116. Who are you when the house goes quiet?

When your children leave home, the loudest voice isn't always the one you want to hear—it's your inner critic. It whispers doubts, tells you "you shouldn't," "you can't," or "you're not enough," leaving you feeling stuck and uncertain about how to move forward. However, there's a practical, proven framework that can quiet the noise and help you reclaim your peace: Positive Intelligence (PQ).

In this episode, we sit down with coach Kevin Gazzara to demystify PQ and explore how it applies to life after the nest empties. Kevin introduces us to the Judge and its nine accomplice saboteurs—Controller, Hyper-Achiever, Restless, Stickler, Pleaser, Hyper-Vigilant, Avoider, Victim, and Hyper-Rational—that hijack our thoughts with seemingly true but unhelpful stories. He explains how these saboteurs influence our daily lives and how shifting into the Sage mindset—empathy, curiosity, creativity, and decisive action—can transform challenges into opportunities.

Highlights & Key Takeaways:

• Positive Intelligence (PQ) offers a prescriptive, practical approach to mental well-being.
• The Judge and its nine saboteurs undermine confidence and clarity.
• Moving from threat-based thinking to Sage powers—empathy, curiosity, creativity, and decisiveness—shifts your perspective.
• After caregiving and life changes, reframe your identity for reinvention instead of loss.
• The Pleaser pattern can lead to burnout—setting oxygen-mask boundaries prevents that.

Join us and challenge the noisy inner critic. Map out a clear, actionable path for growth, reinvention, and community—because the person you already are has everything it takes to lead your best life.

Here's your free PQ assessment and practical next steps!

Kevin Gazzara Bio
Dr. Kevin Gazzara - CEO of Magna Leadership Solutions, Management & Leadership Expert, Executive Positive Intelligence Coach, Professor at 5 Universities, Speaker, & Author of The Leader of OZ. Kevin worked for 18 years at Intel Corporation in positions from Program and Product Management to Leadership Development. He holds a BS in Commerce and Engineering, an MBA and a Doctorate of Management in Organizational Leadership. 

Find Kevin Online: Facebook, Linke

Chapters

• 0:00 Why Your Inner Voice Blocks Joy
• 0:24 What Positive Intelligence Really Is
• 4:51 Reinventing Identity After Caregiving
• 8:25 Sage vs Saboteurs: The Mental Model
• 11:27 Meet the 10 Saboteurs
• 19:22 Taming The Pleaser Without Guilt
• 22:35 Practice, Neuroplasticity, and Daily Reps
• 26:18 Beating Social Isolation with PQ
• 31:05 A Grandparent’s Mindset Shift
• 34:50 Take the Assessment and Act

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:00

Hey there, my emptiness friends. Are you sick and tired of those voices in your head telling you, I can't, I shouldn't, I don't know how, that's impossible, I couldn't, and actually allowing those thoughts to maybe hold you back from living your best emptiness life. I hear from so many of you in my social posts that have these exact same thoughts and aren't enjoying this special time in our lives. So what are we going to do about it? Well, today I'm joined by Kevin Pizarra, a coach trained in positive intelligence, and we're going to dig into how we can leverage positive intelligence or PQ as it's known to find surprising ways to thrive in our emptiness lives. Kevin, welcome to this emptiness life.

SPEAKER_00: 0:40

Jay, thanks for sharing me with your listeners. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01: 0:43

Yeah, I'm so excited for you to be here. Why we were talking a little bit before we hopped on PQ is one of those things that, you know, it kind of is out there in the periphery. Some people know, some people don't. But so before we actually start getting into the meat of this conversation, what exactly is positive intelligence or PQ as we'll probably refer to it from here on out?

