To Live List
What’s on your To Live List®?
I realized there was something missing in my life—not another to-do, and definitely not a bucket list. Because what happens when you check off every box and you’re still here?
To-do lists are useful, sure. But they’re about getting things done. And then what? Just another list.
A To Live List® is different. It’s about how you want to live—through the highs, the lows, and everything in between.
On this podcast, we explore what it means to truly live—and to be fully present in your own life. Come along for real conversations and a fresh perspective on how to shape your life.
To Live List
Rewriting the Rules of Career Fulfillment with Catherine Peters
Catherine Peters shares her journey as she transitions from a successful legal career to a path that honors her personal aspirations and well-being. This episode emphasizes the importance of self-reflection, vulnerability, and the necessity of putting oneself back into their life narrative.
• Catherine introduces her background as a lawyer
• Reflection on pandemic as a catalyst for change
• Importance of psychological distance in work-life balance
• Discussion on self-care practices and personal needs
• Emphasis on vulnerability and openness to feedback
• Observations on generational shifts in work perspective
• Conclusion with a poignant question on self-inclusion in life
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Hey everyone, welcome back. This is To Live List. Hey, don't want to miss this.
Delia:Hey everyone, welcome back to the To Live List. I'm Delia Grenville, your host, and today I've got someone really special on the show. Catherine Peters though I call her Cathy because we go way back to our university days is not only a longtime friend, but someone I've lived with and shared a lot of life with since then. Cathy's in the middle of this incredible transformation. After 30 years as a lawyer, she's giving herself permission to step into something totally new and I couldn't wait to have her on to talk about what that really looks like. We're going to dig into the highs, the scary parts and all the unexpected moments that come with making such a big shift. So if you've ever thought about switching gears in your career or just wondered what it's like to live life on your own terms, Cathy's got some great insights to share. Let's get into it. So I just wanted to introduce everyone to Cathy Peters.
Delia:Well, I call you Cathy Peters.
Delia:I don't know what everybody else calls you, but Cathy Peters, longtime friend of mine, roommate and or housemate as we called them in back in university.
Delia:We've known each other pretty much forever, like since actually teenage years, and the reason I wanted to have Kathy on and I'll have her talk a lot more about her story.
Delia:But the reason I wanted to have Cathy on is because Cathy is going through an amazing opportunity, I think, in terms of transformation, in terms of giving herself permission to live her next steps of what she wants to do in her life, and I've had a couple of friends who started off 2023 in this position to make pivotal moves, and I was, when you know, when Cathy made the announcement of changing careers and I won't even call, I will talk about the other word later I was just sort of like I really want to have you on when you're six to eight months into the journey to help people understand what it means to make your life how you want it to be, and you know the good parts, the scary parts, the unpredicted parts, all of that. So I'll start there and I'll let you, kathy, tell people what you'd like to tell them about yourselves and also, if they're permitted to call you Kathy, yes, kathy is largely an alias for my youth, but most people call me Catherine now, but it's that's how people designate themselves as special friends.
Catherine:If they still call me Cathy, it means they knew me before law school. So I have been practicing as a lawyer since 1993. And I guess part of my story, if you think about it from the perspective of the path that you were on and the ways in which, over the course of your career, you choose to change that path in order to better address or align with wherever you are at that stage of your life. I was 20 years old when I went to law school, and law school in Canada is a three-year degree and then at the end of it you have to article. You did my day anyway, so that was a full year of working within a law firm and it was only then that you could get called to the bar. So the reason I'm describing this is, once you get yourself on the track of going to law school, then very much all of the narrative that you hear as you're going through is that you need to get the best articling job and then, when you're in that articling job, you need to get hired back into that job and then if you get hired back, then you're working as an associate, we call them, for a number of years and your goal is to become a partner right. And so it is very much a track and certainly some people leave the track at different points for various different reasons.
Catherine:But in my case I stayed in private practice for 30 years and then at the end of last year I decided that I would retire, although I understood, as I was doing it, that it wouldn't be a full retirement in the sense that I would go from doing something to nothing. But even though I will say retirees are amongst the most busy people I know. But I did plan to change my career. It's not a totally different career, but it is a different take on what I was doing before. I was an employment lawyer with a focus on human rights and equity, and I moved from being an advocate, so a litigator, into being an investigator and dispute resolver. So I'm now in. I have a firm called Catherine Peters Dispute Resolution where I do investigations into human rights issues, facilitations and mediations as a neutral.
