S3 E6: We Moved to Our Dream Home—Here’s How We Made It Happen

In this episode, Sophia Hyde shares her transformative journey of moving to Waynesville, North Carolina, highlighting the emotional and practical challenges faced along the way. From overcoming health issues to making significant life decisions, she emphasizes the importance of aligning one's life with personal values and desires. The conversation delves into the process of finding a home that resonates with her family's needs and the lessons learned throughout this journey. Ultimately, Sophia encourages listeners to reflect on their own lives and pursue their dreams, no matter the obstacles.

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Transcript

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Life is messy, but it can still be filled with joy. Welcome to the Your Favorite Self podcast. I'm Sophia Hyde, a master certified life coach, minivan driving mom of two, ADHD powered small business owner, and your guide to creating a life you love. Whether you're juggling a business, a family, or just the curve balls of life, this is your space to find clarity, dream bigger, and build your favorite life. Click subscribe to grow with us. Does it feel amazing to be here today? I am just, drowning is not the right word, but just like soaking in gratitude. I am recording this episode from my brand new office near downtown Waynesville. Our family has officially moved. We now live in Waynesville, North Carolina, which is about half an hour outside of Asheville. And y'all, I... can genuinely say, I don't think I've ever felt this happy before. It feels good. It feels right. And as somebody who has been chasing goals and dreams and desires for as long as I can remember, I feel settled and calm and content and appreciative and yeah, aligned. I guess that's the right word. I just finally feel Like this, I guess, my favorite life, like this, my favorite self, this version of me that's been living inside of me for so long that I was just trying to birth, trying to get her out into the world. I had this vision of who I was supposed to be, who I desired and craved to be. And now I'm living it. It all feels right. And I want that same feeling for all of you. And so that's what this podcast is gonna be about. This episode, I am gonna share, it's gonna be filled with a lot of the behind the scenes. I'm gonna tell you the story of how we got here. I'm gonna give you some of the updates and details because I know everybody loves juicy, or at least I shouldn't say everybody. I am the type of person who wants the juicy details of behind the scenes. So I'm gonna give that to you guys. But really, it's because I want you to learn from our experience, feel inspired by it, and wanna go out and take action towards your own goals and dreams. In this episode, I'm going to be sharing with you what we did, and the way we did it may not be right for you, but hopefully you might get an idea or a ping towards what might be good and aligned for you. I'm going to share with you some of the powerful questions my husband and I asked ourselves, and I'm going to encourage you to write those down and ask yourself of them. So they'll make some great journal prompts or just reflective things to think about while you're driving in the car. And if you're listening to this while you're driving and a question that I challenge you to ask really punches you in the gut or hits you in a certain way, press pause. If you're driving on the road listening to this, just hit pause and mull over that question for a little bit in the silence if you need to. Don't feel obligated to finish the episode if maybe the nugget you came here for strikes you. Come back and finish it later if it feels right. Okay, so with that said, let's go into some of the updates. I have not recorded an episode in a few months because as I shared with you guys, I was preparing for a pretty significant surgery. I had surgery to remove endometriosis from my body. I am very grateful to say that it went well. It was very successful. I had very minimal. They were able to do it in the most non-invasive way possible and preserve all my organs. So I'm so thankful for that. The doctors at USF Health and Tampa General Hospital were wonderful, the whole team. I'm just so grateful to them. In my recovery, I did really well for a while. And then I returned to synchronized swimming. And unfortunately, pulled a muscle and stretched too far. Whatever. Anyways, it doesn't matter. I set myself back in my healing. I wasn't able to finish. The ladies are so amazing. You guys know I've been talking about my synchronized swimming team for a while. I've been so excited about it. And it's been my unicorn space. And I love my old ladies. And they let me pick the song. And so we had a routine coordinated to Wannabe by the Spice Girls. That's what they get for accepting a millennial onto their team. And so in the process of learning that routine after coming back from surgery, I pulled a muscle and I had to unfortunately drop out. And I did get to go see them in competition in the beginning of June, but I did not get to perform in it. And my healing is still in progress. I'm doing well, but there's some fancy name for when your abdomen... after pregnancy doesn't repair correctly because it like breaks open in the middle to make room for like the big belly. And pelvic floor therapy has taught me that after my pregnancies, it didn't heal correctly. And so that's kind of connected to why I didn't heal, why I had a setback during my surgery recovery. And so we're trying to repair kind of both things, like rebuild the strength of my abdomen, but while also healing that connection on the middle. So anyways, I digress. Those are the updates. And so There hasn't been any episodes because I can only handle so much mental load on my plate, right? And so we had the surgery, healing, and recovery. And then that was March 10th. And then we had to get the house ready to list it. It went live, I think, right around maybe April 9th. The house went on the market. We had showings. We were living in the house while having showings, which is very stressful if you've ever done it. Do not recommend, but we didn't have another option for us. And it took about two weeks. And then we had an offer we accepted in the middle of April, which then allowed us to start house shopping ourselves. And it took two trips. And I'll maybe tell you a little bit more about how that went down. So we took a couple of trips to Waynesville to look at different houses, and we went under contract for our home here in the middle of May with a closing date of June 13th, and that all happened. And so... We are now, let's see, I'm recording this on the 20th. So it's been a week and a half since we closed on our home. And I'm finally, after months of my life, feeling like it was in transition and limbo and so much, you know, mental load in so many directions, I'm finally returning back to a place of feeling settled and grounded. And I have the capacity to hop on here again. And so let me tell you the story of how we got here. And so you guys can know a little bit about what brings us here, you know, to this moment. Little backgrounds. My husband and I, we met in 2005, married in 2007. And we've always talked our whole relationship when we were dating, when we were engaged, when