110 - Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons: Preparing for Rich Transitions
This week, Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons is here to prepare us for the threshold of career transitions and retirement.
Elizabeth is a retirement transition expert, lawyer, and the author of Encore: A High Achiever’s Guide to Thriving in Retirement. With over two decades of experience in professional development and career transitions, Elizabeth supports high achievers as they navigate the emotional and practical terrain of retirement.
We discuss:
The joys and challenges of Elizabeth’s high-powered corporate career
How it really feels to quit your job and stay home with your kids
Human doing vs human being
How to live your way into the answer
Sabbaticals and embracing seasonality in our lives
How to release time scarcity
Episode Transcript:
Sarah Tacy [00:00:06]:
Hello, welcome. I'm Sarah Tacy and this is Threshold Moments, a podcast where guests and I share stories about the process of updating into truer versions of ourselves. The path is unknown and the pull feels real. Together we share our grief, laughter, love and life saving tools. Join us. Hello and welcome to Threshold Moments. I am Sarah Tacy. I am so glad to be back with you.
Sarah Tacy [00:00:46]:
Today I spoke with Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons and I told her that I don't often interview people that are out side of humans that I have met and been in conversation with and been inspired by. So when people reach out, like reach out as a, as a cold start, I often just like, no, thank you, not now, thanks for reaching out, maybe later. And there was something about her work that cued my interest just enough to then hit the video of a different interview she had done and go, oh. Although I don't know that many of my Threshold Moment listeners are going through the particular threshold of retirement, she does speak of a midlife threshold that she goes through that I think some people can relate to. What I think is really rich here is not are you going through the exact same threshold? Are you going through the threshold that she helps people navigate through? But what are some things that you can look for? What are some questions that you could ask now in your life instead of waiting until then? What are some elements that we can bring with us as we journey into the unknown? I think that Elizabeth is chock full of lived wisdom and I think this is the type of wisdom that is really worth leaning into. Without further ado, please enjoy. Today we have with us Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons. She is a retirement transition expert, a lawyer, and the author of her newly released book, Encore A High Achiever's Guide to Thriving in Retirement.
Sarah Tacy [00:02:48]:
With over two decades of experience in professional development and career transitions, Elizabeth supports high achievers as they navigate the emotional and practical terrain of retirement. Not as an ending, but as the beginning. And as Elizabeth and I were chatting at the very beginning here I was saying the reason why this really felt like a good match for this podcast is because I know that a lot of my listeners are ever evolving humans, and therefore ever evolving humans are generally anywhere from between like big thresholds to constant micro thresholds. And it could be a change in their relational dynamic with a partner. It could be a change in their career, in their roles that they're playing. And sometimes it's a major threshold that comes through milestones or injuries or illnesses, betrayals, divorce, going through the podcast listen, like, which ones have we covered. And as I listened to somebody else interview you, I thought, wow, your work is such a beautiful foundational weaving of practices to consider as preparation for the threshold of retirement or as preparation in general for living that we might enjoy more a life that feels more alive and aligned.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:04:26]:
Beautifully said. Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:27]:
Yeah. Welcome.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:04:29]:
Thank you. Thank you. I'm really honored to be here and very much looking forward to this discussion.
Sarah Tacy [00:04:35]:
There is a part of me that's like, I should start with a soft opening. And there's this, the other part that's like, can I just ask her about her threshold right away? And I think because there are so many parts that I'd love to get to as the conversation goes on, I actually would love, if you would be willing to go back on the timeline to what I believe is around 35 years old or maybe even a little before that, to help color in who you were and what that threshold was like, because I think it will color the rest of our conversation.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:05:07]:
Absolutely. No, I really appreciate that invitation because I do think the experience that I lived so informs the work I now do that. It's a really terrific place to start. I will go back slightly earlier than 35, only to say, as I sort of humorously say in my book, I've always been a high achiever type. And I mean, all the way back to being a little kid. You know, I care deeply about my straight A's and I care deeply about achieving things. And for some reason, who knows what, that drove me really quite intensely. It was so a part of who I was that I never stopped to question it, ever, whether this is a formula for living.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:05:51]:
It was just the way I was. And, I mean, that sort of led me to. I chose a very challenging law school that I was very honored to get into. But I went at night, worked full time, and I relished the idea that this was incredibly hard. I was driven to, you know, finish at the top of my class in a really challenging job market. I landed a very, you know, impressive job at a very impressive Wall street firm. All of these things continued to feel like an affirmation of my approach to life. Right.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:06:25]:
I was being rewarded for what was incredibly hard work. And I never stopped to ask whether I was enjoying the hard work or enjoying the pace that I was living at. So, of course, I was a perfect fit for a Wall street law firm where they don't want you to ask those questions. They just want you to say, yes, may I have another? And I did that for 10 years. And so I just Say all that to say that when I arrived at this pivotal moment, my threshold, I was very conditioned to working beyond, I think, what most people would consider reasonable. To me, that was the way I knew I was doing okay in this world. It's like, well, if I'm working as hard as humanly possible, surely that's enough, you know. But there I was with a three year old, an 18 month old, a marriage that was, for a variety of reasons, under great stress.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:07:23]:
