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
Finding Your Path Beyond the Comfort Zone: A Conversation with Rachel Anderholder
Rachel Anderholder shares her journey stepping away from her role as Executive Director at Carpe Mundi to deliberately explore her next chapter. Through this conversation, she reveals how intentional transitions, though challenging, create space for growth and deeper self-understanding.
• Moving between comfort zones, learning zones, and panic zones as essential to personal growth
• Place-based education makes learning relevant and meaningful to students' lives and experiences
• Experiences without reflection limit our ability to extract meaningful lessons and growth
• Having language to identify when we're in our "panic zone" helps us navigate challenging situations
• Transitions don't require abandoning your past but rather carrying forward what matters
• Taking deliberate pauses allows us to assess whether we're genuinely aligned with our path
• Finding opportunities for mastery (like playing piano or gardening) creates fulfillment
• Cultivating wonder in everyday experiences doesn't require traveling to far-off places
• Setting boundaries and prioritizing self-care establishes healthier patterns for future endeavors
• Choosing to leave something good can still be the right decision for growth
To learn more about Carpe Mundi and their work providing study abroad opportunities to low-income college students in Portland, Oregon, visit the link in our show notes.
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trust me, you don't want to miss delia grinville this is to live this by life and wellness. I'm saying it's what you really need. Sharing the life, advice and good energy. Yeah, seeking understanding amazing topics from rants and ramblings. You'll be a fan when you peep the channel. Face your fears, overcome internal battles. Let's go. You don't want to miss this. Tune in this is to live this.
Delia:Hey, don't want to miss this. Yeah, hopefully that won't work. You probably want to step back a little. I don't know if you can be a little bit further back or lower yourself. Yeah, cause you're not going to want like, yeah, you're not going to want your you know what I mean your head and forever archived with your bangs. Yeah, are you able to be a little bit lower at your chair here? I can make mine a little bit higher, I think.
Rachel :Unless I pull off.
Delia:No, no, hold on Now. I made my chair lower, which I did not mean to do. Let me see if I can do that. My chair higher. Yeah, just be better. Yeah, there, then our heads are almost at the same height when it's better for the editing. But where's your microphone?
Rachel :It's just my computer microphone.
Delia:It's in your computer, okay, so I don't want to put you so far back that you're not hearable.
Rachel :Okay, back that you. You're not hearable. Okay, I mean, I can talk my normal voice I feel like it's not a quiet voice yeah, I, yeah.
Delia:I think they will adjust it too. And then there's a white thing to the side on the plant.
Rachel :Is it a door or oh that, over here it's a window uh, but what's the thing with the knob?
Delia:there's like, oh, it's white and it's got black on it. It's right beside you, it's close. Oh, it's my thing. Okay, I just realized. It's like, wait a minute, it's a gallery, so let me either make the door less or the door more. Let me see I can, what I can do there. If you're like, wait, wait, wait. What's going on? I'm like I don't know what white thing in a knob, like where are you? I was like, wait a minute, it's my house that's doing that. Yeah, why is it crooked? All right, and so I'm just checking my audio settings. Is this thing really working? Are you really working? Yeah, I think so, and yeah, all right. Good, these are all the things. It's just like getting yourself settled into this. I use the armchair expert theory. People always asking him like so when is the podcast starting? He goes. We're always recording in the studio. It starts as soon as you come in.
Delia:We'll edit it if we need something yeah it's always such funny conversations because you'll hear like the guest it'll be someone famous like asking silly things, when it ends up being actually sort of fun for the podcast too. Yeah.
Delia:Yeah, so it works out Okay. So everyone, my guest today is Rachel Anderholder, and we've known each other, I guess for coming up on a year now or so. Rachel and I met through this wonderful organization that she's a part of, and I've become first a member of the board and then moved on to do more leadership with the board. But it's not about me, it's really about Rachel and about the organization, so we talk more about that later.
Delia:Rachel is, like so many of the women that I've already spoken to, going through a transition that I think is exciting to talk about, right, because we all have such amazing choices of the things that we want to do with our lives, and then we come to the moment where we have to make that choice, right, rachel, and it's just sort of like, okay, what am I going to do and how come, or what if, or because, or all of the things, why am I making these choices and how can people keep asking me, why am I making these choices? It's a bit about that, right, yeah, and I think the choices that you have made today are unusual and admirable, and I think we don't know exactly what's going to happen next, but making the choice to stop and make it a deliberate decision, as opposed to moving along, is a real huge step. So many of us don't give ourselves the permission to do that and I'm so glad that you're on to talk to people about how you've given yourself the permission to do this.
Rachel :Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me here today and for having these wonderful conversations with women that are doing really incredible work. So I'm glad to be here and will try my best to share authentically, because I think it's also hard, when talking about transitions, to find this balance between honoring all of the people and places and efforts that you've made while also honoring yourself and your journey, and that can be a balance, I think.
Delia:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. I mean, it's just, and you know what? I think we put a lot of weight on authentically in this current society and I don't think anybody knows what it means, because most of us I don't know about you, but I'm like wait, how did I get so old? I'm just play reacting. I used to be a kid. Wait a minute, I'm still a kid. So my authentic self is I don't even know. I think it's a lot of unnecessary pressure because so many of the things that we're doing as we do it, some of it's intuitively, some of it's situational. We just have to live with the situation that we're in and parts of it, you know, it's just sort of we know the next, we know the step ahead of us or the next two steps ahead of us, but we don't know the rest and we just sort of have to keep going and see what happens.
