The Secret of My Success

When ‘Having It All’ Isn’t Enough - E043 Alese Johnston

• Erin • Episode 43

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IN THIS EPISODE 

What would you do if the life you built… no longer felt like yours? 

In this powerful and deeply human conversation, I sit down with Alese Johnston, who made a bold and unconventional decision at 69 years old—she walked away from a life that looked beautiful on the outside but felt misaligned on the inside. 

This isn’t a story about loss. 
 It’s a story about truth, courage, and what becomes possible when you finally listen to yourself. 

If you’ve ever felt like you’re living a life that looks right but doesn’t feel right, this episode will hit home. 

✨ In This Episode, We Explore: 

The quiet realization that your life no longer fits 
 Why “having it all” can still leave you unfulfilled 
 The courage it takes to walk away—from identity, comfort, and expectations 
 What it actually means to “start over” later in life 
 How curiosity can become your compass 
 Letting go of everything that no longer aligns (literally and emotionally) 
 Redefining success on your own terms 

🔑 Key Takeaway: 

Reinvention isn’t reckless—it’s honest. 
 And it’s never too late to choose a life that truly feels like your own. 

💭 Questions to Reflect On: 

Where in my life am I settling for “good enough”? 
 What feels out of alignment that I’ve been avoiding? 
 If I trusted myself fully… what would I change? 

Guest Bio - Alese Johnston 

Alese Johnston is a visionary entrepreneur, investor, and advocate for redefining aging with vitality. As co-founder of StorageTrader, the first platform enabling fractional investment in self-storage facilities, she has spent over a decade in the self-storage industry. She shares her expertise in her book, Beyond the Locks. 

Alese is a seasoned speaker who thrives on engaging audiences with thought-provoking insights. She has spoken on stage at the ISS World Expo in Las Vegas, the Exit Planners National Conference, and various industry events. Her ability to blend expertise with an engaging, relatable style makes her a sought-after voice on entrepreneurship, investment strategies, and navigating personal reinvention. 

Beyond business, Alese is deeply passionate about longevity, healthspan, and the power of reinvention. She founded the Fabulous70 Challenge, a movement proving that turning 70 is not a time to slow down—but to speed up, take on new experiences, and challenge outdated beliefs about aging. 

An experienced mentor and investor, Alese serves as board chair emeritus of the Arkansas Angel Alliance and consults with startups at The Forge and The Venture Center in Little Rock. She has represented Arkansas investors at the Angel Capital Association’s National Conference and is a graduate of the ACA’s Angel University. 

Alese’s leadership and impact have been widely recognized, including being named an Arkansas Business Power Woman (2021) and one of About You Magazine’s Most Intriguing Women (2023). She is an alum of Leadership Greater Little Rock (Class 21) and Leadership Arkansas (Class 12). 

When she’s not speaking, writing, or mentoring, Alese can be found hiking, dominating Beat Saber, rocking out to her favorite music, and indulging in her love of sci-fi films. Above all, she is a proud mom and grandmother, embracing life with curiosity, adventure, and a relentless pursuit of what’s next. 

🌿 Connect with Erin Currin: 

If this episode resonated with you, you’ll love the work we do inside my programs designed to help you reconnect with what truly matters and create a life that reflects it. 

👍 If This Spoke to You: Like the video Subscribe for more conversations like this Share with someone who might need to hear it 

🎙 About the Podcast: The

Want to learn more about exploring what it means to live a fulfilling life?
Subscribe to the YouTube channel here.

Erin Currin:

You're 69 years old, all of a sudden you get a wild hair, and you just decide that life needs to be different.

Alese Johnston:

I was walking through my gorgeous five bedroom house, you know, just kind of casually, running my hand over the furniture and pieces of art over the wall, and looking around and going, this is beautiful. There's nothing holding me here anymore. I felt like they were holding me back.

