the world.

Michele Folan: 6:36

You know I love your story, Susie, and first of all the travel. I have to ask you about your love of travel because I know that never went away after you did all the traveling earlier in your life. Tell me a little bit about how that has sparked some of this creativity for you.

Susie deVille: 6:56

Absolutely so. My father would go to Asia every winter to buy for his retail shop here in Highlands and he took me in 1987 throughout all of Asia on this amazing journey. And after about one or two days of my following him around Hong Kong, he decided that I should be able to just go out on my own and enjoy the experience and the adventure of travel. And I was completely terrified how old were you.

Susie deVille: 7:35

I was 15. And there was no. There's no phone. There's no cell phone. There's no map. There's no phone. There's no cell phone. There's no map, there's no. My ability to speak the local language. But he gave me.

Susie deVille: 7:49

We were sitting at dinner and he reached into the ashtray on the table in the restaurant and he handed me the matches from the hotel and he said you can go anywhere you want to go and when you're ready to come back, hand the driver of a cab, find a cab, hand the driver these matches. You don't have to say anything, they'll know that this is where you want to go. And every night we'll come back, we'll meet for dinner and you can tell me all about the crazy, wonderful things that you've been doing. And you can go sightseeing, you can go shopping, you can walk through the streets and just look around, whatever you want to do. And in that moment and I didn't realize this at the time, of course, this was much, much, much later before I realized that in that moment he just transferred an enormous amount of self-trust into my being.

Susie deVille: 8:47

Yeah, because if this person, who was a world traveler, who had a very sophisticated understanding of the world, thought that, as a 15-year-old, on my own completely, I more than had it.

Susie deVille: 9:02

Yeah, Then I thought, well, okay, so that's exactly what I did, and what that instilled in me was not only this love of travel, especially in cultures that were very different from my own, but it also instilled in me this sense that I could go on my own and have an amazing experience. I didn't have to wait for someone else to join me, so that influenced all kinds of decisions in my life. I could find the courage and the self-trust in the middle of my nuclear winter period, when I had no money and mountains of debt, to start a real estate company and make it a success, and also be able to take this curiosity that I had about the world of creativity and pursue it and have a belief that there was something in there for me and that it held a key. I didn't understand what it was going to be, but I had the willingness and the courage to pursue it.

Michele Folan: 10:16

Yeah, that's such a great story. I love that, and I'm over here just giggling because I think you've got a son. Would you, in a million years, set your 15-year-old son loose around anywhere?

Susie deVille: 10:35

Absolutely not. No, and here's what's so funny is that last year I took a four-month trip through Europe, mostly by myself, and I had invited my son to meet me in Italy. He had never been to Europe and so I had to. I was explaining to him, you know, this is first of all, you got to get to Atlanta safely. That's a trick in and of itself. Yeah, getting through the airport and through the airport, and then he had to figure out, because he landed in Charles de Gaulle in Paris. He was going to have to switch to then fly to Milan, and I was trying to explain how all this was going to work. So of course he has a cell phone, right? Well, oh, and I also Apple Air tagged him. Oh, good, good, so I could see where he was. Can you imagine? Vastly different. You know, my dad is out shopping in Hong Kong, has literally no idea where I am, and I am in Italy with my phone watching my son go through, you know, the Charles de Gaulle airport. So, yeah, for sure, very different.

Michele Folan: 11:53

So we have talked a lot about midlife pivots on the podcast. So many of us in midlife finally have the time to perhaps explore the creative outlet and we've kept maybe have kept that bottled up inside of us. Can you speak to your own experience with this, Because I know creativity is a really important aspect of your life.

Susie deVille: 12:18

Absolutely. And what's interesting is that, even though I grew up in a very creative household, my father was an artist, an engineer and an entrepreneur and I was immersed in art. I was immersed in Asian art my entire life, and my mother a complete fan of Renaissance art. She would travel to Italy by herself, and yet I never really thought I was creative. I certainly didn't think I was an artist because I had this very common, very narrow definition of what an artist was, and in my mind that meant someone who could physically reproduce through sketching or painting or some other way. Reproduce, through sketching or painting or some other way, something that was in the world, that looked real. So when I first sketched a horse when I was probably five, and it looked like a coffee table, I decided that's just not my thing, I'm not able, I'm not an artist.