Rachel :Yeah, and I love that.
Rachel :I think, in working with students for a number of years, that's something that I've really tried to enforce with them or remind them.
Rachel :I think, especially when you are 18, 19, 20, the decisions that you're making can feel like they're the decisions for the rest of your life, and having to choose a major or a career path can feel like the biggest decision ever, because that's what the rest of your life is going to be.
Rachel :And I think, really emphasizing to young people that it's all a journey and you never know what one stepping stone is going to lead you to, and being able to trust in the journey and, you know, don't be hamstrung by.
Rachel :You have to make a decision and you can't let the perfect decision get in the way of making a decision to lead to the next step. And I think that this is a really cool moment for me to try and practice what I preach a little bit and lean into that and say, yeah, you never know what one step is going to lead you towards, and and trusting in that journey a little bit, that it'll, you know, get me to where I need to be next, which I don't know yet where that will be, but I'm looking forward to having time to to explore that and to to trust in that journey a little bit to trust in that journey a little bit and I think also we are just sort of like so able to give that permission to young people and not realize that the permission is for everybody right, that we all have that choice.
Delia:So in the organization that you work with I know folks will have heard about it already through the intro, but tell us a little bit more about Carpe Mundi and then how you got to Carpe Mundi, as you know your entire path from where you started to where you are now the outgoing executive director.
Rachel :Yeah, so yeah, carpe Mundi, we work with college age students here in Portland, Oregon, where Delia and I are, and we specifically work with college students that are Pell Grant eligible so students from low-income backgrounds and we work with them to provide a year-long mentorship program that includes this experiential education study abroad programming. So we provide students with a scholarship to be able to access this study abroad programming. But we've recognized over years of doing this work that oftentimes, while a scholarship is really the intro needed, if you will, to get students in the door to be able to think that this type of programming is accessible for them, supporting the students both before and after that journey can be really huge too to make them feel confident and embarking on this type of adventure that's probably 100% different than anything that they've ever done before. So right now we have students that are wrapping up their time in Cambodia, we have a couple of students in Bolivia, and it's all about stretching that comfort zone and getting out there and doing something totally different, and I think every student can have this different takeaway, this different aha moment. But I think really getting young people out of the environment they've been in opens up this whole new realm of what can be possible afterwards and for my own journey. I think that part of the reason that I love Carpe Mundi so much is that I experienced that myself. So I can go way back to.
Rachel :I studied abroad in college. I did a more traditional study abroad program where I went to Spain, and I wasn't able to do it until my senior year in college. I was a softball player and so I was able to just kind of like sneak it in and I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I was about to graduate and I did the study abroad program in Spain and it just opened up my eyes to a whole new side of myself, a whole new side of the world. And I thought to myself, well, maybe I want to be a teacher, but I was a communications major and a Spanish major.
Rachel :And I was like, well, maybe I want to be a teacher, but I was a communications major and a Spanish major. And I was like, well, it's too late, we are graduating, we are getting out of here and we don't have time to explore teaching now. So I graduated in 2009. So kind of in the middle of the Great Recession, and had some opportunities to have random jobs here and there and do a little bit of traveling, and moved to Colorado and worked at a bookstore and kind of bounced around and then I told myself you know, I am really intrigued by this teaching idea, but I don't want to get a master's in teaching without understanding if this is something that I might actually want to do, that absolutely makes sense.
Rachel :Yeah. So I got a TEFL certificate, a Teaching English as a Foreign Language certificate, and I moved to Costa Rica without a job because I read, oh, you did, yeah, wow I, in the research that I did read that oftentimes if you got a job ahead of time, read that oftentimes if you got a job ahead of time, schools would question whether you might actually show up, that there had been enough people that didn't show up, that you would be promised a job and then you would get there and they would have already given it to somebody else. So moved to Costa Rica, found a job on Craigslist of all things, and lived in Costa Rica for a year teaching English to preschoolers, kindergartners and first graders, and discovered that I did not want to be a teacher.
Delia:Oh, that's so good because you earned money, lived in another country, didn't pay for graduate school and found out your answer.
Rachel :I found out my answer, but what it did tell me is that I really loved education and the concept of education and felt that I really wanted to be a part of making education feel more meaningful, that even for these little kindergartners and first graders, a lot of their learning was really based off of just writing things down on a chalkboard and repeating it and writing it in their journal and moving on, and it just really struck me that how do we make education feel more empowering and more interesting and more exciting? And so, while in Costa Rica, I started looking at graduate programs, but not for teaching but for international education, and I found a program here in Portland for an international development program and it was one of the few programs I found that had semesters in multiple locations. So most international programs I saw were, you know, spend a year in a library in Boston. I was like, well, why am I getting an international degree to spend this whole time in the US?
Delia:Especially since you had already gone to Costa Rica, right, so you kind of had a sense of how important it was to actually go somewhere. So I can see how that would be a criteria for you.
Rachel :Yeah, absolutely so. This program was a semester in Portland and then a semester in Italy and then a choice between Ecuador or Thailand and then back in Portland. That's a great question that I don't know how much we want to dig into that right now.
Delia:Oh, not in this moment.
Rachel :want to dig into that right now, but I think the program that put it on was an interesting mix of a nonprofit partnering with the university, partnering with overseas contacts, and so there were some longstanding connections in Italy and that's part of the reason that we went to Italy and, I think, to get a European perspective on development.
Delia:Okay, and I wonder too whether it had something to do with art. That's why I asked there's so much art there and so much antiquity, you know, from the European point of view.
