Caroline Paul on How Outdoor Adventure Improves Our Lives as We Age

00:54
Erin
Now, I love a sense of adventure and pushing my own limits around facing fear, but I’m not exactly crazy about the feeling of adrenaline rushing through my body. What is this book? I’m intrigued. Well, it turns out that to me, anyway, it’s not so much a book about extreme sports, it’s a book about finding fulfillment. More specifically, it’s a curious exploration into how outdoor adventure improves our lives as we age. Each chapter of the book introduces us to someone new who is experiencing deep satisfaction from activities that connect them with nature and adventure. These are everyday women in their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond, and their activities of choice run the gamut from wing walking and base jumping to boogie boarding and bird watching. We get to come along on the quest to understand how to live a dynamic life as we age. 

01:50
Erin
As it turns out, there are so many learnings that directly relate to our fulfillment foundations of chasing adventure, connecting with nature, our physical and emotional health, and opening ourselves up to wonder and awe. After being led through this fascinating journey by talented author Caroline Paul, now I’m even more intrigued. Who is this wise woman? Fast forward today’s conversation where I’m so excited to be joined by the absolutely incredible Caroline Paul. Caroline is the New York Times bestselling author of the Gutsy Girl as well as a number of other great books. She is a former San Francisco firefighter and has led a life of extreme outdoor adventure. I can’t wait to continue to learn from her. Welcome, Caroline. 

02:37
Caroline
Thank you, Erin. I’m really excited to be here. 

02:40
Erin
Thank you. 

02:40
Caroline
That was a really nice introduction. That was so nice. By the way, I’m not wise. You know that I. I asked questions and wise people answered them and I put it in a book, but it’s not me. 

02:52
Erin
I think you’re wise in the way that you clearly are a lifelong learner and your curiosity drives you to acquire insights along the way. So I’m sorry to tell you, you are wise. 

03:11
Caroline
Thank you. 

03:12
Erin
I’m wondering if you can bring us back to the spark that ignites the exploration captured in this book. What was the context of your own life that led you in this direction? 

03:24
Caroline
It was basically that I was aging. I was 55, and I was sort of looking, you know, on the horizon of 60. And one of the things I do and I have done all my life is go outside and have adventures. I’m not necessarily a great adventurer, but I love doing a wide variety of things, like from maybe going bike packing for a week or sea kayaking, you know, from island to island somewhere. I mean, I’ve always done this. So I was surfing and I looked around and there were no women out there my age. There were a lot of men out there my age and older, and I’m not a good surfer. It was burly conditions and I knew there were a lot of women who could. 

04:12
Caroline
Could handle these conditions and maybe even catch some waves, which I was not doing, but I was having fun. It was amazing to be out there in kind of big waves, stormy weather. I’m a really good paddler. And I just started to wonder, like, here I am, 55, should I not be doing this anymore? Like, and so this book really is a quest. And it kept happening, by the way, not just surfing. I ride an electric skateboard. Again, no women that I’ve seen my age do that. I’ve seen men, and I fly experimental planes and very few women, but tons of men my age and tons of men older do this. So I began to wonder if I should keep outdoor adventure in my life. And so that made me start to go on this quest. 

04:59
Erin
You said that you’ve always been into this outdoor adventure. Do you think that’s part of your personality or did you have a certain environment growing up that helped to foster that? What do you think? I mean, not everybody has that. Where’s that difference come from? 

05:17
Caroline
Yeah, I’m an identical twin, and my twin sister is brave and curious and explores, but not necessarily in the outdoors in the same way. She’s super fit, but she doesn’t go on adventures. So I guess I can’t explain, But I’m also the quieter, shyer twin, so maybe there was something in that. But both of us, including my younger brother, we grew up in a kind of a free range childhood of the 60s where your parents basically said, go outside and play till it’s dark and come back for dinner. And that’s. That was the only mandate. And we had to take care of ourselves. And were outside a lot, and nobody really kept a strict eye on us or, or circumscribed our time. We had to figure it all out. And from a young age, we wanted, we loved adventures, whatever that meant. 

06:06
Caroline
Exploring a little wood behind our house. We did grow up in the country mostly. Also, my parents were not outdoor people at all, but they wanted us to try a lot of different things, like skating. Learn to skate. You don’t have to be good at it. We each had to have an instrument for a little while, and we were put in the swimming pool, the lake, really early. And none of that was to become an adventurer. It was simply to be able to make decisions about how we wanted to live our life as we came into adulthood. They really just wanted us to be well rounded. And that for me, turned into outdoor adventure. 

06:48
Erin
Yeah, I feel like for myself, I almost became very disconnected with what the word adventure even meant and almost had to rediscover it. And I know in your book you take a deep dive into the importance of adventure, particularly when it comes to aging, particularly for women. What were some of your biggest learnings and aha. moments? 

07:12
Caroline
I love. This is a great question. Thank you for bringing it up so early. Because people are intimidated by the word adventure, and they think, oh, that’s not for me. But adventure, as I’ve come to learn as I get older, is really just an exploration of yourself and your own comfort zones, feeling exhilaration, being physically vital. So for me, adventure, I mean, I understand we can take intellectual adventures, but let’s. For me, an outdoor adventure, like an adventurer, is someone who also is physically vital. So outside. But that doesn’t mean you have to be jumping off a cliff with a parachute. You could be taking a walk or bird watching in colder weather, in rain. So basically it’s those attributes. But I will say that when I was young, adventure meant going outside and feeling high adrenaline. 

08:11
Erin
Right. 

08:12
Caroline
And possibly almost killing yourself. 

08:15
Erin
That’s a high bar. 

08:17
Caroline
Yeah, yeah. It wasn’t smart, and it’s just what, you know, young people do. So, yes, I was, for instance, a member of a whitewater rafting team in the 80s of all women. And we would go around the world doing first descents or down rivers. We wanted to be first at something and we would go down unexplored rivers. And that was my definition of adventure. Like, I thought you had to do that in order to be adventurous. Now I’m no longer interested in being first, and I definitely don’t need that kind of almost killing yourself situation. Yeah. So my definition of adventure has changed as I age, but it also changed during the writing of the book. 

