The Empty Nest Fog: What to Do When You Can’t See What’s Next | EP156

Your child has left for college. The calendar that once organized your life suddenly has wide-open spaces. And everyone seems to want to know the same thing:

So… what are you going to do now?

But what if you genuinely don't know?

In this episode of Encore Living, I explore what author Jim Collins calls “the fog”—the period of uncertainty that can follow a major life transition when the old path has ended, but the new one isn't visible yet.

For empty nesters, that fog can feel unsettling. But not being able to see what's next doesn't mean there's nothing next.

We'll talk about why you don't need to figure out the rest of your life right now, why this may not be the time to force a huge decision, and how small experiments—from trying a new hobby to reconnecting with people—can help you begin moving forward.

You don't need to see five miles down the road.

You just need to see the next 20 feet.

You can find me here:

Dr. Thor on Instagram @thorchallgren

Website: https://thorchallgren.com

Transcript

Dr. Thor Challgren (00:00)
Have you ever driven into really thick fog where suddenly you can only see about 20 feet in front of you? If you're a new empty nester, that may be exactly what life feels like right now. For years, the road ahead of you was pretty clear. You had school, soccer practice, college applications, move-in day. Then your kid leaves, those familiar landmarks disappear, and suddenly you're thinking, okay, what now?

I've recently been reading Jim Collins' book, What to Make of a Life, and he describes how a major life transition, like becoming an empty nester, can sometimes lead into a period of what he calls fog, when you simply can't see what comes next.

But here's what I think is important to keep in mind. I can't see what's next doesn't mean there's nothing next. Maybe you don't need to see five miles ahead. Maybe you just need to see the next 20 feet. Let's talk about it in this episode of Encore Living.

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Good afternoon, good evening, good wherever you are. I'm so glad you're here with me today. Today I want to talk about fog. And I'm sure we've all had the experience of driving in fog where, especially if it's really dense fog, you can't see very far ahead of you. You can only see literally sometimes what's right in front of you. And we've probably been in a car where we had to slow down, where we had to turn on our lights, where

The things that we thought we could see ahead are now not there. And this metaphor really came to me and hit home to me in reading a book recently called What to Make of a Life. This is written by Jim Collins, who wrote a lot of business books, but this was the first time that he turned his attention to how to think about change in life. And what he did in this book was really fascinating. He

Looked at different lives, and I think the book has maybe like 28 different people that he compared their lives. And he found a number of things in common. And there are a couple people that he studied where it became clear that when a big change happens in life, and certainly if you're an empty nester, that is a big change. If you're, say, you retired from a job, that's a big change. And and what he found was

He would call this kind of moment a cliff, meaning something significant changes in your life. Something happens where your life has been upended. And he said, What can happen a lot of times after this cliff, there's this period that he calls a fog. And I want to read this is his definition. This comes from his book called What to Make of a Life. And he said, fog is when you go through a phase of immense uncertainty. Sound familiar?

And lack of clarity about the best path forward, perhaps even having no clear idea where you want to go. When in the fog, you can feel confused or disoriented or unsteady or reeling. Or maybe all of these. You might be expending a lot of energy in the fog, but it can feel more like wandering and stumbling than purposeful strides towards a clear destination.

In the thickest fog, you can feel truly lost. Those are the words of Jim Collins in his book, What to Make of a Life. So that when I read that section, I'm like, my gosh, this absolutely applies to when your kids go off to school because you you can feel lost. And he talks about the many of the reasons why he, in this particular chapter that I read, which is I loved, he compares two people.

He compares the actor Michael J. Fox and also the singer from Earth Wind and Fire who founded Earth Wind and Fire, Maurice White. And he compares how both of them reacted to what was a cliff moment for them. Most people, if you know Michael J. Fox, he was mo he is an actor, he still acts, but he was primarily known, popular for his movies and TV shows.

Obviously, he was in family ties back in the 80s, and then he was Marty McFly and Back to the Future. So he had a huge career until one day he said, and in the book, he sort of the author talks about in what Michael J. Fox wrote in his biography, how he discovered that he had Parkinson's and he got diagnosed. And what was interesting was I didn't know the timing of this.