Rachel :Yeah, no, not necessarily. I think it was more, yeah, more European Union focused. And also, I think what I really took away from Italy was just a lot of what we're experienced here with migrants and migration and a lot of folks coming via the Mediterranean Sea to seek refuge in Italy, and Italy really struggling with knowing how to handle that with a lot of their own national pride and juggling cultures, and I think that was a fast. That was for me, it was really fascinating, yeah.
Delia:It's interesting too because I believe with all the, as you said, the migrant situation in Europe, etc. You do have a lot of people coming in who don't know the language of the place that they're in. So with your TOEFL certificate, you know you were seeing Italian as a second language issues and how they were dealing with all of that.
Rachel :Yeah, absolutely. And I mean birthright citizenship was, is not, or at least I don't know if it is now, but when I was there it was not a thing. And so you could have migrants coming and having children in Italy, being born in Italy, who were essentially stateless because we did not have birthright citizenship, and you know if this family was coming from Syria or Somalia or you know yeah, and they had the issues.
Delia:Yeah, I mean it's interesting, right, because a lot of these sort of things that we take for granted are sort of coming events. But when you look at things more globally, then you get a better sense of how things are. And I think that's part of also the appeal of the program with Carpe Mundi, right, which is these students really get a sense of you know the global positioning, as opposed to just what's going on in here in America or in North America or whatever the situation is.
Rachel :Yeah which I think is incredibly important right now with the political situation that we're in to recognize that what's happening here isn't an anomaly. It's not like you know, this has never happened. It's currently going on in so many other places, and so I think that that is both helpful as we seek to understand what kind of change we want to create, to look to other places and draw inspiration, and also to know that you know, we all have to act in solidarity with one another, and what happens here really does impact other places and vice versa other and what happens here really does impact other places and vice versa.
Delia:Yeah, and I think, and so you know back to your journey of your beginning, of your journey of global citizenship. But I think you really hit the nail on the head of something, because a lot of times we don't pay attention or ask or or get curious about how can I learn to be a global citizen while I'm still staying in the same country? So good for you that you had the good sense to ask that. So you leave Italy, and then what happens next in your study abroad?
Rachel :Yeah. So then I went to Ecuador and I spent about I think, six weeks in Quito and then from there went out to the Galapagos and spent maybe two and a half months or so out in the Galapagos and that was really fascinating for a number of reasons. I mean, most of the students other students that I was there with were like biology students in undergrad and I am I am interested in biology, but I'm like that's not why I'm in the Galapagos. And what I learned there that was really fascinating to me was there are again a lot of conflicts between preservation and, you know, all of the Galapagos are a national park in essence, but there's also people that live there and there's economies there. And how do you balance fishing and sustaining folks' livelihood with also preserving the park and having respect for these natural areas? And I learned while I was there at least at the time again, I don't know if it's changed but the students there didn't learn, didn't have any curriculum that was specific to the Galapagos. So the students that were living in the Galapagos were having the same lessons as the students living in Quito, as the same students living in the Amazon, and you have all of these really distinct geographical areas, geographical areas and, I think, you know, a great job for a lot of folks.
Rachel :Ideally, in the future, living in the Galapagos would be growing up there and then working for the national park or working for preservation of the area. But if they're not getting any, if these young people aren't being educated on how unique and special the place that they're living in, how do you expect them to be stewards of that environment? And so I really started to get excited about the idea of place-based education, which is essentially this concept of how do you make learning relevant to wherever you are, and so that could look like environmental education, that could look like peace education, that could even look like, you know, taking a science lesson and a English lesson here in the States and combining them to be, you know, writing a letter to your representative about this issue that you're learning about. And so just how do you make education feel more relevant to a student's life so that it can be useful, but also, hopefully, so that they can be more excited about it because it's actually feeling meaningful to them?
Delia:I laugh about that because immediately I get the. You know how everyone says and what do I? What am I actually going to use algebra for Right? Why am I learning algebra? This makes no sense, except for there are cases where it actually does make sense and there's parts of algebra that you are just doing in your head anyways that you don't even know is algebra. Is algebra and the language of how you talk about? You know, if you had these things but three times as much and had to give half away that, that would be the algebra.
Delia:So I think we sort of, for the efficiency of education, the economies of classrooms and all of that, we sort of take away the connection between the education and the actual thing that it's doing in a lot of in a lot of situations, and then we expect somehow for students, learners, to assemble that right on their own, like they should. Well, of course they're going to put the to connect the dots. But I'm going to tell you just for myself, you know I am still getting some ding ding, just for myself. You know I am still getting some ding ding ding moments from way back in high school, like we have this lemon tree that we're growing at home. I think I mentioned that to you and I'm just sort of like.
Delia:I have hand pollinated that brazen young plant several times because it keeps a blossoming inside the house while while impregnated with lemons. But it would have been really great had I done that biology, you know, instead of drawing the little flower and the piston and the stamen. I do remember all the words in my book. I'm like what is this? And then somehow, magically, it was going to get pollinated, like giving a student a brush which I do right now a little makeup brush and I go and I get the dust and I put the dust on the other thing and then wait a few days and there you go, there's a fruit coming out of there. I mean, that goes a very far way.
Rachel :Yeah, how do we make it? I think you know everybody learns differently, but I think everybody can benefit from experiential education and taking the theoretical and applying it to what it is that you're learning it. Just it sticks in a different way and you can see it and touch it and smell it and experience it and that stays with people and it's more fun.