I was the only breadwinner and I had an 80 hour a week job with all kinds of promises about the potential, you know, to make partner and all of that. But I was told, you're gonna have to move to London for six months. You know, I mean, I was clearly being forced to make choices between career success and my role as a mother. And those things collided so forcefully that I really finally decided I was gonna have to let my career go. And I will tell you, it was painful. I mean, it sounds like, wouldn't that be lovely to let that thing go. But no, I was so identified with it, I worked so hard for it and I was still deriving a huge amount of validation from it. And so it was very terrifying to let it go.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:08:05]:
But I had this deep internal knowing that if I didn't let it go, I was going to miss out on my role as a mom. And that was probably going to be a deep regret too. So anyway, that tussle did lead me to say goodbye to the career. And I thought sort of blindly that because I had enough money to take a couple years to figure out my next move, that was the whole story. I literally thought that, I thought, I've got enough money, I'm front ending my retirement for a couple years, I'll figure this out. The blind spots in that approach were so huge. And that's what of course created all of the knowing and learning that came, you know, is the mess I created by having these blind spots. But that was me at the threshold, ridiculously confident that I was going to land on my feet, just, you know, have a wonderful time in this new life.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:09:04]:
And I did no planning beyond making sure I had enough money to pay my bills. Bills.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:10]:
I can relate possibly in a very different way. I'm just hearing your story and I'm like, I. So I had a very different career. It was still like 80 hours a week, but it was yoga therapeutic. So I'd be like, I'm following my dream, I'm doing it my own way, I'm traveling the world, I'm This, I'm that. And then I became a mother. And my husband at the same time graduated from his doctoral program and became the breadwinner like within a week. And I left all my clients and just like didn't think much further than that.
Sarah Tacy [00:09:39]:
Just like, of course I'll keep doing my work. And could have never anticipated just how hard the road ahead was going to be. I know that this may be veers away from the line of your work right now, but I would love, because I have a lot of listeners who are mothers, I would be so curious if you would be willing to speak to us a little bit about the difference between. Sometimes I think as women we are told that it should all be enjoyable. The time that we are with our kids and the very different experience of work that you are so good at that paid for because you're so good at it. And then when things go well, people tell you. And then there's this other side of motherhood where people are saying like, this should bring you all this joy. And it might, but very few people, I guess I'm answering the question from my own perspective now and then I'll like pass it over.
Sarah Tacy [00:10:38]:
But it's like, you know, you do something great and then someone might throw up on you and a lot of it is unseen. And so I'm wondering if you would speak a little bit of what your actual experience was transitioning from this high functioning corporate job into staying home with your kids.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:10:55]:
Oh, absolutely, I'd be happy to. I experienced something very similar to what you're describing, which is that, you know, this is such a dramatic reordering of one's world, you know, and when you are in a career space, or at least where I was at 35, I mean, I was running billion dollar transactions and I had a team of people I could delegate to. I was making, you know, sort of heady decisions about important things. And I had a lot of ability to control the things that I was in charge of. Right. And I knew how the system worked and I knew my place in it. And I felt a sense of just agency and effectiveness. And on top of it all, there was a lot of stimulating content in my mental world because of the kind of work I did.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:11:49]:
I also had the rarefied air of just incredibly interesting colleagues and smart people that I was around all day. And so these are things. It's like you're swimming in the water and you don't realize the water's the water. You just think, well, this is just life, right? And so all Of a sudden, you know, you wake up one day having left that behind, and what you've got are these two little human beings that have no intention of letting you control them. Their job is to challenge you constantly. They are hilariously free. They are hilariously messy. There is no stimulating mental contact with anybody, really, during the day, honestly.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:12:34]:
I mean, you're not handling complex, mentally challenging problems and issues. You're getting very little contact with other adults who are doing those things. And so what I found was that there was a very big piece of myself and my identity that had no home. That's how it felt. I mean, the part of me that wanted to be an engaged mother did find her home finally, you know, and that role had been woefully underused. And so I was very happy to step into that role fully. But the thing that I didn't prepare myself for was that there was this entire other aspect of myself that was not going to find a home for a long time. And so I used to laugh at that phrase.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:13:22]:
I feel beside myself, because that's how I felt. Out of sync with myself. It's like my Venn diagram broke in two. There's a little overlap I recognize, but there's a whole part of me that's homeless, and I don't know how to find the home. And I can't say that I'm miserable because I love the time I get with my kids, but I can't say that I'm full and I'm whole yet. So how do you say that you're happy in that condition? Right. And you feel guilty? I mean, I felt guilty. Like, how do you explain to people being a mother isn't enough? It's not enough.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:14:01]:
Maybe it is for some people. I have zero judgment on the choices people make to navigate motherhood, but I had developed these other parts of myself so fully that it just felt strange to have nowhere to live that part of myself anymore. I felt like my life had been fractured in a way.