Delia:Cool, Cool. I mean, in some ways, as you said, you stayed on the same path or in the same lane, and in other ways it's kind of weird because you're on your own now, Right. So that's the big transition sort of not having the partnership not having the firm.
Catherine:You know, I think working in a firm is I don't know how it compares to other businesses, because it's really the only employment experience I have but a firm is basically a group of partners or business owners who come together right. So in a way you're more independent within that model than you might be in a different kind of employment environment. You don't really have a boss. For example, there's a person who manages the firm and, yes, they have some authority over you, but it's not quite this same relationship you have with a boss in a company. So you have, you know you, you are doing your own thing to some extent.
Catherine:But certainly one of the things that's different now is that I am doing it totally on my own. I don't have the. I don't have the supports that I had there. It was a fairly big organization with you know well, I miss tech support the most, but so I don't have that. I don't. I don't see colleagues on a regular basis, and so that's certainly different. Certainly at a younger point in my career I probably would have missed that more in terms of the opportunities for both collegiality but also to bounce ideas off each other and that sort of thing. But obviously as you get more experienced, it's less essential that that happen anyway. So it's different. It's maybe a little less different than it would have been under other circumstances because of COVID, because, like everyone, we worked on our own on Zoom A lot For a couple of COVID, because, like everyone, we worked on our own on Zoom for a couple of years.
Delia:Yeah, yeah, covid, covid. What a thing. That was right. I know people don't want to look back sometimes, but it's such a game changer when you think about how, for many of us, it sort of put us in that position to rethink what we were doing and if we wanted to stay on that path. And did COVID play a role in some of the decisions that you made?
Catherine:Yeah, I kind of wonder about that, delia. I mean, in some ways it seems too easy to say that COVID was sort of the crystallizing factor in all of this. I think probably I was already thinking about the future before COVID, but I think, like everyone else, COVID provided an opportunity both to well, more than one thing. I guess. You know there were opportunities to reflect on where you were now and where you wanted to be. There was also, you know, the nature of work changed fundamentally, and so when I thought about going and continuing on in my firm, you know the nature of work was going to change there. I mean, people weren't going to have I mean, they're in the office to some degree now, but there wasn't going to be the same collegiality that was there when I grew up, because the well grew up when I came up through the ranks, because people are just going to do their work differently.
Catherine:But then I think that third thing that I wouldn't want to lose sight of is, you know, I think it probably all focuses a little more maybe as we should have been previously on personal life things, and so, for example, I didn't see my parents more than once or twice in two years, and so those kinds of things. I think we all reflected on those things and many of us did and said to ourselves is that really what I want? Where's the balance between? Because I would also say, for me, during covid, there was no balance, it was constant work. You couldn't. You couldn't get physical distance from your workspace, which brings along with it some psychological distance, and there was, there was no life to have. Well, you know what I'm saying.
Delia:It sounds really depressing no, no, I hear you. I hear you go out to dinner or or anything like that.
Catherine:Right, your most you can do is walk around the block or something like that. So, um, a lot to reflect on, I think on the personal side as well, in terms of understanding, you know whether, where you are at this in terms of understanding, you know whether where you are at this moment in your life is where you want to be.
Delia:Yeah, and I think too, you know, when you mentioned the psychological distance, I think that was a real factor for a lot of people, right, that we didn't understand how our psychological distance sort of co-traveled with our activities, right. So those breaks that we needed to have, the fact that work wasn't in the living room and dinner in the kitchen, and you know what I mean. All I can say is, in a house with a family, I have never repaired so many items like I did in toilet, like in toilet and COVID because that's what I was going to talk about the toilet cover seats, they all broke, right. You know, the faucets, all of these things that aren't getting that level of use because we are using them in other spaces.
Delia:You know, the house was just sort of like what's happening, but it was amazing because it really brought home how this space, our home space, is really sort of a, you know, a retreat or a sanctuary or a breathing space. It's not where all of us lived our lives and retreat and breathing space. I use those words purposely because I think that was part of the psychological distance that you know, working in other spaces provided. And then all of a sudden we were all here, right, all of us in the world in our homes, except for the essential workers, thank goodness for them who you know really went out and did the hard work during covid, you know, to support us all. And I think one of the big things is we didn't think about psychological distance at all. I mean, I didn't, and now I think it's one of the things that we're all so critically aware of.
