Reinvention After 50: What If There’s Another Way?

Welcome: What If There’s Another Way?

Announcer 0:07

Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion, the podcast designed to inspire your greatness and thrive through life. Get ready to conquer your fears. Here's your host, psychotherapist, coach, and empowerment expert, Beverley Glazer.

Beverley Glazer 0:34

How can you find what you need when you're told it cannot be done? Welcome to Aging with Purpose and Passion. I'm Beverlye Glazer, a work and life transition coach and reinvention strategist for women over 50, helping you turn a lifetime of wisdom into your most meaningful next chapter. And you can find me and this podcast on reInventimpossible.com. These conversations share hard stories from women who have faced difficult challenges, questioned what they were told to accept, and found new ways to move forward. Lynn Miller is an author, a publishing partner, a pioneer whisperer who helps people uncover the ideas and purpose they've been carrying for years. She was always surrounded by people who challenged the system. And she learned that asking the right question is the first step to implementing change. If you ever felt that something in your life is just not working and you don't even know what to do about it, this conversation is for you. And stay with us till the end, and I'll give you simple steps that you can use in your life today. So

Childhood Chaos And Fighting For Inclusion

Beverley Glazer 1:56

welcome, Lynn.

Lynn Miller 1:58

Thank you, Beverly.

Beverley Glazer 2:00

Lynn, take us back, take us back to your childhood. What was life like when you were growing up?

Lynn Miller 2:08

When I was growing up, I was the oldest of two children and then three children and then four children.

Speaker 1 2:19

And uh it was chaotic. It was chaotic.

Beverley Glazer 2:26

Why was it particularly chaotic?

Lynn Miller 2:28

Well, um, the third child, my brother, from my brother Michael, was um had some issues when he was very young. He had some um what they call juvenile epilepsy, and he had several um seizures that eventually took away his language. And he he was talking really early and then he stopped talking at 18 months. And my mother really had to go on a quest to find out the best way to educate him. My mother was really my first example of a pioneer. And she said, after spending lots and lots of money educating him, said, we can't do this anymore. Why isn't the public school system doing this? So um, while I was taking care of the three other children, my mother and father went to the capital of Illinois in Springfield and fought for education to be mainstreamed so that her son could go to regular school instead of them paying thousands of dollars that they didn't have. So that was my first experience with a pioneer. And I said, well, all she did was ask why can't we do something different? And I've lived with people in my family that are like that for my whole life.

Beverley Glazer 3:51

Right. But I'm just looking here. You've seen your mom, you're seeing your dad, you've seen them fight for change. This was back in the day.

Lynn Miller 4:00

This was in the early, like early 70s.

Beverley Glazer 4:03

Yes. And and how did you feel? I mean, here you were taking care of your brother.

Lynn Miller 4:10

Um you know, it wasn't easy. He was hyperactive, you know, he wasn't easy, but he was sweet, he was funny, he had, you know, he was smart, he had a photographic memory. So I just we just played the way he wanted to play.

Beverley Glazer 4:30

Yes So you saw his strengths.

Lynn Miller 4:33

Yeah.

Beverley Glazer 4:34

Yeah. And you also learned not to just accept things the way they were.

Lynn Miller 4:42

Oh, I that that's that was the first time I had to I learned that lesson. Um we didn't have to, we didn't have to allow things to be the way they are, they were.

Beverley Glazer 4:53

And and was there an eventual change because your parents stood up there?

Lynn Miller 4:57

Yeah, they the um the legislature, the senator, whatever the politician's name is that was down there, um, passed a referendum that allows public schools to offer special education in the classroom so that the child was included versus excluded.

Beverley Glazer 5:18

Yeah, that's a huge feat.

Lynn Miller 5:20

It was huge. I had read there were um one of the large one of the best special ed schools in the country, Northwestern. I met people who used to go to school there, and they said, and I told them about my mother, and they said, tell her thank you. Because they had the power then to really make a difference in a much more substantial way.

Beverley Glazer 5:40

Yeah. So you grew up among people who shaped you, people that stood up for what they believed, people that wanted to change the system. And

Opera Lessons In Discipline And Coaching

Beverley Glazer 5:49

you thought that you, I would think that you would go in that direction too, but you became a singer and you started studying classical music. How did that happen?