Sarah Tacy [00:14:20]:
It makes so much sense. And I am friends with a number of people who, some of them who are still running massive companies and some who have really put it aside and are playing with the nervous system. Place of. Can I feel safe when I'm not constantly highly stimulated? What my kid is finding awe in is making me, like, itch in my skin. Can it be a practice to be able to find the magic in the simplicity? And then. Because sometimes there can be, like, an. It must be either or. And if I heal all my trauma, then I could just Be a full time mom.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:05]:
And do we get to honor that part that sat when you said that beside myself? That part that doesn't have a home? And I have been in places where I'm like, oh, I don't know, I think you were saying this too, like, I don't know where that home is yet. And so in my podcast, I've talked about how sometimes I consider that threshold. My teacher, Dawn Stapleton has a map. And it's that you have your normal way of being. There's interruption of norm, which could be like, oh, they want me full time and living in Europe for this, or. And it's like the friction is too much, and so it interrupts the natural flow. So you enter a place of chaos and confusion. So you try something new, but your old ways of being don't fit that new place.
Sarah Tacy [00:15:54]:
And unfortunately, or fortunately, it's not unusual that we have to go into the fertile void, the place of not knowing, the place of feeling homeless, place of sometimes pain. I imagine there are some people who feel some pleasure here before the inspiration can come out of, like, oh, both of these parts of myself get to be alive. And there's a home. And this is the new work. So it's inspiration and insight, integration of that evolved new norm. And then, you know, and then it's a cycle. So. And so in your story, I hear all of that, even the knowing that you want a place for that part of you.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:16:37]:
Absolutely. And I think you're very astutely also pointing out the, you know, habituation to, like, stress or time scarcity and pressure that come along with, you know, trying to live a robust career. At the same time, you're trying to live a robust role, like motherhood. And your operating system is rush, rush, rush. Right. You know, like the joke. I think I, I say this somewhere in my book, but I had become a human doing, not a human being. What I very much like about what you were saying is learning to just be with the content that you have in your life.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:17:20]:
And if it's two little kids being the messiness that they are, why, why isn't that full of richness for you? Right. Because that's a great question. And that the answer back then would have been a loud, I don't know, I don't know. I can't explain why it's not enough. It feels like it should be. And yet, you know, I am so uncomfortable just being here with this thing right now. And I think it was. I really had to unlearn that sense of Doing battle with time and realize that, you know, living through this sort of disordered sense of I don't know how to be in a world where I'm not under pressure constantly.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:18:06]:
I mean, it was helpful to finally learn how to be in that world. And you have to. I mean, that's what happens. You just. You land yourself in the mess, and the mess is the mess, and you're all out of answers. And so you finally have to fall back on something other than your mind. You have to leave your way to an answer.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:22]:
Yes.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:18:23]:
Which in my case was very, very, very important because I like to think my way to all the answers. And sometimes you can't, you know, you have to live your way there.
Sarah Tacy [00:18:32]:
So live your way into the answer that there's some poem around that too, that I've always loved. And you also said, why isn't that full of richness? And you said that before the like, why isn't it enough? And I love the idea of the reticular activating system. And when we ask questions, I love that first sentence you said was not why isn't this enough? But why isn't it full of richness? And so even, like a question from there that I could use, or maybe a listener could use, is like, is there any richness in this? Where can I find the richness? Because richness is such a different question than enough. Richness has to do with depth. It has to do with texture. It has to do with, like, it being hard and beautiful. And so I love the where is the richness in this? Almost like an anchor to hold on to in times of uncertainty.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:19:25]:
Yes, and I love the framing of that question too, because to me, to find the richness requires paying attention. And that's what I had lost my ability to do in a way, you know, my. My mind was so habituated to multitasking and thinking ahead and worrying about something I might have done wrong or racing into, oh, don't forget nine things tomorrow, and don't, you know, instead of be here now. And that is what ultimately, you know, I think finding the richness requires. It's paying attention. I mean, you can find richness in the bark on a tree. You can find, you know, how long are you willing to look and how long are you willing to sit? And those were things that I'd never, ever allowed myself to ask. I was so busy climbing the ladder of achievement that I never ever once even noticed the ladder or the sky or what's around.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:20:28]:
I mean, it's crazy in a way, and yet I remember vividly being that person and thinking that I was doing it right. This is exactly what I thought the world expected of me. And I'd never even asked if I wanted to do it. I just thought it was what I had to do. And, you know, these assumptions we carry with us are so powerful. And that's what's wonderful about life getting a little disordered, is you have to sometimes question your assumptions because they literally are no longer serving you.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:00]:
What I imagine is that even beyond assumptions, they are these embodied loops, and therefore we're not. They're unconscious. And so when we do well and someone praises us to our survival loop, it's like, oh, I have a place in the tribe. I have a place in the village. Because, like, people are telling me I'm really good at this thing. And the more I do this thing, the more security I have. And, like. And so it's not like I feel like it's even beyond assumption.