Catherine:Yeah, I think for me I did think about psychological distance before, but not to the same degree, because I always felt, you know, in Toronto, where I am, if you work in the downtown core, there are, for example, a whole bunch of condominiums around there, and so lots of young people live there while they're working. But COVID was a game changer. You know, as you say, I don't think any of us really had thought about. I mean, there are people who work at home, but for many of us who hadn't previously done so, I had never really imagined a world that seemed that sort of confined in terms of a physical space. That sort of confined in terms of a physical space. At the same time you're connecting with a lot of people virtually, but it's not the same it isn't the same, it's just.
Delia:It's interesting that you actually thought about it as psychological distance, because I didn't.
Delia:I can tell you what would just say like I don't want to be um, cause we lived in downtown Berkeley and I it was a great eye-opener for me I just said I cannot do urban all day.
Delia:I cannot do urban all day, and I just didn't have a I didn't have a framing of that being something with my mental health, right. I just that was just the way I expressed it Like I can't do urban all day and I need to be able to, like on Saturday when I go out for coffee, I don't want to be dealing with the same people that I'm dealing with during the work week when I go out for the coffee, right, Because the Saturday morning sort of suburban retreat is a lot different from you know, same old, same old in the downtown area, with all of the characters who make downtown. You know downtown, you know so, but I didn't have that language. Do you think that comes from you know, having you having a background in psychology, that you were able to make that distinction, or what makes you think that you thought that way?
Catherine:Oh, my goodness. I doubt it comes from the background in psychology. I'm not sure I would have used the terminology at the time but for me it was a very instinctual feeling that I needed to put some borders around the professional life that I had. And certainly, as time went on and you know, we started first being reachable through BlackBerrys and then iPhones and whatnot. The expectation really was in my profession that you were always available, but still it made a difference to be able to leave it behind and go to another place where you know you could have as much of a separate life as possible within the expectations of that professional world.
Delia:So did you hear that like bing bonging thing with my? I'm like oh my gosh, these bells and whistles. I was trying to make sure that something else was turned off. But it was good timing because it went with your theme of always being available, something getting you at any time of the day. But I think it's interesting, though, that you gave yourself the permission to do that, because a lot of young people might have felt peer pressure to stay in the corridor. You know, because I don't know about you but you know about me.
Delia:I was very driven by the TV worlds back then, remember. Sometimes you would ask me like, are we talking? Wait a minute? Wait a minute. You're talking about the TV show. You're not talking about real people right now, right, because it was so interblended. So I would have been like, oh no, I want the life of you know suits, sex in the city, or going really way back in the Gen X machine, not slanding Like. I would have wanted the whole thing to line up. So it's so interesting to me that you gave yourself the permission to say no.
Catherine:Well, I didn't, I didn't. You know, I've described it as a track, and certainly there was always a component of it that was about doing what you were expected to do in order to adapt to firm culture and to be seen in a certain way and to, you know, to become successful within that context. And, of course, at that time, I think as well, you know, when you're, when you're young, you're still on the stage of your development where you're growing a lot, and you know whether it's a good day or a bad day. It's the day where you learn something, both about your profession but yourself. So, you know, there there was, I was very drawn to it that way.
Catherine:So I wouldn't want to create the impression that I was always at home or, you know, really separating myself from the things I was expected to do to to succeed in that world. But at the same time, I did, I did. I was conscious from a fairly early stage that there were certain things I needed to do for myself, you know, to stop myself from sort of being pulled into that vortex. And so one of the things I did do was to try and keep some private home space.
Delia:I think that's cool right, because we're talking about terminology and not knowing the language back then. But I think what you're describing right is self-care Like you knew how to do self-care.
Catherine:Yeah, I think you know, what's interesting is when I look back at my career in terms of what people talk about now, I think in many ways, a lot of resilience was required, required, it's still required, but there were. I was having a conversation with my sister, for example, about the number of situations that we were sent into as young professionals that people would consider dangerous now. But you know, the expectation was just, particularly if you were a woman wanting to prove that you could do as good or a better job as any man, you just did it right. So there was that piece, like there were some things that were expected of me that in the beginning I wasn't always completely comfortable with. But then what? I think, if you're going to be successful, what needs to grow alongside that is some capacity for self-care. Particularly if you're an introvert like me, because you do you need to go back into your hole and recover from some of those experiences so that you can, you know, get up and face the world again tomorrow.