SPEAKER_00: 1:05

So I think that probably the easiest way to describe it is there's a lot of work that was done on emotional intelligence many, many years ago. Daniel Goldman from Rutgers made it popularized and really created the one of the first, I'd say, commercial assessments for emotional intelligence. And I've been a fan of Goleman's as well as his predecessors for many years. And he did a wonderful job of kind of defining what emotional intelligence is with regard to our self-awareness, our awareness of others, our motivation, and kind of all put it together in a single model. And a few several years ago, a gentleman by the name of Shrizad Shami wrote a book called Positive Intelligence. And what Shrizad had done was he had taken a lot of the foundational work that was done by Goleman. And I would say Goleman, the big difference is Goleman's work is very descriptive. So you can take the assessment and you can read his books, and it makes tons and tons of sense. Taking it to the next level, a sh prescriptive way has always been a little bit nebulous. And what Shirzat had done in the positive intelligence book is he has taken the work of Goleman. He's also included work by in positive psychology. If anybody's read any of the work by Martin Seligman from University of Pennsylvania, he's taken some work by in neuroscience like David Rock. And he's basically put these all together into an operating system. And he's moved from this descriptive, how do I move forward, to a very prescriptive methodology so that you can understand yourself, uh, you're you can understand others, you can understand your motivation, and he gives you a process in a mindfulness meditation type type of approach where you can actually build new neural pathways in it in your brain. So the great news is if you're wondering what's going on in your head and how to control those, what he calls saboteurs, um this is a wonderful prescriptive methodology to build those neural pathways through some very quick a couple minutes at a time, mindfulness. You don't have to be, you know, you don't have to be a meditator. I remember back in college and my roommate was heavy in the meditation, and I'd wake up in the morning in the dorm room and he'd be sitting in the middle of the room in a lotus position, all humming for 45 minutes as a mantra. And I tried that, and that just never really worked for me. And what Shirzad has done is he has created, he's brought all the concepts together that that really were independent and should work together in a way that that's very understandable and enticing to want to get engaged with.

SPEAKER_01: 4:24

Yeah, it sounds like it's perhaps a little bit more, his work is a little bit more accessible. You mentioned the meditation piece, and people talk about that all the time. Oh, you should meditate, that'll help you. Yeah. People, I don't understand that piece, or do I have to really sit for 30 minutes or 45 minutes or an hour in silence and kind of figure things out? But the piece that intrigued me was you mentioned like the work all ties together self-awareness, and I would imagine to a certain degree, self-identity. And what I find with empty nesters who were primarily the full-time caregivers in their families, was like that, their identity of self has gotten lost a little bit. And so it's like, how could we use PQ, positive intelligence, to rebuild identity and purpose in our empty nest lives?

SPEAKER_00: 5:09

Yeah, it it's a great question. It's and it's something when I I do a lot of executive coaching currently. I left the corporate world about 18 years ago to run some, to start up a company called Magda Leadership Solutions. And we do lots of leadership development programs around the world for big organizations, medium size, even some small organizations. But what has emerged out of that as we've been working with the different leaders, is there's been a desire for them to get a use me as a coach, right? So I went back many years, several years ago, four or five years ago, and I did all my official ICF coach certifications. And then one of my business colleagues was involved with Shirzad when he was with another organization. And just as positive intelligence was coming out, she said, Oh, there's this new program uh that you that I'm about to take, and why don't you join me on it? So I joined her on it, and it was life-changing for me, right? Because what I recognized is thinking back to my roommate in the lotus position in the dorm room, thinking about, oh, it's another one of these soft. I don't want to, I don't want to deal with that. My background is, just so everybody knows here, my background is in engineering and business. So I I lived in the high-tech world at Intel for 18 years. And before that, I was with Trans America Corporation. And I've always lived in kind of the bits and bytes world, right? Things that were very rational. And I understood the value of emotional intelligence, particularly as I did all my doctoral work and motivation and engagement, and I've found the valve the value of it. So the key is to recognize that this soft, squishy kind of stuff really does help you create this position, particularly as you go into retirement, into a position to think about yourself as a a reinvention as opposed to some a decline, which I think many people do.

