Jodi Wellman Wants You to Stop Wasting Your 4,000 Mondays
Show Snapshot:
We get roughly 4,000 Mondays in a lifetime—are you making the most of your days? Jodi Wellman, author of "You Only Die Once," discovered the power of no-regret living after finding her late mother's apartment filled with unrealized dreams. The former corporate executive turned motivational speaker now helps people stop squandering their precious Mondays. We explore: How to get to the end of your life with next to no regrets, crunch the numbers on "Monday Math"—a guesstimate on how many Mondays you have left, and investigate useful prompts from Jodi's book. What would make your "in/out circle" if you redesigned your life today? How can you identify your "pre-grets" before they become real regrets? Stop letting Mondays, weeks, and years slip by unnoticed. Listen in for ideas on living what Jodi calls an "astonishingly alive" life.
Show Links:
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Jodi’s Book:
You Only Die Once: How to Make it to the End with No Regrets
Quotable:
Am I just doing this life justice? I'm not going to get it right or perfect, but I just want to feel like when I get to the end—boy do I feel like I participated.
Transcript:
Katie Fogarty 0:00
Welcome to A Certain Age, a show for women who are unafraid to age out loud. I'm your host, Katie Fogarty.
Beauties, today we're diving into death and Mondays, but do not go anywhere. While the idea of death and Mondays may make you want to skip ahead to another podcast, this show may surprise you. In fact, it may even delight you. And I don't know about you, but I personally like to be delighted, and if you can delight me on a Monday, even better.
My guest today is Jodi Wellman, author of the book "You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End of Your Life with No Regrets." Jodi, like many of us, has worn multiple hats. She is a former corporate executive turned "stop squandering your life" motivational speaker. As the founder of the company 4000 Mondays, Jodi has made it her mission to spend her days helping you and me make the most of all of our Mondays to come.
Welcome, Jodi.
Jodi Wellman 1:33
Oh, Katie, I'm so excited to be here. I think it's going to be time well spent in a world where time is of the essence.
Katie Fogarty 1:38
Absolutely. You have one of those books that gets in my hand and I read through it, and I always think to myself, "I wish I had written this," which is exactly why you're on the show. I'm so excited.
We get to live about 4,000 Mondays before we die – that is, of course, if we're lucky. You've built an entire company, 4000 Mondays, based on this number and idea. My first question is: why? What happened to you? Why are you so damaged?
Jodi Wellman 1:38
Hey, I mean, that's the subtext, I get you.
Oh, well, I am acutely interested in living. Let me just make that super clear off the start, right? And the portal – the way I talk about it – is through this concept of, "Oh my gosh, we're totally temporary and time is ticking."
The reason that that has become so evident to me, I suppose you could say, but other than just always being interested in this weird side-by-side thing we do in life... like we're all working hard to like our lives, to feel good, to be happy, maybe even sometimes be fit – all the things – to live life well. And then all of a sudden we're going to die. That always baffled me, but mostly thankfully in an amusing way, not in an existential crisis way.
But then my real impetus around this – like grab me by the shoulders and shake me – was my mom dying when she was 58. She had a heart attack. It was not expected at that time, and this is not a grief story, so this is not about me missing her, which, by the way, is true. I do miss her. What I did grieve – I am still grieving – but it was mostly because I cleaned out her apartment after she died, and it was this... well, I call it – I think I call it in the book – the land of dormant intentions.
So she had a big, giant desk with her laptop in it and drawers full of stories and manuscripts and illustrations and business plans. She even printed out business cards for these different ideas that she had over the years, and she didn't execute on them. And it just struck me as the saddest thing that could happen is to have your dreams die with you.
And it snapped me to attention, because I realized that I... while I was happy in my corporate – that's not true. I was in my corporate existence at that time, and I was itching to figure out what I wanted to do, because I did want to change. And that wake-up for me was just so startling. It's like, I do not want to get to the end and have a bunch of coulda, shoulda, wouldas. So that really got me. That planted the seed about, "Okay, hang on, life is short. Let's not get to the end with regrets about what we didn't do."
Katie Fogarty 4:49
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. In the book, you call regrets these "little assholes," which kind of made me laugh, because the book is very funny and cheeky, even though the impetus was like this moment of recognition that your mom had left so many unfinished dreams and plans and hopes and ambitions for herself that just never got realized. And you did have a very meaningful epiphany, but you approached this whole book with a light touch and sort of a spirit of irreverence, but it's rooted in something so meaningful.