Delia:Yeah, so actually Kathy. Ironically, I sometimes I don't always do this, but I like pick little pieces from my self-help journaling book People can find on Amazon. I'm not doing a whole plug here, but I just think it's so funny. The one that I picked for you was how do you refuel? And it's I always. What I do for the journal prompts is I just tell a story about me and then you know the person can use the prompts from here. But I just thought that was so interesting that that was the one thing that I thought out of this whole life and wellness kind of conversation. How do you refuel be the thing that works for Kathy, or Catherine, as the rest of you have to call her officially, or Catherine, as the rest of you have to call her officially, and it says here be mindful For me, like I'm often pegged as an extrovert by people's perceptions, it can make me want to jump in a hole and hide.
Delia:Outgoing is not extroversion. Extroversion and introversion are about how you get your energy and how you refuel. I often think that when you say to someone you're introverted, like you did, they think that you're going to be timid. And you're not timid, you know. Or shy, you know you're appropriate, and I think that's something that we really need to clarify with people.
Catherine:Yeah, for sure. I mean there are different concepts and I also think that you know, within your work you develop a bit of a different persona, right? So I know, when I have my lawyer clothes on in my briefcase or whatever, I can go out and I can be as tough as I have to be, because that's what the job requires, even if that's not who I am, or I would think I am at my core. I guess over time I probably became that person, but still, I'm sure it's the same for extroverts, right, you have a different persona that you put on. And also I think being extroverted, as you say, doesn't mean you don't need some time to recover and refuel, mean you don't need some time to recover and refuel. They say introverts require a bit more, but I've also seen a lot of people over time who I would have believed were extroverts. You know, as they age it seems like they need a bit more refueling time.
Catherine:And I felt when I was young like I had a conscious thing for a number of years where I would try and do something that was totally different than the law, like take a course, for example. For a while I was into taking drawing courses and so you know it's a physical skill. You have to use your brain, but not in the same way I did professionally. But I found those things really diverted my attention away from the worries and stresses of everyday work, and we're actually really good in helping you to refuel as well. You'd go home after spending an hour, hour and a half or something doing that, feeling refreshed, whereas if you're writing till midnight you go to sleep and get up at you know, seven in the morning and start again. There's nothing refreshing about that.
Delia:What do you mean? What do you mean? No, I totally, I totally get you and I think too, like our concept of. I think we've been gotten really good in the last little while, as you said, having like multiple experiences, ways of describing, like it's not the same thing timid and shy versus introversion, extroversion, where your energy comes from, and then the need to refuel versus self-care Like you can be an extrovert and take the same amount of self-care time as an introvert, right, it's just how that energy would feel to you. I think that's a good, that's a really good point that you sort of teased out there. For folks it's oftentimes, I think, especially when you are you're young, or young in your career or you know, or trying to explain it to someone who hasn't thought it through you can get boxed in really quickly and a set of behaviors are expected of you and then when you don't meet those set of behaviors, then there's some kind of conflict.
Catherine:Yeah, and that sounds very much like, you know, what we call today inclusion right, which I think everybody experiences, although for some, you know, it's much more so than others. But we all this goes along with the concept too of sort of putting on a persona like maybe it's getting better. But certainly in my time, you, you know, you, you would be conscious, I would be very conscious of of how there were differences between how I would normally do things and this set of expectations that, you know, at that point seemed very carved into stone and you know, I think we probably all thought to a greater or lesser degree at that point, I'm different than everybody else in that regard, like I'm the only one who's different, I'm the only one who has this problem right. But of course, now that we have a bit more context, we realize everybody's going through their version of that and some people you know whose degree of difference is, I guess, farther away from the whatever central piece, the norm, whatever you want to call it experience that to a much greater degree than others.
Delia:Yeah, I heard someone describe it to like how you, how the room feels like if you're like twirling a rope when you're at close to the center of where the person's holding the rope, versus at the end of the rope, like you get like sort of a different experience, but you're, everyone's still moving. But we need to be conscious that everyone's not on the same, you know, on the same part of the rope. So how that movement feels to them and how sudden it is or how big it is or how irreconcilable it feels, depends on where you are from the center it's a good metaphor.
Catherine:Yeah, it works well. I think also, though I always did try and I got away with it for the most part, I always did try to be myself, and when I use the phrase like I got away with it, I mean I think certainly I worked in environments where there was openness to at least a certain amount of that right, and I think that's if you're going to have a long career, particularly as mine was, spent, you know, 90% in the same place. You know you have to have that flexibility, because you do have to. You do grow and change and not everybody's going to be changing in the same way, at the same pace. So I would certainly, you know, I do encourage people who are, you know, starting up and going through the earlier phases of their legal career to keep that in focus.