09:01
Erin
Yeah. It almost reminds me of. I wrote recently about redefining success, and it was a bit of a similar story where I was thinking of a friend of mine who loves to run, and she used to run for her own personal best in terms of time. And so as she ages, she’s redefining what success looks like for running. And so now it’s more focused on, you know, did I have an enjoyable experience while I was running, while I was competing, which is such a lovely way to, you know, kind of reframe success as your body changes, but still be able to participate in the things that you love doing. So, yeah. It’s interesting. There’s some neat parallels there with what you’re describing around almost redefining adventure. 

09:52
Caroline
Yeah. And I kind of wish I had defined it. Maybe I wouldn’t have done as many sort of crazy, interesting things as a youth if I had defined adventure differently. So I don’t regret pushing myself in ways that were, you know, like, I. I became a firefighter, as, you know, for many years, and. And I actually did really get fulfillment out of running into fires. I mean, most. That’s what firefighters do. And that sounds strange. I get it. But I love the softness that comes with you. Just kind of. I’m kind of softer in life. I don’t need to prove myself, for one, as I get older, which I think a lot of those adventures, even though I didn’t talk about them to people or trumpet them. 

10:34
Caroline
I mean, I didn’t become a writer, so I didn’t write about them till I was in my 40s. And. But somehow they were trying to prove something, and I no longer need to have to do that, I think. But I’m also glad that I had to prove something because it led to. To, you know, a life where I went around the world on many, you know, on bicycles and kayaks and paragliders, doing things that really felt fulfilling at the time. 

11:01
Erin
Right. And it sounds like building confidence along the way, too, in yourself and your own abilities. 

11:08
Caroline
Yes. And that’s one of the reasons why I didn’t want to give up outdoor adventure in my 50s, because I really thought I was my best self outside. You know, you’re. You’re brave, you’re in the moment. You’re being a good teammate. If you’re with other people. And so that was why I didn’t want to give it up. But I. One of the things that I was really impressed by in the women I interviewed. And again, I interviewed women as old as 90 in varying adventures. And of course I embedded in scientific research. Like there is a lot of research that talks about how good it is to be outside and how important it is that our mindset about aging is positive. And so, but one of the things I was impressed with is that these women learned how to adapt. 

11:56
Caroline
So adaptability as we age is really vital. And I guess you were talking about that with your friend who changed her metric of success for running. 

12:07
Erin
Yeah. And one of the things I love about your book and the way that you designed it by focusing on a different activity and featuring someone different in each chapter is it really provides us with a variety of options. You know, it’s almost like a “Choose your own adventure” around what level of exhilaration are you looking for in terms of adrenaline? But then also identifying that you can almost walk away regardless of the activity with the same degree of. I want to call it fulfillment, but I don’t know what else to call it. Like just. 

12:47
Caroline
No, that’s a great word. You know, I went, I interviewed a bunch of women who were boogie boarders in San Diego. They boogie board together three times a week. They’re mostly in their 70s, but they could be as old as in their 90s. And they go in the ocean. And I went down because I was interested in boogie board. By then I had read a lot about the research behind how good it was simply to be outside. For anybody, just on a biological level. Being outside is really good for our brain. It’s really good for our sense of well-being, holistically. I mean, there’s so many metrics about how our blood pressure lowers, how our memory improves, how our, you know, depression subsides if we go outside. And it’s, it’s chemical. This is not. Woo woo. 

13:34
Caroline
So I was like, oh, boogie boarding, that sounds great. Some, you know, when we’re older we can just kind of play in the, by the shore with this board, this tiny board that 10 year olds use to have fun. So I went down there with an idea that it really wasn’t an adventure. But I was going to interview these women because it was an option for people who didn’t want to, for instance, get in a kayak. 

13:55
Erin
Right. 

13:57
Caroline
And what I found very quickly was that yes, boogie boarding is an adventure. It had all the hallmarks of an adventure. There was the physical vitality because you get in the ocean. There was the pushing of your own comfort zones. I mean, most of these women just played on the shore in the whitewater. But for them, that offered the same exhilaration as if I had paddled out on a surfboard and gone a little further. And the community that they found, I mean, on all levels, this, the, you know, the anticipation of a wave coming in and then it happening and then. And that exhilaration, like it had the hallmarks of an adventure. And so I really had to change, start changing my definition of what an adventure was. During the writing of the book. The same thing happened when I went bird watching. 

14:48
Caroline
Bird watching. I was also like, not really an adventure, but really important because the woman that I interviewed was in a wheelchair and she was a big bird watcher. And I wanted to talk about adapting and going outside anyway, because if Virginia Rose could go outside in a wheelchair, we all could. So I was, you know, still determined to get people outside as we aged. And I saw very quickly that bird watching again, all the emotional aspects and physical aspects of an adventure. We went, uhh, our birding adventure was a bird of Thon. So went to six different parks, we walked over six miles, and she wheeled in her wheelchair and there was that anticipation of a bird seeing the bird, the exhilaration, the quest. It was an adventure. 

15:43
Caroline
And so the book itself is an unfolding of my own understanding of how I could live outdoors in a fulfilling way as I aged, which was beautiful. 

15:57
Erin
And I’m so glad you brought up the part about nature, because I was going to ask you about that. I mean, you could have included chapters with indoor adventure type activities, but. But you didn’t. Every single one of them is outdoors. And then you included a lot of the science behind that as well. So, I mean, you’ve talked a little bit about this, but what do you think it is about being in nature that’s so integral for our well being? 