Sarah Tacy [00:21:27]:
It's just we are part of this feedback loop that the society gives us. Um, the more you achieve, the more safety you have, the more belonging you have, the more worthy you are, the more people talk about you. And to step away from that identity. Ooh, piercing. Like, pure. When I say piercing, I'm like, yeah, like, pierces the reality and, as you said, starts some of the questioning. So going into that, and I want to talk about time, because I think that's so interesting, but on this thread of piercing the reality, and I've heard you use the word scaffolding. Can you talk a little bit about what you see when people are in retirement? Like, what you learn from yourself and what is happening for people as they transition through retirement, and the scaffold, things that perhaps fall away.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:22:13]:
I think of, you know, really almost two types of core scaffolding, at least the clients I work with, who've all been in intense careers, often for 30 to 40 years, years. And so the identity scaffolding is very, very strong. I mean, this is who I am. This is where I belong. This is where I get my sense of agency and my sense of community and my sense of routine and habit. And I know how to be, where to be, how to show up, you know, and so that. That's a big, big, big influence on how we see ourselves. So that scaffolding, you must get ready for that to go away in many respects.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:22:54]:
And so you've got to find what indoors, which there's a lot, but we don't often stop and touch base with that stuff. So that's one piece, and the other piece is the scaffolding of the structure of your life. Everybody I work with has basically used their career as the central sort of organizing theme of life. It's like non negotiable. I gotta show up and do these things this way. And now everything else I've got to do has to fit around the edges of that. And that's normal. I mean, it is literally what people do, you know, with careers.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:23:28]:
And that includes often even parenthood and their marriages. I mean, those get second seat. I can't tell you how many clients have said to me, my family got the leftovers. They always got the leftovers. Like work got the best parts of me. And that's common. So if you don't make any plan for the shape of your identity, the new structures of life, and you literally just pluck career out of the middle of all of that, the way I experienced that was like all the scaffolding disappeared and all the little, you know, doodads around fell into a heap on the ground. And I sat there for a couple years going, what the heck just happened? I don't even understand what happened.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:24:15]:
And therefore I've lost my confidence. I don't know how to talk about myself anymore. I don't know how to be with the facts of my life. I can't think about a rational way to approach living or to even validate that I like the way I'm living. So that playbook was gone. And so it was just very messy for me internally to clean all that up and figure it out. And it took a long time, I thought, before I felt like I was firmly back on my feet and I could explain my theory of how to live and who I was. And so to me, that scaffolding, you know, when you're at a threshold, you're going to be saying goodbye to some of it and hello to something new.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:24:58]:
But if you can think about what you want those things to be before you take the leap. I just think the whole experience is so much more orderly and empowering than what I experienced. You know, as I have joked before, it's like I base jumped out of my life. And, you know, it's like, okay, well, surprise, surprise. It was a little bit of a mess. You know.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:22]:
In nervous system work, we talk about layers of support.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:25:25]:
Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:25:26]:
And so I think there's something beautiful, like I just want to highlight, like the health and what. And what I feel like you did as well. So to me, there's something where it's Often the really scaffolding falls, everything collapses like that. Those are the times where often our next chapter of life, where we learn so much about ourselves. Like you said, identity falls away. Like, so much falls away that we get to say, oh, if I was to rebuild, actually, what do I want to do? Like, how do I get to be the author of my story? So that there's something important to the way you did it, because it created this whole. The book that you wrote and all the people that you're helping. So there's something important there and that you get to help.
Sarah Tacy [00:26:10]:
People say, like, you still can take a dive into the unknown. You might want a parachute and to hydrate before you go and have a dive instructor. And there's still going to be, like, unknown things that you're going to see and things you'll find out about yourself. And so it's not necessarily like we must control all the conditions, but what are the layers of support that we offer you? Or if you were to travel in another country and a guide takes you to, like, these small streets that nobody else could show you, and you're still going to have discoveries, but the layers of support can sometimes keep things from becoming less explosive. Right. And more choice along the way. And so we can still have our identity grow and shift, but having somebody guide us can be a really beautiful, beautiful gift.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:27:06]:
Well, I absolutely love that way of speaking about layers of support, because I think that's. So that's the difference in a lot of ways between feeling like you're on a grand adventure versus this is a disaster. Right. The one thing I would say that catches my breath a little bit when I think about people who are retiring, and that word is so loaded with negative connotations. The risk to me of it feeling like a disaster is heightened because of the stage of life people are in. And there's a real, true risk that people think this is the beginning of the end. Why bother? I hear so many anecdotes from my clients who will say, I watched my father retire and he was dead nine months later, or he became an alcoholic, or, you know, but all of these terrible, haunting examples of retirement being the trigger for the backslide or the downward slide into, you know, sort of illness and the end of an exciting life. And so I think, in a way, when I think of planning for this moment, it's to hedge against the additional risk you have that because the world tells us we're, you know, sort of washed up, it's age certain, which is insane, but you can't help but worry in the back of your mind that that could be true.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:28:34]:
And then you get lost in the sort of cataclysm of post retirement, you know, messiness. And it's sort of like the perfect storm for never getting yourself out of it again. I mean, at 35, I certainly knew I had decades ahead. I had these two children who said, you know, yeah, you gotta wake up every day and get busy doing stuff. So that's where I think the risk is even, you know, heightened at retirement just because of so many of the messages people carry with them.
Sarah Tacy [00:29:04]:
Yeah, thank you for adding that element. I think it was something that I was overlooking and hadn't considered in that. Right. Cause here I am, like, trying to relate it to listeners who are in their 30s and their 40s, but to really add in that element of what society says about 55, 65, 75, and the stories that are being told. And can you say a little bit about what is a story that you tell people or that you invite people into when they're in this transition?
