The One Question That Led Lisa to a Volcanic Island in the Atlantic

What would you regret more: staying where life feels predictable or choosing a path that feels alive? We sit down with former executive, best-selling author, and master coach Lisa Toste to unpack how she moved her family from Canada to a volcanic island in the Azores and redesigned work, health, and identity without abandoning ambition. This isn’t a fantasy montage. It’s a practical, warm, and funny roadmap for anyone who senses “there has to be more” but worries about the how.

Lisa shares the question that changed everything—what legacy do I want to live—and how she reframed risk by measuring regret, not just comfort. We explore the gritty middle: documents, language slip-ups, and rebuilding community. You’ll hear how she protected a fragile dream from “candle blowers,” curated inputs, and treated mindset like a daily practice using music, visuals, and sensory rituals. Her approach blends project management with nervous system care, turning uncertainty into a training ground for resilience her teens could witness and own.

We go deep on letting go of the single path and clarifying the feeling instead: ocean air, slower meals, fresh food, and connection. That shift opened doors she couldn’t plan for—beachside schooling, a second language, and a food culture that supported health. Whether you’re considering a big move or a quiet pivot, you’ll leave with tools to listen to intuition, gain family buy-in, and design a life that mirrors blue zone habits and true values. Ready to choose aliveness over autopilot? Listen, share with a friend who needs courage today, and if it resonates, subscribe and leave a quick review so more women can find their own brave step.

And if you want to follow Lisa and her island life, subscribe to her Youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@LisaToste  

The Balance & Beyond Podcast Hosted by Jo Stone, founder of The Balance Institute

For women who are already succeeding, but beginning to wonder if they're willing to keep losing themselves in the process.

We know high achievers, because we are one. This podcast draws on Jo's 20 years in global leadership and thousands of hours coaching executives and ambitious women: the patterns she sees, how to untangle them, and what it actually takes to keep your success without paying for it with yourself.

If something landed today, there's more where that came from.

And if you know a woman this would resonate with, send it her way.

🎙️https://www.balanceinstitute.com/podcast
🔗 www.balanceinstitute.com
💼https://au.linkedin.com/in/stonejoanne
📷 @therealjostone

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

Jo Stone 0:03

Welcome to Balance and Beyond, the podcast for ambitious women who refuse to accept burnout as the price of success. Here, we're committed to empowering you with the tools and strategies you need to achieve true balance where your career, relationships, and health all thrive, and where you have the power to define success on your terms. I honour the space you've created for yourself today. So let's take a breath and dive right in. You are in for a treat. Today I'm joined by the great Lisa Tosti, a woman who's been part of my journey for more than six years. A former executive, best-selling author, master coach, recently turned gardener and YouTuber, and of course my own personal coach for many of those years. I'm now delighted to also call her a friend. This conversation is a little longer than usual, but it's packed with wisdom you can apply to your own life. If you've ever found yourself wondering, is this all there is? This episode is for you. Welcome to Balance and Beyond, Lisa. I am ready for an entertaining conversation full of laughter. So, how does an executive coach who's living in Canada, who's worked on Wall Street for big companies, end up on a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic?

Why Redesign Life Now

Lisa Toste 1:22

Ah, you decide it's the perfect time to redesign your life differently. I guess to give a bit of a background. So I'm living in the Azores, which is the Portuguese islands in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, yes, with a volcanic island. And my husband, 22 years, and my two teenagers, the very sassy bulldog, all came with me. So it's a bit more complex than it was just me coming along. I had to have a few other people decide it was the right thing for them. And there was a lot of things going on. So it had always been a bit of a dream. My family is from here, but everyone has gone over to Canada or the U. Like there was nobody here. I'm the first one to say coming back. We'll see if there's more coming. But uh there was a lot of variables that were happening in the world. My children were becoming teenagers, and I was really thinking about their lives, their opportunities ahead. I was thinking about my husband asked me a great question one day. He said, Who are we going to be when the children leave? And I thought that was like we I just love good questions. And I was like, you know, A plus, great question. Because it's true when you get so like with the kids, you know, because you come together without the kids and then you morph a little bit with the kids. And he had a great conversation. I was like, that's a really great conversation. Cause and then I really started about who I was aging, you know, how did I want to age? How are we going to be? And then I'm not even going to pretend with the cost of living. There was like all of these variables came in to make this, you know, just so much happening. I think this is good to do is go back in history and think about like what sacrifices or changes family members before you may have come. And I thought about my grandparents and what they did to make the change. And it helped not make this as scary as it really was to think about. And yeah, put all the variables together, thought about the cost of living, thought about where we wanted to go, how we wanted to live, how we wanted to age, what I wanted available for the kids. And we started this journey. And it wasn't like overnight that it happened. And that time was a gift. I wanted everything quickly, as we always do. But that journey helped get the brain ready for all the changes that come when you uproot your life and completely live in a new place.