Catherine:Right that you, you still have to be you to the extent that you can Sorry, my bad. Well, there's only so much time that you can really be someone else. And I think also, when you talk about giving permission, like that is something that's an element of giving yourself permission to be you in a way that at the beginning of your career, because you probably do suffer first from a certain amount of imposter syndrome because you probably do suffer first from a certain amount of imposter syndrome and you think you're the only person who is an imposter that you're not quite prepared to do that yet, at least until you've scoped out the lay of the land and are sure that you're safe, right?
Delia:And you said legal career. That was sorry. When I interrupted you I was like no, I think, any career.
Delia:I think that you do have to realize you're going to grow up in it and you have to give yourself the permission to grow up and hopefully the folks around you give you that space, especially if you're going to be in that one organization for a very long time. But also even the industry that you're in has to give you that space right as as you start to evolve into new and better versions of yourself. I hope it's going in that trajectory for you. Then you know you do end up, you do end up changing and sometimes, too, you have to recant some of your positions, which is incredibly awkward. Do you have a story like that? Has anything like that ever happened to you? Oh for sure.
Catherine:I mean maybe I'll I'll tell you two different ones that aren't like, they're somewhat unrelated, but I mean, one of the things I noticed as I moved on in my career was I became conscious that you know, I would see partners coming up behind me who are very aggressive about certain things, right, and often it had to do so. In law firms. You know your compensation is reviewed every year and if your partners find fault with what you're doing, then your compensation will be lowered. It can also be raised. So I would see, for example, some young people coming up behind me particularly young, but people who started after me and I would see them be very aggressive about the compensation of senior people, for example, more senior than me, I mean, and I would know that I was that person once more senior than me. I mean, and I would know that I was that person once.
Catherine:Right, that when I started off as a partner I was that way, and maybe almost because I felt like I needed to be that way in order to demonstrate that I had business savvy and other things. But I realized at some point I wasn't that way anymore and I look back at them and I sort of thought like one day you'll be having the same internal conversation as me Like why? Why was compassion not a bigger part of of the narrative at that point? So that's one story and then another story I got.
Delia:I'm sorry hold, just pin a pin for one second. The other story. But you said compassion, a bigger part of the narrative. Can you just go a little bit deeper, like, do you feel that they didn't understand why the senior person was being compensated as much, or was it compassion for the younger person who's making the inquiry?
Catherine:Yeah, what I'm describing is more compassion around trying to understand the circumstance of the more senior person and why the things that are happening are happening. And that doesn't mean that you wouldn't still reach the same decision in terms of what their compensation would be, because there are some, you know, external metrics that play a role in that. But I, you know, what I'm describing is just, you know, total impatience that this thing is happening and you know it's just not acceptable and you know we need to. We need to change this and you know that kind of thought process which you know I'm not sure I was 100% that way at that time, but I was certainly more that way than I became later.
Catherine:And part of that, I guess you know there may be an element of that that's reflecting on your own situation now that you're heading towards that spot. But also I think there was a component of it which was just that I started to think and values around the workplace were shifting over this period of time as well. I just started to think that you know, it doesn't mean anything Like we'll all go through that trajectory and we'll be here at one time and we'll be here at this other time, this other time and you can decide that that person is providing value in a different way, maybe in a way that would attract less compensation, but you shouldn't be angry at that person, right? You shouldn't be judging that person. You should be understanding that it's a trajectory that we all go through.
Delia:Gotcha, so glad you clarified that.
Catherine:Yeah, and I think there is a lot more like within, within my profession I think it's not limited to my profession there is a lot of more reflection going on about sustainability of some of the work patterns and the impact they have on people and, um, I think that wasn't like in the 90s and in the 2000s. That really wasn't happening to the extent that maybe it should have been.
Delia:I, I'm I'm gonna let you tell the second story in a second, but I'm like obsessed by this uh series that I watched, finally called the Bear. Have you watched that?
Delia:no oh, it takes place in a kitchen. They're chefs and I'm sure you've seen like famous chef competition shows and all the pressure that's there and it kind of reminds when you were speaking, it kind of reminded me of that where you kind of, because of the timeline, because of the stakes, you kind of have to buy into the culture, like the pressure culture, the all you know it's part and parcel. People feel for getting the work done and then, as you were saying, like maybe there's a realization that, wait, are these my beliefs, or is it me buying into this culture Right? Buying into this culture right, and do I have to buy into it in order to still be productive or give my opinion or have a perspective?