we were first married, when we were about to have a kid. There's been a million times that we've came so close to moving together. And even when I was in college, I was supposed to go to a college in North Carolina, and it all fell apart a few weeks before graduation. And I ended up pivoting, which is probably a whole podcast episode of its own. But, you know, we've been having this desire to pivot. Like knowing that Florida wasn't where we belonged for so long. But every time we tried to pursue an opportunity, the doors just shut like so strong in our face that it was, you know, like, here's your sign. That I think some of our friends and family maybe didn't fully believe we were really going to do this because we've been talking about it for 20 years. And I think for some people, it was... that real estate sign going in the front yard that finally was like, oh my gosh, they're serious. This time they're talking about moving and they're really doing it, even though it was a three-year plan. So let's pick up there three years ago. I think that's really the best part to begin this story. If you follow me on Instagram, you've been seeing a lot of the behind the scenes of this journey. And so my handle, if you guys are on Instagram but don't follow me, it's at the Sophia Hyde. And you can see like pictures of the home and the behind the scenes and everything like that. But Some of you have been in the moment walking through this, but you'll probably learn some things today that you didn't know. So the story really dates back to, I guess, really December of 2021 when we were up here visiting family for Christmas and realized that we were ready to finally really be serious about leaving. And we talked about moving to Knoxville, which is close to where my in-laws live. And so we kind of got to the point where we said, we can't, we don't get the option and the luxury of being able to be with all of our family because they do live in two different states. My husband grew up in East Tennessee, my family's all in Florida. And so we were like, you know, we're really done with Florida. Let's, the quality of life is just higher here. Let's, you know, consider moving to the Knoxville area, which led to many conversations, mostly around my husband's career, because at that time I had already gone full-time. I had left my full-time job and was full-time coaching, but It was still a growing business and I was getting everything off of the ground, but I was building a virtual business. So it didn't matter where I lived, but for my husband to move is to lose everything. Like a hairstylist, right? You lose all your clients. That's how my husband is. He's a freelance cinematographer. And so all of his clients are in Florida. But even there, not every market in the US has a thriving film industry. Tampa is loaded with a lot of commercial work. And so of course he's shot features over the years and that kind of thing. But East Tennessee isn't known for its film industry. And so we started looking at that and six months later... I couldn't do it. All the research that I had done on the area, I couldn't find a place that I felt like our family would belong. The things that matter to us, I have a very artistic daughter, really involved in theater, and we knew that we'd probably be doing public school. And I just couldn't find a lot of opportunity, as many opportunities to thrive in the arts community. whether through public school, community theaters, or just whatever around, I just couldn't find them in East Tennessee in the abundance that they exist where we already were. And the public schools were ranked significantly lower. And I just told my husband, I can't move my kids' opportunities backwards, right? So even though the nature is prettier and it's a slower quality of life and there's trade-offs, I just... And if anybody's listening and you live in that area, this is not to offend you. I'm not talking down. My whole family lives there and they love it. They're so happy. All my in-laws are really happy there. This just goes back to the living your favorite life and what are priorities to you and what are to you and the things, the life we wanted to build, I couldn't envision it in East Tennessee. So we had let go of the idea. And then July 2022, we were up here in Waynesville for a Annual vacation may come many times. And in 2016 was my first time going to Asheville. And it was the first time I'd ever been anywhere. I've been a lot of places in the country. I've been out of the country. One, two, three, four, four or five different international countries. And being in Asheville was the very first time I ever felt like I was surrounded by my people. And I think it's because I am a true Southern girl at heart, raised in the South, that Southern hospitality runs deep in me. But it had all the progressive values and the artistic culture and the things that are deep in my blood that you can't always find in the South. And so it was this little bubble of... both things. I describe it as Boulder, but with Southern hospitality, if you've never been to Asheville. And I felt at home. I felt like I belonged. I felt like I was with my people. And I just, Asheville just won me over. And over the coming years, probably six, seven, eight years in a row, we vacationed to the Waynesville area every year. And in 2022, we were at our annual vacation in the mountains. And I looked out the window and I said to my husband, I don't understand why does my body feel more at home here when I look out the window than the way it feels in the zip code i've lived in for the past 25 years like it doesn't make sense and he felt the same way and so we kind of sparked this idea of like wait a second okay the options the two options are not live by your family or live by my family the options are we can live wherever we want to build a life what about building a life here And the seed got planted. We were driving around, you know, doing that thing. There's like memes and reels making fun of it right now, but like you're on vacation and you pull up Zillow and you start looking at the real estate of where you're on vacation at. We literally did that. And the more research we did, the more we saw that the value of real estate was really similar, like par for par to where we already lived. And we felt like, you know, we probably could actually afford this. We could make this work, make this happen. And we decided to make a three-year plan because it would let our daughter finish the fifth grade. I felt like the year between fifth and sixth grade was the ideal time to transition. She'd been with her same little best friend since they were two years old. And I just knew that it would destroy her to have to leave them. But they were going to be going to different middle schools anyways. And so I couldn't. There wasn't a scenario where I could give her the life of going to school with her same little group of friends for all of school. They were always going to go to different middle schools because I knew what their mothers were looking for and valued and what I was looking for and valued. And we had different desires. So they weren't going to go to the same middle schools. And so I thought, well, that breakup's already going to have to happen. And the fifth to sixth grade year is already a really big transition. So that gave us a