16:21
Caroline
Well, let me back up just a second because one of the things I found out in the very beginning of my book when I was doing the research was a study. And it turned into a lot of studies, actually. But the initial study I saw just gobsmacked me. It basically said that the way we look at our own aging predicts how well we age. So what that means is if you have a negative view of your own aging, you’re going to get heart issues earlier, cognitive issues earlier. And the opposite is true if you have a positive view of your own aging, then you are happier, healthier, and you live seven and a half years longer, which is a lot. Yes. So I was amazed and thought, okay, this is the key to. This is the foundation to the book. 

17:11
Caroline
But the question was, after that is, thank you, scientists, for this. But as women, we know that as we age, the messaging that we get is very toxic. This may be the same for men, but because I didn’t know I was really writing this book for women, but men have gotten a lot out of this, too. So how. How in the face of toxic, often subliminal messaging about our own aging, do you get this very vital for our health, positive view of our own aging? And that was the question that underpins the book. We need a positive view of our own aging, but how do we get that? And I started to realize the way you get it is to go outside and engage in an activity that offers you exhilaration and, you know, adventure and physical vitality. And what I. 

18:03
Caroline
I saw over and over again with these women, and a lot of them had never had an outdoor life before. So one of the boogie boarders that I talked to, she said to me, Caroline, boogie boarding changed my life. And this gives me goosebumps, even right now, because how could such a simple sport change your life? And what she told me was, look at the big Pacific Ocean. Look at the way I’m making decisions about all the waves that I have to have. Look at the fun I’m having. Look at the commitment and the purpose that I am helping other people have fun. And what I saw was that boogie boarding and all outdoor adventures was a direct rebuke to all that messaging that we get as older women, which tell us that we’re not fun anymore, that we are in a cognitive decline. 

18:54
Caroline
You definitely shouldn’t be making decisions about what waves to take and that we’re physically frail. Here she was in this big ocean, doing all these things that we’re just telling her on a more powerful level, no, you are not those things. And so that’s why it’s key, not just adventure, but going outside. Because that physical vitality itself is a direct rebuke to this messaging that says, hey, you should be pulling back. You should be narrowing your life. And what I say is, no, What I’ve found is that as I’m 61 now, in our 50s, and especially our 60s, this is an incredibly powerful time to take full advantage of your life. And yet I saw women who continually pulled back because the messaging told them they should. So yes. Being outside with the adventure is key to the book. And here’s the other thing. 

19:49
Caroline
It’s well known that there are things that we need in our life to feel fulfilled, and you need them all throughout your life. But they are harder to hold onto as we age, and they are community, purpose, novelty, and health. We need all those just as humans. But as we age, those are harder to hold on to. And I added one more to that, which is we also need a positive view of our own aging. So those five things we need. And guess what? Outdoor Adventure offers all those in one package. So you could have a book club, which I love book clubs, I think they’re great. But you’re. And you’re getting community and you’re getting novelty and maybe purpose too, but you’re not getting the physical vitality. You’re not getting the health. 

20:36
Caroline
You’re not necessarily getting a positive view of your own aging because you’re not upending your own expectations of what you can do when you go to a book club. You might be in some ways, but outdoor adventure is a powerful way of upending your own expectations of yourself. And so that your 50s and 60s and 70s are about exploration. It’s not about, like, protection and going inward, so, and even going to the gym, like I go to the gym inside all the time. But you’re not getting the benefits of nature and you’re not necessarily getting the novelty. I mean, so going outside, pushing your comfort zones and getting that exhilaration and physical vitality is, in my argument, it’s the best way to really grab hold of these later years. 

21:25
Erin
Well, and I think you make a really compelling argument for that in the book. I, I would say in addition to that, the other thing that I think you present in the book that rebukes this messaging we get about aging is the role modeling that happens. So by including stories of women who are thriving despite whatever physical challenges they may or may not be experiencing in their later years of life, and yet getting out there, being adventurous, being leaders and role models in. Within their own spheres, it’s. It’s really helpful for reframing our own ideas and building that positive view around aging. 

22:12
Caroline
Yeah, I mean, actually, what I realized during the writing of the book, that I was one of the few people in my friend group that was. Did not dread aging. I was actually looking forward to it. Really? Yeah. And I saw around me, my friends were, you know, just doing a lot. They’d say things like they wouldn’t tell us, tell people their age. Just a lot of. Kind of not shame per se, but yeah, a little bit like they just didn’t want to age. And I was like, oh, really? Because I had a role model in my own mom who she blossomed actually, after 40. Like, she became her best self. 40, 50, 60. And I, as her child saw that, but I didn’t also, as her daughter didn’t quite reckon with that because she’s still my mom. 

23:02
Caroline
But I started to realize what a huge role model she had been. She was, is. She’s still around for me. And I write in the book how she picked up bicycling at age 62 and how it really transformed her. And I saw that as she was doing it and on a really subliminal level, was able to fight these other toxic messages because I had almost embodied my mom’s experience. I was with her during it while her life just got better and better as she aged. 

23:37
Erin
Oh, my gosh, what a benefit to you. I love hearing that because I’m the mom of three girls. And I think that a lot of the time, particularly as women, we get a lot of messages around being selfless. And it’s helpful to know that it’s not selfish to be able to fill your own cup with respect to adventure, exploration, bettering yourself, being out in nature, and that actually investing in yourself flows over into your own kids and those around you. 

24:13
Caroline
Might be a more powerful lesson than trying to actively be involved in their life. Just do your life really well too. And on that, what I found is that, yes, I think women are not only brought up to be concerned, always taking the temperature of the room, being concerned about others, putting them first, but I mean, on a hormonal level, we’re. We do that because we are taking care of kids and we’re taking care of partners. And hormonally, that’s actually what we do is that we, our hormones are for those kind of attachments at a certain age. But as we hit perimenopause and then menopause, those hormones start to change. And it’s not that you become less attached or less empathetic to others, but what you tend to do is turn that attachment and empathy towards yourself now.