Lynn Miller 5:59

Um, it's it's a funny thing. I actually wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I had a hard time in school, so I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. So basically, I was more of a uh a reactor. If people said, Oh, you're so talented, you should do this. I said, Okay. So they said I had a voice in high school. I studied opera for 10 years.

Beverley Glazer 6:27

It's huge.

Lynn Miller 6:28

And I wanted to learn. And the basically the the mindset I had was do as much as possible until I feel like I can do it forever. I watched my father get his PhD. Like every I've seen everybody in my family, I watched them go as far as they could go before they stopped learning. And so I did that. And I really, those were life lessons, 10 years of life's lessons I didn't know I needed until afterwards.

Beverley Glazer 6:58

What did you learn?

Lynn Miller 7:00

Dual discipline for one thing, and practice and continuously being coachable was really a big thing because I switched teachers, and the second the teacher I had in graduate school said, I have good news and bad news. You have a great voice, but you're using it incorrectly. So we're gonna have to tear everything apart and start over. And I said, Okay. And 18 months later, I had a voice that was significantly different, and I was able to sing for the rest of my life. I sing in a choir now.

Beverley Glazer 7:36

That's wonderful.

Lynn Miller 7:37

Yeah.

Beverley Glazer 7:38

And when yeah, when did you decide to stop? I mean, you're still singing, but it's not opera.

Lynn Miller 7:45

I decided to stop studying opera and studying formally 10 years after I started. So I was newly married, I was 23 years old. I said, my mother said, let's do you pursue this till you don't want to do it anymore, and then do the next thing. And so that's what I did because she didn't have choices, and I she was trying to give me choices.

Career Reinvention and Finding New Markets

Lynn Miller 8:08

So what I decided to do after that was um start a business career. And I worked at a like one of the largest retailers in the country. At the time, it was called Marshall Fields, and I worked my way up from you know part-time to full-time and all the way up into corporate training. And that's when I really got excited about something for the first time.

unknown 8:29

Yes.

Lynn Miller 8:30

Why did you quit that? I actually didn't quit it. I quit corporate training, but I'd never I did not quit training for 25 years. I stayed in the training industry, but I was in sales and I sold the first learning management system. I sold learning products, I started learning services. So when I didn't even know what software was, I was selling software. It didn't matter to me. If somebody said I can sell, I did it.

unknown 9:01

Okay.

Beverley Glazer 9:01

So you were a people person, and you always were.

Lynn Miller 9:04

I was a people person, and I was um, I felt like I was a pioneer and didn't know it because I was really always wanting to be in something that was new in the market. Even if I didn't get it, then I'm in a pro I'm in a group of people who really don't get it at all, and I get to be first.

Beverley Glazer 9:23

And you were always fascinated with people.

Lynn Miller 9:26

Yeah, and learning. And you know, what else was what else can they learn about that they didn't know that if they learned it, it would change the way they worked.

What Lynn Learned From 200 Pioneers

Beverley Glazer 9:35

And you started interviewing people, over 200 people for your book. Yes. And what did you learn about those pioneers?

Lynn Miller 9:47

Um, you know, there's different kinds of pioneers. Um, I learned pioneers who had want to be inventive and be the first to invent something and turn it into something that's um profitable and makes, you know, starts and is maybe new in an industry or something like that. And I thought that was very creative and very interesting. And um, but they're so busy answering to investors and the market and and their clients that there's not, I wanted, I felt like I could help them, but they didn't really have room for that. And I wanted to say, well, who is else is there that I can help? And I discovered that the people who really want to make a difference in the world to contribute and and and make a difference in people's lives were people that I related to. It's like it was like sort of my pioneers like my mother. Like they wanted to change the systems. I got really excited about those people, and those are the ones that are in the book. What kind of people were they?

Beverley Glazer 10:50

Why were they different?

