Episode 125: Getting Smarter about Goal Setting; A New Year Conversation with Lou Blaser

Are you making plans and setting goals for the coming year? 

 We do it every year, don’t we? We make resolutions. We commit (again) to improving ourselves. In this episode I’m welcoming Lou Blaser, editor of the Midlife Cues Newsletter and host of the Second Breaks Podcast, back to the podcast for the 3rd time!

We talk about how we take stock of the outgoing year and set goals for the New Year. We talk about how we have learned as we age that resolutions don’t work and how we are refining our goal setting process. We talk about what we are learning about living intentionally as we get older.

When I started this podcast in June of 2020 I had a wishlist of people I wanted to interview. I was nervous that no one would say yes to a newbie host of an unproven podcast with no audience or track record. I had admired Lou Blaser’s work on her Second Breaks Podcast for some time, so I was a bundle of nerves when I contacted her and asked her to be my guest. She graciously agreed (Woot, Woot!) and she was the 2nd person I ever interviewed (Episode 3) for Late Bloomer Living. Lou and I stayed in touch after that interview and we started to become friends. I had her on again (Episode 75) to get an update on her big move to the Philippines where she was planning to live with her sister to help be a caregiver to her mom who had advancing dementia. Lou had me on her podcast as well (Episodes 153 and 190). 

Lou now splits her time between living in the Philippines and the United States. In September of 2022 we took our virtual friendship offline and into the real world. We met in New York City for a coffee chat that turned into an all day wander around the city, culminating in appetizers and cocktails at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central (complete with a surly waiter who was NOT amused by our shenanigans and giggles). Note the blurry picture we took to commemorate our first in person meeting.

Making new, real friends as we get older is a rare and precious thing. I am so grateful that I got out of my comfort zone and past my fears to start this podcast because without it I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to become friends with Lou and many of my other guests turned friends.

This week I’m so excited to invite Lou back to the podcast for the 3rd time…and it won’t be the last! This is the beginning of an exciting collaboration and the first in a series of ongoing conversations that will be hosted in alternating episodes on this podcast and on Lou’s Second Breaks Podcast. We will be having four conversations a year. Two of them will be hosted here on the Late Bloomer Living Podcast and two will be hosted on Second Breaks.

We both love to do research and go down rabbit holes as we think about what it means to age well. We tend to talk about this stuff on our regular phone calls to each other, so we thought we’d share those conversations with you.

We invite you to come along with us as we celebrate the opportunity that is midlife.

Learn more about Lou Blaser and some of the other things we talked about in this episode below:

Listen to our original conversations on Late Bloomer Living (Episode 3) or our 2nd conversation (Episode 75). 

Listen to our other conversations on Second Breaks (Episode 153) (Episode 190) 

Subscribe to the Midlife Cues newsletter or listen to the Second Breaks Podcast.

Connect with Lou on LinkedIn or Instagram

When the picture is blurry because you're laughing too hard... Yvonne and Lou meet IRL for the first time