25:11
Caroline
So it turns out that women in their 60s no longer raising kids, maybe not. Maybe their partner has died or maybe divorced, or maybe they still have their partner. But hormonally we have changed. And that actually is powerful because when you start taking care of yourself, you can come into your own more. And it happens in your 60s. And here’s the thing, Erin. When I spoke to. I spoke to a couple women in their 50s, but most people were older than me, and they all told me the 60s was their favorite decade. 

25:43
Erin
I’ve heard that. 

25:44
Caroline
I mean, that’s not what we’re told, though. We’re told, like, to sort of mourn the gilded twenties or the thirties. But no. Women told me over and over, including my own mom, the 60s were their favorite decade. And I’m in my 60s in the beginning now, and I’m like, yay, I got nine more years of an awesome decade. And partly this is because of the hormonal switch that you start taking care of yourself. 

26:12
Erin
Yeah. It’s such a hidden secret, though, because I feel like I’ve only heard that recently through your work. I really love the Wiser Than Me podcast with Julia Louis Dreyfus. Right. So, like, just starting to feature more women’s voices, and particularly older women’s voices, who historically have not been something that’s been listened to or heard. And now that we’re starting to listen, there’s so much wisdom there to share and also that ability to reframe our own perspectives on aging, because maybe it’s not so bleak after all. 

26:51
Caroline
It’s not bleak at all. That’s what I just keep saying. You know, at a certain point. I’m not a pollyanna about this. At a certain point, aging does become really difficult. 

27:03
Erin
Sure. 

27:04
Caroline
We are preparing, you know, for death. I think as a firefighter, I saw this a lot. There’s probably a reason for aging becoming difficult at the very end, but not yet. And this is why I am urging people like, this is such a great time. You’re not supposed to be pulling back. You’re not supposed to be, you know, concentrating on your frailty or your possible cognitive decline. You’re supposed to be embracing life. Because actually, for women especially, this is such an amazing time of adventure. And so one of the things I did was look into novelty as one of the key aspects of fulfilling aging. Because a lot of us stop learning something new as we age. And I don’t know, I looked around, I asked my friends, like, when was the last time you learned something new? And most of us don’t. 

27:56
Caroline
We just think. And part of it’s because we know what we like, and that’s great. But part of it is we also think. We think, oh, we’re too old to learn something new. And in fact, that’s really a mantra that you should be getting rid of. Because our brain, they’ve found, is very plastic, as we all know now, and in fact, wants to learn new things and benefits from learning new things. And so that’s the other thing about going outside is we’re kind of constantly learning new things, even if we stay in the same activity. Because nature itself is often so whimsical. You’re always learning something new about yourself. 

28:34
Caroline
One of the other things I found is an activity outside often leads to other things, because the confidence you get when you pick up an activity again, like Lorraine the boogie boarder, who surprised herself by being, at 62, somebody who was able to get in the cold water and do things that she was told that she wouldn’t. That confidence leads to you going, what else can I do? Who else am I? And that was really beautiful to hear about from people that I interviewed. 

29:06
Erin
I wanted to ask you about fulfillment. Surprise, surprise. But one of the things I noticed was how often the word fulfillment came up in your book. And it caught my eye for obvious reasons, but also because it’s not a word I actually see very often. Usually people talk about being happy or they talk about feeling good. What does fulfillment mean to you? And what did you learn about fulfillment during the project? 

29:34
Caroline
Yeah. So happy or comfortable or what was the other thing? 

29:37
Erin
Not feeling good. 

29:39
Caroline
Feeling good is not necessarily something. Outdoor adventure. Like, sometimes you’re caught in the rain, you’re cold. It doesn’t. 

29:45
Erin
It. 

29:45
Caroline
It doesn’t. You’re not happy, and it doesn’t feel good. But after, there’s something amazingly satisfying about it. So, yeah, those words weren’t so fulfilling was actually a great word, which is why you saw it over and over. I would say that the biggest thing I learned in this book, actually, was that feeling of fulfillment is not in direct proportion to how big the situation is. So you don’t necessarily, when you’re, say, first down an unexplored river, that fulfillment you would think would be, like, huge because of. It’s a first. And yes, maybe it is. But just because there’s a smaller experience that you’re having doesn’t mean the fulfillment can’t be huge along with it. So an example is that I had no understanding of the concept of awe when I started this book. 

30:41
Erin
Oh, I’m so glad you brought it up. I wanted to talk about awe. 

30:45
Caroline
Yeah, I know the word. I’m a writer. But I had always associated, like most people with religious experiences. 

30:52
Erin
Right. 

30:53
Caroline
And then I went wing walking. As you know, I was on the cover of my own book. 

30:59
Erin
Is this you? I was curious. This is actually you. Okay. 

31:02
Caroline
I didn’t want to be on the cover but my publisher is like, oh, no, you have to, because podcasters will introduce the book and say that. Anyway, I went wing walking because Cynthia Hicks, age 71. I was sent a video of her in a biplane. The biplane takes off. I didn’t really know what I was looking at. And then all of a sudden, at 3,000ft in the air, she climbs up on the wing. And I was like, I got to talk to that woman. Because I, I was like this. I was interested in what a one time adventure would do for us neurally. That’s why I was looking into wing walking, because it’s not something you do as an everyday practice. It’s like almost a skydive. Like, you jump out once, you’re like, yay. 

31:44
Caroline
So I wanted to talk to her and she said to me, caroline, you wouldn’t believe the courage you feel when you get up on that wing, by the way. It’s like wing walking is like. It’s from the barnstorming days. There were that people that used to do this as a aerobatic practice, but we’re, it’s. We don’t do it anymore. You do it just once. And so I thought, okay, I’ll. I’ll go do it. You just take a class. There’s only one place in the United States that does it and you just take a class and they just teach you how to climb up on a wing. And I was like, what happens at 3,000ft? Because I’m a pilot and I’m not that happy about doing this. I really wasn’t that psychedelic. 