Erin Currin:

Hello and welcome to The Secret of My Success, where we explore what it means to live a fulfilling life. I am your host. Erin Currin, thank you so much for joining us today. If you have not already, please subscribe to our channel, and if you enjoyed today's conversation, give us a like today. I am speaking with Elise Johnston. She is a visionary entrepreneur who is redefining aging with Vitality. Elise is deeply passionate about longevity and the power of reinvention. She founded the fabulous 70 challenge, a movement proving that turning 70 is not the time to slow down, but to actually speed up and take on new experiences and challenge outdated beliefs about aging. Above all, Elise is a proud mom and grandmother embracing life with curiosity, adventure and a relentless pursuit of what's next. Please help me welcome Elise. So Elise, welcome to the program. Thanks for so much for joining us.

Alese Johnston:

Thank you. It's a delight to be here. I'm thrilled to get to meet you.

Erin Currin:

Thank you so much. So where I normally start out our conversation is asking if there's a point in your life where you had a paradigm shift, or you're dealing with a challenge, something that you overcame and that you'd like to share with the audience. Where'd you like to start?

Alese Johnston:

Absolutely so I am a little older than what a lot of people think, and when I was 69 I, like, totally upended my life. I realized that I was growing and changing, and I needed to, like, create a new life to allow all that to happen. So when I was 69 I sold the company. I started a company. I got divorced, and I set this giant challenge for myself to do 70 new things the year I turned 70, just to shake things up.

Erin Currin:

Wow, that's crazy. So saying you're 69 years old, all of a sudden you get a wild hair, and you just decide that life needs to be different, like, How did you arrive at that point?

Alese Johnston:

So I had been working up to I've looking back over the arc of my life, I can see that every few years I feel like I've outgrown myself, and I have to, like, I'm constantly trying to learn new things. It's just my MO but sometimes going through all that learning means you have to, like, reinvent yourself to grow in to this new version of who you are. And so I went through a phase of that just before I turned 70, and I was walking through my gorgeous five bedroom house one afternoon, you know, just kind of casually running my hand over the furniture and pieces of art over the wall and looking around and going, This is beautiful. There's nothing holding me here anymore. I have a mortgage. I have a marriage license, but at that point in my life, those were just pieces of paper. To me, they didn't carry any extra meaning. They were I felt like they were holding me back, and I could undo all that, so I sat on the path to do that and completely upended my life and became, or at least started on the path to becoming the person I am today. It was a very interesting process to just let go of some things that had taken me decades to build that had been goals and aspirations at one point, and to realize that they were no longer the goal that was time to walk away and. Was an interesting experience. I got there, I think, by spending a lot of time with the therapist who taught me to journal endlessly and write down what I was really thinking and ask myself some important questions, what do I need? What's happening to me today? What do I feel? And up until my point, up until that point in life, I have not spent a lot of time asking myself, What do I feel and what do I need? Like, how often in this society do we spend time with those questions?

Erin Currin:

Hardly at all

Alese Johnston:

not taught to do that.

Erin Currin:

No,

Alese Johnston:

we're taught to think about what our spouse needs, what our kids need, what our clients need, what our business partners need. We don't spend time with what we need.

Erin Currin:

Isn't that interesting? Because what I'm hearing is something that I think is very true. I just created a thing called the values reset. It's a five day challenge where I get people in touch with their five core three core values. And as you're saying, We're taught to dial into what other people need. It's all of us, right? Yeah. So everybody is taught to look for what everybody else needs, but nobody knows what anybody personally needs. And so if somebody wants to know what I need, how do I tell you what I really want?

Alese Johnston:

If you haven't thought about it,

Erin Currin:

that's crazy.

Alese Johnston:

How do your kids or your best friend or your spouse give you what you need if you don't even know what that is?

Erin Currin:

And how can you give it to them if they don't know what they need?

Alese Johnston:

Right? It's really interesting question. I think we need to spend some time with that. We need to give ourselves permission. It is not selfish to say, I need x, whatever that is, and you know it's going to create some uproar in your life once you embrace doing that. It certainly did in mine, because there's some things I needed that were not fully acknowledged. I need to grow and learn more than anything else, constantly looking for something new, and when you're married to someone who does not value growth, then that becomes a problem to both of you. It held me back. It made him unhappy, constantly annoying the hell out of him. So, you know, you just have to think about how what your needs affect other people. So that's a whole other complication in life, but it's led to an interesting journey, because one of the things I need is to not be boring. Hate being boring. I want to spend time with friends, laughing and telling good stories. That's like, really important to me. Friday night, happy hour, hearing everybody tell about their adventures for the week is pure gold for me. So one of the things that I like to tell people about, and has become a big focus of my life, is the fabulous 70 challenge that I set for myself.