Jo Stone 3:18

And so you're one, somebody who loves, as you said, you love great questions. Who did you have to become? Because deciding to leave life in one place and move somewhere else, particularly when it's across the world, is not an easy decision. It's like I want to move towns and go 10 minutes up the road. So I'm guessing there was a whole lot of identity shifts that had to happen as part of that journey.

Identity Shifts And Legacy

Lisa Toste 3:40

There was. There was for me, there were conversations like that between my husband and I. There was for my children who were teenagers moving, you know, moving into different identities just because of their chronological age. So I needed to be the someone who was willing to be uncomfortable for a bigger purpose. I was very grateful with the life I had, right? We had just actually moved into a house which we just declared. This is it. So this had the big pool in the backyard. It's where the grandkids are gonna swim. I'm telling you, these were words I said. Like, this is where the grandkids were definitely not moving again, for sure. Like laid some roots down. My husband was building stuff, like, you know, with like 25-year materials grade standard, like we were not moving, you know? And then you get those ideas, you hear that little in awakening, that little voice that it just gets louder and louder, where it's like, are you sure this is it? You know that there's more available than this. And it just got louder and louder, and I had to really think about it. And so the identity shift was like, What's the legacy I want to live? And I'm like meant that. And when I ask questions about the legacy I wanted to live, it's like, how did I want to be that dynamic in the family? I go back and I think about my grandparents a lot because they made big sacrifices to come to North America. And that changed everything for me, the education I got, the jobs I got. Like it was just big, you know? And I thought, what is the thing I do for my family that's equally as big as what they did? And they have pictures all over my house. Like they really moved me because of the sacrifice they made. I had a different upbringing because of it. So I thought about what's the legacy I want to live. And for me, it was my children had some health problems. They're healthy, but like things, and food made such a big difference for them, right? And I had challenges with like the health that was available, health care that was available, I would say. So it got me down the rabbit hole thinking alternative health. And then what's available with thinking, with my health and who I want to be and how do I want to age and blue zone. You know what I mean? You know, you go down like a health wrap and you're like, I'm not very good with dipping my toe in something, as you know, Joe, right? I cannot, right? Just cannonball into something, right? And so the conversation was like, I, you know, it came up with I want to leave like a food legacy. I wanted to leave like kind of soil wet. I wanted to leave possibilities for generations ahead, and that meant I needed to change. I also, very honestly, I saw how I was okay, my life was predictable. And it was a good predictability. Like, like it's not like I was complaining about the life I had. It's just if I could future pace and go, here, 10 years looks like this, 15 years, like I could just, this is what aging looks like. And it was in a cold climate, so I sat on my butt a lot indoors, you know, because I didn't like the cold. Living here and understanding my roots, I guess I don't. I realized that I'd have to, my physicality, my body, my mind, my identity would have to be different to get the things I wanted. And that wasn't easy because I thought like I had the whole plan. I was in the corporate world for a long time. So, you know, the whole like back of the day, like Freedom 55 is what they called it in Canada. You know what I mean? Like I had like I had the plans, and then I kind of just took the plans and went, nope.

Jo Stone 6:42

Start all over again. How did you learn to listen to that voice? Because so many women listening to this podcast have that little voice inside them that says, but what if there's more? But what if you could quit the job as a lawyer and become a teacher or become a gardener like you have? How did you learn to listen to that voice?