three-year runway to grow my business because the... the cost of moving would also mean that we were moving to a rural part in Western North Carolina where there is not a robust film industry. There's not a huge, even commercial, he could probably stay about as busy as he does in Tampa. If we moved to a place like Charlotte, which is three hours away, but Charlotte's not inside the mountains and the mountains are what feel home to us. And so my husband, we had a lot of heart to hearts about what we really deeply desired. And ultimately it came down to he was willing to sacrifice his career. And maybe not entirely. He can still get, you know, a feature film or documentary if people are willing to fly him out. He can shoot probably like odd stuff here and there. But the income level and the types of projects won't be as consistent here for sure. And we had to, you know, get to the point where we could live off of just my income. And, you know, he said something really profound. And this is, you know, one of the takeaways. I hope you guys can be inspired by this from him and reflect on this for yourself. He asked him, he said to me, I said, Brandon, are you sure? Because if we move, are you sure you don't want to look at Atlanta? Are you sure you don't want to look somewhere else? You know, that your business, your career could keep, at least stay at the same level, if not grow. But, you know, it's totally going to go really far backwards if you move to West North Carolina. And I said, are you sure you want to do this? Because it's a big deal. And all of our decisions in the past have been based on where he could get the most work. And he said to me, Sophia, when I think about being an old man and looking back on my life, I don't see any scenario where I'm going to look back with regret that I didn't get to shoot that big blockbuster film or get on that Netflix series or have the feature I'd always desired. He's already shot a couple of beautiful features that he's proud of. And he said, I don't see myself having any regret that I didn't get some specific type of DP job, but I can absolutely see myself looking back on my life and regretting that I didn't give my children the type of childhood I wanted them to have. He grew up up here in these mountains and playing in the creeks and going camping all the time and regularly going on hikes. And I have friends who are Floridians who do that, but it's not for our family. My children won't go outside six months of the year in Florida because it's too hot. Between the temperatures and the humidity, they're miserable. And it's a constant fight in our home to beg my children to go outside and play. And they don't have fun, but we come up here in the same exact time of year. the middle of July when I'm begging them to play outside in Florida. We'll come on a vacation to visit family in Tennessee or do the annual Waynesville trip or whatever. And I don't even have to say anything to my children. They just find themselves outside. They're in the streams. They're climbing. They don't complain when we're on hikes. They love it. It's not even a conversation. I don't even have to ask them. They just go outside. And that's what we wanted for our kids. We wanted them to be outside more. We wanted them getting dirty. We wanted them having fun. Ultimately, that's what my husband said is, I don't want to have regret that I didn't give my kids the type of childhood I want them to have. And so he said, you know, fast forward three years to us making this transition. And at some point along the way, six months, a year ago, he started letting his friends in the industry know that he would be moving in June. And they all thought he was crazy, crazy. Like, basically, multiple of them said they were flabbergasted because they're like, you're committing career suicide. That's what they said. I can't believe you're doing this. You're committing career suicide. And he is. Maybe. I mean, you never know what can happen. He can get that phone call, right, to go on the next. He was gone in the fall for three or four months on a feature, on a documentary. That phone call can still come, but he's not waiting for it. He's not anticipating it. Right now, he's a stay-at-home dad and he's happy. And if that's all he does is be a stay-at-home dad and help me build this business, he feels complete and satisfied. And so that's the first question that I want to challenge you guys with is if you are at a crossroads with choices or decisions that you need to make, Imagine yourself, you know, in your 80s, sitting on a rocker on some front porch somewhere and reflecting back on the last eight decades of your life. And what will you regret you never tried? What will you be so glad that you risked? What fear might be holding you back right now that you wish you would have overcame? Because that was a big piece of us doing this move was Brandon having that reflection. Okay, so once we got clear, This is what we want. And how did we pick Waynesville? So it wasn't just... I mean, a lot of it had to do with that vacation. And this woman, I call her my angel. I went to a coffee shop on that July 2022 vacation, and I was talking to this local. She was this woman who sat next to me at a coffee shop and... I learned all these things about the community that I didn't know, that they have a robust community theater program for children. I asked her kind of all of my concerns about what about this and opportunities that and this, that and the other. And I just asked her all these questions and she was so helpful. And every single answer just aligned with what we wanted for our family. And I felt really peaceful and content. Like, yeah, there's a lot of people here that I can find my community. I can, I can rebuild. And so over to the next, you know, six months to a year we did explore other states other cities we had serious conversations about what about this place what about that place you know especially looking at how public education is ranked we could have just moved a little bit more north and been in virginia with one of the top public school systems in the country um there was a lot of back and forth of if we can live anywhere, where do we want to be? We looked internationally as well. And ultimately, and this is another question you have to ask yourself, is really what are your priorities? Because for us, it came down to my husband was very clear, and this is why we're in Nashville, in Waynesville, not Asheville. For my husband, it was really like I need to be in the mountains, not looking at them, not near them, in them. I want to open up my front door and smell mountain air. That was a really big deal to him. For me, I needed a really strong, robust sense of community. I left a small town that raised me and had a real strong sense of community. And I was very involved. And I needed to feel like it would be easy for me to plug in again. And I wanted a culture where I felt like I could be my favorite self and that that would be fully accepted. A lot of times in the community I came from, I did feel like I had to filter myself or hold back because either political reasons or like, because my views were very different from where I lived. Not everybody, but like the majority. And so I had to like bite my tongue or I was just too much, too strong, too loud, too artistic, too weird, too whatever. There