It was seven years from his initial diagnosis to the time that he went and did an interview and basically said, I have Parkinson's. So seven years that he carried that with him and he was still working, and the the experience that he had during that time was the symptoms became more pronounced to the point where he he had to to share it. So seven years during that time that he was, by some accounts, in the fog, and he was still.

acting, but he was dealing with it. And up until that point, his career had been mostly acting. And I think this is where for me, I identify with that that many of us, if we've been parents, especially if you were a stay-at-home parent and you had a lot of involvement in what your kids did, your whole life was what what your kids did, their their activities, their school, the

You know, my case, I was a assistant soccer coach. I started a Girl Scout troop. There are a lot of things that I did that revolved around her life. So when she went off to college, that felt like a cliff for me. There was there was before and then after. In the same way that in Michael J. Fox's career, he had his acting career, something that w he was super passionate about and and very successful at. And then he discovered that he had Parkinson's. And for seven years he was.

the way that Jim Collins described it, that was a period that Michael J. Fox was in the fog of trying to figure out how to deal with this. And so this is kind of for me the first point that I wanted to share is I think a lot of times when we're in a moment like this when you're on a cliff and you you kind of fall off the cliff, there's a a feeling that maybe you you have to figure this out right away.

And you you'll especially you look around and see other people who seem like they have it all figured out and seem like, you know, they've got it all together, they figured out what's wrong with me? I'll talk more about that in future episodes, but that idea of feeling like you have to figure it all out, certainly if you look at Michael J. Fox's experience, it was seven years. So I I mean, I don't want to say that that seven years is how long it it takes.

When you're in this fog experience. In fact, in the book, he talks about how it can be, he says, and I'll read from here, he says, the point here is that fog tends to follow cliffs, and that it can take a long time to work through the fog to reframe and reconstruct life after a cliff. And and he's talking now about Michael J. Fox. He says, Fox's clarity and acceptance did not happen in one big step, it didn't follow a linear path.

It didn't flow from a well-formulated plan. It happened in years of zigzag steps and dawning realizations and organic evolution. So for me, the takeaway is wherever you are in this journey, whether your kid's just gone away, whether you're in the first year and you still feel like it just happened yesterday, the fog experience is something that takes a while to lift.

Yeah, I think it's a perfect metaphor for where we are, because you know, if you've ever driven through fog, sometimes you can be in fog so dense you can't see ten feet in front of you. Sometimes you can see a little bit of distance, but things aren't clear. And and I think that's the point that he's making. And again, fog perfect metaphor for this because you've also probably been in the experience where you're driving through fog and it can be dense and then it can be lighter, and it could be dense and can be lighter. In Southern California, we have this a lot.

In May and June, if you have the fog w will descend in called May Gray and June gloom, where you can be driving and suddenly it's dense fog and you can't see. So my takeaway from that is understand that's where you are, and it's okay that that's where you are. So in the instance that he shares of Michael J. Fox, it was seven years before he

Announced to the world that this is what he had. And he still at that point didn't know what was next for him. He he knew that at that point, once he'd announced, he still was doing some acting, but he realized that wasn't the path that was going to be available to him moving forward. And so he began to become an advocate for Parkinson's research. And that really was the next huge career of his life. And even that took time.

For that to evolve. There was a fog period of there where it was several years where he began to move into that advocacy role of his life and the skills and what Jim Collins calls encodings. Encodings is basically a way to say, like, what are you naturally gifted at? What are you passionate about? What is sort of your gift and genius in the world? Michael Dry Michael J. Fox's encodings for being an advocate and a voice for research for Parkinson's that took itself years. And so it wasn't something that happened overnight. 

So I think this is the valuable thing for me is not to think that this has to happen overnight. The other in that same chapter there's another person that is paired in the chapter and and then that's the singer Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire who started that band. And Maurice White also diagnosed with Parkinson's

And had a similar journey. His response, and again, it was several years of figuring out how to deal with this and what was his next to do in life. His response, rather than becoming an advocate, was he he pushed himself back into his music, which was the thing that that was his love, the thing that he was encoded for. He did, in fact, leave Earth, Wind, and Fire, but he put himself into his musical projects, which is that was his gift and genius in the world.

But again, it was something where it took a while for him to figure out. So what do you do when you're in this fog? Well, one of the things, and I'll talk more about this later, that Jim Collins talks about is when you're in this fog, when you're not sure what to do, he said, one thing for sure, don't do is don't make any irrevocable decisions. Don't suddenly decide that you're gonna.

Create some new area of life when you're not sure. He makes the point that you can't really leap ahead if you can't see what's in front of you. So his advice is to take smaller steps to move in the direction of what you might want. Michael J. Fox took steps where he might go and give a speech, he might talk. He wasn't saying, you know, immediately like, okay, I'm an advocate for Parkinson's research.