Learning To Trust Intuition

Lisa Toste 7:02

I'm gonna give you two answers. One, because I didn't listen to it sometimes. And you're like, I uh kind of got some information there, you know, like I really genuinely can recall times where it'll sound weird to others, but reasonably obedient. You know, I listen to my intuition, I definitely do, but only because I remembered times where I really had that information. I didn't listen to it. And then life moved on. And it's not as a punishment, but it's just like I really started to fine-tune a sense of there's something that I have access to that is beyond my intelligence. It is beyond what I went to university for, whatever I learned. And that seems to be like the more magical, interesting part. So I think it's this walk I do, and we both do, between like intelligence and you know, the brain, you know, which I love, and like knowing that there's something even bigger than that. And the combination of the two is really, really important. So to give you an answer, I looked at you know, blue zones and how we wanted to live. And one of my biggest questions, I mean, I have a bunch of mindset work that I do, but honestly, I could just supersede it by just going, what would I regret more? But honestly, if you were like, make a decision in less than 30 seconds, that would be one of them. What would you regret more? And I didn't want to be like 75 going, what would have happened if I had done this? That I felt would have been harder than me telling the story to myself, going, okay, so I did this thing when I was like 50. You know, at least I would have learned from that. At least I would have been able to check off some boxes in life. Like there, I felt there was more value in that than the regret and what it would have cost me.

Jo Stone 8:36

Which is a really different way of looking at it because you said you had this predictability and this certainty, and you've walked into a whole lot of mess and a whole lot of chaos. And as someone, as you said, who was in corporate, who loved a good project plan, senior project manager. I very pretty Gantt charts. She loves it. How have you navigated that transition from certainty, control, security into no idea, navigating a new country, a new language, a whole new dynamic, new ways of doing business, new ways of learning? How have you stepped into that mess?

From Certainty To Aliveness

Protecting A Fragile Dream

Lisa Toste 9:10

That's such a great question. I love all that. My brain's given so many answers. So we're gonna pick the first few that come up. Because it is all new. I want to first say how I navigate it is I've decided the emotional state I feel is aliveness. Because that's what I've taken out my label maker. If I owned one, my personality is the opposite. I really love people who do label makers. Like I just think, God, you know, I want that skill set. I don't have that. But I take it out and I put that on my state because I could be overwhelmed and all these other things. I mean, there's so much change going on right now in all countries, Portugal, Canada, all of them going through changes. And as I navigate the next document we need, or the next thing I need to do, or going from someone who spoke on stage, speaks, and feels comfortable in her communication skills to like just what's that conjugation? Is that a masculine or feminine word? Like as I'm navigating those things, you know, it's very humbling. And so I think it's the story that I tell myself. And the story I tell myself is I'm using parts of my brain that I wouldn't if I was in my predictable life. This is what aliveness feels. This is why I don't have time to age poorly. We've got stuff to do. You know what I mean? I'm and what I'm role modeling to my kids is definitely resilience, which is different. It's like they're watching mom start again in a different way. And the way to move and navigate, there was something that was happening with just documents. And I was telling my son who's 18, I was like, watch mom do this because then you can do it for yourself. Just labeling it all negative or difficult or challenging or like frustrating is like, what aspects of this story do I want to call out? What do I want to label it? What do I want to role model to my kids? What's the story I'm telling myself about why my brain is gonna age better, or why this is better for me, or why this is the right thing for keep our marriage alive together. To really be a very strong author, because if you tell other people what you're going through, it bucks up against their belief systems. And so you really only want to share your dreams with people who either can just hold them for you and not necessarily have to believe in them, or be able to help you navigate your belief systems. To answer your question, when I was young in project management, I realized dependencies and risk management, like all those things with my department for like multi-million dollar businesses, globally, like I did all those things, right? So this would be a nightmare for the younger version of me until I understood that there will always be things, there will always be risks, there will always be dependencies that fall through, there will always be things that don't work. That was like my whole job when I was a senior project manager. Like it was based on the fact that things weren't gonna go right. I really understood then the best thing I can count on is me, right? So if I was the variable that I could depend upon and I made that the most important thing, meaning like, what's the story I tell myself? What's the beliefs? Who do I surround myself with? How do I constantly kind of groom my belief systems? What am I making these things mean? Like all those questions are just like mental hygiene for making big changes. That's one. And the second thing I definitely just want to add in is, and I don't think people do this a lot in self-development or whatever that that language we want to call it, is I sat in what would happen if I don't. So I think people just, what's the risks if I do? You know, and those are very easy. And you have a whole bunch of people help add a few more on and file all function, but what about what about else can go wrong? And here's why else you shouldn't change. Because if you change, that's gonna cause me to think I maybe need to make some changes, and that's super uncomfortable. So stay where you are. Those are chats I've had. I sat in what happens if I don't? What are I role modeled to my kids? What are a role model to my clients? What am I? And then I put the two of them together. And then this one didn't seem so scary because this one started to actually feel more scary than this one.