And for people who have not yet seen the book, there's actually a picture of the Grim Reaper who's water skiing across the cover of it, and it's just sort of really... it's one of these book covers that really captures the spirit of the book, where we're talking about a complicated topic, but we're bringing a sense of joy and humor to it.
So I so enjoyed reading it. And one of the things, Jodi, that I – when I read the book, by the way, for listeners, Jodi is going to walk us through in a few minutes how the roadmap works and how the book is structured, and how you can pick it up, thumb through its pages, and close it at the end with a clear understanding of how you can get to that final Monday without these regrets that we're trying to avoid.
But one of the things in the book that really hopped out at me was an age calculator, and you help us figure out how many Mondays we might have if all goes well. And for the average woman living to 81, right? If we make it there, we subtract our age, then multiply by 52, and I was instantly like, "I hate math, but I'm doing this." And I realized I have, if all goes well, 1,352 more Mondays. So I want to make the most of them.
Tell me and the listeners how the book gets structured and what a reader might expect from it.
Jodi Wellman 6:05
Yeah, well, just to go work backwards, because thanks for the math share and also, yeah, math isn't fun, so I have a calculator on my website so nobody has to waste their precious minutes doing mortality math.
Katie Fogarty 6:05
Tuesday math is for Tuesday.
Jodi Wellman 6:08
Right? Monday is hard enough already.
Yeah, the outline – the way I look at this – is like, how do we have a discussion about how death can actually be a motivator, surprise, surprise. But then how do you do it in a way that's actually going to be like a cool, maybe insightful and eye-opening and motivating journey, rather than like, "Well, great. Thanks for a depressing read," because that would be obviously counterproductive if I bored you to death, or if I brought you to too many tears.
So I love to open up with this pre-mortem. And it's like a deep dive into all things you – it's like, "Okay, I'm going to use all the freaking death metaphors." Like, let's take your pulse first of all, assuming you have one, and then go like, "What is going well in your life right now? What do you love? What makes you feel most alive?" Which I recognize sounds like a fluffy question, but for everybody listening right now, actually, like, really, what makes you feel most alive?
And many of us, especially women past a certain age, I've lost touch with what that even is. I had lunch with a new friend the other day. She's 75 and she's amazing, and she read the book, and she's like, "I need to figure out – this is my time. I don't know exactly what I want. I have inklings."
So it's a pre-mortem designed to get you in touch with what motivates you, what are your strengths, what are your desires, what are sometimes the pre-grets that you might have? So those regrets kind of in the making, and it's really getting – well, I was going to say sometimes it's a harsh look. I was like, "What do you want more of?" You know, when it's just you and you and you're willing to be honest with yourself, what do you feel like... where maybe some of the dead zones where you realize, like, "Wait a minute, I feel like I haven't really had many hobbies lately. Leisure is like a foreign concept. Work is going well, but oh my gosh, I need to have more fun." Or maybe it's the reverse, or maybe it's that work is sucking the life out of me, or maybe it's that I just really feel like I want to learn something new and grow again. "Do I go back to school?"
So it's really meant to be this full-on interrogation in a very gentle and loving and hopefully mimosa-filled way of your life. So that's kind of the opener.
And then really, we go through a candid discussion about how, yeah, no one likes talking about death. We try to deny it, because that's what we're wired to do. It's very unpleasant to think about, except when you do it with me, because I do want it to be productive. So I do talk about the science and the research behind it, but I hopefully do it in an un-boring way, and just understanding, like, why is this topic so taboo, and yet we are intrigued by it, and then talking about regrets, getting us thinking about how they could work to our advantage again, if we really are willing to be honest about, if we were to kick the bucket tonight, what we might regret, and how could we course correct that?
And then the book takes a really lovely turn into talking about vitality and meaning and designing your life in a paint-by-numbers approach and vivid colors, that you actually can start to feel motivated to go, "Wait, what's one thing I could do?"
And that's the post-mortem. It's like in light of all the notes and all the ideas and all the dreams and all the things – at the risk of overwhelming yourself, which, again, would be really ironic to be taking a book about how to make life more full and then to make it feel too full, like "I don't have the energy. I got to just go back to the couch," which is where you'll find me.