Catherine:Yeah, and I think, I think there's an element of that set of behaviors that I described in a somewhat negative way, that is, this is going to be very harsh way to describe it, but it kind of keeps people in line, right. So, like within a business, it's something that is, I think, consciously cultivated on some level because it keeps people afraid that other people will judge them in the same way and therefore they maximize their productivity. And I see some value in this. I can't say I don't like. I mean, people need incentives, but at the same time, you know, looking back, certainly it does reinforce a certain set of behavior patterns which maybe don't need to be there. I guess we could debate whether that's really the best way to motivate people or not. And it does, I think, take a toll in terms of relationships, at least in some cases, because there is this feeling that people who deviate from these behavior patterns in some way are renegades or losers or you know whatever label gets attached to them, right um?
Delia:I had a friend, a dear friend, who would say or just dead branches yeah, that's the kind of thing, right, they're just not.
Catherine:They're not pulling their own weight anymore, or whatever hackneyed expression you could attach to that.
Delia:So I think I think the curious, I think what's neat is we're all now striving for a better balance, like we're like away from the extremes a lot in most professions and we're saying, no, no, you do need a little bit of this and a little bit of that, whether it comes from two separate people in the pop or one person being able to be flexible in terms of their balance. But you do need the discipline and the tempo and all of those things that happen when we are very focused about our work. But we do need our humanity as well, right, and it's got to be both of those things. And we hear more and more of a clamor of that, especially with, you know, gen Z. And then I assume, the alphas will be the same. The alphas can't go to work now, but they'll be the same right With their expectation.
Delia:And you know we were kind of. You know I think that was sort of a shocker for a lot of people, with millennials making those requests at the beginning, especially older millennials, but now, with younger millennials and Gen Zs, I think it's what everyone wants. It's not just the so-called younger generation, younger generation of workers. Everybody wants to be okay, not everybody, but a greater percentage of people want to feel comfortable, known, seen at work, right, and it's just. I thought your compensation example is a really great one because it sort of brings up those blinders that we first have when we get into a situation because we don't have as much perspective. And then, how you know, we get more sort of the ability to see the peripheral, see more multi-positive.
Catherine:I think that's right, you know. And the second story is interesting because I guess it was a bit of a revelation for me. That is maybe interesting in the context of your podcast, but someone I had known professionally invited me, was kind enough to invite me to speak to their class at the law school I went to just after I retired, so last winter, and it was actually a case on. It was a class on critical race theory, which sort of it's not part of my lived experience, but at the same time it it it was part of my professional work and I got. I ended up getting into this conversation with one student in the class who is particularly um, had a lot to say like, was very engaged, and I was talking about the fact that for me, um, part of the part of the way along the path to trying to develop some understanding of other people's lived experience has a lot to do with listening and being prepared to hear what they're having to say and adjust what you might be planning to do based on that young person was. I said to them.
Catherine:You know, when you, when you started in a law firm there, there was a lot of pressure and I'm sure this is the same in any. I'm not trying to exclude other jobs, I'm just talking about my own. There's a lot of pressure to be right all the time and to project that you know everything right, particularly when you're young and for lawyers. People are looking to us for advice and I think what you realize as you get older, more experienced, is and certainly it applied to something like critical race theory for me is that in order to be successful, you're going to have to accept the fact that you don't know and you don't know everything, and you're going to have to be vulnerable. You're going to have to be vulnerable. You're going to have to put yourself in front of people and say I don't know everything. Share your perspective with me, please, so that I can at least hear it and and try to incorporate it. And I guess I never really had that quite that thought before I was having the conversation.
Catherine:But but there is this I think when you're young and starting out, you think in the early days part of proving yourself just to show that you always know what needs to be done in every moment.
Catherine:But as time goes on, you start to understand that you you actually have to do the opposite of that. You have to be prepared to do it and and open yourself up to whatever feedback you might get in that moment, because you don't feel you know all the answers. And I think another thing I was going to say is I think probably most of us who've worked for a lot of years have seen examples people who do say that they know it all the time. They're very convincing about how much they know and if you peel the surface of the, they really have no idea what they're talking about. So you know. It is, I think, another insight that comes to you over time that things are certainly not. You know the sets of behaviors that you think you have to conform to when you're at the beginning of your career. You come to understand those maybe behaviors that don't make any sense in the first place, and certainly you come to give yourself some permission to deviate from them, to understand that something else is required in this context.