was a lot of too muchness in me from where I came from. And so I needed somewhere where I could just walk around completely unfiltered and didn't matter what I wore and How I spoke, if it was just my genuine self, that that would be welcomed. And this community really is my people. But they have a very strong sense of identity and community. And holy crap, are they like so nice. They're just over the top nice. But we looked around, we looked at other places, and either I didn't get a strong sense of community there, or they weren't in the mountains, or they didn't have good public schools, or... Ultimately, what really narrowed the list down was we wanted to stay within driving distance of family. So my in-laws are only an hour to an hour and a half away. And my family, like if something ever happened and I needed to get there, it's a one-day drive. I can be there in 10 hours. But we also love the Pacific Northwest. We love Colorado. There's other places in the country we love, but I didn't. I drew the line at I don't want to be a plane ride away from family. That was important to me. And so then it became... you know, a couple of radiuses between our two families of where do we get mountains and driving distance to family. And so those were the priorities that mattered to us. Okay, so we looked at hundreds of cities, though. We did. We looked at many states, many cities, and it just kept coming back that Waynesville worked for us and our family's needs. So then once we were committed to this idea, we made a timeline. I already shared with you how we came up with that three-year plan. And that was really beautiful because deadlines allow you to have clarity. And so this is another takeaway that I hope you guys can bring from this is I challenge you to give yourself a one-year deadline. If you knew that you were going to leave in the next year, what would you prioritize? And I say that because the reality is even if you already live somewhere, you plan to never leave. We aren't promised tomorrow, whether our own life or the people in our lives that we love. So we really only have right now. We only have today. If there are things in your life where you keep saying, one day I'd like to X, Y, or Z, I really challenge you, instead of saying one day, to put dates on that. Even though we said one day we're going to move to North Carolina, one day we're going to live in the mountains, we still put a date on it. We said, come hell or high water, it's happening June of 2025. And I told Brandon, I said, even if all we do is sell this house and take the equity and pay to rent something somewhere, we're leaving and we will get up there and we will figure it the heck out up there. Even if we can't find the right home, this is the date. We are going June 2025. Even if it's not easy, it is happening. That is the month it's happening, right? So take all your one days and put a date on them. Knowing that we're leaving gave us this beautiful deadline for the things I had been saying that one day I would do while we lived in Florida, right? And so one of them was I wanted to go bioluminescent hiking. If you've never heard of that, you can go, I said hiking, I meant kayaking. You can go kayaking where it's like the water glows in the dark. It's so cool. I had seen pictures of it and you could do it an hour and a half from where I used to live, but I had never prioritized it. And there's only a few months of the year that it's really active and strong to see. So last summer, we had my sister watch the kids so we could go on a date and do that. We drove over to the coast and we did the bioluminescent hiking and drove back home. And I don't know if I would have prioritized that if I didn't have the deadline because it would have felt like, oh, I'll do it eventually. I'll do it one day. Another thing was I always wanted to have annual passes to Disney World because we had them when I was growing up and I wanted to do that with my kids. So we made it happen. And when we made it happen, guys, if you would have seen the math, if you would have seen the numbers in our bank account, knowing we needed to be planning for this move and saving and all this stuff, it financially did not make any sense when we went. But I just said, this is my last shot. So we bought them last March so that I knew if they ran March to March, then... Shortly after the month of March, if we were wanting to move in June, we would need to be like focusing on moving and not like, you know, taking a day off to go gallivant around Disney World. So that timeline kept getting tighter and tighter. And finally, I was like, it's now or never. And so we bought the passes and we made some of the best passes. memories and I had so much fun. So I have no regrets. I'm so glad we did it. But I don't know that I would have done it if I didn't have the pressure of that deadline. And there's other things that we did too. Different people in our lives, relationships, I prioritized knowing... I'm so grateful I get to live by these certain people and I want to make memories. There were other relationships in my life that were not good, but that mattered to me. And so I also had the clarity to focus on repair. Like I didn't want to leave knowing that I was leaving those relationships with the way that they were. And so it created an opportunity for figuring out what repair looks like. And I'm so glad I did that because it did not feel bad at all when we left because we left them in a much better place than they used to be a few years ago. There are other relationships that, you know, I started realizing, are these people lifetime friends or are they just seasons? Because, you know, they live close and it's convenient. And so I started investing more in those people who I knew would be in my life forever and allowing those relationships to just drift or fall apart that I knew were only based on me living there. So it also gave me this clarity of who to prioritize when I have free time, right? Because as a working parent, you only have so many hours a week that you're going to spend on socializing or so many people on your brain that you can think about in text. And you know, I can't keep up with everybody and invest in everybody. And so it gave this real clarifying lens. And then I also was really involved in the community. And I've talked about this on other episodes. And that was That helped me to have this three-year timeline, helped me to slowly get off of all of those boards, some of them quickly and some I did over time so that I could replace myself in a really strategic way. And so by the time we left, I had really cut all of my ties. Of course, there's people I still love, but I only shed a few tears, like maybe three different people, my mom, my dad, and one of my friends. I cried for like 10 seconds. That was it. There wasn't really any sadness. because we were so excited. But that leads me to the next thing that we did in the preparation was a lot of the inner work. Even though in 2025, it wasn't a very emotional decision to leave, getting serious about it in 2023 was. And so there was a lot of crying and shedding of tears and doing a lot of inner work. So I worked with my mentor at the time to do a lot of like emotions, subconscious work to heal a lot of the people-pleasing and fear and guilt that I knew that I was going to move either