SPEAKER_01: 7:24

Yeah, I think what folks who hit the empty nesting stage, and I I look at that as it's not just a moment when the kids leave home. Like, yes, that's when empty nesting starts, but it is that time frame between when they leave home and when we retire. I know a lot of what you talk about is like how we can thrive in retirement. And I'm saying, let's back that up. How can we thrive in empty nesting? And how can we use a tool like PQ to actually help us do that?

SPEAKER_00: 7:51

Yeah, and it's a great it's a great tool to be able to get you started, but you always want to have a plan. I was fortunate enough that I had this personal goal to retire at 50, and I was able to do that. If you look at success in transition and you look at success in your retirement life, I'd say very close to 100% of that is with regard to your mental models and the strength of your what Shazada calls your sage brain. And if you can get your sage brain turned on, which means turning off the naysayer brains, which he calls your saboteurs, and there's 10 of them, we'll talk about that today. The 10 saboteurs that do that. If you can really turn them off, because one of the things that we know from really great neuroscience work that was done by Dr. Richard Boyatsis is that we know that when we have a negative event that happens, that you need to have three other positive events to get back to uh to the status quo, right? So if you have a lot of negative events happening, you have 10 of negative events happening during the day, typically it just completely overwhelms your brain. And unless you've really built those neuropathways by understanding which saboteurs are creating these negative events, because each event is it's how you interpret it determines whether it's positive or negative. Do you look at it as an opportunity or as a threat? But some other terms that people will talk about, do you have a fixed mindset of well, if the this happens, it's bad, and this happened, it's good? Or do you have what they call a growth mindset? Some work that was done by Carol Dweck, also at University of Pennsylvania. And if you have that growth mindset, and people say, Well, I've always been like this, and this is how I am, so I don't have that growth mindset. The really good news is you can do work to be able to change that. It's very possible. And I think the reason that people don't, in fact, I know the reason, because this is from my research, that people don't do that is that we live in a Wall Street world, right? Everything is 30, 60, 90, what's happening, and we don't really think longer term. And for people who are getting ready for the emptiness life, that you have to take a little bit longer look. And the reason that people don't do that is that in our brain likes causation. If I do an hour of this, I get an hour of benefit there, right? And what we're talking about is we're talking about correlation. And you have to continually, it's just like building any habits, right? Or exercising or weight loss or whatever it is, that you have to do things on a continuous habitual method in order to continually build that those little pieces of the road. And so when you need to go to that neural pathway in your brain once something bad has happened, that it's there. And because you can't see that in the short-term Wall Street model, people aband abandon it, say, Well, this is a valuable. So I'll just drudge through things.

SPEAKER_01: 11:16

Okay. So for somebody who's trying to figure out, I've got to I've got to make a change in my life now that the kids have gone. They're battling, you said 10 saboteurs. Yes. I break them down into contractions for folks. Is I can't, I shouldn't, I won't, but what are the names of the 10 saboteurs so that people might have an idea of what to look out for?

SPEAKER_00: 11:37

Yeah, so they're so I'll start at the top, which is the judge saboteur, right? He or she is the master saboteur, right? That controls all of us, that we have this judge in our brain that takes all the information coming in from the other nine saboteurs and makes the determination of what to do next. Then I'm gonna run down through these, and these are in no particular order. And I'll give you a brief description, and then what we're gonna do, Jay, is at the end of this, we'll give them a link and they can take the the two PQ assessors for free.

SPEAKER_01: 12:14

You can throw it into the show notes too, so they have access to it, so they can be like, oh, okay, now I see where this is what's bothering me, this type of saboteur.