Susie deVille: 13:21

So I took myself out very early, and so it wasn't until much later certainly midlife, and it was the beginning of my nuclear winter period in 2008 that I realized I had a hint, I had a glimmer that it was going to be creativity that was going to save me, that it was going to pull me out of the various messes that I was in in my life.

Susie deVille: 13:54

That included financial challenges, a divorce, health issues and just being kind of on an emotional gurney, and I started to take classes in watercolor and sketching and all of a sudden I started to come home to myself.

Susie deVille: 14:07

Lots of things that I had forgotten about who I truly was and what brings me alive came back and certainly, playing with color and moving my hands and not worrying about the outcome, just enjoying the process filled me with this unbelievable energy and sense of possibility and I was inspired and back online after many years of being just living in this sort of gray dull, distracted, exhausted, overwhelmed state.

Susie deVille: 14:49

And I believe that midlife offers us this incredibly beautiful threshold to move into a new state of our lives and remember and reclaim the parts of our past that were delicious, that we somehow forgot or somehow stopped doing when life got busy and when we became mothers and parents and wives and had all other duties in terms of our careers and taking care of our own parents, etc. All of those pressures of time and focus sort of steered us away. But creativity and tapping into it is incredibly simple. It does not require a huge investment of time or materials. Does not require a huge investment of time or materials, and it can absolutely be the key that unlocks everything in our lives, especially at a tender transitional time like midlife.

Michele Folan: 15:58

You bring up your nuclear winter and I am sure that other people listening right now. Now it could be longer than a few months. It could be years that we're in this space, where we were in this funk. Was there any one thing that you feel like got you to surface? Was it just the art class or was there anything else that you feel like pulled you up?

Susie deVille: 16:31

So what I realized after I was starting to come out was I started to look back at what I had been doing. That had represented an entirely new way of being in the world. And when I was writing my book, I codified it into something I call the five M's. I codified it into something I call the five M's. So those are morning pages meditation, movement, moments of inspired learning and making something. So morning pages are the brainchild of author Julia Cameron, who wrote the book the Artist's Way, and it's basically just three pages of free handwriting in a journal in the morning. And it is not prose. It does not have to be beautifully punctuated or spelled. It is really just an opportunity to take everything that's in our head and just dump it onto the page. If you only have time to do one page of morning page writing and nothing else none of the other four M's this can, over the period of just a few weeks, start to shift things for you.

Susie deVille: 17:50

Meditation is something that a lot of people try. Some people find it very challenging or think that it has to require a lot of time, but honestly, five minutes in a room where you're quiet and the lights are dim, when all of the notifications are silent can be enough to reset your central nervous system. Moments of Inspired Learning is again just reading a very short inspirational quote. I find inspirational quotes every morning and I write a new one in my diary, so I'm tracking these over the course of five years, just as a fun experiment, which was inspired by the way by Austin Kleon. And or you can read poetry or something out of a book that lifts you up. This just kind of again resets our energy, but it also connects us to this world of fellow creators and it's a beautiful community to feel that you are in fellowship with. Then the movement part to me is just vital. You can do anything from chair exercises to a walk in the woods, but just again, a few minutes moving the body. There's an opportunity for our brain to start to release these incredible neurotransmitters, and it's also a beautiful time to get some of your best thinking and your best ideas.

Susie deVille: 19:21

And the last is the one that all my hard-charging entrepreneurs fight me on, which is making something, and they cringe and howl with disgust when I present them with art supplies and a sketchbook, and what happens every single time is nothing short of what I think is miraculous. When we cross the threshold and enter into the unknown, whether it's for five minutes or an hour, we become an absolutely different person in a suspended state. When, all of a sudden, now we're tapping into our creative back channels, our intuition, our imagination, our ideation, our problem solving, we calm down, we feel vastly different, we enter into a state of ease and flow. Anxiety just absolutely drops and again it has nothing to do with the thing that we're making, which we tend to be taught is the point of making art, but it's not. It is the time spent just experimenting, just seeing what happens.