It's like, how do we just... it's like one freaking moment at a time. What would be one thing you could do today that might be a small decision that makes you feel more alive? So it's just really meant to be applied with really quality research. I take research seriously. It's part of my background, but again, not in a snooze-fest sort of way. So I don't know if you found it like that.
Katie Fogarty 9:57
It is very, very full and rich. There were a number of thought prompts that had my wheels spinning, but very big picture stuff that I hadn't really even stopped to think about, but also this notion of sort of smaller action steps. And we just don't often take time to think these sort of bigger picture questions through.
I feel like I'm very pro age-positive. I have shared on the show before, I had the experience of losing several friends in my early 20s – one to a drunk driving accident, one to cancer after a long battle. Both of these young women died and disappeared out of my life before I was a sophomore in college, and so I've been very mindful my whole life. I'm 55 now that every year is a gift and that tomorrow is not promised.
But still, even with that underpinning and foundation and kind of like a zest for new experiences, some of the things in the book kind of made me think hard. And I want to ask you, we live – everyone knows this – in a world obsessed with sort of both being young, but also now the new reframe is sort of living longer and healthier, which is good, right? We want to live longer and healthier lives.
But you make the point: are we so obsessed with living longer and increasing our sort of health span that we've sort of forgotten to have our joy span kind of keep up? And you use the phrase "astonishingly alive life." And I was like, "I want in." I want it. I just had a wonderful guest on who talked about – a couple of episodes ago, Liz Plosser, who came on. She's the former editor-in-chief of Women's Health magazine, and she talked about her goal of aging exuberantly. And I was like, "I want in on that also."
So let's talk about astonishingly alive lives. I would love to hear you define it, and then maybe ask you how do we start to define it for ourselves?
Jodi Wellman 11:38
I want to preface any of these answers with a small disclaimer, because I realized that when I use words like "astonishingly alive" – like "astonishing" is pretty darn grandiose – that as much as you find that motivating, many people actually find it to be a little bit intimidating. And so by putting my disclaimer up, it'll also answer the question, I think, and if not, you'll tell me.
I think that astonishingly alive is relative to each and every person. So your version of an astonishingly alive life is going to be different from your neighbor and your friend and your colleagues. So it's a reflection of, do you feel like your life is wide enough with vitality? That's the dimension I associate with living with width. Are you living the full width of your life with pleasure and fun and experiences? And then are you feeling that your life is deep enough with more of that sense of purpose and meaning and connection to people and spirituality and having that sense of being connected to something bigger than you?
Those two concepts jammed together help to frame if you're anywhere positive on meaning and you're anywhere positive on vitality. So back to the depth and the width – that puts you in that astonishingly alive category. But again, it doesn't need to be that you are always on a plane going somewhere glamorous and fabulous, and that you're always trying the newest cocktail bar, and that you're always living this life that looks super impressive on any kind of social media channel, because astonishingly alive, as I've shared before...
I was just at a conference doing a keynote this weekend, and we were laughing because it was a Saturday that the keynote was on. It was for a conference, and I shared with them, I'm like, "My astonishingly alive life on this Saturday night is to go home. I'm going to fly home today, and I'm going to be on the couch with the husband, and we're going to have a great meal and a great glass of wine, and the cat will be there, and we're going to be watching a movie. And my life couldn't get any better on a Saturday." And I know some people are like, "What a boring lady, that's a boring Saturday." But I'm like, "That's fine. You go do what you want to do. You go to the concert."
Katie Fogarty 14:20
Jodi, I'm coming over. That sounds delightful.
Jodi Wellman 14:22
I know. I mean, I love nothing more than to be hanging out in front of the fire. And I hear what you're saying. I think it's an important distinction. I think, you know, "astonishing" is a very powerful, larger-than-life word, but there's astonishment in moments that people might consider to be more mundane, just the simple pleasures of life.
We're recording this conversation on the first truly beautiful spring day in New York, and it feels astonishing to be back out in the sun after what's been a really slow, long winter. And so I hear you – astonishing doesn't need to be glitzy or shiny or profound, but it has to be something that catches you in a moment of sort of awe and self-love and just sort of this feeling that you get that bubbles over when you feel so grateful to be exactly where you are. And I think that's something that we want to talk about, but I do thank you for raising that distinction, because I do think that we don't want listeners to feel like, "Ugh, astonishing is out of reach for me," because whatever you want for your life is in reach.