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

Exactly. And it's like read out the names. What I would encourage people to listen to is listen to see if this that name resonates with you. So the first saboteur is they called or Sirdad identifies as the controller, right? It's being able to make sure that you have control of everything, regardless of others and the environment. The next one is what's known as the hyper-achiever, right? Where nothing is good enough that they always have you have to do better and more over and over again. The other one is the restless. A lot of people have this restless saboteur where they're always thinking about woulda, coulda, shoulda, as Kenny, you had mentioned before. So you have this kind of rest restlessness of like when everything is done at the end of the day, your brain just fills it with more mind chatter. You have that restless. The other one, next one is what's known as a stickler. And a stickler is really where it's paying attention to deep details that really have a very, very small, if not zero, degree of importance or imp impact to what you're doing. And it's usually kind of things that are never never good enough that that I'm constantly looking for more and more m minutia, which delays our ability to move forward. People get stuck there to think they want things. And it's usually a combination of the stickler and one of the other saboteurs as well. And by the way, we all have different levels of these, and it's a scale from from zero to 10 when you take the assessment. So the next one is what's known as the pleaser, and this is the one that that I particularly have several client executive clients that I'm working with, uh, that they they have the pleaser saboteur, and it's always much more about what you're doing and about pleasing others, independent of what it's doing to you. Just taking more and not dealing with conflict, pushing it off. Hope is not a strategy type of thing. So that's the pleaser type. And I've seen from a lot of assessments that I've done. The pleaser one seems to be in the top three for many people. And then you have the hyper-vit vigilant, right? The hyper-vigilant saboteur is very similar to the restless. The difference is the hyper-vit vigilant is also worrying about all the things that are out there, right? Oh, I did this wonder that when this is going to come back. I probably should call or touch points again. And and you can do this. And by the way, this works both in business and with the family in particular. Most of the people have gone through the the six-week PQ program that that I offer is they found that that's equally, if not more, um impactful for for their family. So you have the hyper-vigilant saboteur. And the last three areas, you have the avoider, particularly with the pleaser. Those two seem to work kind of hand in hand with each other, that they don't want to deal with the uh the conflict. They hope is a strategy for them. And usually with the avoider, the more time that goes on, the worse it gets. Not always. Quite often it's uh it's very prevalent. And then you have the victim saboteur. I think from a coach perspective, this is the one that's the most challenging for me. Is someone that sees themselves it's a victim as the things are happening to them. And the I think the people with the growth mindset believe that things happened for you and not to you. Victims always it's happening to me. Why do they do that to me? Why is the stock market crashing? Why is does my daughter want to talk to me? Those type of things that's the victim mentality. And then the last one, which is one of my top ones coming out of the engineering, the bits and bites, and the rational world is the hyper-rational, right? Where the belief is that that everyone can turn any anything, any problem into a rational discussion and decision. And the one thing that we have learned is that the way our brains work, then the way I like to think about it, is if you think about your brain, you have your emotional brain and you have your rational brain. And I always think about the emotional brain as a kind of a wall that goes around the rational brain, which is in the center of your brain. And our tendency for those particularly have a strong hyper-rational, like I do, is just pushing harder to break the wall or get over the wall. Push, push, push. And what we know is until the wall has come down, the emotional brain has been satisfied, you really can't address the rational brain in a very practical, um, productive, efficient way. So the my best tip for any of you that, particularly if you're a scientist or an engineer or a medical person that really lives in the rational world with lots of data, is take the pause, listen, and see if you can recognize if there's an emotional challenge happening there or if it's a rational challenge, right? And if it's irrational, you can start the discussion right away. Most of the time, there's something else going on. There's something else going on. Like, oh, I can't get this project done. I'm always late. And you ask, and what's going on emotionally, a lot of times has nothing to do with the workplace. It has to do with something that's happening at home. Of my daughter's studying for the SCTs, and she's really worried, and I'm worried she's not going to get into college. She wants all of that mind chatter is happening. And people with a very strong PQ value, where they have low saboteur numbers and a very high sage. There's five sage powers. We could talk about those where they have that sage brain happening. If they if they have a really strong sage brain, what they can do is they can recognize the impact and deal with it and have a discussion about what's really happening. And then once that's out of the way, then you can have the rational discussion.