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:29:35]:
This is one of my absolute favorite stories for so many reasons. And it highlights exactly what you're saying. You know, I often will say to our clients, let's not use the word retirement. Why don't we think of this as another graduation? That's really what's going on here. You know, you, you have just completed a fabulous, incredible stage of life. Look at what you've learned. Look at the security you've created, the experiences you've had, the wisdom you've accrued, the relationships, all of it. Wow, what a spot you're standing in.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:30:05]:
It's like you've graduated. Now what? Right. The whole world, your oyster. Let's think that way. So we were working with a wonderful lawyer. He was 55. He'd been a real estate lawyer his whole life. He had enough money, he was done doing the work.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:30:19]:
This had never been his passion. But he was just completely blank slate on what to do next. And yet he's like, I'm only 55. I'm healthy. Like, come on. I mean, I literally can't just have 365 Saturdays in a row. That's just not going to, you know, cut it. And so we do a lot of brainstorming and a lot of broad questioning, but one of the questions always is, if you knew today that you could choose anything, you know, to go do next and you'd hit it out of the park, whatever that means for you, like, it would just be a smashing success for you, what would you choose? I mean, if you just knew for sure that it was going to be everything you hoped for.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:30:59]:
And he said, well, you can't write this down because it's ridiculous and it's never going to happen. But I would be a Broadway producer and the cherry on top would be to win a Tony Award. I'm like, okay, so you're saying that's impossible? And he's like, of course. I mean, I have absolutely no basis to believe this could happen. I don't know how to do it. I'm terrible at asking for money. No, it can't happen. So I'm like, all right, well, let's just play with me here.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:31:23]:
Let's break it down. If you were going to investigate this, what do you need to know and who can help? So we start talking about what research he could do and who does he know in the industry who knows about this world, who knows how it works? Well, the next thing you know, he's got a whole list of people he can talk to and a bunch of research projects. And I'm like, why don't you just go off and do some of that? Let's just keep iterating and see what happens. What do you have to lose? I mean, it's just an exploration. You don't have to tell anyone you're doing it. Just. Just give it a shot. So sure enough, he starts on his process and next thing you know, a little momentum and a little this and a little that.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:32:00]:
And the punchline of this whole thing is three years from that meeting, he was standing on stage accepting a Tony award for Hadestown. I mean, he's now produced probably 10, 11 shows. He's got a full blown career as a Broadway producer. This is his unlived life, this is his dream. This is the thing for him. And I just think he would have talked himself right out of it if he hadn't had just that little bit of encouragement to believe that it was worth exploring. You don't have to believe it's going to happen. You just have to believe it's worth exploring and let momentum take care of it from there.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:32:43]:
That's one of my absolute favorite stories. And every time I talk to him or sit down and meet with him, it just fills my heart with joy because he is so happy.
Sarah Tacy [00:32:53]:
That's incredible. I was like near tears, like, oh my God, say it's not so and I don't want to project onto you. And my thought was, wow, what meaningful work. To know that somebody would have had this unlived dream. Had you not said, hey, let's look at a few things. Let's look at these two realms. Let's make a list. And the freedom.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:18]:
What I'm also hearing is when we are in this place where we believe that our time is in exchange for money, then often we feel like there are some trainings that I've done. My husband's like, well, what's the return on investment on that? And I'm like, I can't tell you. I just know that I need to be here, I need to do the thing. And inevitably, years down the road, it is so clear. But at the time, I can't say how. For a lot of people, then they would say, well, then I can't do it, I won't do it. And what I'm hearing in the story is, well, now there's this perceived time freedom, not linking what could be like, oh, this is a hobby. This is an exploration.
Sarah Tacy [00:33:54]:
And so when we even think about manifesting such a strong portion of that is to put in the effort without the attachment. He's like, already had his career. And I'm just like, wow. So when you talk about the momentum, it makes sense because I feel like there are less hooks in it. This has to work and I have to get this. And also when you ask for favors and you're feeling and people feel the graspiness of the favor, it can be a deterrent. So when you feel the excitement and the curiosity, I can see how, wow, retirement, if you have that financial stability, and then saying like, well, what else now matters to me really? That momentum and the curiosity and the play, that is also like, can that happen before retirement? But also just the fact that you're helping people find it during graduation, after graduation, I way prefer your phrasing. Graduation is like, it's a celebration and then a celebration.
Sarah Tacy [00:34:51]:
Within the question of, like, what's next? Who am I now? Or I hear retirement. And I don't actually know the etymology, but I'm imagining like the. Just the word tire is in it. Like to tire of something and to like, get tired again and then therefore just relax and take a break.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:35:05]:
Yeah. The word comes from the French word retrier, which means to retreat literally. And the etymology is also awful. It's just like it. It literally is all about contraction and making everything smaller, pulling back. I mean, it's just, oh, I have to use the word because it's the handle that society uses for this moment. But I see it as an inflection point or I love your phrase threshold too. You're just stepping into a moment of change.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:35:33]:
You're going to move through the change. But there's this huge world of possibility waiting over here. And it's like, come on, come on. You know? But I love that you brought play up, because that's what I tell everyone. I mean, you don't have to burden what you do next with the need for it to generate money. It probably will if you love it and you do it well. But set that aside. Enjoy it.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:35:54]:
Just enjoy the adventure of asking for what's possible. You know, it's like whitewater rafting. I mean, you get in the boat and you have. I mean, it's gonna be scary sometimes. It's gonna be exhilarating. It's gonna be boring here and there. It's. You want the ride on the river.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:36:09]:
That's what you signed up for.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:12]:
And I wonder, as you said, like, retirement and contraction. So again, in the work I do, there is this great health to being title to having expansion, contraction. And so even with that time freedom or like, so he was 55. Other people might retire at 75. And it might be like, well, how can I contract with pleasure? Right. As opposed to, like, necessitating because I'm unable. Like, is. Do I have choice? Even in the.