Katie Fogarty 15:00
Jodi, we're heading into a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about putting some tools into the hands of our listeners who are looking for ideas on this no-regret living. We'll be back in just a minute.
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Katie Fogarty 16:35
Jodi, we're back from the break. When we went into it, we talked about the idea that you can create an astonishingly alive life in big and small ways, and that they need to be unique to you to sort of what lights you up. But you candidly share that at one point, you got to a point where you were like, "Is this lighting me up, my own life?" And you looked to reinvent. This is very common. I don't know a single woman – and I put myself into this camp – that hasn't gone through a period of time where you thought, "Huh, what am I doing? What's going on? Do I like this job? My circle of friends? My community?" Whatever it is that you're going through at different times, you've wondered, "Am I on the right track? Am I doing what I need to be doing to feel like I'm getting to that last Monday, and I did it correctly?"
So what are some recommendations? The book is full of them, but we have a limited time right now. What is one big question that you'd like our listeners to think through as they explore this for themselves?
Jodi Wellman 18:40
Oh, wow, one question. That's tough. I'm going to try and jam in two, and we'll see if you stop me.
Katie Fogarty 18:43
You can have two. You can have two because everybody's already going to count their Mondays. That one's already done.
Jodi Wellman 18:48
For that temporal scarcity, that perspective of, "Oh my gosh, my life is, in fact, quite limited. And I want to use this time..."
We've already hinted at this topic of regrets, and I call them pre-grets, the idea of, if you can identify stuff that you have longed to do, like paths that you wanted to take, plans, dreams, thoughts... maybe you wanted to write a book, or maybe you wanted to go back to school, or maybe you wanted to go and do a road trip across the country or go to whatever.
This weekend, one woman said she wanted to play the violin, learn how to play, and another guy's like, "I want to learn how to dance so I don't feel like a total idiot." Whatever the thing is, if you were to get to the end and feel a little pang or a big pang of regret, what would that be? Write that down, right? Keep a list. Keep a running list, because that's your fodder for these are your pre-grets. They're not regrets yet, because you have not died yet.
So you could still, if you wanted, go and sign up for pickleball lessons, or go and dance lessons or the violin lessons, or you could plan the road trip and just say, "Fine. It's going to happen in the spring of 2026," whatever that is. So that might be an impetus for you.
And then another exercise that I just find really practical and really... when you were talking, it made me think about it, this idea of really looking at your life and then wanting to maybe refine it or upgrade it, just make it more intentional. Make it feel like, "Am I just doing this life justice? I'm not going to get it right or perfect, but I just want to feel like again, when I get to the end, oh, do I feel like I participated?" And for me, as a homebody introvert, the answer will generally lean to no, but it'll still be, "But I did some cool things, and I'm glad I did these things."
So let me tell you about Shay. She runs a nonprofit called Shay's Warriors for breast cancer survivors, and she did her own round of breast cancer, and she had chemo for something like 20 weeks, and she took a journal into chemo, and she did this thing that she didn't even know was going to be so freaking profound. She told me that she said, "I took my journal and I drew a circle in one of the pages, and I said, 'Because I'm going to get through this cancer, I'm going to be really thoughtful when I get through this: what do I want in my life and out of my life?'"
And she got really thoughtful, and she drew inside the circle the people, the names of people who are like, "Yeah, they make the cut," or the activities or the feelings or the clothing, or all the things that she wanted in her life. And then, maybe more importantly sometimes, it was like, "Yeah, this friend maybe doesn't make it. On the outside, I don't feel good when I go to lunch with her. I come home and I feel..." or "this family member" or "this attitude."
Specifically, this will resonate, I'm sure, with all of us listening: she didn't want to come through cancer and have her second chance at life continuing to be a pleaser. So she wrote the word "pleaser" outside of the circle, and then she got to have this fresh start, because the good news is that she went into remission.
And it makes me just... I shake my head. You can't see me now, but I'm shaking my head and I'm going, "Man, why is it that so many of us need a death scare in order to have a wake-up?" I don't want to have to go through a really dire diagnosis and emerge so that I can have clarity about what my priorities are and what my priorities sure as heck aren't anymore. But I urge us all to kind of do that Shay circle exercise about, "What if you got a second chance at your life today, and being really deliberate about what do I want in? What do I want out?"