SPEAKER_01: 19:22

Got it. So I'm I the one thing that popped up for me in those descriptions, and you mentioned a lot of your clients are this one, is the pleaser. I imagine a lot of primary caregivers feel like they're the pleaser too. They're always looking out for their kids, their partner, spouse, maybe other people in their lives, their parents, their siblings. What is it in particular about the pleaser saboteur that makes it hard to get over? Like, how do you help people work through that? I'm just I'm super curious there.

SPEAKER_00: 19:51

Yeah. So, first of all, is one you have to recognize that's your saboteur. And the on a scale of one to ten, somebody that is at a 10 uh is very different than someone's at a six or five five type of thing. And if you're at a 10 or you're in an eight, nine, ten in the higher range, the my recommendation, and if you read Shoes Odds book on PQ, his recommendation would be is to one is to to think about yourself like uh like you're on an airplane. That we want you to put your oxygen mask on first before you can help others. And the tendency is to help all the others, and by the time you're done and you haven't put your oxygen mask on, bam, you're passed out, then you're of no use to anyone else. So you want to be able to leverage that. And the one thing I always tell people is when people are trying to load more stuff on you, or you feel like you're not doing enough, or whatever is really to say to them is I will be here with you to facilitate what we need to accomplish today. It may not be me doing the work, but I will make sure that the work gets done or the relationship gets done or whatever that we take care of your needs. And then you have to delegate it to others. And too often I think many of us just keep loading it on, and we don't the for the pleasures, they don't ask for help. Because they don't want to be seen as not a team player or insensitive to other people's t needs, and I have to do more, right? Or what will they think about me? And that's the saboteurs talking to you. Oh, what would they think about me if I don't go over to see mom every day or take care of this or give her a call or whatever? And they haven't really talked through that, and they also haven't said who else in my environment or my system can be we can work together rather than just do it doing everything. So it's it's setting expectations, it's working with others, it's bringing more people into the fold so that it's not just you. You can't you just you can't do it all yourself.

SPEAKER_01: 22:15

Okay, so I'm gonna tie some pieces together here for the listeners, because there's I had another guest on talking about executive function and where our brains don't fully develop until we're 25. And so oftentimes parents play the role of executive function for their kids. And so when they go off to school, if you are, if you're listening to Kevin, you're like, oh yeah, the pleaser, that's me. I feel like that's me. It's like when the kids do go off to college, because their brains aren't fully formed yet, you played the role of their that part of their brain for so long. Is that when they do call and say, How do you do X, Y, and Z, or I have this problem, is ask them, Well, interesting. What are you going to do about it? That's how you remove the people, like the people pleaser saboteur from is like you don't feel like you have to jump in all the time for your kids once they're off to college. It's like you give them the space to learn and grow. Feel like that, I think, is a good analogy transition for the folks who are listening. Like, okay, here's the people pleaser and me. I feel that this is what I can do about it. But number one is to go and take the test to find out, are you really the people pleaser? Are there some other saboteurs at play here for you?

SPEAKER_00: 23:23

And the the great news is even on the site that you'll get access to for positive intelligence, even if you don't buy the book, there's lots of information there that if you wanted to go delve into the saboteur that's I would say to take a look at your top three, depending on the numbers, right? If you have one that's at a 10 and all the rest are fives and below, really focus on that 10. If your top three are like 888, uh then you probably want to look at all of those. And and some some may come in at zero, and that's a good thing. And some other some others will come in higher. I think the one thing I'll say, Jay, is I took the program about four or five years ago to get certified to teach positive intelligence. And then when I first took my assessments, my top three were in the seven and eight range. And then by doing this for many years, because I do this as it's first thing I do in the morning. I get a focus for the day. I do some mindfulness activities for anywhere between two to twelve minutes, depending on. I usually try to get up and take a walk every morning. And that's the first thing I do is to clear flush out my brain and not be thinking about all the stuff I have to do. And it brings a lot of clarity. And by doing that, it really helps. And when I've retaken the assessment, which I think the last time I took the assessment, uh ever everything is down into the six and five range. Right. So move from eight to seven eight and sevens to sixes and fives. So it's still there, but it's fifty percent less than it was. So I know that the stuff is working. Uh, so that you can't you can make the change. Getting everyone to to zero is probably I don't think anybody's ever done that. I don't think they talk about that in the book, but the key is to get them reduced so that your emotional brain stays at a lower level so that you can really use that rational brain when you need it.