Delia:Yeah, I think it's also interesting too, like as you talked about the story I was thinking a lot of people don't get the opportunity to say I used to think this way and now I think differently I think. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I do believe that people present the new way of thinking as it was the way they were always thinking right, as opposed to just saying I changed and giving themselves the permission to grow up and evolve in front of us. Right, because there's some, at least in tech, there's often some kind of like downgrading.
Catherine:If you, you take yourself out of demigod status right and um, and I I personally hope that changes I think I, I do too, because I think I well, I, I do think it that some of those things you know can end up being barriers for folks because they end up being perceived a certain way.
Catherine:It affects their creativity, but also it affects that concept we were talking about before, which is kind of being your genuine self in the workplace, which I think is something that you're going to need if you're in it for the long haul. To the extent that you can cultivate that space and defend its borders, then that's something that's going to become very helpful for you. I think you know because it is true in a long career that things cycle right. I had times that were great, I had times that were I was not happy, and that's just the way it is. I guess, when you, when you step back and you think about it not as the job that you go into every day, but you know, what would I expect over the period of 30 years? Well, of course you'd expect things to cycle right.
Delia:Yeah, it'd expect things to cycle, right. Yeah, it's like any other relationship, right? Marriages, friendships, kids, pets. You know what I mean. There are up days, there are down days, there are up times, there are down times. So, yeah, you're totally expected to cycle, except for no one actually tells you that, or maybe they do, but you don't listen Like I don't know, you don't know, you can't take it all in at the very beginning. But I wanted to say that, wow, the time has gone very quickly and I didn't get to ask you. Some of the questions I wanted to ask you, which was one of them, was like because the podcast is actually called To Live List, right? So not what's on your to-do list and not what's on your bucket list, but what are the things that you do to live the life that you want to be living. Do you want to share some of those things, or one or two tips, especially since you've taken this transition to retire? So I think one of the things to me is that you made the transition no-transcript.
Catherine:Well, I think that's part of it. Like, I think there's an element of sort of continual critical and I don't mean negative, but just kind of critical scrutiny box. Maybe some people would characterize it even more pejoratively and, you know, move away from what people's expectations of you might have been to to create another set of expectations that is more aligned with where you are now. But I, I think, maybe on a less conceptual level, I I do think more about. I mean, you know, as you age, there are certain realities. Some of the maintenance takes longer than you stick, you know.
Catherine:But I do think more about also those kinds of wellness measures that I think are important to keeping your stamina, to keeping um, keeping you happy, really, and about just kind of making the time like one of the things that's been positive for me and I I've hit on this a couple of times and I probably make it sound like it was really awful, it wasn't but one of the things that's been positive for me is just the flexibility in terms of my own time right, and it relates in part to what I said about having to be available all the time if you were needed, but it also has to do with workload.
Catherine:So right now I can kind of set my own workload more or less or in a different way than I could before, and that allows me to make time in my life for a lot of other things that are important to me Not all the time time, but it's certainly better than the way it was, and so I haven't given you any sort of real specifics, but I do. I think it's a process of, of continuing to um, try to move yourself closer to what you imagine is the ideal and and for me, even though there are some things I've lost, if that's a word you want to use in terms of like not working alongside colleagues you know who I care about and and other things. You know some of these lifestyle decisions, or you know having the independence to be able to make them the way you want and to be able to say I don't want to do this without having to worry about how that's affecting others in an organization.
Delia:That is a very freeing thing and I think has been very positive Sounds like you've been, you know the ability to check in with yourself and not to be afraid to do the check-in, because you can actually change something about your life right Like, if you do the check-in with yourself and it's not aligned with where you want to go, you can make a change without having to affect all these other people. It's very liberating.
Catherine:It is liberating other people is very liberating. And it's liberating and I actually think, as I, as I started to go down this road of separating myself from the law firm and building another career, one of the things that sort of came to me is you know, it's not really that hard different. I mean, I'm very privileged because I don't have dependents or anything that I need to worry about financially and that sort of thing. But I think the biggest barrier in some ways at least for anyone like me who has options, who isn't tied into certain financial realities that they can't get out of what's holding you back is you, because if you actually start down the road, you know what's. What's holding me back.