Erin Currin:

That's fantastic,

Alese Johnston:

as I realized that I didn't want to be boring. I read this article in the Wall Street Journal with this gentleman who was just turning 60, and highlighted the fact that he realized that he actually was boring. He didn't have any of these stories to tell for his friends. He was repeating himself. And you know, that's never good when you tell people the same story over and over again. And I said, Oh, I hear you, brother. I feel your pain, yeah. And he challenged himself to do. 60 new things the year he was 60. And I said, Alright, game on. Let's do this. So I committed to a few friends that I would do 70 new things the year I was 70. That's no small undertaking. Have you ever sat down to do 70 of anything it that's more than one week. So that was interesting in itself, when finding things that I've never done, because I have not led a boring life up till now. So that was a bit of a challenge, and then being accountable to actually do it was a little daunting. So I decided to do blog posts and write about each one of my new adventures, and put them out in public so that friends and family would read about them and hold me accountable for actually doing them. So that turned into a thing. It's now a website called fabulous seventy.com and I actually did it. I got all 70 done before my 71st birthday. I was real damn proud of that. It was a close call. We got down to the wire and there were a few too many left, but it helped him in the accountability. So I learned a lot from that experience. I had not previously realized how much I held myself back, even though I sat here and just told you how much I value growth, I will make excuses that takes too much time. It costs too much money. Sounds like fun, but I don't want to do it by myself. I don't even pay to go do it with always some lame excuse for why you're not getting out and fully living your life, but being accountable in public, in this particular fashion, forced me to let go of all those excuses. It's like I, it doesn't matter I, I don't care that. I don't have time. I've got to get this done like the clock is ticking. Sister, you know, so throwing out the excuses changed who I am as a person. It taught me to embrace the adventure and find ways to get things done. Find a way to make the time, find the money, go do it by myself, or rope some friend into going with me. You know, you just have to throw out all those. I can't paradigms. And so now I find myself much more open to doing new things. It's just become part of who I am. It's like people walk up to me, they haven't seen for a while, and they go, What have you done new lately?

Erin Currin:

Now that's what you're known for.

Alese Johnston:

Yes, that's my identity at this point. Wow, which is a lot of fun

Erin Currin:

I can imagine. Do you mind if I ask how old you are now?

Alese Johnston:

I am 71 and a half.

Erin Currin:

Okay, all right, cool. So this is a fairly recent experience. And, wow, that's really amazing.

Alese Johnston:

And you know what the best the thing that really filled my heart was people would call me up, catch me at a coffee shop wherever, and tell me what they had done new what adventure they had been on or were going on, and one that's fabulous because it makes for a lot of conversation. Oh, yeah, you know how people struggle to come up with something to talk about other than the weather, and this is an instant conversation starter that has nothing to do with how hot it is here in Arkansas.

Erin Currin:

Wow.

Alese Johnston:

So that was good, and it got people in my social circle interested in having their own adventures, which I thought was pretty cool.

Erin Currin:

That is really cool. You know, a few minutes ago, you were talking about wrapping up your marriage because you were talking about this need for growth, and your husband had didn't have that same need. And I think you know what you had said was you were talking about how your needs impact somebody else. And it's like, whether we know we have that need or not, it's impacting somebody else, yeah, because it's like, you could just say, Well, you know, I have this need for growth, but it's really not very expressed, and La, la, la, but like you're discontent and he's discontent, and nobody knows why. Then you go on this soul searching, journaling, kind of an odyssey, and you start to see the things that light you up, and then it becomes really bright, and now you're this beacon for all of these other people,

Alese Johnston:

right, which that's out from underneath the basket it was hiding under.

Erin Currin:

Yes, mm hmm, which, that's an absolutely beautiful thing.

Unknown:

Yes, it is. It's a lot of fun.