SPEAKER_01: 25:34

Yeah, I think that the takeaway here for folks is often in emptiness life we we have to like work on our health, or we have to work on our relationships, or we want to go to the gym, whatever it may be, is that it takes time. Like your perfect example of I was at eights and now I'm at fives and sixes, is you actually get up and do the work every day. And I think that's a good point to make for folks like everything we talk about here on the show is you have to put the F like the reps in, the time in. And just sitting there will never get you over. I can't, I shouldn't, I don't know how, that's impossible. I couldn't. Right? Though those things are gonna block you until you decide, okay, I do want to make a change. Let me dig into it a little bit more and figure out why.

unknown: 26:17

Yep.

SPEAKER_01: 26:18

One of the biggest challenges for empty nesters, which I think is true for retirees as well, but it happens in that empty nest phase too, is social isolation. It's so much so they're our friends were the parents of our kids. So that whatever our kids' friends' parents are, those were our friends. That just happened to be how we all mesh together as human beings. Like we go to where our kids go and get to meet those people, and then we move on. And I know you talk about this when this happens in retirement, you leave work and all of a sudden you're just home, and there's social isolation that happens because everybody has scattered and you're by yourself, which happens in empty nesting too, especially if you're not working. How can PQ help there too?

SPEAKER_00: 27:02

Well, the thing is the I think for thinking about PQ, um, first you want to recognize which saboteur is holding you back from making the social connections. I think what you'll find is there's usually one of those. So, for example, an avoider might be, you know, what might be is like, uh, so if I go meet somebody and they don't like me, that's going to be upset upsetting to me, or what can I give them, or this is new. So you basically just avoid it and you hope that think things will happen, right? So all of the saboteurs have some kind of voice in your head that's telling you not to do that, right? That and once you recognize which ones, then there's lots of stuff in the book on the website that will say, if you're get here's the voice, is this if this is what's it's saying to you, here's approaches that you can use in order to do that. And the other thing is you don't have to go it alone, right? So pairing with someone else, whether it's a spouse, a significant other, uh a friend, a colleague, a coworker, someone else is in that space, and doing it together. I think that's one of the things that we found, particularly as we've done our leadership programs, is probably the biggest advantage you can get for advancing yourself and really building your PQ brain is what we call capability partners. We don't call them accountability partners because it feels too much like policing. But we say get a capability partner so that you hold yourself accountable and say, okay, guess what? You and I are gonna go to the gym that day, or you and I are gonna go to the that golfing meeting that's happening about this golf social group, whatever it is, or card group and so forth, that you're gonna do that together. And when you physically do that together, you hold yourself accountable. And the capability partners can be my capability partner is in San Francisco, and I am here, and we talk about what we're gonna accomplish. Then when we meet on a regular basis, we talk about what we did do and what we didn't do. And if we didn't do it, to really go deeper of the why. And usually the why, or almost 100% of the time of the why is uh has to do with the saboteurs. It's that hyper-vigilant saboteur. Oh, I've been working on all this other stuff, and my long my to-do list is a thousand things long, so I didn't get to that point. It's why didn't you prioritize that? I understand why you didn't prioritize that. And once you understand that, you can really move forward.

