Month: January 2026

There is a certain kind of transition that can catch you off guard, even at 60, when you have already lived through so much and learned what matters. It might be retirement, an empty nest, a move, a change in health, a relationship shifting, or simply that quiet inner feeling that something in your life is ready to become different.

Even when a transition is positive, it can still leave you feeling unsteady, emotional, or unsure of what your next step should be. In moments like these, what we often need is not more advice, but something we can return to, something simple and steady that helps us find our way back to ourselves as we move forward.

Three Words Full of Meaning

Listen. Pause. Act. is also the name of my upcoming teaching memoir, the book I am currently writing, because these three words became more than an idea to me. It was something I was already using to heal, but I did not realize it at the time.

In the thick of recovery from PTSD, I was not thinking in terms of a method or a framework. I was simply trying to get through each day, trying to stay steady in my own body, and trying to find my way back to myself. It was not until later, after the hardest parts had passed, and I finally had enough space to look back, that I could see I had been relying on the same three steps again and again.

Once I was able to name it, it became something I could return to with intention. Now it is a process I rely on any time I am in a transition, whether it is something small and ordinary or something big and life changing. It reminds me that I do not have to force clarity or rush forward. I can listen for what is true, pause long enough to create space, and then take the next right step when I am ready.

What It Means to Listen

Listening means turning your attention inward when life is shifting, because transitions and stress can blur your instincts and drown out your inner voice. It means noticing what you are feeling underneath your words and what your body is trying to communicate.

Many of us have spent decades overriding ourselves, staying strong, staying capable, and taking care of everyone else. Listening is the moment you stop and include yourself again. Sometimes what seems like anger is actually grief. Sometimes what feels like confusion is fear of making the wrong choice. Sometimes what you call laziness is simply exhaustion. Sometimes that stomach disruption is not random at all, but a message from your body asking you to pay attention. Listening does not fix everything, but it gives you honest information, and that honesty is where self-trust begins.

Pausing for Healing

The second step is Pause, and in my experience this is where healing becomes real in everyday life. When the nervous system has been through too much, even small moments can feel intense, and it becomes easy to react before you have a chance to breathe. The pause interrupts that old pattern and reminds you that you have choice.

I often tell myself a simple truth that has become a lifeline: if it is not life or death, there is no urgency. For me, meditation became one of the most powerful ways to practice the pause, because it taught me how to stay present with what I was feeling without immediately reacting, fixing, or running from it.

The pause does not have to be long. It can be three slow breaths. It can be stepping outside for a moment. It can be waiting before you answer a difficult message. It can be giving yourself permission to sleep on a decision. Pausing creates space, and in that space, you can feel your own wisdom again.

A phrase that helps me is I have time, I can sit with this. That one sentence can soften the body, lower the pressure, and keep you from stepping back into a version of yourself you have worked hard to outgrow.

Acting in Self-Respect

The third step is Act, but this kind of action is different from the way many of us have been conditioned to move through life. It is not rushed, performative, or driven by fear. It is grounded action that comes from self-respect. After you listen and pause, the next right step often becomes clearer, even if it is small.

Acting might look like setting a boundary without over explaining, asking for support instead of carrying everything alone, taking better care of your health, or choosing rest instead of forcing yourself through. Acting might look like writing something in your journal to help shift a belief, returning to the same truth again and again until it begins to feel possible.

Sometimes the most powerful action is telling the truth. Sometimes it is walking away from what drains you. Sometimes it is doing one kind thing for yourself and letting that be enough for today. Over time, these small actions become a new way of living, not because you are forcing change, but because you are building a life that fits who you are now.

Something to Return to After Change

What I love about Listen. Pause. Act. is that it respects and celebrates the wisdom you already carry. You do not need to be lectured through a transition, and you do not need to be pushed into transformation. You simply need something you can return to when life pulls you off center, because change is part of being human.

Old triggers can return. Family roles can tighten around you. Grief can reshape your days. Stress can flood the system and make you react in ways you do not recognize until afterward. This process offers a clear and compassionate path when you do not need more information. You need a way to come back to yourself in real time. Listen for what is true. Pause to create space. Act from the deepest part of your values, not your fear. What began as a quiet survival tool became the heart of my upcoming teaching memoir, Listen. Pause. Act., and it is a path I return to again and again.

If you are in a season of transition, you do not have to have all the answers right away. Change rarely comes with a clear map, and even the transitions we choose can stir up fear, grief, or doubt as we step into what is new. When you feel overwhelmed or unsure, let these three words guide you back: listen, pause, act.