32:22
Caroline
But because Cynthia had told me about this courage thing, I was like, oh, courage. I gotta write about courage for sure as we age. But I wasn’t happy. And I said, well, what’s going to happen a few thousand feet? They’re like, don’t worry, you know, we’re just teaching you the moves and your body will take over. So at 3,000ft, I’m in the plane and we’re. It’s time for me to get up on the wing. And I’m. I’m not. I’m really kind of surly about it. And I get up and I’m terrible at it. I get tangled and I ended up doing it correctly. Getting to the. Not dying, by the way. We had a. They never told us what would happen if we fell. And none of us asked. We did have like a Rope attached to the plane. 

33:05
Caroline
But it was like, okay, so if we fall, we’re dangling under the plane. How are you going to land? Right. It was hilarious. But also nobody falls. You just don’t. You’re. You have a death grip on those cables. So I climb up on the wing. I finally get myself over to the king post. I attach myself in. I’m thinking this is dumb but I’m doing this for the book. And then you have to tie yourself in with a belt. And then I give the thumbs up and the pilot begins to do loops, hammerheads and barrel rolls in the sky. And Aaron, I went from the surliest wing walker to ecstatic. Like I did not know what had happened when I got on the ground. Like what had happened up there because. 

33:55
Caroline
And I’m very well schooled in adrenaline and I knew there was some adrenaline but something else had happened. And what I realized is that I had experienced awe in a very extreme way. 

34:07
Erin
Yeah, I was going to say that’s the ultimate awe. 

34:09
Caroline
It was. Yeah. I mean I was jettisoned into awe. But what awe is when your brain can’t. It’s a mixture of wonder, fear and dread. It’s the feeling that you get in the presence of something bigger than you. And it’s often your brain can’t figure out what’s going on. It sort of just implodes. Which of course that’s what was doing when I was doing these barrel rolls in the sky. And what turns out there’s been a lot of studies recently on awe. And I had no idea until I was beginning to do the research myself. And since then books have come out on this. But it’s really good for us. It’s really good for us because it kind of blows out the templates that we have. The kind of autopilot that we have about our life on a neural level. 

34:56
Caroline
And it makes us more curious and open minded. So this is the good news. You don’t have to wing walk to find awe. You can just walk. They did a study here in San Francisco that was fascinating. They asked people between the ages of 60 and 80 to go on 15 minute walks. And their only instruction was to look at everything with childlike wonder. And so pretty soon these all walkers were self reporting upticks in compassion and gratitude and they were feeling less depressed and anxious. And the scientists found that their inflammatory markers, so on a biological level they were much lower. So inflammation is really bad for our body. So even on a biological level awe was affecting these awe-walkers. They had a control group. 

35:53
Caroline
These people just walk like we usually walk, thinking about what they had to do for the day, looking at their phone. So one of the things that awe does is it makes you feel more connected with other people and the world. And one of the, as almost as an afterthought, the scientists were like, hey, could you guys take selfies on your walk? And initially the selfies showed the face of the awe-walker in the middle, like we have, you know, right in the middle. But as the walks progressed, the background got bigger and the person’s face got smaller. And what this suggested to the scientists is that they were becoming more curious about their place in the bigger world. 

36:38
Erin
Right. 

36:38
Caroline
As opposed to all the anti awe devices that are teaching us simply that we are the center of attention, like our phone and our computer, that we are completely in control, that the outer world almost doesn’t exist. So yeah, the awe is really good for us. 

36:58
Erin
They had a broader perspective and it showed up in their photo. 

37:02
Caroline
They call it the small self perspective. And what it is, it’s a healthy understanding of your own place in the world. You are not the center of the universe. And guess what? That’s okay. Awe walkers are. They feel more in awe of like the big night sky or the huge Grand Canyon or the tiny flower. So what I really learned to get back to your question. Fulfillment is a big feeling that can come even from small moments. You don’t have to run into a fire, you don’t have to paraglide off a mountain. You can just be awestruck by, look at things with fresh childlike eyes and be sort of renewed by that. And that is one of the biggest things I learned. 

37:53
Caroline
And of course, as I don’t think I ever could have understood that as I when I was young, because we’re not really built for that. We’re not supposed to understand that really. But age, I have a real reverence for just smaller moments. They just are more powerful for me. 

38:13
Erin
This actually came up for me the other day because one of the things I talk about in some of the writing is the difference between happiness and fulfillment. So happiness being this high, short term, you know, peaks, it’s a great feeling. It’s a feeling that’s, you know, normal for our human experience and fulfillment being more of this strong, steady undercurrent of contentment, satisfaction, well being. I think for me this notion of awe is beginning to replace some of those earlier peaks of joy. And there’s a bit of analogy there with what you were describing at the very beginning. So we’ve come full circle here in our conversation, which is great, but around, you know, those adrenaline spikes that maybe you got around adventures in your earlier years, and then, you know, what you’re looking for out of your adventures later in life. 

39:10
Erin
But I found that as an example, a couple weeks ago, I was in Mexico, and I kept seeing these butterflies, so vibrantly colored. And we don’t have butterflies that look like that where I live. And I would just find myself just in awe. Like, this didn’t take me getting up on a wing of an airplane. 

39:33
Caroline
Don’t do that. 

39:35
Erin
Kind of want to now, but no, it was just being present enough to observe the absolute magic of nature and just allow yourself to feel the power of that. That wonder. And I think that. I guess my question to you is, would you agree that awe becomes more important as we age? And, you know, is that something. Is that kind of the new happy? Is the deeper satisfaction you get out of a feeling like awe? 

40:13
Caroline
I mean, I am new to awe. I’m not new to awe, actually, because when I looked back, I realized that a lot. I had been sort of becoming more about awe, but I didn’t have a word for it. So, for instance, I do. I fly. I fly. I used to fly hang gliders with motors, and I used to fly paragliders. And I used to just love, like, rough air and just be like, I hit some really rough air. But as I got older, I was like, yeah, I don’t like that anymore. I would wax. Wax about, on about the colors of the sky or the leopard sharks I saw in the ocean below when I flew. And I didn’t. I thought I was getting boring, to be honest. 