SPEAKER_01: 29:50

Yeah, I like the idea of the capability part. Accountability only happens within, nobody can hold you accountable, I believe. And yeah, it feels very like onerous to say, oh. Oh, somebody's gonna hold you accountable to doing whatever, or getting outside your comfort zone, or meeting new people now that the kids are growing and flown. Can you find someone like the capability partner to even say, hey, are we capable of doing this? Like together, let's make this happen. Let's try and find something to do together.

SPEAKER_00: 30:18

And I think there's I know there is. I don't remember what the site is, but there's actually a site where you can go on. I don't know if it's I think if you search accountability partners, because that's the more common term to use that you can that it pairs people together. So you can meet somebody remotely. And I I think probably might be a little bit scary, realize is that the other person is probably in an equal situation. So you can work through that together. I my I found for me the best way to extend my social network is really by giving back, right? Whether it's coaching, whether it's mentoring, uh, whether it's working with nonprofit organizations. The more I give back, the more I get back from a social perspective, the more people I so I don't go in with the intention of, oh, I'm doing this to meet people or to build my network. I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do. And if I and if I can do that, it really helps with my gratitude.

SPEAKER_01: 31:28

I love that. And folks, if you're interested in more mentoring stuff, I actually have another episode coming out on that specifically with Deborah Heiser. So listen to that one as well. Kevin has been a huge resource here for helping you understand a little bit more about positive intelligence, PQ. We've dove into a lot of different things here today, and it really is just at the 30,000-foot view. There is so much to this. But I really encourage folks to take the time, go take the test, figure out where you're stumbling and where you get stuck, because that's how you figure out how to move forward in life. Kevin, I'm curious, through all of your work, what's one of the most defining moments of your life in this past year? Not with your clients, not with anything else at work, but just in your own life.

SPEAKER_00: 32:16

I think, you know, the transition for me from I've had several different versions. The first transition was leaving the corporate world, which was planned. We just celebrated our 18th year for my company on Magna Leadership Solutions. Every year has been better than the last. Very fortunate for that. But the I think the big thing for me is my kids, my two daughters have had their children late in life. Right. So I be so I became a grandparent about six years ago. But the defining moment this year in the past 12 months has been the arrival of my first granddaughter. So I have two grandsons, three and six, and then I have a granddaughter. And really what has happened is the kind of the next definition for me, beyond just being a coach, a mentor, leadership expert, has been as a grandparent. And we are very fortunate that we have a home right next door to my younger daughter, who has the three, and the uh the nine-month-year-old, and then my uh six-year-old grandson is two miles away. So I get so that's my daily basis, right? My daily basis, I'm a grandparent and a parent first, and then I have uh I'm a I'm a coach and a leadership and a professor. I'm teaching, I've taught at six different universities. So that's secondary. So the shift has happened from uh in the last six years, but in particular, as of the last two have I've shown up as three and three years and nine months has really been that's really been the biggest difference from my identity to be the grandparent first. And it's been a wonderful transition. I didn't I didn't plan to go, this is when it's gonna happen. I just knew it was gonna happen, and I just needed to be ready for it, and that's the reason that having that positive mindset, whether it's for home or work, is so important.

SPEAKER_01: 34:28

I love that, Kevin. Congratulations. That's so exciting. I know a lot of people in their emptiness life feel like they are just waiting around to become a mother-in-law or father-in-law or a grandparent, waiting for the kids to get engaged and married and have kids. But I think the important takeaway here is get prepared for it before it happens. Live your life before it happens, do lots of other things before it happens because when the grandkids do come, they you just said when you listed your identity, you listed grandparent first. And so take the time now, folks, to do the things you want to do in life and learn what's holding you back. I think that's the biggest takeaway from today is which saboteur is holding you back and how might you move forward in life now that you're empty nesting. Kevin, it's been an absolute pleasure having you on today. Folks, we're gonna put a lot of stuff in the show notes about Kevin and his work, and definitely the link to take that PQ test that is free just to get you started. So it's good to have you here, Kevin. Appreciate you being on.

SPEAKER_00: 35:31

All right, thanks, Jay.