way. But if I hadn't done that work under the surface, it would have been a lot harder. I think fear would have had a bigger grip on me. I think I would have been more stressed about it, probably had more anxiety about it. But I had none of those things because two years ago, I worked through all of that. So the fears that had been bubbling up about the idea of You know, I was nine when we moved to Hillsborough County. I was 11 when parents bought the house that they still live in. And I'd been extremely invested in my community. And so it wasn't just like an easy thing to step away from. And so it required a lot of work under the surface. And I worked with a professional to help me do that so that I could feel easy and breezy and comfortable when the time came. And the last little bit of inner work that I want to share with you that I did as well was for all three of those years that we were planning, I did a lot of meditation and I would, you can get, I have meditations for free on my app and you can listen like just the different way I meditate. You can go in and you can see how I do that. But I will go in and, you know, I was taught I was raised in Christianity and I was taught through church that prayer looks like talking to God. But at some point in my early 20s, I figured out that that, oh, and this is in my book, this is in the spiritual chapter, chapter six, I believe, that it just felt like praying felt like a Santa Claus list. Like you're just going to God with these like prayer requests and just talking and like, I want this, I want this, I want this, I want this. And it just felt really wrong. And meditation was really helpful to me because it taught me how to listen. And so when I say it, you know, I take things to prayer and meditation. It is me going in and asking questions of God. Whether I call it God or the divine or the universe, it doesn't matter to me. That word is all the same thing. And I would ask and I would listen and I would reflect. So I would go with questions and then I would sit in the silence to see what came through. And so I did a lot of meditations to just reflect on what is the right next step? What should I be prioritizing right now? What does this look like? How do I move through that? And for all three years, I did that. And then it came time to actually start taking action. So I think some of the actions that are the most important are to know that once we committed to this idea, we moved mentally before we moved physically. I think the first year, it was still like an idea. So I was looking at Zillow every night and sending him houses and what about this? And do you like that? And, you know, we're looking at it all the time, talking about it regularly. And I think for that first year, it was like 95, like 95% sure we're going to do this. But there was still some doubt, like 5 to 10% of like, but maybe it won't work out. I think there was still 5 to 10% of the doubt for the first year. But after that, eventually we got to the 100%. And once we were 100% certain we were doing this, I think we had checked out to any other reality. We would just do, and this wasn't me like trying to do some manifestation thing or some checklist of this is how you make your goals and dreams come true. All of this was just very organic, very natural, but it does follow a lot of the scripts that those types of people will tell you to do. But we did a lot, ultimately what it was, it was visualization work because We would do little things like we kept the Waynesville weather on our app. So whenever we would check the weather, we would know what it was where we lived in Plant City, Florida. But then we would be like, what's the weather like today in Waynesville? And so we always knew like what the temperatures were. I was looking at Zillow every single night. I knew so much about the real estate. And then I would go down these deep rabbit holes of like, okay, but if you live in this area, then why in your zone for these schools and what are these schools and how far away. Like I had two places I loved so much. So there was the theater program I wanted to get my daughter in. I have a favorite coffee shop and then the rec center. And every house I would look at, I would see, I would run a search in Google of how many minutes would it take if you lived there, how long does it take to get to these three places? And we didn't really want anything more than like 15 minutes away from those places. I knew we were gonna, we were really building our life around those three things. The rec center, the theater program and my favorite coffee shop. And so I was willing to live in like a 15 minute radius. The house had to be bomb for me to be like amazing to be like, okay, to have that house, I would be willing to drive 20. But after 20, it was like a no, not an option. And so that really taught us the areas of town and what was too far out and that kind of thing. And then I'd also looked up the different schools and which schools I was more interested in. Private Facebook groups are the best because you can type in a search and just see when people have commented and said stuff. And so I knew which schools people had shared positive stories about and negative stories about. And you can't give those too much credence because... my siblings are public school teachers and they will tell you, always trust what a teacher says, not what a parent says, because there's very irate people without the whole story and the context. And so I, you know, I gave those, they were relevant information, but I was looking for patterns, not like one mad person was going to form my opinion. But anyways, private Facebook groups were the best. But I even started, because I was involved in these private groups, I even made a couple of friends, like online friends, which I guess is different. I think that there's like social media friends and online real life friends. And I think you guys know the difference of what I'm talking about. But I started networking and being able to like talk to locals and ask questions and really wrap my mind around the community here. And I think that the visualizing it and moving mentally before we moved physically was really, really big. Because if you listen to anybody who has done something really incredible or really successful, they will tell you how important that visualization is. So for example, really successful athletes, they will tell you that part of their game warmup process is they will play the game in their head. They see themselves throwing or catching the passes or scoring, you know, if it's basketball, a three point, you know, shot or whatever, but they visually see the plays in their head and they see them going well and they see them going smooth. And, you know, my dad played golf and so he talks a lot about golf, but I know that like when it comes to golf, it is almost entirely a mental game, right? Your mind has to be all on it and they have to like see the shot going well before they ever swing that club. And what they are seeing and visualizing ends up impacting whether they have a good game or not. And that's why visualizing the thing that you're desiring and truly believing it is so important. And again, we were doing that, but I wasn't doing it of some sort of a checklist thing. It was just really organic. We believed it. We wanted it. We desired it. And