Sarah Tacy [00:36:38]:
In the retraction, in the contraction. And I imagine for this man, but I don't know him, and I don't really know his story, that there might actually also be space when there's play for there to be that expansion, the reaching out for people that coming back in, like, the. But even within that, you do get the expansion and contraction, as opposed to the message that we are often told earlier on, which is like, expansion, expansion, expansion. Right, right. All you can do. There's a little more choice about the. How much we amplify that and our ability to kind of go in and out more.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:37:15]:
No, I love that you raised that.
Sarah Tacy [00:37:16]:
The.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:37:17]:
There are a couple things that came to my mind. One is, to your very point, sometimes what we recommend to people at this particular moment, because they're very worried about what to say to everybody because they do feel like they need a minute. Right. I'd like to take a minute and catch my breath after this intense life. So we say, well, maybe frame it as a sabbatical, because that implies a period of rest and recovery and reflection. But it also implies I'm coming back and not necessarily to work, but I'm not going away forever, but I am going to take a period of intentional Reflection. And I think a lot of people need that, and we often give them that framework just to explain to the rest of the world that they do intend to take six to 12 months and maybe really commit to very little other than reflection and recovery. And I mean, recovery of just not being so intensely under pressure all the time.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:38:14]:
The other thought that occurred to me when you said. What you said is a lot of people are looking just like this gentleman to. To move into a more creative realm than what they have been to live so far. And because they're used to a world where you always have to be producing something, it's scary to try to be creative. Because what I always remind them is that creativity ebbs and flows and it's more like nature than work is. And so you've gotta be ready for periods of expansion and contraction or creativity and rest. And I heard somebody put it beautifully, somewhere in the last month or two, they said, no flower blooms in all four seasons. And I loved that as an analogy because even in writing the book, I experienced that.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:39:03]:
And you imagine because you're in a period of not blooming that somehow you're failing or you're done or you're not going to be able to keep going. And it's so much nicer to reframe it as I'm just recharging right now. It's all gonna be fine.
Sarah Tacy [00:39:21]:
Totally. Wow.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:39:22]:
Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:39:23]:
And can you speak a little bit to your experience with time?
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:39:28]:
Yes. Yes. Oh. I found my adjustment to free time so fascinating. Once I had some distance from it and I could look back on it, of course, I had not understood, I didn't have the perspective yet right away to understand that time. Scarcity was my most familiar way to experience my life. The only thing I never had enough of was time. And when you suddenly end up in a world where all you have is time, the funniest thing is all you want to do is kill it.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:40:10]:
It's like, oh, my Lord, I have to kill all this time. What am I going to do? Instead of it feeling like a luxury because you have divorced yourself from time. It's as if time is a thing that lives outside of you. And if you're not using it in a way that feels productive, you're wasting it somehow instead of realizing, like time is a construct that we create, we are the embodiment of the time because we. We are the ones living our experience. Right. Of these sequential moments. And it suddenly occurred to me that, like, I just divorced myself from the fact that I'm the Person generating my sense of being alive.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:40:55]:
And how did I get so separate from that? I got very philosophical about it and did a lot of reading because I found it fascinating and bizarre in a way and very much an artifact of modern life, you know, that we all feel like we are racing against time all the time. Like time is almost our enemy in a way. And I always mention this to my clients because I thought it was a big blind spot, you know, and I just thought, gosh, if I had even just had somebody warn me about it, I think I would have handled it better than I did. But, you know, realizing that you are the person who's generating your own experience of what time is was a big click for me because I was able to then be much more in a moment and realize that like this moment is fleeting and here's another one and another one and another one. Like stop worrying about what's going to happen tomorrow. Tomorrow's not even here. I mean, be here. And so it was more finding out that the present moment was everything.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:41:59]:
That was the thing I never ever fully understood viscerally. And eventually I did. I don't know if that answers your question, but it was such an. A bizarre revelation for me that I was so detached from being here now.
Sarah Tacy [00:42:14]:
You know, so the reason why I'm so excited and like, as I, as I said, I listened to a different interview with you and the topic of time came up as I hear you talk about it, feeling like something outside of you or that there's never enough of it to just like, then the idea of you're trying to kill it. And actually are we the creator of our own experience of time is that I was a few months ago leading an experiential workshop or somebody else's retreat and I was leading a portion of it and I had them holding on to a sign that said plenty and they got to kind of hold it. How close, how far away? Notice how their body felt. And then let's walk towards your goal. And like, how did they do it when people are crossing them? And. And then we did it with a sign of scarcity. And what is the pace that they walk at? How does it feel when you interact with another? Which is often like they're in my way. And whose pace am I keeping anyway? Am I trying to keep up with the person next to me? And some people also found like, wow, I thrive off of my story of scarcity.