You can begin again as many times as you need, and every time you do, you are finding your way forward with more steadiness, more clarity, and more peace.

Let’s Reflect:

Have you ever gone through a transition that left you feeling off balance, even when it was a good change? Is there something your body has been trying to tell you lately? Where in your life do you need to remind yourself, I have time, I can sit with this?

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Originally posted at: Kyle Richards’ Denim Shorts

When Mom was alive, there was a brief time when she had to leave her independent living community for a skilled nursing facility for rehab. I did not know then that the person sleeping three feet away could have significantly impacted her health outcomes.

The idea that your roommate could affect how long you live may sound dramatic – but a new study suggests it’s real. Research highlighted by McKnight’s Long-Term Care News found that more thoughtful roommate selection in nursing homes could reduce short-term mortality by more than 5%. Economists analyzed 2.6 million nursing home stays and discovered compatibility matters profoundly, particularly concerning cognitive status. While facilities worldwide increasingly move toward private rooms – a trend accelerated by COVID-19, many older adults still face shared accommodations.

This raises a question that rarely gets enough attention: What should we consider when a move into senior living involves sharing a room with a stranger?

This issue doesn’t just apply to large nursing homes in the U.S. It’s equally relevant in assisted living, memory care, and the growing number of small, home-like residences with 9–10 residents found across Europe, Canada, Australia, and parts of Asia. Different systems, same human reality.

Why Roommates Matter So Much

Roommates influence daily rhythms: sleep, noise, light, visitors, even emotional tone. For older adults – especially those who are frail, cognitively impaired, or newly relocated – these factors can compound stress. Stress affects appetite, immunity, mobility, and mood. Over time, those effects can become medical.

The study’s takeaway is not that a “bad roommate” causes death, but that mismatched living arrangements amplify vulnerability. In contrast, compatibility can support stability, routine, and a sense of safety – all critical during the first 90 days after a move, when risk is highest.

Key Questions Every Consumer and Caregiver Should Ask

If you or someone you love may have an unknown roommate, ask these questions before signing anything:

How Are Roommates Matched?

Is it random, based on availability, or intentional? Facilities should consider sleep schedules, cognitive status, medical issues, mobility, hearing, and social preferences. If the answer is “we don’t really match,” that’s a red flag.

The research reveals an asymmetric relationship that challenges conventional wisdom about room assignments. Residents with dementia showed significantly lower mortality when paired with cognitively healthy roommates, benefiting from informal monitoring and behavioral support their roommates provide. However, cognitively healthy residents experienced no such benefit from dementia roommates and actually fared better in private rooms. Which seems logical, right?

What Happens If the Match Doesn’t Work?

What is your policy for changing roommate assignments if compatibility issues arise? How quickly can moves happen? Is there a trial period? Are room changes treated as routine – or as disruptions to avoid? Facilities that resist roommate changes may prioritize administrative convenience over resident wellbeing.

How Are Conflicts Identified?

Staff who know residents well will notice subtle signs: withdrawal, agitation, disrupted sleep. Ask how often staff check in and how concerns are escalated. In shared settings, particularly smaller group homes, what staff-to-resident ratios ensure adequate supervision? The research found effects were twice as large in understaffed facilities, suggesting roommate dynamics become especially critical where professional oversight is inadequate.

Can Families Be Involved?

In many countries, family input is considered optional rather than essential. It shouldn’t be. Families often know triggers, habits, and preferences that residents may not articulate.

What About Private Space?

Even in shared rooms or small homes, residents need control over something – lighting, curtains, headphones, or quiet hours. Ask what autonomy looks like day to day.

Small Homes Aren’t Automatically Safer

The rise of small, household-style senior living promises intimacy and personalization. But fewer residents doesn’t guarantee better matching. In fact, incompatibility can feel more intense in close quarters. Across Europe, where smaller care homes have become increasingly common, families have learned that intimate settings amplify both positive and negative interpersonal dynamics. What works beautifully can quickly become untenable if compatibility issues emerge.

Globally, regulation of these homes varies widely. In some countries, they operate outside traditional oversight. That makes proactive questioning even more important.

Your Rights and Advocacy Options

Regardless of location, remember that most care facilities depend on your satisfaction and payment. You have leverage. If initial room assignments prove problematic, document specific concerns – disrupted sleep, safety issues, emotional distress – and request changes in writing. In many jurisdictions, residents have legal rights to appropriate accommodations that protect their wellbeing.