Katie Fogarty 22:22
So I have a question for you. Do you think it's possible to live a regret-proof life? I mean, obviously you've written a book helping to try to guide us there, but when you think about the fact that we're all constantly works in progress, because we evolve through age, circumstance, as we move throughout our lives, and to me, that's part of the beauty... I'm delighted I'm not the woman I was yesterday or 10 years ago, because I've had new experiences that have changed my DNA on a cellular level. And I have some regrets, and some of them are big and some of them are funny. But is it truly possible if we are constantly looking to evolve and grow, which I think is the goal, is it possible to truly live a regret-proof life?
Jodi Wellman 23:13
No, I love that you're asking this because you know why? We're cut from the same cloth, because you're highlighting something that gives me a lot of feelings. My publisher – love them – Voracious at Little, Brown and Company, they helped shape the title of the book. And so by saying "make it to the end with no regrets," I was like, "Yeah, but wait..." But I was like, "Okay, well, I'll explain myself later."
So the important thing to note is that there are two kinds of regrets. There are regrets of commission, which reflect the actions, the things we did that we just kind of wish we hadn't – like marrying that loser, or moving to that town that you didn't like, or taking that job that was... We're going to do those things. And I would argue with you, a really rich life is actually shaped by making choices and then editing and learning from them. So no, I am not concerned at all about regrets of commission.
What I am deeply, gravely concerned about are the regrets of omission. And that's what I'm really referring to in the book. And this is this idea of the paths we didn't take, right? So this is like, "Oh, I always wanted to go to school to study animal wrangling, but I went and I became an accountant." And that's when you get to the end, you feel like "I didn't take that path," or "I never... I always wanted to go and live in Paris." Or, "Wow, what would my life have been like if we had gone and gotten that boat, or what if I had kids?"
And so these are the coulda, shoulda, wouldas, because they represent the things we didn't do, and research is really clear that those regrets of omission are the ones that will potentially haunt us as we age, because we'll always fathom, "Well, what if my life... could my life have been like, could I have been happier? Could I..." Oh, I could picture myself with the Louvre every Saturday, like the fantasy version of our life.
So I want us to get super intimately in touch with those regrets that we may have, that again, are not about the stuff we did, but about the stuff we didn't do, that we always wanted to do.
Katie Fogarty 25:21
But my question for you now is, when we think about these sort of deathbed regrets, because the book is about death, we're all going to die, how do we get to the end and feel like we lived fully? We've all heard that old saying – the common regrets that you have at death, no one regrets that they didn't spend more time at work – and everyone laughs. But the reality is, most of us need to work. We have mortgages and bills to pay, so I'd love to hear you share a little bit with listeners your thinking around, how do we balance this? How do we balance the going for our dream so we don't have those shoulda, coulda, wouldas with the reality of life?
Jodi Wellman 26:06
I've done a lot of work in the financial community, like I present to financial planners or people that work in actuaries or insurance, and it's one of those things like, does draining your bank account to live a life worth living... "Woohoo! We took a jet around the world, and now I have no money, and now I'm more stressed and miserable," right? That doesn't help anybody.
And so I want to acknowledge these interesting thought exercises that can only make us feel a little more stuck and frustrated. Like, "Well, how do I live a life that I'm going to feel proud of if I'm not sure how to do it, but still be responsible?" Like, "Yeah, I'd love to move to Tahiti, but I need to work, or I have a mortgage, or I can't just pick up and move because I have kids in school." Anyway, I'm just going to slow us down, because here's where I believe some of the answers come from. And again, your results may vary.
I think that this whole spirit of "life is short," kind of a "why not?" And back to regrets: would you, if you got to the end, regret not doing X, Y, Z, or would you regret doing it? So I think that... I'll give you one example, just to help bring it to make it clear: I met someone at a workshop who said, "I just spent a lot of money to give my mom a really great 80th birthday party." It was like she stressed the point, like it was a very significant amount for me to spend on this big thing. And I thought about it, I knew I could technically afford it, not have to move out myself on the street, but I also knew that this meant so much to her and to me that I would regret not being able to do it. And so I was like, "For me, this gave me the feeling of fullness in my life that I will always feel proud that I did that."
