163. You Don't Need a New Life. You Need a New Perspective.

What if the clarity you’ve been searching for isn’t going to come from thinking harder…but from stepping away?

In this episode, your host Laurie Reynoldson shares a deeply personal invitation into the power of retreats — why getting out of your daily routine isn’t indulgent, it’s transformative. From the Best Life Retreat in Arizona to two intimate Paris experiences this fall, this conversation explores what really happens when midlife women step outside the noise of their everyday lives and into a curated space designed for reflection, expansion, and joy.

This isn’t about sightseeing.
 It’s about seeing yourself differently.

If you’ve been feeling stuck in repetition — same days, same responsibilities, same questions — this episode is your nudge to stop postponing your life. Because clarity doesn’t come from waiting. It comes from movement.

LINKS + MENTIONS:

🌵Best Life Retreat at Civana Wellness Resort + Spa

🇫🇷 Best Life Retreats in Paris

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Transcript

What if the fastest way to figure out who you are in this season of life is to step outside of your life for a minute. In today's episode of the School of Midlife podcast, I'm inviting you into something bigger, a conversation about retreats, about Paris, about Arizona, and about what actually happens when you give yourself permission to get out of your routine and reconnect with the woman you're becoming.

Let's talk about why changing your scenery might just change everything for you. This is a good one. Let's get into it.

Welcome to the School of Midlife podcast. I'm your host, Laurie Reynoldson.

This is the podcast for the midlife woman who starting to ask herself big life questions. Like, what do I want? Is it too late for me? And what's my legacy beyond my family and my work. Each week we're answering these questions and more. At the School of [00:01:00] Midlife, we're learning all of the life lessons they didn't teach us in school and we're figuring out finally what it is we want to be when we grow up. Let's make midlife your best life. 

Well, hey friends. Welcome back to another episode of The School of Midlife podcast. I'm so glad some of you returned after last week's rant. It was, uh, I got a little spicy, I got a little worked up. Um, I will say that apparently you like worked up, Laurie, because last week's episode was one of the most shared episodes in a very long time. So, um, I guess if you're my people, you know it and you are creating a big group around us and I am here for that. Thank you so, so much.

Um, I actually, I am in the middle of preparing a number of talks that I have on the [00:02:00] calendar for this week. Because of course, I'm waiting until the last minute to get that done. If you are watching the video, you see me wiping water off of my desk because I just spilled a very large bottle of water all over my desk, and I keep finding little puddles.

Um. I wanna talk about retreats today. I went live with the Paris retreats over the weekend.

If you have been around, if you've been a listener of the podcast for a little while, you may remember that I went to a retreat in Paris uh, at the beginning of November. , It was a big deal for me. I mean, I, yes, I had flown overseas by myself before, but I was, I was in Paris for a week by myself, and I went to a retreat there with the idea that I, I always thought it [00:03:00] would be really cool to bring women back to Paris and have them experience Paris in the way that I think it's meant to be experienced.

Not, you know, let's not go climb the Eiffel Tower. Let's not stand in line to take a selfie at the Arc de Triomphe. Let's, let's actually experience Paris in a way that is. A level above, and I'm not just meaning high luxury, although the retreats are, they're so good.

I mean, everything that is planned, I, I am so excited about the itineraries. I'm doing two retreats back to back. Same itinerary like the first day once you get to Paris.

Well, let me back up. Why go on a retreat? Why go on a retreat? A lot of people feel like it's indulgent. [00:04:00] Why would they ever go on a retreat?

Because there is something that happens at a retreat. You getting out of the busyness of your life to actually spend some time with yourself. Thinking about who you are in this season of life, what you want to do with your life. And yes, you can do that at home. You can do that in the car listening to this podcast.

You can certainly do some online coaching. We can do one-on-one coaching. Totally. Absolutely. But it's different. There is something different about getting you out of your everyday routine. Moving you to somewhere that feels maybe even a little uncomfortable May because maybe you don't know anybody.

Maybe you're even in a different country. Maybe you don't speak the language.

Taking you from your every [00:05:00] day, same morning routine, same work day, same, you know, four or five o'clock in the afternoon, like question of what's for dinner tonight.