The Private Room Alternative

When financially feasible, private rooms eliminate roommate-related risks entirely. Many countries now offer subsidies or tax benefits for private accommodations in recognition of both dignity and infection control benefits. The COVID-19 pandemic prompted policy discussions worldwide about phasing out multi-bed rooms.

Moving Forward with Confidence

The roommate decision deserves the same careful consideration you’d give to selecting the facility itself. Tour at different times, observing how staff manage shared spaces. Ask current families about their experiences with room assignments. Trust your instincts – if a proposed roommate situation feels wrong, speak up immediately rather than hoping things improve.

A Broader Global Lesson

Around the world, aging systems are under pressure: staffing shortages, cost constraints, and growing demand. Roommate matching may sound like a “soft” issue – but this research reframes it as a public health concern.

Older adults are not just beds to be filled efficiently. They are people entering one of the most vulnerable transitions of their lives.

The lesson for consumers and caregivers is clear: where and with whom someone lives matters. Asking better questions about roommates isn’t being difficult – it’s being protective.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Have you ever lived with a roommate? Were you compatible? What do you think is the importance of roommates in senior living facilities?

The idea didn’t come from a design studio.

It came from my crooked stove.

I live in an old house – the kind with character, which is another way of saying nothing is quite level. One evening, I noticed my frying pan tilting slightly to one side. Oil pooled where it wasn’t supposed to. Food cooked unevenly.

At first, it was just annoying.

Then I noticed something else.

The food on the lower side cooked faster. The food on the higher side cooked slower. Same pan. Same burner. Different results.

That’s when the thought landed – not gently, but clearly:

Why Are All Frying Pans Flat If Heat Never Really Is?

I was standing there in gym shorts, trying to get dinner on the table without turning it into a production, when I realized the crooked stove had accidentally solved a problem I’d been fighting for years.

Chicken wants high heat.

Vegetables don’t.

Fat splatters everywhere.

Every frying pan assumes everything cooks the same way – and it doesn’t. So instead of fixing the stove, I started sketching the pan.

What if the pan was tilted by design? What if angle – not just material or size – determined how food cooked?

That crooked stove changed everything.

What began as a personal annoyance turned into the iLean-Pan – a sloped frying pan designed to create multiple heat zones in one pan, allowing food to cook at different speeds with less mess and less stress.

I didn’t set out to become an inventor.

I just wanted dinner to work.

So here are the lessons I learned from this whole ordeal.

1. If You Have an Idea – Act

Ideas don’t get better with time. They get quieter. We talk ourselves out of them. We say things like:

• Someone else probably already did this.
• I’m too old to start now.
• I wouldn’t even know where to begin.

But most real ideas don’t arrive fully formed. They show up as irritation. If something keeps bothering you, chances are it’s not just your problem.

When I started talking about my tilted pan idea, people said:

• “That happens to me all the time.”
• “I hate juggling multiple pans.”
• “I just want cooking to be easier.”

That’s when I realized something important. I didn’t solve a problem for the market. I solved a problem for myself – and the market recognized it.

You don’t need a perfect plan to begin. You need motion.

One sketch led to another. One conversation led to a prototype. One decision led to filing a patent.

None of it happened because I waited until I felt ready. It happened because I started.

2. Put Your Idea Out in the World

Acting didn’t mean quitting my life or suddenly knowing what I was doing. It meant taking one concrete step – and then another.

Those steps eventually led me to an appearance on season 21 of the Blox, not yet released. Filing a patent and learning all about metallurgy and welding and molds.

To a big step in January 2026 when I launched the iLean-Pan to the world, on Kickstarter, a platform designed specifically for ideas that don’t yet have a proven path. It’s where founders test real demand, not opinions.

If you’ve never backed a Kickstarter before, here’s what it really is: you’re not buying something off a shelf. You’re backing a founder. Kickstarter allows creators to produce small batches, test demand, and bring an idea to life with the support of early believers. Backers help fund the first production run and, in return, receive the product once it’s made. It’s not retail – it’s partnership. It’s how ideas move from “almost” to “real.”

Once I committed to that step, the real work began.

3. Be Prepared to Be Challenged

I coach and mentor entrepreneurs for both fun and for payment for services. And, actually, being the entrepreneur that created a physical prototype took more than I expected.

Let’s be honest about entrepreneurship. An entrepreneur isn’t someone with a logo and a laptop at a café. An entrepreneur is someone building something that doesn’t yet work – publicly.

By definition, entrepreneurship involves risk. No proven model. No guaranteed customers. No roadmap. Until revenue exists, you are a one-person band. And you have to decide how to get there.