Jo Stone 12:42

That whole risks that you don't take.

Lisa Toste 12:44

Yeah, the opportunity loss. Am I gonna regret this? Am I going to? Is that gonna be like I wish I would have? Do I role model that to my kids? Who am I as someone who's a coach? If I'm just like, here's here's what you should do, but I'll just do that for the comfort of my armchair and you go do the rest. You know what I mean? And I didn't plan for all these things to come from it and people to notice it. And I never thought anyone was gonna even visit me here. Like I moved here expecting that I would never have like people visit me because it's you know, it's a bit of a trek to get to the middle of the Atlantic. And lots of visitors, lots of people coming, which was a huge surprise to me. So that's the other upside of when you do change is what's easier to see is what could go wrong. What's harder to see is those unexpected, really unique little miracles or people you meet, or things that happen that you just I never ever would have thought these things would have happened that have happened to me here.

Jo Stone 13:39

Surprise and delight. The word. How did you protect this dream you had? Because I remember you and I are very alike. I would say you were probably the most alike person to me that I've ever met in terms of belief systems, personality, the whole thing. Even when you said it to me, I was like, whoa, okay, okay. This is out there even for Lisa. This is really out there. And then I was like, okay, well, if anyone's gonna do it, Lisa's gonna do it. How did you protect that little tiny spark of a possibility when you would have had so many naysayers chucking the, but what about, but what about the kids? And then how did you hold that steady? Because that's something that so many women have lying dormant in them. And I love it, Brene Brown calls them candle blower outeras, people that, you know, blow the candle from your birthday party because how did you handle the counterblower outer's?

Lisa Toste 14:40

Yeah, yeah, I definitely I'd say two ways. And the latter one's a great conversation we can have. The first one is I watched who I told, and I didn't tell many people until I decided. Like I'm, you know, me, so I'm not new to doing like big crazy things, right? I'm more tell people what I'm doing than ask permission if they think I should do something. I'm not really good at getting lots of people's opinions, right? My kids will tell you, like, if you're living the life, I always tell my kids, if the person's living the life that you want, or if they've helped people live the life you want, or you know what I mean? Like, you can ask their advice, but I wouldn't just randomly, hey everybody, what do you think it is to move to volcanic island, volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? Yay, nay, what do you think? At 50, when we're all established, my husband's business is physical. I'm just yeah, no, nobody. Not one person said it was a good idea. Nobody. I had two people who were supporting of me, but they knew the crazy of me. And and you know, I don't crazy, I mean just the willingness to look at new things. So that's one. But the second part of how did I protect is I conditioned it. It was my full-time job, Joe. Like we should have that chat because so YouTube was one of the things I did, right? Where I would watch people living versions of their life out there, whether they had left or whether they were going, I watched about it, just watched about things that I wanted to try on for size that way. And that was so helpful to see it because I'm really visual. So to like see versions of it. Oh, I wouldn't do that, but I would do this. And I just got in this world of like having conversations about it. And then when I got a sense, I didn't know exactly what I want because when I started this journey, I wasn't coming here per se. I was just going to the mainland. This this kind of morphed a little bit as it is. This is where my family's from, this island. But I thought it was for my son and, anyways, other reasons where he is there now. I would condition it. I I know I wanted to be near the ocean. So I would do things like in the morning, I would get up and I would open my window. Even though I lived in a very landlocked place, there was not water for I don't know how far, Joe. Far. Okay. And there would be snow. And I would open it up and I would close my eyes and I would smell the ocean. Sometimes it hurt my nose because it was like minus whatever outside, you know what I mean? But I'm like, there's the ocean. Okay. And and now the whole backyard is a huge ocean. Like it's, it's, it's this big ocean behind me. I would listen to music. Like I would, you know, that conversation, act as if. And I think that gets a bad rap because people, I don't know, can take it different ways, but there really is ways where you can feel it. I just understood what did I want to feel? Financially, what did I want to feel? Emotionally, what did I want to feel? For my family, what did I want to feel? For how I age, for our like I went down all the F's of what I wanted to feel for like, you know, all the different states. And then I just started basking in them with the music with the food. I would go to like Portuguese bakery and just sit there and be like, cool, here we go. We're in Portugal. For the next half an hour as we drink this coffee, we are in it. You know what I mean? Or we, you know, little things that sound crazy, but it started to normalize things before I got there. And then it's, you know, I thought, what did the the way I want our family to even be more of? I kind of have a very kind of old-world heart around certain like coming over and eating, and I'm a big feeder and stuff like that, you know? And so I started really doing a lot of those things ahead of time that normalized it. I guess that's the biggest thing because as long as you think it's this wild, crazy thing, you're less likely to do it. But to me, for so many reasons, I bridged the gap between where I was, where I wanted to be. I realize this sounds coachy, but I've this is this is the thing that you just do. You know what I mean? And then you normalize it. You realize I'm not that far away.