And so that's the same thing you could apply towards something... Say, "Wait, could I afford to take this four-month sabbatical?" Again, another example, "What could this mean for me? Is this going to make me feel financially insecure and therefore more stressed, or is this something I think I can manage and I just know I'm going to just savor the flavor of life the whole darn time, and I'm going to feel like, yeah, if I got to the end, I'd regret not doing it?"
So I know we could rationalize anything, and depending on how impulsive you are in your mood, you can say that about anything. But I think it's sort of that balancing act of – and I'm using this in relation to money, but it's also with time, and it's also with responsibility.
Katie Fogarty 28:35
Or relationships, that's coming to mind too. Because, yeah, as a... I'm 55, I have three kids, and at different stages of my life, my schedule was beholden to my children's needs, and I made that choice. That's how I wanted it to be, but the ability to do certain things, even if I would regret not getting after them, wasn't as available to me because of my time. I potentially could have made some other changes and different things, there's always the option to choose a different adventure and choose a different path. So I don't want to say that it has to be one way, but there are moments of our lives where we have less freedom and agency than we would want.
But that's what's really exciting about being a certain age, I feel, because there are new pressures of dealing with perhaps aging parents and helping young adult children, but there is more freedom of time. There's freedom of certain responsibilities, even though we're moving into maybe newer ones. So this is such a ripe conversation.
And for me, it's interesting because we're talking a lot about some fun stuff like hopping a plane or a sabbatical or Tahiti. But I also feel like, for me, I think that there's a lot of excitement about closing doors and chapters on things like owning a big house – we're going to downsize and have less to manage, and I'm excited about that freedom. So there I'll be saying goodbye to certain things, like I love gardening and I love my community and my friends that are in it, but I'm excited for new adventures, and we can choose those things if we want to bring that intention.
And I think that's why we're having this conversation, Jodi, on this show, which talks to primarily women and some men. I always joke like my husband listens. If you are a male listener, please DM me. I want to hear from you, because we're not leaving anyone out, but I'm mostly talking to the women that I've known and met. And so I feel like there's a lot of excitement thinking about this chapter of life.
Jodi Wellman 30:44
No, I love that so darn much. I mean, this is just the stuff that makes my heart beat fast, because it is about constructing it, designing it, creating it. And again, when I said earlier that idea about living an astonishingly alive life, and I referred to it as being the combo of living wider with vitality and deeper with meaning, I think... And there's a whole chapter in the book on this, because I think you're right. I might default for the fun examples, just because I feel like I want more fun in my life.
Katie Fogarty 31:12
And I also know, statistically speaking, Jodi, I said I wanted to be delighted at the top of the show. I'm like, bring on something delightful. Bring on the astonishment.
Jodi Wellman 31:20
I tell you. But I think some of us will have that inner knowing of going, "You know what? I'm okay on the fun side right now. Or, yeah, bring on more fun. But I really want more meaning." And for me that's going to mean maybe finding some kind of spiritual practice. Or maybe it is that I do want to spend time volunteering in a way that I used to find such depth out of. Or finding the thing that might... So again, it's different strokes for different folks, for you to maybe make a neat new chapter, which I urge us all to do, just because time is just a ruthless little countdown, little time ticking time bomb, right?
Katie Fogarty 31:59
You know, but Jodi, it's funny because you had said life is short, and I know people say that, like, I always really think life is long, even though I lost these two friends at a young age that really taught me way earlier than I probably was prepared to experience loss and to truly recognize how finite life is. I think life is long. There are so many chapters. I feel like I've had such a variety of chapters, and I feel like I'm just writing new ones. And I'm excited about that, and I'm excited, and I believe that the women who show up and listen to the show every week are there too. Some of them are maybe in the active creation phase, and some of them are in the thinking about it and discovery phase, where they're feeling called to something a little bit different. And some are well into their third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh act, which is continually... anyone who's listening to this show is thinking to themselves, "What is coming next for me?" with a little bit of excitement.
So yes, your book – again, I wish we had way more time than we have, because it truly is very rich with exercises, examples and sort of call-outs, little worksheets. What is something that you would offer to a listener to kind of help get them in motion? Because I know that you talk about what can get in the way, habits that blunt our aliveness, sometimes when people get in our way, our own inner voice gets in our way. What's an action item that you might hand them besides – I love the circle drawing – that would kind of help them move forward with their thinking?