Lynn Miller 10:53

Well, they they were different because they all had a core talent, just like I did. I had a I was good in sales, I was good at singing. They had a core talent and they used it and they did pretty well with it, but they decided it wasn't making a difference in the world. They were they were growing a business, they had maybe growing a group of people, but they were like, but there's so more many more things in the world that where people need help. And so they would shift there something would happen where they just got frustrated that they were hitting a brick wall in their current job or their current role. And they said, How can I make a better impact on a bigger impact on the world? And they took their talent and they put it, used it somewhere else. And they did the, they started asking questions about what's missing in certain areas and found a new way to use their talent that they had never anticipated.

Beverley Glazer 11:55

So they just became persistent in what they believed they could do and what they cared about.

Lynn Miller 12:02

They really wanted to make a difference using their current talents. Like one was in the restaurant business. She said, Well, how can I make a difference for people who are just getting started? One was a when technology person, he said, How can I make a difference for people who don't have access to technology? So it was something that they saw missing and they wanted to make a difference.

Beverley Glazer 12:25

Okay. So they didn't accept just the way it was and keep on doing it.

Lynn Miller 12:30

No, they didn't. And they didn't really they wanted to stop feeling frustrated and want and got very curious.

Loss, Caregiving, and Building Resilience

unknown 12:39

Okay.

Beverley Glazer 12:39

And you had a series of losses, all kinds of losses, and also did not accept what was told. Let's tell us about that. How did you manage a system that is so rigid and you come through and you're advocating too?

Lynn Miller 13:02

Well, losses, you know, everybody has loss. It's the great equalizer. And and so I knew I wasn't alone. But having, you know, seven losses in 15 years or whatever it was, 20 years, is a lot. And I love they were all close friends, you know, siblings and parents and uncles and aunts. And some of them were long goodbyes and some of them were unexpected. And um I decided that really wasn't going to be how I was defined anymore. I didn't want to be defined by what my losses were. I wanted to be, I wanted to be defined by my resilience. So I started writing about resilience. I wrote about it for a year. It was like my therapy. I wrote about resilience for a year and all the and found books about it and shared about it on LinkedIn. So every time I was learning something new, I shared it with others. And um, in the process of doing that, I discovered I was surprised that I was people liked my writing. And people liked the questions I asked. So I started kind of going further into interviewing more entrepreneurs, interviewing people that I was just curious about. They were, I still do it, they're successful. And I'm like, how'd you get here?

Beverley Glazer 14:26

Right. And you advocated for yourself and for your husband as well.

Self-Advocacy Through a Rare Disease Diagnosis

Lynn Miller 14:33

Um, that is true. Um, so I learned when I was very young that uh being an advocate, it was important, as my mother and father advocated for my brother. And um recently uh I discovered, we discovered our my husband had a very rare form of uh incurable disease. And um, that's as far as I want to go talking about it, but he is but we caught it very early. I was my persistence and my advocacy paid off. And one of the things that I didn't expect was that the best way to get him the treatment he needs for a rare disease is to be part of the system in research and clinical trials. Because whatever's on the market, they didn't figure it out yet. Right. So I said, okay, well, how do I get into this other system of research and clinical trials? And we're involved, we're talking to four different organizations, schools, slash schools, maybe five that that are interested in um helping to see if they can have the disease not be continued like slow down or delayed.

Beverley Glazer 15:52

Yeah, that's a creative way to do it.

Lynn Miller 15:55

That's pretty that's that's a lot. That's that's a big deal.

Beverley Glazer 15:59

It sure is. So if someone is going through this and they feel stuck or they're afraid, uh where can these people even learn to be a pioneer like you?

Lynn Miller 16:14

Oh, my book. Um you know, you can't really learn to be. I don't know that you I think it's not so much learning to be a pioneer, it's recognizing that you already are. Um, I believe that everybody is a is capable of being or already is a pioneer. They just haven't had given it enough thought or enough attention to say, oh, I could really, I didn't know I was gonna be a pioneer of an incurable disease.

unknown 16:44

Right.

Beverley Glazer 16:46

Right.

Lynn Miller 16:47

Um I life, that's just what life dealt me. And rather than just waiting for things to go wrong, I said, well, what can I do to make a difference? And here I am. So I get to still keep writing. I get to get to publicize my book and help other people who are who kind of see that it's possible to be a pioneer, but doesn't don't know what to do first or second. Right, right.