40:52
Caroline
And what I’ve realized now is, no, I was more in tune with my own awe and the beauty of awe. It’s a bit of a practice. So this instruction to look at things with fresh, childlike eyes, I think was key for those walkers. And so you can give yourself that instruction. But I also found that just going outside provokes awe in a way. Like, it helps us. So if you’ve hung out with bird watchers, they are awestruck by the same tiny brown bird that they see all the time. And I love that. Like, that capacity is so beautiful, and we are better primed to grab that. So it is. I think it’s vital for who we are now. And I’m really grateful that I came upon this idea during the writing of the book. 

41:45
Erin
Yeah, it’s almost a muscle that we have to practice and flex regularly. 

41:50
Caroline
And the components of it are to try to be present. And then I guess the access childlike wonder. I mean, I don’t know that I say that mantra. And then gratitude. I think gratitude is big for promoting awe. The thing about happiness is you almost have to be sad too in order to really understand happiness. But I’m not sure that’s true with fulfillment. I think fulfillment is a steadier thing. You don’t need unfulfillment to be like, oh, now I really appreciate fulfillment. You know, it’s sort of more in foundational somehow. 

42:31
Erin
I love that. I’ve never thought of it that way before. 

42:34
Caroline
I wonder if fulfillment is also more than emotion. Maybe there’s something that’s so happy and sad. Those are emotions, those are chemicals interacting. Those are sort of reactions to maybe environmental issues. But maybe there’s something found more, just more integral. Like it’s a. It’s maybe biological as well as emotional as well as spiritual. I don’t know. So it’s this more steady thing. 

42:58
Erin
I think you’re onto something. I love that. See, you are wise after all. Oh, let’s build your equation. 

43:07
Caroline
Oh yeah, let’s. 

43:08
Erin
So here’s the exercise. This is. We’re going to have fun with this. We’re going to build a little mathematical equation to describe what fulfillment looks like to you in the present day. Okay. So the first thing we’re going to do is think about what an ideal week looks like for you and what you want to include in that. If I was to give you know, different blocks of time, how would you want to spend that time? And the test I often use for thinking about whether I include things is if there’s something that I like doing that if I didn’t have a chance to do it for a while, I would notice, I would feel out of equilibrium. So what are some of the things that you like to do in a given week? 

43:56
Caroline
Week? Well, can I do it by the day? I’m gonna. Yeah. So I like to wake up really early. I’ve actually been setting my alarm for 5:30 now and it’s actually pretty easy to get up and. And then I. I read for about an hour and my cats are usually on my lap and that time is key for me. Like I drink coffee and I read and sometimes I don’t even read that much. I do get distracted, but just having that time is it. It’s a habit for one. It’s something I look forward to but it starts my day and then I usually write and I have to go to the gym. I need to work out. So that’s key for me. That’s definitely all those things are things I notice if I don’t do it. Yeah, I need to have an animal around. 

44:59
Caroline
Oh, preferably more than one. I lost my dog sadly a couple months ago, and I am kind of that ridiculous person who sees a dog and wants to go hug it. And it’s a little bit embarrassing, but I am going to adopt a new dog soon. But I have to wait a little bit to my heart heals a little bit more. But I have cats that I love, so I really, in a week would need to go out on a little adventure. It doesn’t have to be a big adventure anymore. In fact, I don’t really need to travel to far off places. And a friend of mine, years ago, he said to me, he himself is a big adventure. He’s like, Caroline, why are you going off to Siberia, China, Vietnam, Borneo? The best wilderness is here in the United States. And he’s right. 

45:54
Caroline
It’s beautiful here. And especially where I live in the Bay Area. So a little adventure is often like maybe getting on my paddle board with one of my best friends, Sophia, and she’s in the book. We actually did a paddle board session to look for bioluminescence at the very end of the book. Yes, that’s a classic little adventure that I love. I mean, we were just an hour from our homes and we got out on our paddle boards in the middle of the night and it was exciting and cool and we found bioluminescence, which is what we set off to find. So doing something like that, or I’ll get on my one wheel and she’ll be on her bicycle, or I go sailing with my friend Beth, who’s learning to sail. So something outdoors in that week. 

46:43
Erin
And would you include. You’re mentioning friends along the way. Is friends something that we would include in your equation? 

46:49
Caroline
Definitely. I mean, I, since COVID have been – definitely that changed me. So I can imagine it changed like lots of especially younger people, but I am much less social because of it. And so I’m really. And it’s been. People are pointing out, I said, you know, Covid, I’m not social. They’re like, Covid’s been over for a little bit. Okay. So I realize I have to make some conscious changes, but I don’t see friends as much as I used to. I’m also Single. My. I have a. I had a wonderful. A wife for 15 years, and we. But we’re no longer together. But. But I’m always in touch with her. Yeah, so. So that. So that’s. That’s also kind of maybe a change, but not a bad change. We. We had a wonderful situation for a long time, and then. 

47:43
Caroline
So we didn’t, I guess, is what one could say. But. So. So then I’ll usually be in touch with her. And. And my. I have an identical twin and my mom and my brother. So at some point I’m always in touch with them too. 

47:56
Erin
So we’ll put family, too. 

47:58
Caroline
Yeah, the family. The ex wife, the twin, the. Yeah, family. They come. Yes, family. And, you know, honestly, those small ties are really important to me. What do they call them? They call them weak ties. I think the social touchstones of, like, going to your cafe or seeing your neighbor or, you know, running into a writing friend. All those actually are important to me. 

48:26
Erin
If we called that community, would that work? 

48:29
Caroline
Yeah, that would definitely. 