Jo Stone 18:14

There's a whole stack of nervous system alignment you've done in that process too. Like you said, getting your nerve, you know, the smells and the sights and the being able to imagine it so that your nervous system goes, Oh, yeah, this is what Portuguese coffee tastes like, and this is what a you know, Portuguese dog tastes like. And it's coachy, but I love that you continue to coach yourself. Like we end up leaving and breathing this stuff.

Letting Go Of The How

Lisa Toste 18:34

Because it works. It really works. Why, you know, why would I not? Like it really works. And I still we need to do it all the time here with the changes and the you know, my daughter went to a school where she didn't speak English. Um she didn't speak, see. There we go. I'm at the phase now where the English and the Portuguese, because they're blending, neither one's great sometimes. So just give me a second, I'll get on the right one. We're doing English here. Uh, she didn't speak any Portuguese, and she went to a full high school of Portuguese. And so who she was being, her vision boards, her discussions about what's possible, the beliefs, all of that. And she's the reason we came here early. I should probably like to say this because everyone thinks I dragged my family to some like, you know, archipelago in the middle of the I didn't. That's actually one thing I should say that's really important is if you have a dream on your heart, this is my belief system. If you have a dream in your heart, I thought it was my dream. This is the mistake I made. I thought this was just selfish Lisa's dream, which really doesn't make sense because you know me, my family is very important to me. What I can tell you now is everyone else's had a dream connected to this, had a huge path connected to this. I was just the one who had the idea first. I was just like, you know, the Olympics with the torchbearer. Like I was just me going, I, you know, I think we have sons in this amazing school in Europe that he would not have been in if we were in Canada. My daughter is like has another language. She has like this different way of schooling here, which is ext, it's extraordinary, the school system and what she's experiencing her life here. And I never thought it would be like that. I guess that's another thing. Even the idea of entertaining a different way of life has you re-examine your current one differently. And even if you don't take action, you at least get to understand what's really working for you and what's not. And there were some things that before we had this idea, I thought, oh, this we've got a really great high standard for this. And we didn't. I just didn't have another comparison that was that would have taken me from my ordinary. So the short version with my daughter, really quick, is that she, and this is my psychology that shifted. We had sold the house, and that was predictable with economics. You know, that's the other thing I like, economy stuff, right? So there was a timing of marketplace. So, you know, that helped. I'm not gonna pretend like that didn't. And then we were just going to stay in a house and we bought a beautiful property here that we were gonna keep for a couple of years here. Like, this is what I was thinking. That's how much I was willing to not disrupt my children, right? We're just gonna change our lives this way, but stay in Canada when they're in university. Maybe we'll we'll make some changes. And then one day my daughter had something happen to her at school and she just blurted out, Mom, I just want to go, I want to go to school in the island instead of here, which never would have occurred to me in a thousand years, right? I just wouldn't have even suggested that. But how that turned out is I was here one day and I thought this life is so beautiful as doing paperwork. This life is so beautiful, it's like it's it's a slow, it's and if someone of our personalities wouldn't think a slower lifestyle doesn't sound great at all, you know, but it's a different lifestyle here. And I thought, well, I'll wait till it doesn't disrupt the children's lives. And then that idea occurred to me that we know so well, Joe. I'm like, oh, look at me thinking I know the the how it has to be. This is the one way it can only happen, and it can only happen this way. Like, I know that's the death of any great dream is to decide this is how it has to happen. That's like my project manager on the Gantt chart. This is most reasonable dependencies in written. You know what I mean? Like this is this is the way. It's just, I mean, I get that thinking I did for many years, but that's not where the magic tends to be all the time. So I was walking right out path. And if you if my neighbors would have seen me, I would have looked like another crazy person, like smelling the ocean air, right? I I had that idea like, oh, I've just decided the one