Erin Currin:

So tell me, like all like you're 69 years old, you're sitting here, you've decided that you're getting rid of your pieces of paper and you're going to grab some other pieces of paper and like, the mortgage and the marriage are out. And now here's that 70. At 70, where do you start? Like, you know, what was the process like for coming up with 70 different things?

Alese Johnston:

It was a challenge. You know, like everything I had a spreadsheet.

Erin Currin:

Of course,

Alese Johnston:

I live in dub spreadsheet.

Erin Currin:

You're speaking my language.

Alese Johnston:

I thought I might be spreadsheet in a database. Otherwise I can't get by. I i sat down and just started throwing some things on a list. Yeah, and it's like some of them were really aspirational, some of them were low hanging fruit and and as it turns out, the more I talked about it, the more people would send me ideas. So it was very much a participatory exercise that made it a lot of fun. Now it would have been even better if some people had, like, sent me checks to go with their ideas. But no, I mean, you know, if you if you want me to go, like to Europe, and saying igloo, you gotta help a sister out, I mean, but you know, all kidding aside, you just kind of you like you work through it. It's like this one is going to cost me like 50 cents, and this one's going to cost 10 grand, and you just start working out the budget and figure it out. And the same thing with the time, like some of them just happen. I remember I was always going out to happy hour on Fridays with I had standing Happy Hour date with friend of mine, and we would go to the oyster bar. And in all of my decades of going to the oyster bar, oddly, I had never eaten an oyster because I hate them. But I was sitting there one night, I was going, Dude, I just need to eat an oyster. It's something I've never done before, so that was easy. It just kind of like organically happened, yeah, and I had an excuse to try food that I had intentionally not eaten before, and I won't do it again because I did not enjoy the experience, but I can now say I've done it. Whoa. I think,

Erin Currin:

I think that's the other important part. We're not saying do 70 things that are really going to thrill you if you've never done it before. How the hell do you know?

Alese Johnston:

you don't, you don't. And the other thing is, you don't have to do them again. True. There. There's some things that I did that I had not done before because I I couldn't commit to, like, doing them over and over and over again, and so you don't let yourself do something just once, like I took one airplane flying lesson. Oh, would I like to go do that every week? Yes, ma'am. Sign me up, but we're back to that time thing. It doesn't fit in right now. So I did it once without having to commit to doing it all the time. Like I went to one pole dancing class. I didn't sign up for, like, a whole series of them. I didn't go every week. Would I love to Yes, but you just you give yourself permission to do things just once without making a long term commitment to them. And that's fun in itself. Just little samplers.

Erin Currin:

I was going to say that that must have been a really freeing experience to give yourself permission to just go once,

Alese Johnston:

yeah, it's an interesting paradigm, and I didn't realize that that was a thing previously. You know, it's like you You learn a lot setting out on this journey.

Erin Currin:

I, you know, go ahead.

Alese Johnston:

I said, now I'm trying to figure out which of those experiences I would like to do on the regular and like incorporate them into ongoing fun. But I haven't quite, haven't quite gotten there yet. I've been too busy with actual work to make time for that.

Erin Currin:

I think that that's a wonderful problem to have, if you don't mind what I say. I think so yeah, because problems, I certainly don't have an experience of you from before, but the person that I'm speaking with is vivacious and alive and generative and just, I mean, you do you stop smiling. But

Alese Johnston:

yes, I do, but you're just fun to talk to. So why?

Erin Currin:

Thank you. I also think that it's a really powerful thing that you're pointing to with the accountability piece. Talk to me a little bit about what that was like, because a few minutes ago, we're talking about your journaling like, what do I need? What do I feel like? What happened today? Well, the what happened today? Now, you got all kinds of different answers. What do I feel and what do I need? You're starting to get in touch with these things, and it sounds like you were probably a fairly connected person before this. How is the accountability piece played into all of this

Alese Johnston:

That's been an interesting learning in and of itself. I do not like to be told what to do. I don't take it real well. But when I was in a visage group, one of the things that we learned was to humble ourselves to being held accountable. Um, and I learned over the course of that experience that it's something that I often need in order to stay engaged with something, I need to know I'm accountable to another human. I will get up at six o'clock in the morning and go to to the gym if I'm accountable to you to show up. But if I'm not, my ass is probably staying in bed because it's too early. You know,

Erin Currin:

I can appreciate that 1,000%

Alese Johnston:

I actually am blessed to have a long term accountability buddy that I get together with every Monday over coffee, and we have a list of things that we hold each other accountable for getting done, and so going through that has taught me the value of being accountable to another human for the things that come out of my mouth that I say I'm going to do. I did the journaling not because I enjoy doing it, but because I knew that my therapist was going to want to see my journal. It was homework. The day before our session, I had to email it to her, so, you know, I'm always going to get my homework done. I didn't want to have to explain why I didn't do it? So I've just I've come to learn that that I don't accept accountability that somebody else imposes on me, but if I humble myself and invite someone to hold. Accountable, then I will absolutely get it done, whatever it is. The other thing I learned doing the fabulous simity challenge is that accountability doesn't have to be a painful drudge. I write those blog posts every week turned out to be a lot of fun. I enjoyed it. And so if you can find a way to create that accountability structure for yourself that is fun, that's Nirvana,

Erin Currin:

truly, absolutely, truly, are you familiar with the Miracle Morning?

Alese Johnston:

I've heard about it. It's, yeah, yeah.

Erin Currin:

It's a book by Hal Elrod. And I was introduced to it in November of 2019 I just come off of a personal development course. Went to a marketing weekend to learn some cool stuff about building my coaching practice. And Hal was one of the people who spoke at this event, and he was sharing his story and how he had come up with this process of creating your morning for yourself before your day starts. And I thought I need this because it's meditation, it's affirmations, it's visualization, it's exercise, it's reading, it's journaling, it's all of these amazing things, and it's also relatively flexible. So I took it and I made it my own, but I also gamified it, because finding a good accountability partner can be a little challenging. I don't know if you've ever had this experience, but like, I've tried having friends as accountability partners, and we're usually good for a couple of days while the fire is lit, but then once one of us slides, the other goes, Oh, thank God. I don't want to do that anymore, right? That is not a good accountability partner. No, um, what I did for this miracle morning is I numbered the pages of my journal so that when I missed a day I had to start back at 00. Ouch, painful, ouch, yeah, the whole like, you know, if I skipped a morning, the whole thing reset back to nothing. So I did it like weekdays and weekends, and I was so proud of myself, because I think it was like I missed like four days at the beginning, and the number in my journal got up to, like 526 Awesome, yeah. And that was when I started doing a little bit of retooling, because kind of like, what you're pointing to here, after a little while, when you've tried on something new. You figure out what works. You figure out what doesn't. You figure out what you like. You figure out what you don't. It's like going to a buffet. You can go, you can try little bits of everything, and then you go back and you take more of what you'd like.

Alese Johnston:

Yes,

Erin Currin:

take more

Alese Johnston:

perfect.

Erin Currin:

Yeah. Like, if you don't like the oysters. Don't take them, right? You don't get mad at them that they're there.

Alese Johnston:

No, no, because my friend Mark loves them. You know, there are lots of people that love them, just because I don't, it's all good. It is all good.

Erin Currin:

So I also love this idea of leveraging your strengths, because what I hear is there are certain tendencies that you've had, that you've built as a business owner over the course of your life, and you know a strong, successful, independent minded woman that you're playing to these strengths in how you're setting up that challenge, like having the blog post to write once a week. If you enjoy writing, you enjoy sharing, you enjoy happy hour, you set up these things so that it's not drudgery. You're not going, Oh, God, I have to report in again, right?

Alese Johnston:

You have to know yourself well enough to create those structures. And I think that's really important to spend some time asking yourself really, like, what am I good at? And acknowledge that, take pride in it, and then figure out how you can use it to your own good. Like, what are the structures that really work for you not going to work for everybody?

Erin Currin:

That's absolutely true. And I also really think that the idea that you were point. Pointing to accountability is only accountability when it's something that you've decided that you want, right? I don't think it's called accountability if it's been assigned to you.