Jodi Wellman 33:39
Yeah, you just mentioned the word habits, and I would be remiss if I didn't just put a little shout-out for the anti-habit campaign in that I think just, you know, a quick way towards aliveness, just in terms of a small, low-hanging fruit for action, is to look at your life and look at where you have routines that serve you, and just be willing to shake it up just a touch, and not enough to create anxiety, especially if you really like order and control, but enough to say, "Okay, if I have the same route that I take to work or that I visit my grandkids... and do the same thing, the same park, the same subway visit and Dairy Queen or whatever," the thing is, you just do one routine, because it's easy to do. Throw a wrench in it, shake it up. Take the exit off the highway, one stop early and try it out. Walk in a new neighborhood, you know, try a different breakfast other than the western omelet you always get. Or just do something just a little bit different. Plan a different evening with the girls or whatever. The thing is that just adding those little spurts of aliveness...
And then a really easy thing, because, again, I'm just right now... I'm just into ease. I gotta tell you, I think I've, you know, moving my dad into assisted living, of course, is very eye-opening. And it's also just like, I want the cheap and cheerful hits towards joy. I don't want to have to work super hard. So I think a really easy one that we underestimate the impact of is getting in touch with what makes us happy, and doing something around that, which goes back to the pre-mortem. I have a whole exercise on getting in touch with what are the stuff that just brings you just a little bit of joy. And for a lot of people, I'll just give you answers, just to highlight the point I'm making. It's like sitting outside in the sunshine and having my bubbly water in the afternoon, or it is taking the dog for just a long walk, where I get to put a podcast – my favorite podcast, obviously A Certain Age – in my ears. Or it's like, "Oh, you know what? Just reading a chapter with my martini before bed," where, maybe we never martini before bed. I don't know, do what you want to do.
Katie Fogarty 35:38
You can't be, Jodi. You're living an outrageous life. You can have your martinis when you want them.
Jodi Wellman 35:43
I just don't want to impose my lifestyle on anybody else.
Katie Fogarty 35:46
I would be a glass of rosé. You're not imposing. You cannot impose a martini on me. I refuse to be imposed upon by martinis. But if you ever want to hand me a glass of rosé, I'm taking it.
Jodi Wellman 35:57
What if you forgot what you didn't like? And I say this because my dad is aging, and he forgets that he doesn't like, for example, oranges, and now they're giving him oranges in his home, and he's like, "Oh, these are good." And I'm like, "Oh, my God, all these years you have not liked oranges."
Katie Fogarty 36:12
That's his loss with the rest of us. That's a start. I think that it's such a wise thing to recommend that change doesn't have to be dramatic to be effective, and that we can have these little spurts of novelty, or just a new door being opened by trying something even small.
And you and I just discussed earlier, I'm moving. I'm excited. I'm returning to a place where I've lived before and loved and grew up, New York City. I'm very excited, but there's loss. I'm thinking about all the things that I will no longer have here, including my beloved hot yoga class, and then I just said to myself one day, "I'm going to take entirely new classes, like I'm not even going to go try to find a hot yoga studio, because I've been doing that religiously for eight or nine years. Why wouldn't I try something new?" And this is not revolutionary, but it got me excited. I'm like, "There's a million classes in this city, and there's tons of things I've never even tried." And believe me, when I first went to hot yoga, I had no idea. I thought I would hate it. My friend Lisa brought me, and I went very resistantly, I was hesitant, and it wound up being something that I clicked with and that I loved, and if I had just believed my first story that I don't like to bend over or be hot, I would never have realized how much I enjoy it.
So I think for anyone who's listening, sometimes when people hear the words like transformation, reinvention, pivot, or, to your point, astonishingly alive life, sometimes people feel like, "Wow, that sounds like a lot. I can't get there." But it doesn't have to be hard, and these small motions can rejigger things in such beautiful ways.
Jodi Wellman 38:05
That is the perfect sum-up to it. And let's not underestimate that even a little thing like trying and doing new classes... because sometimes we just need a little bit of a reset button on our life, or you just go do it. And maybe you don't even need a reset, because sometimes we do look for the grand gestures like, "Oh, it's a new town. I'm going to now draw. I'm going to now throw. I'm going to now try cocktails." Funny how I got into cocktails and you got into a better health routine. That says a lot.
Katie Fogarty 38:27
A lot of my regrets, Jodi, I'm not going to name them. I'm not going to list them all here, but it hasn't always been hot yoga.