But he took those smaller steps. So if you think about what you could do in your life, you can begin to take steps while the fog is around you. And what I love about that idea is if you think about anytime you've driven through fog, you know that that you can have an experience where simply driving through the fog gets you through it, right? If it's localized where you are, you're driving.

Safely through what you can see, taking the the path that you can see. And at a certain point, you may get to the point where the fog dissipates, or you get to the edge of it, and now you can see what's in front of you. So taking those small steps, for me, that was the key that sort of unlocked a lot of this was thinking of it that way, where you ask, okay, what what steps can I take towards something that motivates me, that lights me up? And they can be simple.

They could be maybe there's some new hobby that you wanted to try. I have a painting kit. It's actually a painting by numbers kit. And I'm gonna be starting that soon when I come back from some traveling. And that's something for me that's a simple step forward that I could explore and go, do I wanna be an artist? You know, looking at his advice of don't make an irrevocable decision.

I'm not gonna say, I'm gonna go get an art studio because I've suddenly decided I want to be an artist. Instead, I go, you know what? Maybe I will paint by numbers. Maybe I'll get a kit where I can create some artwork and decide if that's what I like. Maybe instead of going, you know what, I'm gonna run a marathon this year. And I I've said that in the past where I go, I'm gonna run a marathon. A more sustainable path in the short term, a smaller step might be to say,

Maybe I'll sign up for a 5K. I already walk a lot, so I I know I could walk that, but maybe I run a 5K. That's a simple thing that I could do that gets me moving forward. There are all sorts of things like that in life that we can all do. Maybe it's restoring a friend group or setting up a friend group of people that are in a similar situation as you where you want to get together periodically and support each other. That's another

small step that you can do while you're in that fog. So if you look at your life and go, okay, I'm number one, I may be in a fog right now. I don't know what's next. And I think the I don't want to say the worst thing, but the challenge for s for many of us is at this point in life we can employ what I call grand adventure thinking, where we go, all right, I have to figure out what's mine for the rest of my life.

But if you think about being in a fog, you don't know what the rest of your life is like. You can't see that far ahead. But what you can do is go, you know what? I can see 10 feet, I can see 20 feet, I can take those first couple of steps. And those steps may be the ones that get me out of that fog, or at least they can illuminate for me what might be mine to do. I'll I'll I'll leave you with this thought. I was

Doing some work with a a client, and when we were talking about fog, it occurred to me that if you think about the nature of fog, fog is something that if it's really dense, you can feel it on your body. You can feel the moistness of the air on your skin. Maybe you can even see it on your clothing where the heaviness of it, the dew forms little drops on your clothing. So if you think of it that way,

That it's something that permeates you, that surrounds you. What it means now, too, it is you. You are part of that, is essentially the atmosphere in physical, tangible form. Just it's it's water, right? And so if you think about it that way, it's now no longer fog isn't something that is a problem. It's not something that's an obstacle, it's not something that needs to be.

overcome or that you're gonna persevere over it. It's just where you are. You are in the space around you. Not to get too metaphysical, but you are energy and that energy of the fog is also energy. And so you are in this place where if you go, you know what? Where am I right now? I I I love there's a saying I have which is to go, which is to ask, what about this? What about now?

When you say what about this, you're saying what is right in front of me, what is mine to do right now. When you say what about now, you're saying what's in my immediate presence, what's in my immediate circumstances. So to say, what about this? What about now when you are in the fog? Ground you, ground you in the fog to remind yourself that you're present where you are and you take the steps from where you are.

You're not trying to see ahead towards what's next week or what's a month from now or a year from now. Just take the time to move deliberately, to enjoy and experience what's around you right now and know that when you keep taking those steps, you will eventually get through that fog. You'll discover what's yours to do, and you may discover that in the process of doing some of those things, whether it's

Running a race, painting, getting involved in music or creating friend circles, you may discover that that's what you're encoded for. That's what lights you up. That's what you're passionate about. And I think that's really the the best outcome that when we're in that fog trying to discover what's next for us, we we remember that by taking those steps, by continuously moving forward, you will discover what's yours next to do in life.

I hope this lands for you. I hope this is meaningful for you. And I look forward to having more conversations with you in the weeks and months ahead. Although I don't want to think too far ahead because even this could be in fog. And I'm just appreciating being with you here right now. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you next time.