Alese Johnston:

No, what's the word for that? It's not coming to me. I know there is one.

Erin Currin:

There probably is one, but it's basically when you're doing, yeah, you've been assigned a responsibility. And the word responsibility, I don't like using in that fashion, because responsibility is is abused as well. But it's like, it's more of a boss, subordinate, kind of a relationship, as opposed to a support relationship.

Alese Johnston:

I think you're onto something there. It's like, Where does the power lie?

Erin Currin:

Yeah. Mm, hmm, yeah. And if I'm having trouble with the authority figure over something that I said I wanted in the first place, even if that authority figure is me

Alese Johnston:

that gets all twisty and complicated, doesn't it?

Erin Currin:

It does. But I think that like especially, most of the people who are listening to this podcast can relate to because it's like, Why the hell can't I ever just blah blah blah for myself? Why can't I show up and walk every morning or go to the gym. Why do I have to make a promise to somebody else? Why can't I just do it for myself? But it's like, you know, we have these deep seated unworthiness, imposter kinds of conversations, like I should be focusing my time on serving somebody else or making sure that somebody else's needs are met. Best thing I ever did was doing that miracle morning. Because even though I stopped doing the miracle morning after, you know, a year and a half, I still dedicate the first two hours at least of my morning just to me, meditating and journaling and like, if you want to, if you want to have a conversation with me, it's not happening before 10am and I get up at 530 Oh, I get up at 530 or six o'clock because I want to make sure that I get me in and then, like, after, after, like 930 10 o'clock, I'll start to book things, because I want to make sure that I've taken care of having plenty of time to make breakfast or go to the gym or whatever it is I choose to do. Because if I don't, if I put gym time at 536 o'clock after my day is wound down. Yeah, I'm not, I'm not going, not a chance in hell.

Alese Johnston:

Oh, totally not happening. That's something I'm working on right now. I really would like to have more gym time, and I I have some dedicated time on Wednesdays at 1130 where I have booked time with a trainer at osteo strong, and I go do my osteo strong routine, and then my trainer, bless her soul, tortures me through the x3 routine. And I show up for that every week because I have an appointment on my calendar and I'm accountable with another human, and I paid money for it. So that's the other thing that works for me. But I find that I struggle to haul my ass down to the actual gym, even though I've paid money for that, like, I have a gym membership, but I somehow that's like, too flexible. I don't have an appointment. I don't have another person that I'm supposed to show up for. So I apparently that's the key to me, is having a person to do it with in that case. So I gotta work on that.

Erin Currin:

It's really powerful to know

Alese Johnston:

because, like, the whole thing is, you got to know yourself, yes, like this whole Miracle Morning thing clearly works like a charm

Erin Currin:

for you. Yes, it doesn't work for everybody. Would not work for me, well, you know, and I think that there's the commitment behind it. I hired a health coach this year, and it was pretty much because my blood work was so bad that I got turned down for a life insurance policy. Whoa. And it wasn't the fact that my blood work was bad, it's the fact that I prefer to go to a natural path and I'm not going to take prescription drugs, gotcha. And so my blood work is saying I should be on statins, and I might be needing to look at something that's a little pre diabetic, and I'm like, la, la, la, la. I don't I don't want to hear that. And after eight months of trying to do it myself, I finally just hired a. Functional nutritionist. And you know, we're working on balancing hormones and getting I cut my numbers in half, oh, in 10 weeks, because I had a structure. But then when she says, okay, great, now you know what to do. You can just go and fly be free.

Alese Johnston:

No, no,

Erin Currin:

the last, hell no. It's like, you know, I've got to have and so, like, what is the sweet spot in there? And like, what you're pointing to is really powerful, because when we know ourselves, when we take the time, and here's the reason why most people won't do it, because it's a messy process, and you're not going to like everything you find, right? Like, did you enjoy everything you found when you started going through that process?

Alese Johnston:

No, there's some things about myself I really don't like and I which weren't true.

Erin Currin:

How have you dealt with those aspects of yourself?