As midlife women, we tend to live our days pretty much the same day over and over again. And then we get to the end of the year and we're like, well, where the hell did the year go?

Because we're not doing new things. We're not experiencing new things. That's the beauty of a retreat is it's this collection of curated experiences in a very safe container so that you can stretch a little bit, you can do something a little outside of your comfort zone in a very protected, controlled environment.

Okay, so that's what the retreats are about.

There is one coming up in April that we still have some spaces available, so if you don't wanna travel to Paris, cool. You can [00:06:00] get everything in the Best Life retreats, the same curriculum, all the coaching. In April next month, we are going to the Civana Wellness Resort and Spa in Carefree, Arizona.

It is just, um, northeast of Scottsdale. And it is incredible. If you heard anything a couple of episodes ago, I actually, uh, talked about being there with some of my girlfriends, some women that I have been lifelong friends of mine. We went to elementary school together. We just had a wonderful time at Civana and.

I am so excited to be partnering with Renee Campisi, who is a board certified wellness coach and we are going to deliver a, a completely transformational weekend for the women who travel to Civana. And not only will you get the coaching, but Civana [00:07:00] has an award-winning spa.

So you're gonna get a spa treatment. There is gonna be plenty of time to hang out at the pool. The food and drink, all included. And it is. Incredible. It is so good. And it it, it's just a weekend of pampering yourself and being intentional about who you want to be and how you wanna show up in your life. In this season of life. It's going to be an incredible, incredible weekend.

If you have started the year and you can't believe that it's already March and think that maybe this is the year that you wanna do something a little differently. Check out the Civana retreat. I will make sure that there's a clickable link in the show notes and you can get yourself signed up and I would love to see you there.

If your travel schedule is full for April and you wanna do something even bigger, something that's even potentially more of a stretch for you, then join me in [00:08:00] Paris in October two retreats. They are incredible. Let me just set the stage of what I have planned and you let me know if that sounds like something that you would be interested in.

The first day we will kick it off. That's probably gonna be a travel day for most people, so it will be you land in the morning. You, you do have some free time. If, if you're anything like me though, I am so tired from traveling that all I wanna do is check into the hotel and take a nap. There is time built into that first day schedule so that you can actually have some free time to get your bearings, get yourself to Paris, get to the hotel, and maybe even take a nap if you need it.

And I know that there are people out there that say, on your first day of travel, stay awake as long as possible so that you can sleep through the night. What I have actually found is I can't sleep through [00:09:00] the night anyway. I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night. That's just how jet lag works, especially because where I'm at, Paris is eight hours ahead of me. So it doesn't matter if I go to bed at 6:00 PM or 8:00 PM or 12:00 PM I'm still gonna wake up at like three or four o'clock in the morning. That's just how it works. So I try and get my sleep in whenever I can.

That first day, we're gonna do a champagne reception and a welcome dinner with the idea that we're gonna get started early and we are going to end early. So yes, there will be some, you know, a walk along the river at night on the way back from dinner. But you're gonna get back to the hotel early enough so that you can go to bed early and get as much sleep as you possibly can.

The next day we're gonna get up and have a beautiful breakfast and then head to the Luxembourg Gardens with a published [00:10:00] artist. And she is going to give us some hands-on instruction on how we can live sketch our entire trip, but we're gonna focus on the gardens. We're gonna do a little bit of journaling.

She's I, what she has planned is, it's so amazing. And if you are somebody who is like, why would I ever wanna do that? Because there is something really cool about getting to a different place and working on some different skills without, I mean, who cares if anybody sees it? Who cares if you're terrible at it?

You are just moving, you're working your brain, you're, you're experiencing something different, in a different way. It is going, it's gonna blow your mind. It's gonna be so good. I have seen her travel journals before. I have seen what she has been able to create with people, and we're doing that at the beginning of the trip.

So that you can take that journal with you [00:11:00] to everywhere else that we go in Paris. You might decide that you don't want to do any live sketching anymore, but maybe you want to use this, this journal, this book that you're gonna get to document the rest of your trip. Maybe to, uh, pick up a postcard or two and put it in the book. Or your little metro ticket mementos. Little ticket stubs from the museums, whatever it is. But this is going to be an incredible way for you to document the trip, and we're gonna do it early on so that you have the entire rest of the trip to fill it.

