One of my clients is a very successful financial planner. When she came to me, she wanted me to help her sell her business.

This made no sense financially. She was not ready to retire.

She has superior skills in helping her clients maximize the ROI, return on investment, on their financial investments. But she had not realized that she was not getting a good ROI on the time she was spending in her business. She felt stuck. She is a top 30% earner in the industry, so she is very successful. But her success had made her miserable.

About a third of her clients were very demanding people who took up a lot of time and energy. They were people she didn’t enjoy working with. Their demands caused her to work long hours and their response never included gratitude or appreciation. No matter how much she gave, they wanted more. They made her whole business a nightmare.

My client was so stuck in this situation that the only solution she could see was to sell her business.

A Business She Loves

Instead, I asked her to shift her focus. I asked her, “What would a business you love look like?” She gave me a list. Then we set about the task of changing her beliefs and mindset about herself, life and other people so that she could own that business.

The belief that caused her the most grief was that she had to take on every person who asked to work with her. When she set up an ideal client profile and refused potential clients who didn’t fit, her life changed for the better.

A second belief she had to change was that she couldn’t fire clients. The first time I suggested that she could fire troublesome clients, she was incredulous. “You can’t be serious,” she said. So we explored this. She realized she was functioning as a people pleaser in all parts of her life. Her needs came last. She had been raised this way. Her mother modeled this and reinforced the idea that good girls were pleasing.

When she took an honest look at how much she was suffering by trying to please these unpleasable clients, her willingness to fire them grew. The day she fired the worst one turned out to be one of the best days she had in her business in years. The relief of having that nasty person out the door and never coming back was a huge win for her. More firings followed and with every one she felt stronger and more powerful than ever.

Four months later, everything had changed because she changed her choices. She had fired a third of her clients…the ones who were demanding, ungrateful complainers. That was hard. But after every conversation, even those that went badly, and some did, she found she felt lighter and freer. She truly enjoyed everyone she worked with.

She used that energy to invent some new strategies for attracting the type of clients she loved to work with and set about implementing those ideas. She cut back her working hours and pursued some hobbies that she loved. She took more time off. She traveled with her husband.

The ROI of her business had totally shifted. She gave up all plans to sell the business and instead began to look at taking in a partner, a person who one day would carry on without her when she was ready to retire.

Your Life’s ROI

When I make financial investments it’s very clear that I am looking for the maximum ROI I can find. It only makes sense that if I am going to put my money to work, I want it to make a great return.

I think this idea should apply to the way we live our lives too. Don’t you?

Every day we invest our time into our lives. But how often do you invest your time with an ROI in mind? How would you change how you invest your time if you thought about it this way?

I’ve done a lot of work on my own people pleasing tendencies. I’m still a kind and thoughtful person, but my own needs now weigh in when I make choices. I’m learning to disappoint people when my own wellbeing is at stake. It’s not easy, but I live more joyfully now because of this.

Where You Focus

When women get stuck the reason is almost always about where they are focused. Stuckness comes from focusing your attention into areas where you have no control. The most common focus with poor returns is trying to change other people.

Sorry, y’all. Trying to change other people doesn’t work. Maybe you’ve noticed? LOL.

One of the ways to maximize your ROI in any situation is to focus on what lessons you can learn out of your current situation and implement any changes that are required in yourself.

This is the power of focusing on what you want and who you need to become to be a person who can create it. That’s the return I want for you: to feel lighter and freer.

I’ll leave you with two questions: What would a joy-filled life look like? Then, what would you need to believe about yourself, life and other people in order to create that life for yourself?

If this landed in you, even a little, would you send it to one woman who needs to hear it? That’s how the women who need this find their way to it. One woman handing it to another.

Tender hugs,

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This week a pickup truck nearly backed into me on my morning walk, and my almost-70-year-old bones found out they can still run.

The gold came afterward, when I noticed the story my mind was spinning about it.

Press play and ask yourself which of your own stories might be keeping your body on high alert.

I’m building Radiantly Alive Women into a powerful community of heart-centered women using their third act to make contributions to life that were not possible earlier. I’m still creating this. So if it landed in you, even a little, would you pass it along to one woman you know who is committed to using her third act to be part of the solution so desperately needed by this chaotic world? That’s how the ones who are called to this life context find their way to it. One woman handing it to another.In the manifesto I wrote that we have to dismantle the false self protectors that keep us powerless and small. Those protectors are supposed to make you safer, but that isn’t what happens. Protectors keep you disconnected from your authentic self, the part that allows you to be full-filled by life. Take this two minute quiz to identify them. Seeing them clearly is the first step toward taking your power back.

Click here to go to the Protector Quiz

Tender hugs,

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Radiantly alive women are a stand against a culture that discards a woman’s third act.

We refuse the cultural lie that consigns us to the rocking chair on the porch. We will not be pushed to the sidelines just as we are reaching the very apex of the power of our love.

Do not mistake what we carry. We have to redeem “love” from greeting card sentimentality and codependent attachment, and see it for the uniting power it is.

This is the fierce, tested love that has borne and raised children, weathered the fires of living, and now rejoices in the birth of our grandchildren.

It is an earned authority: tempered by experience, grounded in humility, and clear in its vision.