Sarah Tacy [00:43:13]:
This is where. And then, and then I collapse. And as I'm doing it and I have a Nervous system chart up on the wall. What I realized, what I believe currently, is that when we are outside of the range of regulation, which a friend of mine, Tel Darden, would say, like the range of resonance, that place where we feel in our body, we feel like we have choice. It could be slow, medium, or fast. The pacing. But this is our range of resonance. When we go above it into the hyper.
Sarah Tacy [00:43:41]:
It's where many people in the hustle culture live, right? So there's fight or flight, but there's also this place. It's. It's called Global High Intensity activation. This is a place where you would live at a pace where it feels like you never have enough time. And you could live the entirety of your life here not knowing that you're out of the range of regulation the entire time until you have a collapse. And when you have the collapse, you're in the place of. There's too much time. I could be here forever, right? Can't be here for another minute.
Sarah Tacy [00:44:17]:
And when we come into the central place of the range of resonance, time is so much more fluid. So even if things are moving fast, like if you see a basketball player and there's three seconds left on the timer and they're, you know, needing to shoot that last, if they're in the zone, they know exactly how to like. It is the perfect amount of time, Right? Seconds is the perfect. It is spacious, it's expansive, and their body knows exactly where to get and how to do it. And if you're in a meditation and this is a practice that you Is comfortable for your body, then time can expand or contract. But when we're in our range of resonance, then time is. It expands and contracts and you move with it. And it's actually like when we are.
Sarah Tacy [00:45:06]:
We are out of regulation, when we are dysregulated, that we tend to experience time as too fast, way too slow.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:45:14]:
I love that.
Sarah Tacy [00:45:15]:
Yeah. And I'm wondering when you're working with people, how you. So I have in my mind, like, oh, how I would work with somebody if they were having challenges with time. And I'm wondering how you work with people when they're now feeling like they have no idea how to work with time.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:45:32]:
Well, I certainly. Part of, you know, we do these two intensive days with one person. So we go very, very deep with them about their lives and all of that. So often this discussion comes up and it's. The minute I flag it as an issue, I get this kind of bemused, like, oh, my gosh, you're so, Right, like, because one of the pain points they'll express when they work with us is, what am I going to do with all this time? What am I going to do? Like, what am I going to do all day? And it's such an interesting anxiety to have. Right, because what is the actual problem? I mean, whatever you want. The real problem is you don't know what you want to do. You know, I always tell people, you have been a fabulous reactor.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:46:19]:
You've got to learn to be the creator. And those two words have the same letters in them, but boy, do they mean different things. And so to me, the time problem is more about becoming the owner of your creative force instead of waiting for content to fly at you like you're on a tennis ball court with a relentless tennis ball machine, right? And you're just like, whack, whack, whack. And you get so good at it that you think that is the recipe. That's it. That's what I'm here to do, I guess, you know, and so you don't even know. You are not asking the question, what do I want? You've stopped doing that a long time ago or you wouldn't be in this job anymore, to be honest. So.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:47:02]:
So I try to use time as the door to walk through. Like, because once you point out how funny it is, it's sort of like, okay, you're right, that's kind of crazy. That can't be true. That can't be how it really is. So help me understand how I get some agency over this problem. And so that's when I talk about, well, you're just used to being a reactor instead of a creator. And as a reactor, you get to be heroic all day, right? Yes. As a creator, you are the one setting all the rules, all the agendas, making all the decisions.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:47:40]:
Woo. That's a lot to own. But you can do it. You've got to recognize that you've got to change your relationship with the rules and you've got to decide you're going to set them and you know how to. And you've got to experiment. You've got to be okay not knowing every answer and it's again, living your way too. And so those are the conversations we tend to have. And I mean, I work with very bright people, so they're very suddenly aware that there's a lot out there to live and learn about and experiment with than what they've been doing.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:48:13]:
And there's nothing wrong with what they've been doing. But it's that I always say, don't bring that operating system forward because it's not going to serve you unless you want to step into a new world where you're reacting to nothing but other people's agendas all day. And that's the very thing you told me. You're ready to leave.
Sarah Tacy [00:48:32]:
Peter Levine describes trauma physiology as a sense of hopelessness, powerlessness, and the lack of choice. And so whenever I hear elements where what I hear for you is, like, you bring in some conscious choice. And that part about being heroic, it feels so big to me. And I think that's because as long as we're being heroes, people will think highly of us. And if we start being the creators of our own lives, there will be more judgments. There will be talks like, oh, aren't they lucky to have that privilege? Which can be true. I'm not saying that there aren't privileges there, but there are people who don't have a lot of wiggle room and take great risks to be able to make conscious choices in their lives. I do think that sometimes when people live a conscious life that are making choices, that there can be so much more judgment from the outside for that freedom that you're choosing.