how, the one way it can happen. I thought, here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna get out of the way. So I look, I moved to the side physically, you know, like I'm moving over a puddle that didn't exist. I'm like, I'm just gonna get out of the way, you know, bring it in your physiology, right? So, like, again, I'm just gonna get out of the way and let life decide the best way for everyone to get their needs. I'm gonna pretend like I'm the project manager of like the universe because I am not I haven't been a project manager for like 10 years, you know. I it's been a bit. I will let I just want it to feel a certain way. I want it to feel like great for my kids. I want it to feel great for my American, I want it to feel great, like I just had ways I wanted it to feel. I go back two weeks later, Joe. My daughter pops up with like, I want to go take a look at the school there. And I thought she was in a great school, and we had put her in this place, and she's like, So we come here, and I had no, I thought the education system was the best here. And I'm not going into the education system, but like it's by the beach, Joe, so they get to go to the beach during lunch, okay? Let's just put it that way, okay? I'm not even talking about how they teach math, okay? I'm just going on basics and the foods. The girls sit down and they eat a whole plate. Like it looks like food grandma's made. Do you know what I'm saying? You know what I mean? Like marinated, like it just she sends me these pictures and they sit for an hour and a half. They eat, they walk. It's just a different lifestyle that the kids had. And like, I will say for anyone who's decided they can't do something, just see if you can take the how you think it has to be and put it on the shelf just for a moment. Because my thinking of how it had to be would have robbed my daughter of like a childhood I could have never dreamt for her. And that would have been me deciding it has to be this way. And uh, she was meant to be here way more than me, even.

Family Buy‑In And Choice

Jo Stone 24:04

Which is such an interesting pattern we have of trying to control everything. But you also have to take the reins and light that torch and put it up high for everybody else to see to say, hey guys, what do you think about this crazy idea? So that they can all spark their own torches. So there's this duality of you've got to let go of the how, but you also have to give your dream permission to spark, to flame, to come alive, so that you never know where that's gonna go. So if you'd have buried yours and not communicated it, unlikely because you're Lisa, but you know that if you were gonna, if you were buried that within and wouldn't let it out, right, then as you said, you're also robbing others of that opportunity.

Lisa Toste 24:47

Yeah. And I had always had this on my heart and tried to do it many, many times, you know, citizenship, all those paperwork and stuff like that. And it was just at a point, and I'm so grateful. Like, I guess that's the point. I'm I'm I know I'm being repetitive here, but for anyone who you know it may be easier for us to do things alone, but what I hear a lot of times like, but I have kids, or but I have this, or like there's other people I have to consider. But what if you're the one that's meant to go first? Like that, like I'm saying, I could never have dreamt that this was the right thing. Because do you know how many people lined up to tell me all the horrors I was going to be doing to my kids by moving them? Ho ho ho, you know what I mean? And they so I had them also self-select, they chose it. My husband's the one who's just like, you really need to go, go check it out for us. We need to do this. Like he was the motivator for a lot of this, also. So it wasn't me dragging him. I built the story for both of the children. I had them come see and make decisions on what they wanted for them, so they felt in choice around this. Um, and it's not that it doesn't make some things challenging and everything's perfect, it's still messy in the middle, but we're writing our own story. And if you can empower people that way, and one of the ways you can do that is understand the cost of staying still, because there is one. We're just not used to people making changes like that. Or we weren't, because I think there's a lot of people making changes now in the world, but like normalizing um what are your value systems? Where do you want to live? What excites you? How do you want to age? Where do you want to be? How important is is how do you involve do you want to be in your food supply? Like just questions like that. It it's it's cool to rethink. I mean, especially like at 50 or 40, any age, you just get to it, it makes you feel very young again, I would say. That's my experience, is I definitely feel very young, almost 53, because there's a newness to things.