Susie deVille: 20:47

And I had a very interesting experience last fall when I was teaching an art class online and I was playing around with everybody else and I really sank into it and sort of traveled I don't even know where I went, sort of like when you drive and you lose track of where you are and we finished the lesson. I was walking from my studio to go clean my brushes and something that I hadn't even been thinking about, which was the topic of my second book, came roaring out of nowhere and I ran to my phone to start typing in the info. I mean chapters were coming out of no, I mean out of thin air, but this is what happens. We have so much rich knowledge and capacity that we never send the taproot out for and it's all in there. And so the five Ms to me are enormously powerful, healing and transformational.

Michele Folan: 22:01

Is this where you term the phrase brain renewal? Is this kind of that path to brain renewal? Absolutely.

Susie deVille: 22:10

And research shows us that we need to rest our brain 42% of the time. So when we do the math, that's about 10 hours a day. So let's say we're generous and we're assuming that we're getting eight hours of sleep a night, which I know is not true and then so we have two other hours that we're supposed to be resting our brain. Now how in the world does that happen? Well, as it turns out, the five Ms are a perfect way to do that.

Susie deVille: 22:49

And not only are you going into a very different, almost meditative state, you are accessing parts of you and lighting up parts of your brain that are traditionally dormant. So we have these beautiful strategic minds, and those serve us very well, but it's only part of what we're capable of. Those serve us very well, but it's only part of what we're capable of. And that strategic mind keeps us in this sort of what I call teaspoon digging mindset, which is I'm going to try to dig a tunnel with a teaspoon. You can certainly do it. It's not the preferred way of getting there, not the preferred getting there, but if you're in your right brain, this is where you have leaps of progress that seem to come out of nowhere. But it's because we're in a very different state and we're connected into our creativity in very unique ways.

Michele Folan: 23:52

You know, as I sit here and listen to all of this and you've got me really curious about this process, because I think a lot of people would benefit from digging in a little bit but there's also, I think, definitely a health and wellness component to what you're saying, and can we use this same process when it comes to resetting our expectations around our health?

Susie deVille: 24:23

I think that this helps us get on a new path that's much healthier, because I think that there is an almost sort of strange resistance once we have let things get going too far in the wrong direction and we will believe the lie that it's going to be too hard now to turn things around. My habits are entrenched. It's too much to try to change. I don't have the energy for it, I don't have the willingness for it and I don't have the self-confidence or self-trust for it. So the five Ms and tapping into our creativity five Ms and tapping into our creativity reverses all of that, because it takes away what is really eating us, eating at us, through just continual sort of crawls across the brain of thoughts that do not serve us well at all, thoughts that do not serve us well at all, and it shifts those into thoughts that are very empowering and energizing, that fill us with this desire to take bold action. There is a wonderful synergy between tapping into our creativity, having more courage, which then helps us take bold action, and then, once we take bold action, now we have ignited synchronicity, so we're doing our part.

Susie deVille: 26:11

And then there's this whole group of a thousand unseen hands who are in there with us. So, all of a sudden, support shows up. The person who could help us get connected with the right trainer or the right nutritionist just happens to sit next to us at a meeting, us at a meeting, or we have a glimpse into a potential fun way to change things up. Maybe we'll go to the beach for a week and kickstart a whole bunch of new habits, and someone just happens to connect us with a wonderful resource for that. So there's just all of these things that begin to happen once we take action. Then there is this benevolent force that joins right along with us. So it's a way to begin to leave stuck and set ourselves on an entirely new path of health and wellness. Yeah, I have a great story for you.

Michele Folan: 27:14

I was on a walk with a friend the other day, and she had mentioned to me probably I don't know a year ago, that she really wanted to work for this nonprofit. She was super interested. She talked about it, but she never really brought it up again. She decided to take some time off, retire from her corporate job and focus on some personal things. She's in line at the shoe repair, and the woman who runs that nonprofit was right in front of her in line, and she's like, oh my gosh, wasn't that coincidental? And I said, no, you manifested that you somehow crossed paths with her, because, in your mind, you knew this is what you wanted to do. Now. Things fast forward, right, she wasn't ready. She's like, oh my God, I wasn't really thinking about going back to work this soon, but I'm going to jump on it. So they're talking now, but it was such a great story.