I know our time is coming to a close, but before I say goodbye, we're going to ask you where listeners can find you in a minute and learn more about the book. But I want to just... my one last question for you is you've pivoted your life in multiple ways. Anyone who spends time with this delightful book is going to learn about some of the journeys and evolutions you've alluded to some of them on the show today, you've written an entire book about the days that you have, the Mondays that you've got left. I don't know if you've got 1,352 like me, but when you look out over the horizon, what is something on your list that you still want to get to so that you can get to that last Monday without regret?
Jodi Wellman 39:13
Oh, ooh, I love you asking me this. Two things are bumping each other on my bucket list. One is living in Paris, so... I said that earlier, it might have been, may or may not have been for me or a friend. And then another one is seeing a tornado, which I realize might be the thing that takes me, but those are things that I just have to make happen.
And here's a really good example of how bucket lists can be really dangerous. I'm a reluctant fan of them, because I think that they could just potentially be pleasing enough to put it on a list and think, "Yay." But unless you have a date assigned to it, it could be that you know the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The road to the grave, I think, is paved with brimmingly full bucket lists.
So me talking about going to Paris, really, when... Me talking about seeing a tornado. We're going to... there aren't tornadoes here in Palm Springs. I gotta do one of those stupid tours in the Midwest right when I need to...
Katie Fogarty 40:07
Oh, you gotta get out your calendar.
Jodi Wellman 40:11
I gotta get out the freaking internet and go, "When is tornado chasing season?" And then book it. And then here's the cool thing, when you book it, that is the most... it's like a jolt of life, because you did a thing, you proved to yourself. "I'm the type of person who sticks up for her vitality and her... me," and "I'm living." Even though I haven't gone to see the tornado yet, I'm so excited. And then you get to anticipate whatever the thing is that you booked, whether it is again, the class that you have planned for restorative yoga, or whether it is the trip, or whether it is that you're going to meet a girlfriend and try that watercolor class or whatever it is.
So just think like if... whether you perceive life to be short or long, the point is, we know we're limited time only situations. So let's just go for it. We have nothing to lose.
Katie Fogarty 40:55
Love it, love it, love it, love it. And that anticipatory excitement is something that can really help buoy you up during times when you're waiting for that no-regret action to finally bloom and be what you're doing in the present. So you'll have to let me know when you see that tornado. I said I was going to come squeeze in between you and your husband on your sofa, your cozy night, but maybe I'll come to Paris instead, because that sounds delightful.
Jodi Wellman 41:21
We could have a nice rosé.
Katie Fogarty 41:25
Exactly. You can have a martini, or maybe we'll switch. Anyhow, it was very fun to meet you, connect, have you as a guest on the show. I always love connecting with authors, especially when they've written books that I wish I had. So thank you so much for coming on to talk to me about "You Only Die Once: How to Make It to the End with No Regrets." Before I say goodbye, though, where can our listeners find you?
Jodi Wellman 41:45
Oh, thank you for asking. I am over at 4000mondays.com and 4000Mondays on Instagram. And there is that – on the resource page – is the calculator, if you want to calculate how many Mondays you have left.
Katie Fogarty 41:56
Yeah, I'm curious. Everyone needs to do that. And then DM me, and then when I drop the show post on Instagram, how many Mondays you've got left? We're going to get after them beauties, and we are going to make the most of it. Thanks again, Jodi.
Jodi Wellman 42:10
Thank you.
Katie Fogarty 42:11
This wraps A Certain Age, a show for women who are aging without apology. This was a totally thought-provoking conversation. I loved exploring how to embrace no-regret living. I feel like I've done a good job about saying no to regrets as I've aged. There are a couple of things that I still wish I had done differently, like wear more sunblock and maybe buy Apple stock when it first came out. But for the most part, I don't have regrets about the way I spend my days, but I have so many new ideas from this conversation with Jodi about making the most of the Mondays that are left.
It was really interesting, thought-provoking, and I would love to hear from you if you took something away from the show. If you are doing your own math to figure out how many more Mondays might be on your horizon, let me know in an Apple Podcast or Spotify review, because reviews help other women find the show and help them decide if it's worth listening to.
Thanks for sticking around to the end. Thanks for diving into Mondays and death with me, beauties. You are the best listening audience out there. I so appreciate you. And I also want to thank Mike Mancini for composing and producing our theme music. See you next time and until then, age boldly, beauties.