Delia:So yeah, sometimes, Sometimes it's smelly.
Rachel :Sometimes it's hard. I mean, I think there are a lot of experiences that our students have that while they're abroad. It's challenging and in a different way, right Like sitting in a classroom and listening is hard in a way, but maybe in a way that we've gotten used to and so it's still in our comfort zone and maybe we don't really like it, but we know what to expect, whereas experiential learning can be really yeah, it can be really challenging. That's a good reminder. I think I get so excited about it. Sometimes I'm like it's just so fun that, yeah, it could be easy to overlook that and it's also hard, yeah.
Delia:And it's also outside of your comfort zone, right, which I think is the thing that you're learning to manage the most in all of the situations in the classroom situation, in the experiential learning situation, like you're managing and I don't think we tell kids that enough, or even ourselves that you are managing advocacy for your comfort zone even at work as well.
Delia:That's, I think, basically your human collective experience. Right? What will you do that is, inside and outside of your comfort zone? Will you have your boundaries respected or not? And are you flexible enough or engaged enough to involve your comfort zone? Right, because the boundaries that you start with are not the boundaries necessarily that you should end with because of all the learning that you have.
Delia:That's why I say a lot about missing the big picture around. Why we're actually here, you know, for the experience of being human is to get these skill sets right. You know it's not just to acquire degrees or travel the countries or get loads of money, like I don't think if you just do those things, you'll ultimately be satisfied. If you have an option to grow old and look at your life and you know, look back you're not going to be as satisfied as you could have been if you were like, yeah, I knew what my comfort zone was and I explored it and beyond it as I had the capacity to do more. But you know, that's my kind of philosophy on the whole thing.
Rachel :Yeah, I appreciate that philosophy and we talk a lot about wit Carpe Mundi students the comfort zone, the learning zone and the panic zone. We're spending a lot of time in the learning zone. We all need to be in our comfort zone here and there. But the sweet spot especially in a, in an experience abroad or, uh, you know, in some well, in a, in a, in a learning experience, you want to be in the learning zone and then there's the panic zone which is like, okay, this is so far out of my comfort zone that I can't really learn right now because I'm just in fight or flight mode or I'm, you know, having a lot of panic or anxiety.
Rachel :And certainly every once in a while, on every trip, students are going to be in the panic zone. Like you know, the experiences are so and all of us right and I think that that's part of it too is how do we manage when we're in that panic zone and how do we recognize and how do we say like, okay, I don't, I need to get out of this space. But also, how do I get through it, instead of just like jumping ship and going back to my comfort zone, how can I kind of push through this and get to a spot where I can actually learn from it, because if you're spending too much time in the panic zone, you're not learning, because you're just figuring out how to get out of it.
Delia:You know I think oh my gosh, rachel, what are we going to do? We just have to let everyone know about the panic zone, the learning zone, the comfort zone, because so much of these interactions, even let's just say, pushy road rage person like I know you have to get somewhere, but come on now. This is not right. You're in the panic zone, get yourself together, because the panic zone doesn't last forever. I think that's one of the things.
Delia:As you said, getting through it, you learn that you know it's not going to last forever. This is a temporary state of being, and do you want the decisions that you make in that moment to represent all of who you are? And I think a lot of times when we are in that mode, we are not thinking, we are thinking very locally and very in the moment. We're not thinking about all of who we are. So knowing that there's places to go to, like you can go into the learning zone or you can reestablish yourself and regroup in the comfort zone and then come back and see if you can approach it differently, is huge. I feel like our students at Carpe Mundi get to think about this and we don't often get everybody to think about this as much as they should.
Rachel :And ideally right. It's always growing or changing and you know, the comfort zone grows. Things that used to be in your learning zone become in feel confident, going into new situations and to say, all right, this used to be in my panic zone and I never would have tried it, but now I know that it can be in my learning zone and I feel like I can take a step in this direction and try this new thing or sign myself up for this leadership position, or be a part of this small group, or try this club or whatever it is.
Delia:Or change lanes if you're driving, or just call the other person, send them a text with Siri or Alexa or whatever. Let them know you're going to be five minutes late. Let them know what your you know you just don't have to unravel. There's so many places where the panic zone behaviors could be moved into the learning zone. But you got to know that those options are there and I think that's one of the beautiful things that happens in this program is it's all of those options of how you navigate yourself, that sort of come alive as the students go through this program.
Rachel :Yeah, yeah, it's. You know language and being able to name things is powerful, right. And so, having these conversations around, how do you know you're in your panic zone if you've never heard of a panic zone before? I mean, you know because you're panicking, right, but how do you know you're in your panic zone if you've never heard of a panic zone before? I mean, you know because you're panicking, right, but how do you know that you can move out of it if you're like, oh wait, I can recognize right now that I am in my panic zone and I need to make a change and I can't just sit here because this is not where I want to be.
Rachel :But yeah, I think so much of it is just having these experiences, being able to reflect and put names to things, and that's something that we talk about a lot too is that experiences without reflection don't always lend themselves to learning in the same way. They might eventually over time. But I think it's important to do and then to think about what you've done and figure out how you can extrapolate learning from that or how you might apply that learning in the future, because just doing without thinking about it also doesn't necessarily lend itself to the best learning outcomes either, because then you're just do-do-doing all the time without necessarily looking back in your wake to understand what's been happening.
Delia:Experience without reflection doesn't give you the same outcomes. Boy, you are just coming up with some gems here. Gems, gems.