What else are we gonna do in Paris? Well, we are going to see some incredible museums. We're gonna see the Rodin Museum, which is, has this beautiful sculpture garden attached to it. If you, if you know Rodin, he's, uh, his most, uh one of his [00:12:00] most famous sculptures is The Thinker. And it's in this beautiful sculpture garden, but it's not just about The Thinker. The, the, the grounds there. The indoor setting of the museum itself, the other sculptures that are in there, the paintings. It is one of my favorite museums and I cannot wait to share it with you.

We're also going to do a turn through the Dior Museum. I don't know if you've seen any pictures of that online, but the history of Maison Dior and Christian Dior, and the atelier and the beautiful gowns on display. Super, super excited to share that with you.

What else are we gonna do? Uh, we're gonna do a walking tour.

We're gonna do a private tour through Notre Dame, which is reopened now after the fire. [00:13:00] One day we're gonna actually take a day trip to Versailles and have a private tour of Versailles after having a lunch in this charming little town. If you have not been to Versailles, it is, it is charming. It is so quaint.

It is so. It's darling, I love it so much.

We're gonna take a cooking class. There is a woman, a an American woman. In fact, it was her retreat that I went to in the fall, and she's an American woman and she owns a French cooking school. Mike and I took a class at the cooking school when we were there in November. It was so fun. It was appetizers and drinks for like a, a dinner party. I think that that is the same class that we're gonna take because it's so, it's so portable. What I mean by that is you can actually take these little appetizer recipes and make them once you get home for an incredible dinner party.

It's, it's, it's such a [00:14:00] fun, fun way to spend an evening. Um, there are food tours and wine tastings planned. There will be, of course, time to walk all over the city, maybe do some morning walks or runs along the Seine River. Uh, if you want to shop. Uh, plenty of shopping. We're gonna stay in the sixth, which is on the left bank.

It is one of my favorite areas in the city because there are such great restaurants nearby. There is incredible shopping. It is close to the river. Everything feels like it's very walkable. You cannot see the Eiffel Tower when you walk outside of your window because it's, it's kind of around the bend a bit on the, on the river, but it is so walkable. It is so charming and it is not as packed with tourists as some of the other areas are. So I love it so much. We're gonna stay in a very [00:15:00] charming, I think it's a four star luxury hotel. It's, it's so cute. I love it. We stayed there in the fall. I, I love it.

I haven't even talked about the restaurants. I have hand selected a few of my absolute favorite restaurants to show you. Because I don't want this to be a tour of Paris like you would read about in the guidebooks. If we do the things that are in the guidebooks, we're just going to end up with a bunch of Americans.

There's gonna be a bunch of tourists, and we're all gonna be like pushing around, you know, like throwing elbows to get to the first in line or, or trying to snap a picture of a very important or famous painting, just to say that we were there. That's not what this is about at all. Coming and experiencing Paris in the way that this magical city was meant to be experienced.

I don't wanna show you Paris. I wanna share it with you. I [00:16:00] want to share with you the city where I feel most like myself. The city where the very first time I was there, and I've only been going there for four or five years now, but as soon as I got there, it was like, I am home almost as if I have been homesick for this place, this beautiful, incredible city.

It's, it's so good. We're gonna do, uh, I forgot we're gonna do a, a dinner cruise on the Seine. One of my favorite experiences, we have done it every time we have gone back to Paris because it is that magical. There's something about seeing the city from the water at night. All of the beautiful, lights on. The, the food, on the boats amazing. And the piece de resistance is you end the tour in front of the Eiffel Tower on the [00:17:00] hour, which means it is completely lit up from top to bottom sparkling lights. It's, it's so great. It's so good.

I, I wish, I wish everyone could experience this. But the restaurants in Paris aren't big, right? They're small. Everything in Paris is smaller. The hotels are smaller. The restaurants are smaller. The spaces are smaller, which means four women per week at the retreat. That's it. It is specifically designed for solo travelers because I want to give you everything you need to say yes to yourself, to, to take away all of the barriers.

