231 Happy Life Response Reflex with Michelle Fishburne
The Happy Life formula is all about your response reflex. Michelle Fishburne, 57, joins us from her RV to share her story of how she responded rather unconventionally to the events of 2020.
Those events have been largely out of our control. Oh, how we hate to give up control! But we can control our response to life’s events. Even a pandemic.
In our 50s, we can choose to, must learn to, change our response reflex. For instance, being instantly available to our children becomes less vital when those kids are married and have families of their own. You might be surprised how ingrained the belief of “best to stay near home” reflex remains.
In this episode we discuss and frequently return to this formula:
Event + Your Response = Your Outcome
When my guest experienced a debilitating episode of vertigo which included hearing loss, then lost her job due to COVID, prepared her youngest for college, was unable to secure a job within her profession AND the lease on her post-divorce home expired… (you can’t make this stuff up) … Michelle Fishburn was surrounded by what she refers to as “scarcity”. All she had been focusing her attention toward was was she did not have.
Once she shifted her response to taking an inventory of what she did have
Michelle’s project, Who We Are Now, is her response to finding herself unemployed and without a home, a partner, or kids, or… anything.
Sometimes life turns you upside down, dumps you on the floor, and asks “so what are you going to do about it?” That’s what happened to Michelle Fishburne in 2020.
An RV, a camera, curiosity, and years of storytelling experience. That’s what she did have. And she had two other things that are kind of unusual. First, she and her kids had traveled the United States and Canada in an RV for over a year when the kids were in elementary school.
Planning an itinerary and heading west on the open road was familiar to her. Second, her 2020 experience of loss enabled her to better understand how others might be feeling during this time. Kind of unusual for a person who used to be an international attorney, flying first class all over the world.
Fortunately, though, life is not a straight path. The curves give us perspective. So Michelle took to the road in her RV and started interviewing people all over the U.S. about how they were facing 2020’s challenges.
As of the end of November, she had already interviewed 100 people spanning 24 states. Her project, called Who We Are Now, can be found at www.whowearenow.us. She plans to continue touring the country and interviewing people through at least March 2021.
Michelle will be traveling in her RV from Florida to San Diego beginning in early January 2021. If you have a story of how you responded to the events of 2020, reach out to her she would love to come to your town and interview you.
Follow Michelle and Who We Are Now:
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