48:30
Erin
All right, so we’ve got reading, writing, exercise, animals, adventure, friends, family, and community. 

48:39
Caroline
Wow. Yeah, that sounds like a pretty. That isn’t that everybody’s. 

48:44
Erin
There’s some shared pieces there, but not necessarily. Yeah. 

48:48
Caroline
Okay. 

48:49
Erin
And then the other thing that might be more unique to you is the second step here is to get things in the right proportion. So just like a good recipe. Some things you want a little bit more of and some things less of. So like, if you think about a. A block of time being maybe an hour or so, how many blocks would you give to reading in a week? 

49:10
Caroline
I mean, I give seven for sure. Like every morning. 

49:13
Erin

What about writing? 

49:15
Caroline

That actually is less consistent, believe it or not, Even though, you know, I have published eight books, and I try to be disciplined, but I. I’m. I’m confident that I’ll get things done. So if it. If an adventure beckons, I don’t necessarily have to write that day. 

49:34
Erin
Yeah. What about on average, if you think about like an average week, how many blocks would you give to writing? 

49:40
Caroline
Oh, I mean, I probably do three or four hours a day. 

49:43
Erin
Five days a week. 

49:44
Caroline
Five days a week? Yeah. Let’s say four. Yeah. Four hours. 

49:49
Erin
Okay, so 20 hours for writing. Exercise?

49:53
Caroline
Two hours every day. I kind of maybe take one day off. I do take a day off. So three. So six days a week. 

50:02
Erin
It’s 12. Great. Animals? 

50:06
Caroline
Oh, that’s 24. 

50:08
Erin
24 block. 

50:11
Caroline
No, that’s a lot. Like, I can’t come. I don’t know how people come home and have no little animals sitting on the top of the stairs blinking because they got up from their nap to say hi to you. I don’t know any humans that do that. 

50:23
Erin
I’ve actually never had a pet in my whole life, so I think I could learn something from you because that’s the description. People just tell me about their vet bills and stuff and I’m like, oh, well, okay. When you describe it that way, that’s beautiful. I think what we can do is just put seven like just to represent kind of an interaction a day at least. Like just oh, what clearly said by. 

50:50
Caroline
A non pet owner. 

50:52
Erin
Sometimes what I do is I give the blocks, I make them big blocks. Okay, Big blocks. They’re not the same size as the other ones. 

51:00
Caroline
Well, let me just add one other thing that’s key to my day is that I do not hack my day. My day is not a rolling succession of events at all. In fact, I usually, I’m really cognizant as that I don’t. That I want a lot of breathing room and I see a lot of friends who are super busy and I have the luxury of not being busy just because of my lifestyle and I’m privileged and I’m not, you know, so I, I. But I still see a lot of people who pack in a lot of busyness and it almost starts to look like a distraction from something. So I don’t rush anywhere and I’m never. Well, I won’t say never, but I really, it’s a really important to me not to be late. And I never drive fast. 

51:47
Caroline
I don’t because I’m never, I’m not. I bet I embed a lot of time for any possibility an accident or whatever. So I’ve always. I’m often early to things, but I’m never not stressed by those logistics. And that is actually really important to me to not have all that logistical stress because it’s busy. It’s not important stress. Like there are stresses in our life that we have to encounter and then there’s a lot of control we have. And I. And part of it is I’ve seen very bad car accidents. I’ve seen people make very bad decisions when they’re rushed and as a firefighter. So that definitely has affected me. But also I see that for myself. It doesn’t feed me to be sort of busy and in a hurry and always, you know, going from one thing to the next. 

52:36
Erin
I love that you’re intentional about building that open space. I am into your equation. 

52:42
Caroline
So that’s wonderful. That might be something that we could put in as a mandate for my week. 

52:47
Erin
Yeah. 

52:48
Caroline
That is air. 

52:49
Erin
Yeah. Do you want to make that a big one, too? 

52:52
Caroline
That’s a big one. It’s a big one. It’s. It’s like. It’s really big. And it. It really keeps me centered. Yes. And open to awe. Because I’m more present. 

53:01
Erin
Yes. Well. And I think it’s worth pointing out as well that, you know, the equation is not a productivity exercise. It’s actually one that’s more about balance in terms of understanding what your unique recipe for fulfillment is, such that if you’re starting to feel off, you can kind of reflect back and say, is something missing lately? Oh, wait, I haven’t had. You know, the weather’s been terrible, and I haven’t gotten outside in the last few days. That’s probably it. Okay, so we’re at adventure. Do you want to give it a couple blocks a week or what do you think? 

53:44
Caroline
I mean, I wish I was a couple blocks a week, but I think I’m like. Well, I do go flying once or twice a week, so I guess that’s an adventure. I forgot. Yeah. Flying is key. I do fly a gyrocopter now that I learned in the book under the novelty section, I learned something new. And that was. So I do fly that once or twice a week as well as go sailing with my friend Beth. So let’s say two or three blocks of adventure. Yeah. 

54:12
Erin
Great. Friends. 

54:14
Caroline
I mean, that. Super important on an emotional level, but at the touch. Might just be texting at some point because I. My life feels pretty solitary. But that’s gonna change because. Because Covid’s over. 

54:28
Erin
That’s right. 

54:29
Caroline
Yeah. 

54:29
Erin
You got the memo. 

54:32
Caroline
So, yeah. Friends? I don’t know. Five. 

54:36
Erin
Great. What about family? 

54:40
Caroline
Five. I mean, I email, talk. Yeah. Yeah. 

54:48
Erin
And community. Those. Those. What did you call them? They were like soft connections. 

54:53
Caroline
They’re called weak ties, but I’ve never liked that. That. But it’s those sort of. Yeah. Those social connections. Those daily social connections that we sort of depend on. Yeah. I mean, those, I guess, are. I don’t know, three. I don’t know. I mean, that’s not like it doesn’t happen three times a week, but in terms of time, ultimately, if you put it all together, because they’re just little interactions. Like, you see this person, you nod. When I used to walk my dog, see the same people. That’s cool. 