Everything has been planned. There will actually be a concierge service that will meet you at the airport because Charles de Gualle airport is a little big. It can seem like a lot to navigate if you've never been there before, especially if you don't speak French.

That's the other thing. You don't [00:18:00] have to speak French. I know enough to cover us, and I'm actually going to an adult french immersion language school in the south of France for a month before I even meet you in Paris. So I know enough French to get us around the city right now. Uh, after spending a month there, it's, it's gonna be so much better. I, I already know it's gonna be so much better.

I would love for you to join us, but there are eight spots total. Four each week. That's it. Come by yourself. Come with a friend if you want. It's really going to be a.... making me choose a favorite retreat is so hard. It's like choosing your favorite child. Sun Valley will always have a special spot in my heart because we've gone there for five years in a row. It was the og. [00:19:00] I love it so much. I would love to be able to take you back there this fall, but because I'll be in Paris, we can't do Sun Valley this year. That'll be back in 2027. I am very excited about Civana in April next year, we're gonna add Mexico early in the year. But I know without even going there yet, Paris is gonna be my favorite.

I mean, there, I, I, I just know it. I, I know how the city feels. I know what these experiences are gonna be like. After you come with me to Paris, you're gonna wanna go back. It. I, sorry, not sorry. I cannot wait to show you why Paris is so special. Why it's so special. It, it's, it's just so good.

There's only [00:20:00] four spots each week though. Eight total. I'll drop a clickable link in the show notes. If you have any questions you let me know. Um, but I'd love if you would join me.

Because we talk a lot on the podcast about our one life. We get one shot at this. I know that there are plenty of you out there who have travel on your bucket list or your best life, top 100.

That you want to be able to do more travel. And yet you have a tendency to put it off. You have a tendency to put it off until someday, or the time is right or the kids are done with school.

Maybe it's time though. If you have been saying, I would love to go to Paris or Paris someday. Or maybe you've been to Paris and you wanna go back, but it's kind of been low on the priority list. If there is something in you that [00:21:00] is, is excited, but also maybe a little nervous about traveling by yourself, let me put those fears, those nerves, that anxiety, let me put it to rest. There is gonna be somebody who will meet you at the airplane. It's gonna help you get through Charles de Gualle Airport. You are gonna make sure that you are in a car that knows exactly where you're going. All of the meals are taken care of, all of the experiences are taken care of, all of the transportation is taken care of.

Literally, you get yourself to Paris and I will take care of everything else. If you decide to go shopping and buy yourself, you know, a Cartier bracelet and a Louis Vuitton handbag, or we go to Polene or any of the other high end boutiques that's on your dime. Everything else though, I'm gonna cover all of the experiences I'm gonna cover and it will be a [00:22:00] week that you will not soon forget.

Bringing it back to where I started, not, not with the spilling water all over my desk, but this whole idea that if you really want to figure out who you are and what you want in this season of life, you need to get outside of your life to do that. I'm not saying burn down your life. I'm not saying quit your job and move to France.

All I'm saying is come with me to Paris. Experience. Who you are when you are not who your life commands you to be. Give it a try. Come, come meet the woman who you are becoming in this season. You are going to love her. And you are going to love the Paris experience. But again, if Paris is too far, join me in Arizona.

Both spots [00:23:00] are gonna be really, really magical. Really incredible. I hope to see you at one of the retreats this year.

And with that. au revoir, mes amies.

I'm gonna go get ready for my talks this week, and I will see you right back here next week when the School of Midlife is back in session. And until then, take good care.

 Thank you so much for listening to the School of Midlife podcast. It means so much to have you here each week. If you enjoyed this episode, could you do me the biggest favor and help us spread the word to other midlife women? There are a couple of easy ways for you to do that first. And most importantly, if you're not already following the show, would you please subscribe? That helps you because you'll never miss an episode. And it helps us because you'll never miss an episode. Second, if you'd be so kind to leave us a five-star rating, that would be absolutely incredible. And finally, I personally read each and every one of your [00:24:00] reviews. 

So if you take a minute and say some nice things about the podcast, well, that's just good karma. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you right back here. Next week when the School of Midlife is back in session until then take good care.