Michele Folan: 28:16

There's something, though, I want to talk about, and it goes back to our discussion at the end of December, when you were talking about setting boundaries. I love the idea of setting boundaries and protecting our energy, because, susie, you and I both know we're typically not great at that. Because, susie, you and I both know we're typically not great at that, particularly with the demands of family and life, and I think and maybe this is more of a comment than anything I think we have to get away from asking for permission to do things in the name of self-care or to do things that will spark joy. Right, and I believe this is what you're really trying to get out there in the world. And then about setting boundaries you've discussed before about doing an energy audit and trying to figure out where your leaking energy is coming from. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Susie deVille: 29:16

Sure. So I think that it's very easy for us to let the bucket of our energy just drain almost down to nothing, because culture tells us that's what we should be doing. We should be working harder, we should be more productive, we should have more discipline and our own brains, which are wired for survival and certainty, becoming these hollow husks of humans. And it is a challenge to recognize initially that that's the gerbil wheel that you're on. But once and this is again why the 5Ms are so incredibly helpful because it's doing those things that make you feel the contrast of I feel amazing and full and full of life and full of joy. When I'm doing this and when I'm over here, I feel like there's no color at all in my life and I can barely move. So if we can get to the point where we can at least recognize that's the first step, just to be able to recognize that I'm in this energy deficit, then you can sit down and very quickly do what I call an energy audit.

Susie deVille: 31:00

Invariably there are things that we are doing. There could be obligations that we have, we could have overextended ourselves in certain areas, maybe we got on too many boards, maybe we got on too many committees or too many volunteer assignments, or perhaps we have some habits that are draining our energy. Maybe we're staying up too late, maybe we're not spending our mornings in a way that are healthy for us, maybe we're on social media so we can sort of examine what we're doing and start to circle. Okay, here are the ones that I know that are going to represent the biggest levers of change. If I can address these things and just start with one, maybe you very kindly and graciously bow out of a board obligation Now there are going to be things on our lists that we know drain our energy and we will look at those things and we will convince ourselves that there must, that there's absolutely no way we can take these things off our list.

Susie deVille: 32:17

I would just encourage everyone to check in on the reality of that and see where we might have absorbed the expectations of others as our own. That is a huge, huge challenge and it is so common because we're almost not even sure, when we get to this point, what is us authentically and what is the expectations of other people and where is that line. But again, with practice, with the five Ms, with taking some time out for yourself to be able to hear yourself think we can begin to put ourselves back at the helm and we can do what I had suggested to you, which is to not only dig an energetic moat around yourself, but I will kid with clients sometimes who are so overcommitted in every area of their lives I will say don't only dig the moat, put sharks in it.

Susie deVille: 33:30

I mean you've got to really have a firm wall there of protection, really have a firm wall there of protection, and sometimes the biggest culprit is just ourselves.

Michele Folan: 33:44

I am empowered, honestly, when I say no, when I say yeah, no, that doesn't feel good to me, I'm not doing that tonight or next week. Or I just say no because you know what. I need to fill my cup first and I just, yeah, it's not, it's not happening. I know a lot of women are super busy and when you say, you know, maybe you want to sleep eight hours and commit two hours to this other energy, I think too we need to say get started, try one M, try two M's of your five, at least. Just get started, see how you feel, see if it does create some of that positive energy, and then maybe you can incorporate more as you go. So I just wanted to say that, because I think we struggle with perfectionism and we think we've got to do all the stuff and if we can just get started, that can be the best first step.

Susie deVille: 34:54

I completely agree. We have a culture that tells us that we need to go from couch potato to scaling Everest by Friday, and so we incorporate that into our own thinking, believing that if I can't do it all immediately, then I have failed, or that there's no point to even trying. Failed or that there's no point to even trying. Five minutes was all I could do at the beginning, and it was more than enough, because the power of accumulation kicks in and the magic starts to happen. So I love your point, thank you.

Michele Folan: 35:34

Let's talk about your book Boyant who did you write this for?

Susie deVille: 35:54

and discipline, and in the book I show the surprising path is through tapping into our innate creativity, and I have exercises that take you on a journey Very nice and I feel like I could probably read this and also come away with some wonderful pearls.

Michele Folan: 36:19

So I wouldn't say, you know, sometimes I think these books it may. You know, I'm not an well I guess, maybe I am kind of an entrepreneur these days.

Susie deVille: 36:28

You're very much enough.