Alese Johnston:

It's a work in progress. True. You know, when you get real honest with yourself, you'll find some things that are pretty broken, that you would like to pretend are not broken. You'd like, I, I would like to stand here at 71 and tell you that I'm a completely healed human, and I've got my shit together. And that would be the biggest damn lie, you know, because I still have daddy issues, you know, and my father's been dead for decades, and you know, I've had some relationships that left deep, deep scars, just not a perfect human. And I wish, I wish I were, my ego gets in the way of business relationships every once in a while, and I have to get humble. You know, you just, you just have to be willing to be aware of the parts of you that are broken and love them anyhow. Just it's, it's a challenge. I recently made friends with this gentleman who is deeply spiritual, and he's been helping me embrace some of those parts of myself. They're so broken, and that's been a cool experience. Yeah, but you know what? It's all okay. It's you. You can be terribly, terribly broken and imperfect and no longer gorgeous, no longer skinny, all those things that we tell ourselves that we have to be and we don't. There are too many shoulds in life. It's we can throw all those out. You know they're, oh, turning 70. You would not believe the list of shoulds that people want to drop on you. You should hang out in your rocking chair, and you should not be building companies. You should not being on the dating apps and trying to build new relationships, and you should not be going out to happy hour on Fridays, because, don't you know, you have gray hair in your grandmother and and what society has some expectations that I think are just ridiculous and they don't align with the purpose driven creative life that I continue to want to build for myself. Perfect or not, doesn't matter. And I think, right,

Erin Currin:

no, I think you are a shining example for people who are going through this process all over the world like because, you know, I'm going to call you out, if you don't mind.

Alese Johnston:

Oh, go for it. I'll done

Erin Currin:

one of the conversations that we had when we were pre qualifying for this conversation. You were talking about being so creative, and I don't know how it came up. I was sharing with you a friend of mine who has gorgeous, long white hair like you, and she dyes it purple. And you were like, Oh my gosh, I would love to do that. I was like, and why don't you?

Alese Johnston:

Oh, yeah, why don't I? Because I tell myself, I can't, yeah, see, you know,

Erin Currin:

and it nobody is anyone who says that they are. I run far, far away from, I don't know, did I? Did? I tell you there was this one person I was talking. To about the possibility of being on the podcast. And when I said, so, you know, tell me, like, what's your story? What would we be talking about? She's like, Oh, no, I came out of the womb successful. Well, good for her. And I was, well, you know, that's, that's kind of what I said. I was basically like, that's not my people. There wouldn't be any place for us to go. So, you know, congratulations, she was serious. She was she was deadly embarrassingly serious. I know she won't listen to this podcast, so I, you know, I'm not going to say who she is, but lovely young lady, but she her goal was to get on podcasts to for marketing purposes, because that's what we're all told we should do. And I'm like, No, my podcast is a space for people to hear about someone's real life, lived experience, so they can see, life is messy. You're not fucked up. There's no problem here. It's just this is what it is. Each of us is given a completely different script. We start in different places, and then we play the game, and we make choices, and that sends us down different paths. And some of us get beat, some of us have alcoholic parents, and some of us, you know, like whatever, and some of us do the beating, and some of us do the drugs, and some of us, you know, do the overdosing or the like. But it's like we all make in my personal philosophy is we all make these agreements before we get here so that we could play out a game. So ain't none of us got nothing over nobody else, because we're all just, we're all running the same rackets. We're all, we're all playing this thing called life. And you know, nobody's going to get out of it alive. So why

Alese Johnston:

isn't that the most interesting concept to sit with it for a few minutes that you agreed to this before you were born, that you have a soul contract to play this game. That is a singularly interesting concept that I signed off on this, yeah,

Erin Currin:

it puts things in a completely different perspective.

Alese Johnston:

It does but in my conversations with Bill, I'm starting to where we talk about that subject. I am starting to embrace the fact that I think I am just now hitting my stride. I'm just now getting to my real purpose in life, that everything up to here has been prep work. It's not that my mission is over, it's that it's just now getting started, good, and I'm excited to see what happens next.

Erin Currin:

Isn't that beautiful?

Alese Johnston:

It's fun. It gives you purpose and joy. It brings joy to my life.