Rachel :Yeah, well, like we talked about, I think, a lot of this yeah transition for me is going to be it's so easy to talk about it, right, and it's so easy to ask things of other people and I've been working with Carpe Mundi students since 2012. In some way, shape or form so I mean that was part of my grad school journey too is that I had to do an internship each semester, and so I started interning with Carpe Mundi in 2012, and so I started interning with Carpe Mundi in 2012, and then I interned with them again in 2014. And so I think this is a really great opportunity for me to take a step back and say how much have you pushed your comfort zone? How much time have you spent in your learning zone? How much time have you spent reflecting on what you've learned and what you've done and where you want to go next?
Rachel :And I think one of the things that I love the most about Carpe Mundi is students coming home from these experiences and feeling empowered to make choices, to say what do I want to do next? And maybe I don't know yet, and so I'm going to take some time away from school. That's a choice, too, or I'm going to take some time away from school. That's a choice too. Or I'm going to change my major to this because I got really excited about this topic, or I'm going to keep traveling because I really loved how I felt and I want to keep exploring more.
Rachel :So, to have the choice to yeah, I don't really care what it is that you do. I mean, maybe a little bit, I want you to make choices that are healthy and safe and legal and legal yeah, healthy, safe and legal. But what I really want is for you to feel like you can choose the direction that you want to go next and to not feel like you don't have a choice or somebody is choosing it for you. And so I think I'm excited to do a little bit of that myself, to say, okay, where do I want to go next, and I do have a choice, and to have some time to explore what those choices might be travel abroad and then be in a program that helps you experience and then reflect, all right and with time built in so that you do these things, the discipline of doing them.
Delia:But in talking about it because we were just talking about you know how this happens in real life.
Delia:I think a lot of times we think a bigger chunk of time is needed or a bigger excuse to do the work is needed.
Delia:But I just want to remind people who are out there listening that maybe you don't, maybe you can't pause your life and take three months off to travel and reflect, but I'm certain that you can pause your life for 10 minutes, right, and you know quietly, sit outside or you know in your family room or living room, when your kids are asleep and your house is quiet and your plants are taken care of and all of that stuff, and spend that moment of time where you're looking at your experience of what you've been doing and then making some time for reflection.
Delia:Walk on the Camino, or it's the alchemist or it's some big journey thing that, and so a lot of people are just daunted by that, and it doesn't really have to be, because it's the act that you're talking about that act of taking the time to say what I'm experiencing. That can just be something that you make a commitment to Like. I'm going to do this twice a week for five weeks and see where that leads me in terms of my assessment of am I just in my comfort zone? Am I in my learning zone? Do I want to be somewhere else? And how do I do that? Totally.
Rachel :Yeah and I think this is something that we talk about with students a lot too, when they come home is this sense of everything. Everything where I was was so unique and so special and I got to have all these experiences and meet all these new people and everything was so beautiful and different. And now I'm home and I'm just bored and everything here is the same. And I hear that and experience that and I've experienced that myself, and it certainly is easier to reflect on those things when you're physically outside of your comfort zone and you are surrounded by new things. And I mean especially for listeners that are in the Northwest I'm biased, I love the Pacific Northwest. There is so much beauty here. There are so many things to see and so many things to do, it's true, and so many people, yeah, that have unique hobbies and interests and there's clubs, and I mean there's stuff to do here. It's a matter of, like you said, sitting down and asking yourself okay, you know, what's one new thing that I can do this week, because there's plenty of new stuff happening. Or even, you know, I love what you said about just go outside this time of year oh, my gosh, the springtime. It's like go outside and appreciate the natural beauty and pay attention to what's around you. There's I like the word wonder, and for me, one of my favorite parts about traveling is just this experience of awe and wonder and just being in a place where you're like, oh my gosh, the world is so amazing and there's wonder to be had everywhere, if you just choose to pay attention to it, I guess, and choose to embrace it.
Rachel :I have a pear tree in my yard and one of the things that I try and do, but no partridge, no partridge, at least not that I know of.
Rachel :I haven't seen it. It's, I mean, it sounds kind of silly, but I I try and pay attention to it, especially this time of year, especially coming out of winter, when I'm kind of getting a funk and it's February and I'm like, oh my God, are we ever going to have daylight again? And I go out and I'm like, okay, the buds are starting to come out on the pear tree, and then what comes next? And then you know it's the little. I'm not good with my plants, so something, yeah, yeah. And then the buds start to form and the blossoms, and then the leaves start to come out, and then you can see tiny, tiny little pears coming out of the blossoms, and nature is incredible and I think often we're just too busy going about our day to really stop and appreciate how incredible it is. And you know, that's part of how I cultivate that sense of wonder, even if I am not in a new place, in a foreign.
Delia:Yeah, in a new foreign place, and I think, too, a lot of our students don't come from worlds where they have the option to you know, they're on strict schedules, there's lots to be accomplished, they have jobs after work, they've got a lot of things to be doing. So pulling them out of their comfort zone and putting them on this experiential learning does give them a chance to sort of take a breath and look around, but it also doesn't have to be as radical to get yourself to take a breath and look around, and something I think a lot of us need to be doing more. I remember meeting Christina Rasmussen. She's the author of this book called Second First, and I believe she has another book out there. She talks a lot about grief and how she believes that a lot of us just, you know, just through our whole lives, should go through, you know, the process of getting through grief, because there's a lot of things we have to let go. And when I first saw her say that, talk to her, and heard her say this was at a talk in Portland, you know a round table or something I was just like really, and she's like CEOs, everybody, and because there's always something that you give up, like you give up the project, or like, as you were saying, like when you realize that you wanted to be a teacher, you had to go forward with your degree, so you had to kind of give up the idea, right, until you can find something you know, find a way to meet that need. Or even for some of us, like some of us were not ready to stop being 13. I'll be honest, that was a good life, right, but you can't live with your parents forever. So we're always have something in the grief cycle that's with us.