Sarah Tacy [00:49:27]:
Whereas when you are the heroic person, feeling like you're in control because you hit every tennis ball, it's like being thrown at you. People go like, wow, look at that person. It's so hard. And they're doing it, you know, exactly.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:49:41]:
And it. And it. And it's so easy to unconsciously hero through your life, you know, in a way that it's like, well, how dare you criticize me? I mean, do you know what I got done today? Do you know what got asked of me today? You know, instead of the harder work of really answering to yourself. And that was maybe the biggest shift of all for me, and that I always hope to help my clients think about at least, is are you sourcing your security and your validation and your okayness out externally or internally? Because when you finally make it an internal job, you at least know who to ask and you know who to look to for your okayness. And there's something so grounding about that even if you don't have all the answers, at least you know that you're the person who's got to tell you, ultimately, you've got to answer to yourself. And you know, that was the biggest change about getting off the high achiever treadmill. And I'll tell you, when I made that choice to leave my career, believe Me, the peanut gallery thought I was crazy. I mean, they.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:50:49]:
Everyone was like, you lost your mind? I'm like, maybe, maybe.
Sarah Tacy [00:50:55]:
I have a question for you. So now you are in a place where you are helping high achieving people find their art, find their. Who am I actually? And I imagine that brings a lot like a sense of like, oh, I'm on my path. I'm in. Is there a sense of what graduation might look for, like, for you in the future or is this like, I'm doing this until the end?
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:51:20]:
I love that question. So it's so funny. I've been really sitting with that here lately because one of my dreams had been to write a book. And I knew, though, that I wasn't going to write a book, just to write a book. I mean, I needed it to feel like a really important project and that I want. I had something important that I wanted to say and share. And so this book, in many ways was 10 years in the making. But I didn't know if I was actually going to succeed in getting the thing written.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:51:49]:
To be honest, I lost hope halfway through because I just forgot I wasn't blooming in four seasons. And, you know, then my inspiration re emerged and all that. So my next graduation and I've been talking to a lot of people about this. I really want to become as much of a writer as I can. I loved the process of writing this book and I love writing and so I love the work I do and I will keep doing it. But if I were going to enhance the ways that I'm engaging in life, it would be to keep writing and probably to explore some other writing realms. Perhaps something that's got even more of a memoir feel or I don't know yet what that next book would be, but I feel very inspired to keep writing. And, you know, I didn't know if this was a one and done until I finished it.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:52:42]:
And I was like, oh, I'm sad. Yes, it's like finishing a great movie and you wish it kept going or something, you know. So, yeah, so I think that's my answer. It's not so much that I will leave what I'm doing now behind as it is that I look forward to finding a richer, broader voice in the written word, whatever that might mean. And I'm okay letting that unfold, you know, I'm okay letting the story sort of come together, because I don't know yet. But.
Sarah Tacy [00:53:13]:
That I'm like as a. The. Into the unknown has really been a theme, I feel like for the last year for so many people. I know. But again, as I explore the nervous system charts, I'm like, wow, there is something. There is so much health. To have the capacity to be with the unknown.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:53:31]:
Yes.
Sarah Tacy [00:53:31]:
To live the answer. That is such a growing edge. Because our culture will say, well, if you do this and get these grades and you can get into this school, and then you can do that so you don't have to live into the unknown. And so to link to the answer really, to me, is a sign of health. And also, like, how do we give ourselves those layers of support so that we can stay in the unknown and live in history? Yeah. Just over here celebrating you. And I'm so happy that you're out in the world doing the work that you're doing. And I love the story that you shared of the man that you worked with who thought his dream was impossible.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:06]:
And you were like, but is it? And. Yeah. And there he was on stage.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:54:14]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Sarah Tacy [00:54:15]:
Thank you so much. Thanks for coming here today. Is there, of course, the book? We'll put the book in the show notes and put your website in the show notes. Is there anywhere else that you would love for people to find you at? Or any last things that you'd love to share or say?
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:54:32]:
Well, in terms of finding me, LinkedIn is the easiest spot. Everything is there, so absolutely feel free to go there. But just a final comment is the thing I say to everybody is as much as the unknown is scary, it's also filled with possibility. And just try to enjoy the ride through because you don't get it back, you know, and you can make that much easier if you're smiling versus angsting. So that's. That's what I would say is just surround yourself with positive people who believe in you and keep going.
Sarah Tacy [00:55:04]:
I love that. That's so huge. Yeah. You're only on the side of the mystery once.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:55:08]:
That's right, exactly.
Sarah Tacy [00:55:10]:
Thank you so much for coming on.
Elizabeth Zelinka Parsons [00:55:12]:
It's been a lovely discussion. Thanks again.
Sarah Tacy [00:55:20]:
Thank you for tuning in. It's been such a pleasure. If you're looking for added support, I'm offering a program that's totally free called 21 Days of Untapped Support. It's pretty awesome. It's very easy. It's very helpful. You can find it@SarahTacey.com and if you love this episode, please subscribe. And, like, apparently it's wildly useful, so we could just explore what happens when you scroll down to the bottom, subscribe rate, maybe say, a thing or two.
Sarah Tacy [00:55:53]:
If you're not feeling it. Don't do it. It. It's totally fine. I look forward to gathering with you again. Thank you so much.