so we talked about it all the time. And I'm really glad that we looked at those hundreds and hundreds of houses on Zillow over three years. It just became my habit every night when I would go put my son to bed. And I broke him of this habit like last August. So almost a year ago, I broke him of the habit. But prior to that, I would sit in there for a while while he was falling asleep. or lay down with him. And when I lay down with him, I would look at if any new houses had popped up on the market that were in the areas we were looking at. And then I would send them to Brandon and we would say like, yes, this or no this. So that's how we started learning little details. Like I really cared about the view and he really cared that it was like not in a neighborhood. The neighbors can't be that close or he would care a lot about the kitchens. I forgot to even pay attention to kitchens, but he would say that one's too small. Absolutely not. That kitchen's way too small. And so we started learning like the little things that matter to him and kitchens matter to him, neighbors matter to him and a good spot for the fire pit mattered to him. And because he'd look at home and he'd be like, it's great, but I just don't see anywhere that it would make sense to put a fire pit. And so then that house would be like, that's not going to work, right? And for me, it was the view and the proximity to those places that I wanted to frequent and little other things too. But we started learning what mattered to each of us. And so we could, by the time, you know, it was actually time to shop, we could look at a house and immediately know, like, it checks these boxes. It does not check these. Yes. You know, yes, we're interested. No, we're not. Like, with such clarity. And so those are just like little different things that we did as we were preparing for it. And that leads me to a couple of questions that I, a couple additional questions I want to challenge you guys to ask yourself. So I brought up the fire pit and that's really actually a very important piece of information. I've mentioned this in my book, if you've read my book, which is I shared that A few years ago, my therapist had asked me, what are you doing when you feel the most alive? And I said, speaking, but my husband said sitting around the fire pit. And that was really important to us in realizing that Florida wasn't going to work out for us long-term because six months of the year, it is so hot. It's miserable. You would not light a fire pit at night in the Florida heat. Like you're just not going to. And it was one of those clarifying things. Like we needed to live somewhere that most, not maybe like 12 months out of the year, but 10, 11 months out of the year, you could sit outside with a fire pit. And it really made it, you know, it helped us in this decision that we wanted to relocate. And so I want to ask you that question. My job, my ability to speak doesn't matter where I live. It doesn't, that doesn't affect it. But for my husband, it was relevant information. And so I want to challenge you to ask that of yourself. What are you doing when you feel the most alive? Another thing that was really clarifying for us was what makes our nervous system feel at peace? And so I go back to that comment that I made in July of 2022 when I said, why do I feel more at home here than I do in the place I've lived for 25 years? And I know, I'm certain that it has something to do about the environment and the nature here. I just believe like I live, I belong in mountains and I don't know why, but they just make me feel very relaxed. But I have a girlfriend who lived in the Pacific Northwest and it was beautiful and it was great. And she was miserable because she just has the tropics in her blood. It's my former coach and mentor, Amani, who I hope to have on an episode coming up. I hope to bring her for us to talk about. She really walked me a lot through this journey and preparing her over the last couple of years. And so I'm hoping to bring her on. But she lives in Mexico now. She just moved with her and her son to Mexico, but I've known her so 2016 and she I met her in Florida she lived in Key West she lived in Bali and then life took them to Oregon and she was miserable and now she's in Mexico and thriving there and she just said like I just I belong in the tropics and it's just where she feels good and I don't know if that's because she was born in Hawaii but it just it's where she feels the most aligned and her nervous system feels calm and she said I knew I just I couldn't be my highest self up here in this weather. I don't belong here, right? And so the same thing that makes me feel like I belong, which is the mountains, I feel like if it wasn't so far from family, I could probably be really happy in a place like Oregon or Washington. But that answer is going to be different for every person. I have friends who can sit on the beach and their whole body relaxes The beach stresses out like all five of my senses. I am super white. And so I'm like stressing out that I'm, you know, going to get a sunburn and the sand is like getting in all the crevices of my body and I can't find a shade. And then the water is like, if it gets in your mouth, it's all salty. And I just, all my senses go on alert at the beach. None of them relax. And so like, I'm not a beach girl, right? But I have friends who would tell you that that's when they feel they're most relaxed. So What is it for you? And it might not have to do with nature. It might be something else that you can create or cultivate in your home. You know, I think of like how calm and good I feel when I lay under my weighted blanket, right? So what is that answer for you? What brings the most peace to your nervous system? And then a question that I kind of, I ran over this one quickly, but it was a very pivotal one for us. And if you don't have children, just, you know, skip over this part. But for us, a big clarifying question was that really shaped almost all of our decisions was what kind of childhood we wanted to give our kids. And that really shaped most of our decisions. And so if you have kids, that's a great question that you can ask yourself. Is this the kind of childhood I want to give? And maybe you are. You're already doing it. And that's confirmation for you. And that's beautiful. And that's great. And so great. Box checked. But is there some part of it that you're not? And what can you do to change that? Okay. I want to talk to you guys about the actual house we found. Because it's nothing short of a miracle. I mean, it's truly a miracle. This house, if you don't follow me on Instagram, then let me just tell you. First of all, the house is beautiful, but the views are breathtaking. I didn't even realize it till after we were already living in it, but I can see both the sunrise and the sunset from my front porch. Oh, by the way, like the whole view thing, it was because I was moving to the mountains so I could sit on the front porch and drink coffee and look at a pretty view. That's like, Big, big, big deal to me. Okay. So that's what all the houses that matter. Brandon has his fire pit. I have a front porch with coffee. That's like a big deal. And this has a panoramic view. So I can literally see the mountains 306 degrees around the house. Like if I walk the property, but the front porch, I