Delia:And you know, when she said that and I think for me I heard that in 2014 or something way back when I first met her I was just like, oh, I'm not sure what she fully meant about that and she said that because of that, we have the tendency to have the you know, the experience that's holding us back the grief, the trauma, whatever it is. And then we get stuck in this place which she calls the waiting room. And so in the waiting room, like you know think about a hospital analogy like you know, you hear about the patient. You know they're getting better. You can get pizza in there, other people can come and visit you. You see doctors going by, a a whole thing.
Delia:Life can happen in the waiting room, but it's still not life. Life is beyond the waiting room and a lot of us, our comfort zone, becomes like that waiting room. Right, that we're just, we haven't processed everything that we went through. That's why I like the fact that you're talking about the experience versus the reflection. We haven't processed everything that we went through, and then we get stuck in this waiting room, our life's in this waiting room, the comfort zone, whatever we want to call it and we don't get to the other part of the door. Right, and I think what you're doing right now, after being at Carpe Mundi for like 2014,. Almost 11 years, plus 2012, actually, so even more than that is saying to yourself I love this job, but I need to make sure that I'm not in the waiting room, that I'm not in the comfort zone, that I'm here like fully having my experience. And what was the tipping point for you to come to that decision?
Rachel :That's a great question. I think there were a number of pieces that came together for me, just a number of things that kind of started building up. I think that one of them is definitely thinking about my own passions and interests and skill sets and thinking about where I want my career to go and recognizing that part of what Carpe Mundi needs is somebody that really wants to double down on fundraising and that aspect of organizational development. And I think there's a lot of amazing things about being a part of a small team. But one of them is that you wear many hats and you're trying lots of things and I enjoy that and I, you know I'm always comfortable doing some fundraising.
Rachel :But I recognize that I think that there was an element of hesitation in I don't want to go too far down that fundraising journey, that it's hard for me to choose another one and that's not where I see myself really thriving. That's not where I see my passions and my skill sets aligning and I think that was certainly one piece. That it was as I think about my journey and where I want to go. That's setting me down a path and not to say that I can't get off that path and go a different direction. But I think that, while it's never too late to totally try something new, the farther you get down a path, the harder it is to start over on the baseline of another path. So I think that that was certainly part of it for me, and I think also just seeing how the community has changed over the years, or just grown. The community has grown in a way that's really beautiful and also in a way that makes it hard to continue to have the depth of relationship that I have with a number of students and alumni. At some point that isn't sustainable anymore, because there's only so much depth that can can be had in terms of hours of the day and the time that it takes to cultivate those relationships and um.
Rachel :So I think that that was a part of it too just seeing how the community is growing in a way that I really think is special and beautiful, and wondering what my role in that community is and and not being certain that it felt sustainable for me in the way that I. It wouldn't be sustainable to continue to do it the way that I wanted to do it, if that makes sense. So, yeah, I think those were. Those were some of the points and and I think it's also a lot has changed in the world since I started working with Carpe Mundi, and that doesn't mean that I believe any less in the mission, because it sounds so cliche, but at the same time I do really think that it is more important than ever to get folks out into the world and understanding different perspectives and seeing new ways of doing and being, and I wonder what else I can be plugging into with how the world has changed and what other opportunities might I be able to learn from and what other opportunities maybe?
Delia:I could lend what I've learned towards. So yeah, I think those are some of the convergence points. It's also it's always interesting right as we're cataloging sort of where we are in a journey and where you know our organization is or our family is or whatever the analogous situation someone's in is that, like you said, things change, things grow and evolve because of our involvement. Like, I mean, part of what we, part of our mission, is to help whatever we're in be most of the best that it's the best that it can be. And then for the next step we're not always the right fit, you know, on both sides and and I've gone through this conversation many times with my um, now young adults but even that transition between okay, but you're going to have to leave kindergarten and in the first grade they are going to make you like move middle school Even for myself, I still remember the transition. It was. You know, it was one of those pivotal conversations with my sister's godmother who said you know, you are a big fish in a small pond, but you're going to go to a pond and all the fishes are going to be the same size and you might actually be a small fish. And I was like, wait, what you know, it's all of this. You know, just managing that kind of change and figuring out where we want to fit in, and you know what we want to do and how we can do our best.
Delia:I know, personally I love the innovations, parts of new things, like you know, when they're about to grow and they need someone who has a lot of faith. And you know, just, you're getting through by just pure willpower and sheer nerves. Right, I kind of like that. And I know that it's also the repeat, repeat, repeat is not my strong suit, not to say that I can't do it, because I do believe that we can do anything but similar to you know what you were saying before. It's not that you can't do it, but what you want to be able to do is engage in a way that you know that the thing that you're doing is what you should be doing, that you're in the right place at the right time and you're the right person to help move whatever the agenda is forward.
Delia:And it's a hard, hard thing to want to keep that feeling crisp, right, you know, am I the right place? Am I the right person? Am I helping here as opposed to just managing along, cause I've had to ask myself that so many times, not only as a, you know, as my own personal life, as a partner, as a parent, as a career person. It's a choice, I guess, where we're saying authenticity at the very beginning, right, I think that's part of it, right? Authenticity, fulfillment, satisfaction, all those kinds of things. Are you continuously checking in with the situation and making sure that you are actually aligned to it?