Catherine:Is you because, if you actually start down the road, you realize that this is quite manageable and I might make less money than I did last year but, um, I make enough and I get these three other things that are important to me Right. And I think when I many years, when I was working and I would be in some of those trough periods, I just didn't know what, I didn't conceive, I couldn't really conceive of what the other realities were and so I didn't move towards them, whereas I got to a certain level of maturity. Where I did, I did know what those things were. I knew that I was capable of bringing them to life if I wanted to, and ultimately, I did know what those things were. I knew that I was capable of bringing them to life if I wanted to, yep, and ultimately I did it.
Delia:Yeah, it's so interesting and I always say so interesting driving myself crazy with that one. So hopefully listeners are not being driven batty by interesting, as you said, financial or you know whatever. They are intellectual and all of those kinds of things, but we're all still part of our lives. I was just flipped forward to some of the struggles I think employers are having with Gen Z and I'm not putting down Gen Z because I have Gen Z kids and I think they're awesome.
Delia:But they also realize already, sort of innately maybe, from being raised by Gen X and millennials, that you know, a little less money, a more, a little more life is not a bad way of being, yeah, and so it's just so neat that we're all kind of on that same shift and that's not doesn't have anything in some ways to do with age or experience. It has something to do with our realization that, you know, life isn't just this narrative where you, you know, do, do, do, push, push, push, succeed, succeed, succeed For what? Like? I mean obviously for money, but you have to have more out of life, I think, to feel happy.
Catherine:But you have to have more out of life, I think, to feel happy. Well, I saw a lot of people, including close friends, who you know they had families and I'm sure that gave them a lot of joy, but they got to a certain point, maybe when their kids were a little past, you know the earliest years, where they just started working harder and harder, and harder, longer and longer and longer hours. And I would say to them sometimes, you know, perhaps in a more polite and empathetic way than I'm going to say right now, but you know you'd ask them why they were doing this and they'd say, well, you know cause? I want my kids to have a good life. And he'd say, okay, but do you ever see your kids, you know, and so like, how, how, how good a life are they really having when they don't have you in it? Right, I mean, obviously everyone wants to build a platform for success for their children, to be able to give them a good education and other things that they may want or need. But you know that is a trade-off that lots of people are still making, at least in our generations.
Catherine:That I guess I have questions about, because you know for, for what, like at the end, at the end of the day, I'm pretty sure there's not like a parade thrown in your honor because you worked like 2,000 hours a year or something.
Catherine:Yeah, that's not. That's not how it works, right, what happens like? What happens is you get those people I was talking about before you were like, why was so-and-so was working 20, you know know, 2000 hours last year, only working 1800 this year, like, and so I guess you know I didn't have children so I didn't walk in their shoes, but I guess you know I would hope lots of people are, you know, qualitatively, considering that, because I guess we've all had and COVID plays into this too, we've, we've all had experiences or having experiences now, where people get even to your age or my age and they die. I've seen, I've seen a lot of people like who retire and you know, and like a year later they passed away, right, well, so that was upbeat well, you know what I'm saying, though nothing is nothing is certain yeah, nothing is certain more aware of that as you, as you move through the life cycle.
Catherine:That's that no day is promised.
Delia:But there's something I think we should end with which I think is very profound. That you said, at least for me. Right, you were referring to, you know, the parent and the child relationship, but we've all been in a parent child relationship because we have all been someone's child, right? So we, we've experienced that. And then there's this whole self-parenting that we have to do in the completion of our own life cycle, right? Not everything that you have to do to develop yourself, to grow up, happens while you're with your family of origin. So there's that whole self-parenting thing, and you said this line that I think is really pivotal, and I kind of wanted to close on bringing that to everyone's attention. Right, but how good is the life without you in it? You know, you've got to put yourself in your life, and I think it's a really great point that you raise and it's a point that we should be holding ourselves accountable to. Are we actually putting ourselves in that life.
Catherine:Yeah, and I think probably we all spend, or many of us spend, a lot of our lives without doing that, like without being mindful of how to do it, but it is, it's essential.
Delia:So there, I think that's your big to live list item. Put you in your life, exactly, exactly. Well, catherine Peters, very glad to have you on the podcast. Finally and might not be your only time let's see, let's see but really excited that you're able to share this journey with listeners and I'm sure when the podcast is up, we'll get some interesting questions, emails and follow-ups. Thank you very much. It's always delightful to speak to you, but this has been a lot of fun. All right, cool you.