Michele Folan: 36:30

That's a whole other story, oh my God, and I've never thought of myself as a creative either, but I guess there's. You know some of that as well, but I really think that all of us have a little bit of that in us. We just have to come and find it.

Susie deVille: 36:44

Well, I just want to mention quickly that I have had. I just I did a presentation not too long ago to a group of women who are executive C-suite folks in Austin and they said this book is for everyone. This book is for absolutely everyone, and I've had people in their 80s send me beautiful notes saying I left the workforce a long time ago and this book has changed my life, so it is a book for everyone for sure.

Michele Folan: 37:16

You know, I have someone very close to me who is an amazing artist and she still takes painting classes and she's really good at what she does. But she's kind of come to this realization that that type of painting isn't what she really enjoys. But that type of painting isn't what she really enjoys and it's taken her many years to find that her real fulfillment comes out of doing a different kind of art. But she likes the people, she loves the vibe, but now she's at the age of 66 saying, ah no, I want to do this and I'm going to pursue this. So it's never too late also to find that pivot, no matter what it is, absolutely.

Susie deVille: 38:09

And I think that it lengthens our telomeres when we do that. It just gives us a whole new lease on life. It gives us a healthier life and a longer life, and certainly one filled with a lot more joy.

Michele Folan: 38:25

Susie, you're also a business coach and creative strategist and I know you've talked a little bit about some of your coaching and clients. How do you work with clients? Do you do in-person, remote, how do you work that?

Susie deVille: 38:40

out. So I do one-on-one coaching as well as group classes and workshops that are virtual. I also do in-person coaching. I do VIP coaching days. I did one of those in Paris when I was in Europe in March. But I also do phone calls and Zooms and that kind of thing. I will travel to see clients as well. If they need me to come in for a couple of days and help them with a launch or they want a total reset of their business or their life, then I can do that intensive work with them. But we tend to do packages where we meet about every two weeks and it's very hands-on from the client's perspective. We co-create that path together and we create a curriculum, create that path together and we create a curriculum. So it's very much driven from where the client's needs are that they can clearly articulate. And then my intuitive hits as to also where we should go and travel together as part of that journey and it tends to be quite an all chemical and transformational experience and it's heaps of fun.

Michele Folan: 40:03

Wow, fantastic. I do want to ask you a question what is one of your core pillars of self care?

Susie deVille: 40:11

I would say it say that my walking ritual, which is in the woods, and I carry with me a little pocket journal and a pencil, and I will stand in the middle of the woods with ideas just coming through me, and there's, honestly, just such a fantastic synchronicity of the beauty of where I am being in touch with my best thinking, but also thinking that doesn't even feel like it's mine that I'm just sort of channeling it, and so I'm moving my body, I'm feeling great, it is quiet, and I feel my most aligned, authentic self in those moments. And there are so many other things that I love to do, though, too, but I would have to say that's one of my top ones.

Michele Folan: 41:19

I love that one too. I don't take a notebook and a pen with me, but maybe I need to start doing that. Susie deVille, how can listeners find you and also your book, Buoyant?

Susie deVille: 41:33

I am online at innovationandcreativityinstitutecom and you can connect with me on social media. I'm on all the social channels. You can connect with me through my website. You can just scroll down and you'll see all the social icons. And my book, Buoyant, is available through Amazon and wherever books are sold, but it might be easier to pick it up through Amazon. It's in paperback, Kindle as well as audible version.

Michele Folan: 42:06

Wonderful Susie deVille. Thank you for being here today and thank you for the great advice. Appreciate it, thank you. Oh, Susie deVille has graciously offered asking for a friend listeners a complimentary seat at her next self-discovery virtual workshop. So who is this workshop for? It's for anyone who's always wanted a journaling practice but found it too hard to get started or stay with it. Or if you're on a creative journey and feel stuck, or you want to tap into your authentic voice in new ways, or if you've lost contact with joy or freedom, or maybe you're in a transition of any kind, seeking clarity, courage and comfort. This workshop will be held live via zoom on Saturday, may 18th, from 10 am to noon Eastern time. Check the show notes of this episode for more details. Follow Asking for a Friend on social media outlets and provide a review and share this show wherever you get your podcasts. Reviews and sharing help us grow.