Rachel :Absolutely, and that is hard to do. When you've been in the same place or when you're in that waiting room or the comfort zone, it can be easy to just keep doing the next thing. I'm like, okay, well, I know that at this time of year this is what comes next, and here I am and there's plenty to do to stay busy, and it can be really challenging to you know. It's almost like you do have to take that step back or remove yourself from the situation, and I'm really grateful to be able to have the opportunity to not move into something else right away, because I don't think I'm in the place where I can do some honest reflection yet about what I want to come next, because I've been in this place for so long, in this place for so long, and it's been such a beautiful experience in so many ways and such a special, informative experience for me that I think I do really need a little bit of that separation, to to take a step back and to say, okay, what, what was that? You know what, what just happened and and what about that do I really did, I really love and appreciate and felt like I was thriving and felt like I was contributing the best and what was really draining for me, or felt like I really fell flat on bigger picture of you know. I love that you were just talking about.
Rachel :You know as a partner, as a parent, as a friend, as a. You know what are my values as a human, not just as a as a worker or as a as a leader and how do I want to balance all of the other priorities and things that I hold dear in my life and how does that factor into what comes next, instead of making a decision based off of just like oh, I really love working with students, so I guess I'll just find another nonprofit and work with students. It's like whoa wait, where is this all going? And how do I want to be in this world, not just how do I want to be in a workplace. So I'm really grateful for the opportunity to have some time to reset before I choose where to go next, because I don't think that I'm quite capable of reflecting at the level that I want to while I'm still in the waiting room, so to speak.
Delia:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that waiting room analogy has been really huge for me, because sometimes the comfort zone doesn't have the walls, but the waiting room reminds you at least for me, that analogy reminds you that you're living the whole thing, but you're walled off from your possibilities, yeah, right.
Delia:So, yeah, you know, and you need to need to. Also, you need to also leave somewhere, whether that's physical leaving or mental transition, but you need to go out, right, you need to those zones. The waiting room, you need to leave it in order to have the have another experience, and you don't want that to come from trauma. Right, have another experience, and you don't want that to come from trauma. Right, you can leave the comfort zone in the waiting room, but you can also go back to the operating room or the panic zone. Does it have to be from trauma? We can do this by choice. So we've talked a lot about choice, we've talked a lot about experiential learning and, before we wrap this up, in case any of the students are listening out there, what would you want them to take away from the example that you're setting in terms of doing this for your own life?
Rachel :Oh, that's a great question. I think that a couple of things maybe. Um, transitions are hard, but they're necessary and they will continue to happen, and that's a good reminder for myself, too, to remember like transitions are good. It can feel hard to make that decision, but if things aren't changing, then you're just standing still, so that it's. It's okay to transition and to, um, you know, walk away from something even if it's a really good thing.
Rachel :And I think that that is definitely one message that I want to get out there, especially to alumni and students, is that the community is the hardest thing to walk away from.
Rachel :And just because I'm not going to be a part of Carpe Mundi officially doesn't mean that I'm not still a part of the community, and I think that that's part of it too is that when you open a new door, you don't have to close the one behind you when you leave the waiting room. It's not that the waiting room disappears if you don't want it to. That is still there and it's still a part of you and it's still something that you'll take with you moving forward. And that sometimes there are chapters that we want to close the door behind us on, and that's okay too, but moving forward doesn't mean you're leaving things or people behind. They can still come with you. It'll be different, but maybe some really good things can come out of that change as well. So I think that is what I would want them to think about is that moving towards a new opportunity doesn't mean that the old, not the old, the thing that you're walking away from, isn't still special and dear and won't be a part of you moving forward.
Delia:Awesome, moving forward, awesome, and so we talked about travel being on your to-live list. Because we talked about that, because it's the name of the podcast, so you know, and to-do lists are the things we just have to get done and the bucket lists are the things that we're going to do before we die, but we're not dying yet. So what are we doing to live? And we've talked a lot about making the choices, about the present moment, about what's going on in terms of what we're doing to live. So, I know, travels on yours, reflections on yours, catching up with yourself what else did you want to add to things on your to live list?
Rachel :I want to learn to play the piano. That's number one. I didn't know that. Yeah, oh, my goodness.
Delia:A softballer who wants to learn to play the piano, that's number one. I didn't know that. Yeah, oh, my goodness, a softballer who wants to learn how to play the piano.
Rachel :Yeah, I spent a lot of time singing growing up but I've never really learned how to play an instrument. And we have a piano in our house because we got it for free on Craigslist. And people come over that don't know us and they're like, oh, do you play the piano? Like no, no, that don't know us.
Delia:And they're like, oh, do you play the piano? Like no, no, we don't, we just have it. It's just there for decoration, it's just there for decoration.
Rachel :It was free. You know, we don't have a TV, we have a piano that nobody plays. So I'm really looking forward to that and again, I think that is something that's going to be a challenge for me, like really putting myself in that learning zone and getting into something and I will admit that I am generally not great at doing things that I'm not good at, but I so it's like try a new thing.
Delia:You need the right teacher. It's all about getting the right teacher. I have one in mind for you. I'll tell you that.