can see it, you know, 180 degrees. The whole from left to right, everything is a stunning view of the Blue Ridge Mountains. So I have learned that this means we live in a cove. So that's why it is mountains all around us is we actually live in literally the middle of the Blue Ridge Mountains in a cove so we can see them all around, like 360 degrees around us. And we had a budget, right? A house shopping budget. Everybody does. Ours was based on the equity we were pulling from Florida and, you know, what my business could support with us being a one income family, not knowing what's going to happen with my husband's career. And so that really limited the houses that we could look at. And we came up at the end of April and saw five houses. Two, I was really, well, three of them I was super excited about. One, when we got to go see it, my in-laws were with us and my father-in-law was like, absolutely not. He didn't even want to finish the tour. It was like, There was so much work that needed to be done that they had hid in the photos. He was like, get us out of here. This is in such bad condition. Like, there's no way you can buy this house. And so that one was really disappointing. And then the other two, one was my husband's top pick and the other one was my top pick. And his top pick was surrounded by trees. And even though it was a beautiful property and a beautiful home, I was open to living there and actually standing in the house. with trees all around me, I felt claustrophobic. I felt, I didn't know how to describe it, but I was like standing in the living room and I just felt like my shoulders were hunched forward and it just felt like everything was like coming in around me. And I tried to describe it to my husband as this feeling of like isolation. And I was like, I can't do this. I can't do this house. Everybody was on an acre there and the neighbors felt really far away, like not a sense of community, very much like everybody keeps to themselves. And she also said that it was almost all entirely retired people or there's a lot of Floridians that live here and a snowbird. So I'm leaving the snowbirds, but it's the opposite, right? So I was with the snowbirds for the winter. These are the snowbirds for the summer. And there's a lot of snowbirds up here. And that whole neighborhood was mostly that. And I just, I was like, I can't. It was mostly the trees around me. I feel like maybe claustrophobic. I was like, Brandon, I can't. I can't do this. I can't live here. And so that one took that off the table, which my realtor said, do not. buy a house you have not seen in person because no matter how, like we had done a virtual tour, everything looked great. But she said, there's like, whether the pictures, the virtual tour, a screen cannot show you what it feels like to drive up to a property, stand in a property, be inside of a house, and you have to see it in person before you buy it. And so we had come up for that one that didn't work out. And then one that we were both pretty excited about, we ordered a home inspection on it and it came back with so much wrong with it. It was a disaster. We could not, the headaches we would have had to deal with were enormous. And so we, and then a couple, we had, we saw five houses that day. And at the end of the day, none of them worked out. And so my mother-in-law gave me this advice. She said, you know, I, we wanted a 4-2. We were looking at a lot of, you know, I think I had my settings on three bedrooms because sometimes there's like a bonus room and I had it on one and a half baths because having two bathrooms was like a non-negotiable to us. And my mother-in-law said, consider changing your settings to looking at two ones because if there's an unfinished basement, you can always add a couple more bedrooms and a bathroom. But I would look at two ones. So we did that and we ended up finding a house that was technically a three, two, but it had two living rooms and one of the living rooms I could make a fourth bedroom. And so we felt really strongly that we wanted to buy that house. And so we came up to see it. But that same weekend, there was this open house on this other property. That was just outside of our budget, but it had only just dropped into our range. And so they dropped the price by$25,000, which put it inside my filter. And it was a 3.1, which I had had my filters where I couldn't see anything less than one and a half, but it was a three one, only a thousand square feet, but it has an unfinished basement. And I felt like it was priced way too high, but they were having an open house. So my realtor didn't even come with us. And when we looked at the listing, my in-laws, Brandon, all of us, we were like, this house is so overpriced because most of the houses that we were looking at were somewhere between like 230 to 290 a square foot. And this was like 450 a square foot. And I was like, I can't believe they're charging this for a thousand square feet. This is nuts. And I want to go look at this house in case the one that we thought we were going to buy falls through. Then maybe over the coming weeks, this one will keep dropping in price. And then when it's priced more appropriately, we can put an offer on. And my realtor didn't even come with us because they were having an open house. We just went to go look at it for shits and giggles. And pictures could not do it justice. So we pull up to this property. It is stunning. The photos on Zillow had been taken during the winter and we were there in the spring. So the house had been on the market for like, I think like two or three months. And so they had kept dropping the price and we bought it for$130,000 less than what it was originally posted for. And you just can't, like, I can't even describe this property to you guys. It's so gorgeous. It's luscious. They took such good care of it, but also everything. once you're on the property, you also can't see in a picture how immaculately well they took care of it. So they used like all the best wood, all the best exterior, the best quality. They pick best quality everything, best quality appliances, best everything top of the line. And so there's like, All these other houses we were looking at, we were going to have to do work to improve this, fix that. They all had things wrong with them, right? And this house did no work, except it was only a thousand square feet and it had a thousand square foot basement. And when we went to go look at it, we found out that the plumbing was already there for the second bath. And my in-laws were like, you guys have to buy this house. And we were like, I don't know if we can afford it. It was outside of what the bank was willing to loan us based on the financial situation we were in. It was... They were like, you cannot walk away from this house. This is a dream property. And so they helped us to make it work financially. And we made an offer that was on Saturday. We made the official offer on Sunday and they accepted it on Monday. And it was such a whirlwind because the home feels out of our league. I don't even know how else to describe it. I can't even believe we'd ever be able to afford or be able to have a home like this. We had been saying like we would have a band-aid house. So like one home that we'd be in for three or four years while I kept growing my business. And then we could sell that