55:28
Erin
It’s almost like you. You are looking for one A day, you know, and it doesn’t. We don’t have to say like it’s an hour. 

55:34
Caroline
On a day. Yeah. On a day. Yeah. 

55:37
Erin
Nice. Okay, so your equation. Seven reading, 20 writing, 12 exercise. Seven big block animals, seven big block for open space, two adventure, five friends, five family, and seven touch points for community. 

55:58
Caroline
Oh, two adventure. Wow, that is, that’s bad for my brand versus writing. 

56:04
Erin
Do you want to change it? 

56:05
Caroline
Do you feel like. No, that’s. 

56:08
Erin
You know what? I love it. This is, this is a great equation. Okay, let’s go into some rapid fire quick. 

56:16
Caroline
It’s been fun. 

56:17
Erin
Number one, finish the sentence. Fulfillment is?

56:22
Caroline

being in the moment. 

56:24
Erin

Give me an example of a small moment of joy you had in the last 24 hours. 

56:30
Caroline
I. My cat came and slept in my neck while I was reading, which is pretty common, but I love that. 

56:40
Erin
What is a book you read or podcast you listened to that changed the way you think? 

56:45
Caroline
Well, there’s two. So let me get, let me do one, which is there’s a book called the Stars by Ha Rey. And Ha Rey wrote Curious George, but he also did a star map of the sky. And I love the sky. And I’ve learned the constellations at a young age using this book because it redraws the stars. Because when you look at an old sort of star map, you’re like, that’s a lion, that’s a bear. 

57:15
Erin
Right. 

57:16
Caroline
They sort of, they just connect the dots. But what Ha Rey did is he connected them in a way that you’re like, oh, yeah, I see the lion in the sky now. 

57:23
Erin
Oh, neat. 

57:24
Caroline
Yeah. So that book really opened up the sky for me. So I’m a. I go and watch, try to watch every meteor shower. I try to see the aurora. If they tell us it’s going to come to California, I’ll stay up till God awful hours trying to do that. I love the sky. So that book really, when I was a teenager, opened me up to the sky. I recommend it to everybody. It’s such a great book. And then a friend of mine gave me The Things they Carried by Tim O’Brien, which reignited my. This is before I was a writer. I was. He and I were raft guides together and it reignited my passion for reading. 

58:07
Erin
Wow, that’s powerful. 

58:09
Caroline
Yeah, because college tends to kick that out of you, I think. And then I started reading again. 

58:17
Erin
Try reading math textbook. That’ll kill it. Oh, just a quick side note, because you reminded me with the example of your first book, I got the opportunity to see a full Solar eclipse this year. And talk about awe. That was like super cool. So if anyone has go for that. Well, actually, we had to drive 45 minutes. That was it. It passed right near where we are. And I went into it being prepared to be like, interested, but it was. It was awe entirely. So super cool. In one sentence, what does freedom look like to you? 

58:59
Caroline
For me, freedom has been taking off in my gyro and flying to the ocean to look for whales or dolphins. 

59:07
Erin
What is the coolest place you’ve visited? Because I know you’ve been a lot of places. Or if that’s too hard to answer, what is one place you visited that exceeded your expectations? 

59:18
Caroline
I. I mean, I did. I did go to Siberia, which is such a mythical place. We just think it’s gulags. And I was doing a rafting expedition with Russians. It was a Russian American rafting expedition in Siberia. And it was beautiful in vast ways that I had not considered could be possible because I just thought of it as a snowy climb. The other place that I’ve been that kind of blew my mind is that I was. For two summers, I was a volunteer ranger on Denali, which is in Alaska. 

59:55
Erin
Yeah. 

59:56
Caroline
And because my best friend at the time was a. He was a ranger there. And so I got to come and be a volunteer ranger, which may soon meant skiing around and kind of picking up trash, or we would ski to other places and we saw avalanches. We, you know, far off and vast glaciers. And we were stuck in a blizzard for. In our tents for a couple days. And just the landscape was so alien and intimidating and beautiful. So that place has always stayed with me. And also the toilet had the most amazing view ever. It was just like this toilet they built on the glacier that you would go to and sit on. It was like made of snow and it had an incredible view. 

01:00:48
Erin
Oh, my gosh. 

01:00:49
Caroline
What happened when we were there too is were responsible for some rescues and there had been a plane that crashed or that was disappeared, as they often do in Alaska. And so my friend Eric’s like, we’re going to go up in the helicopter to go look for this plane. And I was like, no problem. I have really good eyesight. And we get in this helicopter and it rises vertically and I suddenly see mountains and mountains for miles. I mean, for hundreds of miles. And I had never fully grasped just how wild and vast Alaska was until that moment. And I had flown into Nolly, but it must have been cloudier. But this was a completely clear day. And I thought oh yeah, we’re never going to find this plane and we did not. 

01:01:37
Erin
That expansiveness must have been awe inspiring too. What is something you do regularly to fill your own cup? 

01:01:48
Caroline
I regularly work out and that fills my cup. 

01:01:55
Erin
Nice. Caroline, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for your beautiful book. Thank you for your curious and brave outlook on life and for being a role model and for allowing us to come along on this journey with you. I really appreciate it. And thank you for being here. 

01:02:15
Caroline
Well, thank you for having this podcast. I really appreciate your questions. It’s awesome. Thank you. 
01:02:21
Erin
If you like this podcast and want to support it, tell a friend about it. You can also connect with Fulfillment Equation through Instagram or Facebook for updates on new episodes, daily doses of joy and fun travel tips. And if you are really into it, feel free to join the Fulfillment Equation community through the website at fulfillmentequation.com where you will get a weekly email with insider information and free resources to help you build more fulfillment into your own life. I hope you enjoyed the episode today. There’s lots more to come this season, so stay tuned.

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