Rachel :Oh, excellent, and she's actually not too far from you from, at least not too far from where we used to be on Killingsworth, okay awesome, Great, and I'm looking forward to spending more time in our garden and having that be something that I can really immerse myself in, rather than oh, we've got an hour on Saturday, I guess we'll throw a few more seeds in the ground and harvest some green beans so that I can really spend time in that space than oh, we've got an hour on Saturday, I guess we'll throw a few more seeds in the ground and harvest some green beans so that I can really like spend time in that space and and then, um, also enjoy the fruits of the garden a little bit more and and maybe do some canning or preserving or just um. Yeah, I'm looking forward to doing some traveling a little bit later, but I think, particularly since I'll be making this transition in the summer, summer in Portland is just so beautiful.
Rachel :So I'm looking forward to just kind of being here a little bit more and appreciating this place and saying yes to more things that would have kind of conflicted with the workday or yeah, just, I think, developing some healthier habits for myself so reading more, getting into a better like exercise routine and and just recognizing some of the tendencies that I have to do a lot for work or for others, but not always prioritize what feels best for me and giving myself some time and permission to take care of myself in a different way and hopefully reset some patterns so that whenever I do transition into what's next, I can feel like I'm in a little bit of a healthier spot to hold some boundaries and to continue some of those habits that I've given myself the chance to cultivate without a work needs.
Delia:Without that external sort of pressure. There I feel like you, everything that you says, you feel you sound like you are craving an opportunity for mastery. Things that you can master the garden, the instrument, instrument, you know, just going deeper into things. That's what I'm, when I'm turning, saying by mastery you know those things that you can put hours into and that you can see yourself getting better at. Yeah, and not in a competitive kind of way, but for the joy of being better at it. That's kind of. And and oftentimes, when we're rushing or we're just on this timeline, like many of us are, because we have to do it to feed ourselves and make a living, you know we don't have a chance to sort of take a moment for mastery. And that was one thing I liked about my previous employer is that you know we got this sabbatical time off and we could put this with our vacation and some people traveled and did a lot of things, but I remember I spent mine pretty much doing exactly what you are describing. Just, there are a lot of things I just couldn't go deeply on and also, if I started to go deep, I couldn't rejoin them the next day. It might have to be like three weeks before I went to do them again, and it's nice to just be able to have consecutive days and continue on with an activity and fully explore it. So I understand that craving, and in my old company we would have that eight week break every seven years. And I think there's something to be said for about that timing too, where you kind of just you know, you kind of just need to sort of like as you, what am I doing? Oh yeah, who am I? I think that's a kind of it was a at least it was a good rule of thumb for me that I don't know how they ever came up with that, but it seemed to be like just about the right timing for most people to sort of want to to check in with themselves to make sure that everything's okay. So you're absolutely on the perfect path for all of that and it's very celebratory and it's going to be great. It's also going to be hard. You're also going to enter the panic zone, cause everyone thinks it's. You know I'm going to do this reflection. It also going to be hard. You're also going to enter the panic zone Because everyone thinks. You know I'm going to do this reflection. It's going to be great.
Delia:I still remember the first morning of my sabbatical. I, like everyone, left for school and for work and then I was here on this thing that I was supposed to be journeying on. I was like, what have I done? I don't have a plan, I don't have travel, I don't have anything. And I just thought I was just about to sort of devolve into the full panic zone when I remembered I'd set an appointment with my mother-in-law, who does Alexander techniques and voice, and I'd set an appointment with her for 1 pm to get to her studio. And then that kind of got me into that. Take a deep breath, it's not you know what I mean and remember that you are going to just go through this. Like, as you said, you're going to leave the panic and go into the learning zone. So, yeah, yeah, because you think everyone thinks relaxing is going to be easy. But relaxing is a little bit of its own. It's got a challenge there.
Rachel :You've got to be ready. It's a little bit, yeah, especially, and I'm I'm definitely a big time extrovert and I'm. So I'm not worried at all about being bored, because I feel like my list is already. There's plenty of things to do, but I am more worried about being lonely, or you know, I think reflecting is great here and there, but if I'm just sitting by myself all day is that too much reflecting. So I, I think I hear that and I appreciate that and I think, yeah, that first week would be like, oh, this is great, it's like a vacation.
Delia:And then the second week, it's like, okay, I'm going to avoid the Safeway in Northeast because you'll be pushing the cart in the aisles and manually holding people in five-minute conversations that you don't know. Anyways, rachel, thank you so much for this time and sharing where you are in your journey. I'm sure there's a lot of people who are out there who are in a similar kind of spot and hopefully, if you have a bunch of time or if you just have a few minutes, I hope you get something out of this that helps you move yourself to whatever will bring you to your best alignment. It's not a snap thing. We all put the work into it and it's a good place to be able to put work into.
Rachel :Yeah, I love that. I think that that's Everybody can live their life seeking out purpose and being intentional, but it's not easy and I think that that's part of it too, like it does take a commitment and a sacrifice and, you know, a sacrifice to the things that are on that to-do list instead of your to-live list. But I think that you know we only have this one life, so how are we going to really take care of ourselves and live it to the fullest?
Delia:Yep. So that's it, everybody. Do your best, live your life to the fullest. It's cliche, but it's true. Cliche but it's true.
Delia:Yeah, and all the best, rachel. In the next adventure We'll hear more from you. For sure You're going to be part of the Carpe Mundi community and anyone who is local or global who wants to know more about the Carpe Mundi community, I'll make sure to have that in the show notes. We are doing fabulous things with these students and we definitely want more people to know about the work that we're doing and more people to help contribute to the community in any way that they can. So take care, everyone, and we'll talk to you next time. Bye, thank you. Thanks, rachel.