I didn’t just invent a pan – I had to learn everything around it.

• I learned CAD (Computer Assisted Design) to communicate with engineers, designers and fabricators.
• I learned how to do 3-D printing to make my first model.
• I learned basic metallurgy so I could understand heat conductivity and how to slope the pan.
• I built my own website.
• I learned manufacturing language, packaging, patents, and crowdfunding economics.

None of this was familiar territory.

But here’s the advantage of being older: we’re no longer afraid of being beginners. We’ve already rebuilt our lives more than once. Learning something new doesn’t threaten who we are – it expands it.

Still, the challenges are real.

You’ll get conflicting advice. You’ll be questioned. You’ll be underestimated. And there will be long stretches where no one is clapping.

That’s often where people stop – not because they failed, but because encouragement didn’t arrive when expected.

4. The Toughest Lesson: The People You Expect to Help Usually Don’t

This was the hardest lesson for me. We assume the people closest to us – or the ones cheering the loudest – will be the ones who show up. They usually aren’t.

Some don’t understand what you’re building. Some are uncomfortable with change. Some simply can’t see you in a new role.

That doesn’t make them bad people. But it does mean you can’t build your courage around their approval. Support often comes from unexpected places – strangers, fellow entrepreneurs, people you meet halfway through the journey.

I learned to stop waiting for validation and start trusting momentum. Entrepreneurship later in life isn’t about proving anything. It’s about answering something inside that refuses to go quiet.

For me, that voice said: I’m not done yet.

Not with learning. Not with creating. Not with contributing.

Sometimes a crooked stove isn’t a flaw. It’s a clue.

What’s Next

If you’d like to follow this chapter – or support it – you can find the iLean-Pan on Kickstarter here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ilean-pan/sloped-frying-pan-tilted-by-design.

However this unfolds, I know one thing for certain: I’m still walking forward.

And at this stage of life, that feels like exactly the point.

Let’s Start a Conversation:

What causes have you supported? Do you think entrepreneurship in later life should be pursued? What inventions have made your life better?

If your mind were a compass, a curious thing,
Would it spin toward old stories with a sorrowful ring?
Would it point toward the past with a dramatic insist,
Crying, “Look what they did!” with a clenched fist?

For thoughts are the seeds that we scatter each day,
And life is the garden that grows what we say.
Whisper “I’m powerless,” then watch the vines creep,
Declare “I choose,” feel your courage wake from sleep.

Now pain wears a costume—oh, pain loves a role!
With a villain, a plot twist, a starring control.
“It happened to me!” says the mind with a cry,
And the world nods politely and lets the tears fly.

But hush now—lean in—here’s the radical view,
A truth with some sparkle and spiritual glue:
There are no helpless victims, abandoned or small,
There are choosers and thinkers and creators—that’s all.

Yes, things may occur that feel sharp or unfair,
But meaning is chosen—it’s breathed into air.
Power lives not in blame or in stories retold,
But in now, where your choices are fearless and bold.

In power is freedom, unbuttoned and bright,
In freedom is joy—soft and steady and light.
Joy doesn’t shout with a parade or a drum,
It slips in unnoticed when struggle goes numb.

Have you felt it, those moments that make zero sense?
Nothing improved, yet your heart felt immense.
No trophy was earned, no applause filled the room,
Yet happiness bloomed like a late afternoon.

That’s joy doing joy, without reason or proof,
When the mind steps aside and opens the roof.
It visits when judgment loosens its grip,
When you stop replaying that old sinking ship.

So what if today you chose one new thought?
Not wrestled or battled or tightly overwrought,
But gently replaced an old script that you knew:
“I’m free in this moment to choose something new.”

When anger comes knocking with a megaphone shout,
Just thank it for coming—and show it back out.
When blame sets the stage for its dramatic scene,
You bow and reply, “That’s no longer my dream.”

This isn’t denial or glittery cheer,
It’s spiritual backbone—it’s steering from here.
It’s bold. It’s empowering. Grounded. Awake.
It’s choosing your mind for your life’s own sake.

For life follows mind like a shadow at noon,
Or a dance partner matching your movement and tune.
Shift thought into truth, then courage and grace,
And watch how your world subtly changes its face.

Change your mind—not the past, not the who, not the why—
Just the lens through which all is allowed to pass by.
And life will respond, as it always has done,
“Keep changing the lens” and shine forth like the sun.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Would you say you’re a more positive or a more negative person? What affects your mindset the most? Have you tried swaying your thoughts in a direction you know will bear fruit in your life?