Beverley Glazer 17:11

And so what I what I'm hearing throughout this whole thing, Lynn, is you don't have to call yourself anything. No, come, whatever you are, you just keep pressing and you keep doing. And other people will say, Oh, you're a pioneer.

Lynn Miller 17:25

Yeah, exactly. I I called all the people in my books pioneers, and they said, I don't see myself as a pioneer. And I said, Well, you saw something nobody else saw, and you were committed to doing something about it, either a problem or an opportunity, but you saw something and you just didn't want it to go unlooked, you know, not you know, ignored. You didn't want it to be ignored. And I was actually at a meeting this morning, and they said, What do you think your best success? What do you think is the key to your success? And I said, I've always felt I was a work in progress.

Beverley Glazer 18:02

Right. Oh, me too.

Lynn Miller 18:05

Oh, yes. Just keep on growing. You just keep it's you just keep going with people who say, oh, you get you're thinking I think you're onto something. Or I say, oh, this is this keeps this keeps me interested. Let me find out more. So I like to go deep, not and not necessarily wide.

Beverley Glazer 18:27

Yes.

Reinvention Takeaways and Your Pioneer Potential

Beverley Glazer 18:28

Why do you believe that older women more or less accept the status quo? It is what it is. Why do you think that happens?

Lynn Miller 18:38

Oh, that's a really good question, Beverly. I I don't know. I why would people say it is what it is and when there's so much opportunity? I I think they underestimate themselves. And they asked them at underestimate what's possible because they hadn't been, you know, maybe they just didn't ask enough questions about what's possible.

Beverley Glazer 19:03

Okay. That's perfect what you just said. And I'm gonna ask you one last question. What's one last word to leave us with, Lynn?

Lynn Miller 19:15

Um, you really you're a pie, you're you have more potential to be something you never imagined and you just didn't know it. And so I help people, I want to people give people a chance to ask themselves those questions so they can see what to do next. And the purpose of all my learning, I didn't know why I was stayed in learning for so long. I guess I did it so I could write this book and people could learn from the stories.

Beverley Glazer 19:42

Terrific. So thank you so much, Lynn. Lynn Miller is an author, a publishing partner, a caregiver, and a pioneer whisperer who helps experts, leaders, and change makers turn complex ideas into messages people can understand. She is the author of Ahead of Their Time, Pioneers Who Sees Tomorrow, today, based on over 200 hours of interviews with people who challenge the broken systems and asks, What if there is another way? Here are a few takeaways from this episode. Reinvention starts with frustration, so pay attention to what bothers you. Caregiving, loss, and adversity can reveal strengths you never knew you had. And sometimes the only question you need to ask is, what if? If you've been relating to this episode, here are some things that you could do for yourself right now. Trust what you know and keep advocating for it. Stop accepting that it's just the way it is and ask a better question. And remember, all you need is enough courage to ask, what if there's another way? And do something about it. For similar episodes on advocating for yourself, check out Beating the 5% odds of cancer, that's episode 164, and finding your voice, that's episode 178 of Aging with Purpose and Passion. And if you love podcasts of older women, the Late Bloomer Living Podcast helps you find joy, embrace change, and live playfully. And that's latebloomerliving.com. And so, Lynn, where can people find you? Please share your links.

Lynn Miller 21:34

I um, well, first of all, my book is my book is on Amazon. So you can find my book on Amazon. You can um ahead of their time, pioneers who sees tomorrow today. You can find me on LinkedIn under Lynn Ellen Miller. Uh I use my middle name so it's easier to find me. Uh, I have a website that's uh it's lynmillerauthor.com. And if you do forward Pioneer, you get to take an assessment that helps you look at how where you are as a pioneer because everybody is somewhere in the end of the journey. Um, I'm also on Facebook and Instagram.

Beverley Glazer 22:17

They're also in the show notes, they're on my sitei that's reInventimpossible.com. What's next for you, my friends? Please download my free world map. That's in the show notes. And please add this to your playlist and share this with a friend. You only have one life to live. So live it with her.

Announcer 22:54

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