one and then level up and have like our dream home. But we did not think we'd be able to afford our dream home out the gate. And we are, my husband and I think that we don't see any reason that we won't die in this house. Like this is our forever home unless something unforeseen happens. There's no reason for us to ever leave. Like this is our dream property. It is 10 minutes from the coffee shop, 10 minutes from the theater program. It had my first choice of schools. The property is a dream in every way, shape, or form. Everything we wanted on the checklist is there except for the second bathroom, but we could put it in ourselves. So I guess at the end of the day, the band-aid is we are living in 1,000 square feet for a little while, but we have 1,000 square feet basement storage plus a 1,200 square foot garage separate from the house. So we have 3,000 square feet to store things, but 1,000 livable space. And that's why we were able to get it at such a good deal. But the second we close in that basement, our equity will probably jump by at least$150,000, which is insane. If these people would have closed in their basement and put that second bathroom, they could have gotten at least$150,000 more for this house. So we feel like we got a steal of a deal. It blows our minds that we were able to have a home this wonderful. Guys, There's... From my front porch, when I wake up at the sunrise and I drink my coffee, one of my neighbors has horses that neigh. Every direction is beautiful. The 10-minute drive to get to anywhere is all rural around us. So I feel like I'm driving through a national park. It's just farm after farm. So like Rolling Hills, the Blue Ridge Mountains, there is a miniature donkey farm. So on my way to the office today, they were outside and I just get to see little miniature donkeys roaming around. You guys, I can't make this stuff up. I'm just so happy everywhere I drive. My office I'm sitting in, I found her through a Facebook group. I had posted about having an office separate for lots of reasons, internet reasons, because we are a bit rural to have the best high-speed internet. And so it was really started from an internet reason, but it's also really good for my ADHD to not work from home. But my office, I'm close to downtown and I have three windows and outside of all of them, all I can see are mountain views. You go to Walmart, and you step outside of Walmart and you have a 360 view of the mountains. You guys, it just, every single day, my mind is blown. I just can't stop being grateful and excited and overwhelmed in just amazingness. Okay, sorry, I got off. I just, I guess I share all that with you guys to say that I really feel like this happened. It felt like the universe just rolled out of red carpet for us. And I know so much of that had to do with, I use the language of God. It just feels like those three years of setting the intentions and those conversations around, we want this, but not this and this, but not this and this, but not this. It's like God was listening the whole time. And then even when we thought it wasn't going to be possible and I was ready to buy that other house and settle, God was like, no, What I have for you is better than what you can imagine for yourself. And that's what it feels like. It's insane. And I'm just so grateful. And I want this for everybody. Okay, moving on. I shared a lot of like what has gone well and what was easy and rolling out the red carpet. But I want you guys to know that there was plenty of hard parts. The Florida house started falling apart and we had an unexpected$3,000 car repair and we had to let go of, we had to allow people to feel disappointed in us, right? Like a lot of our friends and family were sad we were leaving or had disappointment. And I had to get to a point that I could be okay with that. And I could, it's perfectly appropriate for them to be sad and perfectly appropriate for them to feel disappointed and perfectly appropriate for them to say, I wish you weren't leaving. It's a sign of love. It's beautiful. They're allowed to have those feelings and I don't have to take them on. I don't have to feel guilt that I've disappointed them. And I don't feel any guilt. I feel completely at peace with these decisions. But the work it took to get there, to allow people to be disappointed in you, to allow, make a choice that you know is going to make other people feel sad, It takes a lot of inner work. And that's what I was doing behind the scenes. And like I said, my husband walked away from a whole career. That's not easy to do. So there's plenty of things that were not easy. But I will tell you, as much as there were things to be afraid of, to move to a place where you don't know anybody and start completely over, the scariest part was not making the decision to leave. The scariest part was the thought of never trying. of getting to the end of our lives and saying like, what if we had followed our dreams and what if we had moved to the mountains? Not knowing the answer to that was way scarier than taking the risk. And so I asked that of you, is there anything you're afraid of? And what's bigger, the fear to do the thing or the fear of having never tried? So I would just ask you, here's just some different questions for you to think about for your own life. What are you craving more? What in your life drains you? I just think about how drained I felt driving around. So much of our rural town we grew up in is now like a concrete jungle. All the strawberry fields are getting converted into warehouses and distribution centers. And I would just constantly drive around and feel sad. And so anyways, what in your life drains you? What kind of community can support the version of you you're becoming? And if you do want to consider... I want you to follow your dreams no matter what they are. They might not have to do with moving. They might be about changing careers or changing partners, getting a divorce, or maybe you're single and willing to put yourself out there. Your things might not be about a house and moving. Your dream might have to do with some other spoke on your wheel. But if you are thinking of moving, I encourage you, the lessons I've learned is visit the places you're thinking about going, talk to the locals, do a lot of meditation and reflect, and give yourself permission to want and desire what you truly desire. want. Allow yourself to dream big. In closing, really, this is not, this was never about the house. It wasn't about this particular city or place. I call it that I'm living in paradise, but this is our paradise. It might not be yours, right? You might have people who are like, oh my God, I could never live somewhere that snows. Okay, this is not your paradise, but it is ours, right? But it was never about the house. It's about this feeling of living in alignment with with who we are it's this deep peace I feel when I wake up in this home in this town it wasn't random it's not a coincidence it's a result of listening to what my soul was whispering in my ear for years and so my wish for you is this that you will listen to your whispers and that you will create a life that feels aligned for you that you can't help but be in awe of every single day as you drive around and do day-to-day things like commuting to work, my deepest desire for you is that you will unleash your favorite self.