We see the fatal blind spot of our time.

A culture obsessed with idols of dominance, conquest, and relentless greed destroys the fabric of the planet that holds it. It burns through the future to feed the appetite of the moment, utterly blind to the desperate need for coherent structures that value all life.

We see the cost written on our faces. The light that fades from our eyes. The smile tinged with sadness. The aging default drives our biology into unrelenting alarm, denying the body the rest and renewal it needs to thrive.

But the cost doesn’t end there. We see it written on the faces of our young people. Their disillusionment is the direct product of the violence, posturing, and fractured noise they see all around them.

We are losing them to it.

They are starved for an alternative. And we are here to provide it.

We honor the drive, intensity, and innovation of youth. But raw drive without wisdom burns through everything it touches. Experience tempers all that. Experience makes bold ideas efficient and enduring.

We have lived long enough to outgrow the petty tyranny of “my way.” We carry the deeper eye that insists on “our way.” Where raw ambition sees only battle lines, win or lose, crush or be crushed, we look for the third option.

We set the table where opposing forces can sit together, listen, and find the win-win possibilities that ego can’t see.

We see a world where the unique gifts of the individual are celebrated, and differences are welcomed because they express the fullness of the whole.

There is a world that works for everyone.

Fear will tell you this is an impossible dream. But we know in our bones that a coherent world works for everyone because it reflects the wholeness that is the source of all life.

Radiant aliveness is not just for third-act women: it is for all people.

But it must be embraced by us first. We must dismantle the false self protectors that keep us powerless and small. We must find the courage to be our authentic selves and model this to our children and our grandchildren.

In this way we create a world that works for everyone. Not through force, not through violence, and not through destruction, but woven quietly and permanently into the structures of our everyday lives through the living bonds of relatedness and care.

We are fueled by love.

We are revitalized by love.

We are motivated by love.

We are not winding down.

We are radiantly alive.

I’m building Radiantly Alive Women into a powerful community of heart-centered women using their third act to make contributions to life that were not possible earlier. I’m still creating this. So if it landed in you, even a little, would you pass it along to one woman you know who is committed to using her third act to be part of the solution so desperately needed by this chaotic world? That’s how the ones who are called to this find their way to it. One woman handing it to another.And if you want a place to start today, I made a two-minute quiz. It introduces you to one of those protectors, the part of you that learned to keep you safe a long time ago and has been keeping you covered ever since. She is more loyal than you think, and meeting her changes things.

Meet your Protector

Tender hugs,

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kristinvantilburg.substack.com/subscribe

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the notion of Living Water. Jesus says when you receive the Living Water you will never be thirsty again. I have been pondering this in my heart. Today I share a Living Water Meditation with you.

Find fifteen minutes just for you in a quiet serene place.

As you practice it, do so with the idea of leaving the flow going. Perhaps this is a way of praying unceasingly, allowing yourself to receive from the waters of the deep even as you go through your day.

Please share this with a woman you know who is parched, thirsty, in need of Living Water. I treasure your comments about how this lands for you. I read every one.

Tender hugs,

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Somebody has probably pronounced an ending over your life by now. It comes from doctors sometimes, and also from financial advisors, and the beauty industry, and the men who prefer a younger woman. They look at your body, then tell you your life is over: Go sit in your rocking chair on the porch and be quiet. Then they wait for you to arrange yourself around it.

This week I tell you about a woman who was handed the most final version of that sentence I have ever heard, and what she decided to do with it instead. That’s the miracle mindset, and it can carry you into your own third act. It has nothing to do with being brave.

You’re allowed to hand that verdict back and say, “No thanks, I’m just getting started.”

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I have been obsessed with the story of Gideon from chapters 5 and 6 of Judges in the Bible. I think it has a valuable message for women who are learning to live radiantly alive. Please comment and let me know if you agree or disagree.

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On Monday I wrote you two words. Today I want to say them out loud.

Somewhere along the way, most of us learned that we only matter when we are useful, and by the third act of life that belief gets very loud. In this video I want to say the truth to your face, and show you how to say it back to yourself: you matter, and you always did. You are not finished, and the world has never needed the gift that only you carry more than it does now.

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There's so much heavy news lately, so I wanted to bring you a bit of genuinely happy news!

I walk you through what the longevity scientists are racing to build, why some of them think we'll reach 150 years.

But there’s one thing none of them mention: your body is listening to how you talk to it. That’s the part you can start changing today.

Come celebrate the good news with me. And if it lifts you, send it on to a woman who could use some.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kristinvantilburg.substack.com/subscribe

When two people catch the same idea, only you can bring it into the world your way. That way is not a small thing.

It’s essential to the whole, and it’s essential to your own aliveness.

When you hold your essence back, that same fire that would have gone out as your passion turns inward and burns.

Press play, and let me convince you that you are the one the world is still waiting on.

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This morning I looked straight at a fear I had been carrying for months. When I finally faced the actual facts, my foundation held, and a much bigger question opened up.

What if joy was never something you had to earn?

What if it belonged to you all along, and a whole wall of old beliefs is the only thing standing in front of it?

In today’s video I walk that wall, brick by brick, and the one small turn that lets the joy back in.

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