Erin Currin:

Yes, that's a beautiful thing that's inside of that conversation. Like people say, it's not about the destination, it's about the journey. And it sounds so trite, because you think, no, I want to go to Tahiti, like, I want to be on a beach sipping something with an umbrella in it and like, that's the purpose. Well, yeah, but when you go on a vacation, like, at the end, you're just going to come home, so why not just stay home? Because it's the destination, isn't it?

Alese Johnston:

But I want to lay on the beach and have somebody bring me pina coladas,

Erin Currin:

but that's the experience. That's not the destination. You're right. So we confuse what we think the destination is with the journey. Oh, because the destination is you're in a pine box. Yeah, that's where all of us are headed, yeah. And it's like that reframe really helps, because what if what I thought was important doesn't really matter, and will I let myself think about that? What if I have been living on a particular other track, and all of a sudden now I'm doing a little bit of a recalculation? Do you stay in the old so that you can be right about what you did? Did, or do you start to jump into the new so that you can align with who you are?

Alese Johnston:

Well, you know which side of that argument I vote for.

Erin Currin:

I do you know, but, but I think that that's part of that, that questioning, that we should be asking ourselves when, when we truly ask ourselves, like, what do I need? What do I feel?

Alese Johnston:

Yeah, what I need is continue to grow and have new experiences deep down in my core. That is what Elise needs, that and good friends and and good red wine. And, you know, we, my little family no longer does much in the way of physical gifts on holidays and stuff. We buy experiences for each other. We go on trips together and make new memories that is more important than things that's been an interesting, interesting perspective to come to, but it just feels I would rather go on an adventure with my kids than or share a really good meal with them. We're kind of into tasting menu restaurants too. Experience.

Erin Currin:

Yeah, that's a beautiful thing. I think that's fantastic.

Alese Johnston:

It works for us,

Erin Currin:

and that's the point,

Alese Johnston:

yeah, and you don't clutter up your house with a bunch of stuff, kind of anti stuff at this stage of my life, yeah, yeah. I can shelf behind me is the most cluttered up.

Erin Currin:

I think that that's actually, you know, a good place to come from, because at the end, somebody is going to have to clean up after you, right?

Alese Johnston:

Bless their hearts. Wow, you worry about that. So I what am I leaving here? Like, you know, I have some lingerie. I don't know that. I want my son in law to go through, you know, like, what do you what do you do? Do you have a good friend come in and look? And you tell him, look if here's the key. And before my kids get there, I want you to go through this list of drawers.

Erin Currin:

Out that I

Alese Johnston:

need to go before the kids get here,

Erin Currin:

yeah, leave some instructions for the for the estate,

Alese Johnston:

yeah, need to think that through. Not in any hurry to exit stage left, but you know, you should have a plan, just in case.

Erin Currin:

Well, but then again, at that point, what do you care? What they think? It's not like they're going to make fun of you at the holidays.

Alese Johnston:

Oh, yes, they will.

Erin Currin:

Well, you won't care.

Alese Johnston:

Gramms did, yeah, I can hear that now, I'll come back and haunt their ass.

Erin Currin:

That's funny. That's really funny. Well, we are heading pretty close to the 50 minute mark, so I just wanted to say, man, it's been great talking with you. Is there something that maybe we haven't covered or that you want to circle back and highlight for our listening audience about what do you think they should take away from our conversation?

Alese Johnston:

That's such a great question. I think if there's anything I would like to leave with people, it's to structure your life in a way that makes curiosity and reinvention priority number one for yourself.

Erin Currin:

That is a beautiful thing. Thank you. Curiosity has been a big word in the last week, so I message received excellent Very good. Well, it has been an absolute pleasure speaking with you. Elise, thank you.

Alese Johnston:

It's been fun. Erin,

Erin Currin:

you're very welcome, and for you the listening and viewing audience, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast until next time. Thank you so much for tuning in to the secret of my success, where we explore what it means to live a fulfilling life. I am your host. Erin Currin, again, if you have not, please give the video a like. If you've enjoyed it, if you haven't subscribed to our channel, it really helps us a lot. We look forward to seeing you next time you. You.