Jo Stone 26:35

I love the way you said the word aliveness. That's such a brilliant emotional state to intentionally cultivate and find. So many women are stuck in overwhelmed, frantic, stressed. What a different life. But you don't always have to move to an island in the Middle Atlantic to access aliveness.

Lisa Toste 26:53

No, I don't think so.

Jo Stone 26:55

Lisa's like, but I highly recommend it.

Lisa Toste 26:57

Yeah, I mean, it's fun, it's fun. I had family roots here. So, like me discovering my identity and feeling like I was always felt as half, you know, North American, and then from here. So I always had like when you talk about identity and why that's very important to me, is I wanted to discover this part of me. I really lived in a world that part, and I want to get this part of me and kind of going back and grabbing some childhood dreams and some part of my culture that's very familiar to me, very, very familiar with my upbringing, but uh I didn't experience the same way. So I think that's important too. And then having different goals, like if you have children, what's what's the big exciting thing you're doing when they leave, even if that's 10 years from now, 15 years from now? Because one of the things I see is as women age more than men so much is like, who am I now? And so for me, I always like I'm about to be 53, like in 2026, but I'm already telling the story. So if you ask me how old are you, I'm like 53. But that's only because I'm like telling the story. I've already done that three times so far, so it's funny, of like what it's like to be 53 and what my experience, like I'm living into it so that I normalize it. It's like, you know, have you ever seen like asphalt being paved? You know, those big rollers, like just I'm just paving the story. So when someone wants to tell me I'm supposed to feel old or it's supposed to be over, or whatever crap story they're gonna give me, I it just like water off a duck because my nervous system, my brain, my story, my beliefs, my identity, I have worked on them. So this is my truth, and I'm not moving from it. That I think is important. And if we don't do that, there's lots of things out there that'll happily tell you what to think and what to feel and how to be marketed to, or what other people's fears are. So I think more than ever, us taking control of what who we want to be, what we want to think about, how we condition, like really condition our thoughts. I mean, I'm sure everyone listening to this understands they know you, so they know wiring and firing and repetition. Like that sounds so boring unless you can find a really cool way to do it, which there is music, sounds, smells, sight, like there's lots of ways to do it. That's kind of like a full-time job because if we don't, someone else is doing it. Like it's not like we're not conditioning ourselves, it's not like we're not deciding who to be. Well, we could be listening to someone telling us who we're supposed to be in our 50s, which I very much recommend your 50s. I'm quite liking them.

Jo Stone 29:20

I'm just saying. Well, Lisa, thank you so much for sharing your story. There were so many nuggets of wisdom woven in there. And what I hope that every listener takes away is the courage to listen to that spark, to cultivate your identity, whatever that is, just to follow the nudges, whichever way they go, and to let go of how your dreams have to come true. Think you're the most brilliant example of just throwing caution to the wind, but doing it incredibly intentionally and coming out the other side with that gorgeous laugh, that gorgeous big hair, and just bring on the personality. So thank you for sharing your story, Lisa.

Lisa Toste 29:58

Thank you very much, Joe. Appreciate it.

Jo Stone 30:02

What a conversation, so much gold. If you'd like to dive deeper into Lisa's world and her life of bold living on a volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic, you'll find the link to her YouTube channel in the show notes. Thanks for joining us today on the Balance and Beyond Podcast. We're so glad you carved out this time for yourself. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend who might need to hear this today. And if you're feeling extra generous, leaving us a review on your podcast platform of choice would mean the world to us. If you're keen to dive deeper into our world, visit Balanceinstitute.com to discover more about the toolkit that has helped thousands of women avoid burnout and create a life of balance and beyond. Thanks again for tuning in, and we'll see you next time on the Balance and Beyond Podcast.