Thank you to Dr. Wendy Walsh for interviewing me on your show! I loved talking about relationships and my book, BRAVE-ish!
Listen to our interview on iHeart Radio or KFI AM 640 or read the transcript below:
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Did you ever read that book? Wild? By the woman who went on the P C T all by herself while she was solving her psychological problems or Eat, Pray, Love, whenshe ate her way around the world and prayed and came back with a love. I’m sure you did. Well, my guest on the show has written a very similar book. Her name is Lisa Niver. She’s named a number three travel influencer this year. And she talks travel on K T L A in Los Angeles, plus her YouTube channel. She’s all over social media. Her new book is called Brave-ish, One Breakup, Six Continents, and Feeling Fearless After Fifty. So what I didn’t know about Lisa Niver is that all her travel blogging began after breakup. It all had to do with relationships.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
I mean, she ate sushi for the very first time despite having already traveled to Asia a bunch of times. That she sat on the bottom of an ocean in Mexico and learned how to identify different species of sharks, especially the aggressive ones. She raced BMWs in the rain in California. She zoomed on a Lamborghini in Vegas, On a border crossing between Tanzania and Kenya, she fixed a toilet <laugh> for people who’d never done a bucket flush. She took the plunge to skydive as her 50th challenge! Welcome Lisa Niver. You look fearless.
Lisa Niver:
Thank you. I’m so honored to be here with you.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
So why did you decide to write this creative memoir?
Lisa Niver:
I’d say one of the main reasons I worked on this book was I remember when I was getting divorced. I felt like such a failure and I felt really alone. And I’ve spoken with a lot of other women and men who also felt like failures. And in actual fact, as you probably tell your listeners, for me, it would’ve been a failure to stay in that marriage.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Exactly. You know, this week in my psychology class I was teaching students about various cognitive biases we have. And one of them is called the sunk cost bias. And that is the more time and the more money you’ve invested in something, the more likely you are gonna stick to it, even if it’s awful because we have this bias to staying loyal. Right. So you gotta know when to hold them and know when to fold them.
Lisa Niver:
Yes. And so I folded them and then I was so upset and I was so sad. And I ended up working on my eyes. I had a vision problem. And then I started the 50 challenges before I was 50. And doing the 50 challenges eventually became this book.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
And you did ’em alone,
Lisa Niver:
The challenges? Yes.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
What are some of the biggest challenges and how did you overcome your fears?
Lisa Niver:
I’d say one of the biggest things that happened was I had an undiagnosed or misdiagnosed eye problems since I was a child. And everyone told me I was clumsy, which I believed, but that actually wasn’t true.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
You weren’t seeing stuff? Oh my goodness.
Lisa Niver:
That was definitely a problem.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
This book, it’s not just a travel log and an exciting adventure story. It’s a story of recovery after divorce and you share a lot of personal struggles after this divorce. Was it difficult to open up? I mean, I’m an open book. I’ve been an extrovert. I process externally. I have a very high shame tolerance. I’m not a normal person. How was it for you opening up about this really personal stuff?
Lisa Niver:
It was horrible. I would write, I would write about it and I would feel so sad and I would cry. It was very cathartic. And then I, when I thought I was for sure gonna throw up, I would lie on the floor
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
<Laugh>
Lisa Niver:
I wouldn’t really throw up. And then I would get back at my desk and keep typing.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
I kind of felt like that last night with all the champagne, but I had to stand up instead of lie on the floor. It’s a long story. So just give us a quick little laundry list of some of the things you did that were particularly scary. I mentioned a few, but there might be others.
Lisa Niver:
You mentioned a few. I I’ve done a lot of scuba diving challenges, like you said, with the sharks. One of the things I tried was beach tennis. For someone that doesn’t see very well, starting tennis as an adult was very frustrating.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
How does the ball bounce on the beach?
Lisa Niver:
First I took tennis lessons on a regular court. But then when I was in Aruba, they had beach tennis. It’s more, it’s like a cross between ping pong and tennis. It’s fun. But hard.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
So you’ve done these 50 challenges. You wrote the book. Was it worth it? How has your life changed?
Lisa Niver:
That is such a good question. My life is so different. Even when I was doing the 50 challenges, every time I had a new idea, first I said no. I refused. There was a lot of crying and refusing. And, and now when something happens, like I went with a friend to the CN Tower in Toronto. I realized you can go to the top and walk around.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
With a glass floor.
Lisa Niver:
My friend said the idea of it made her wanna throw up. And not only did I do it, I did it in the rain.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
I did it one time with my kids because we wanted to see the CN Tower. It used to be the tallest freestanding structure in the world, but who knows who beat it now. You take this elevator up forever and ever and ever. And you get to this tower and there’s a freaking glass floor you step out on and there’s nothing. So I actually have vertigo. So what happens when you have vertigo is there are no thoughts. Your muscles just freeze. You can’t move. It’s the weirdest thing. You can’t get past it. It’s not even any sense of fear. It’s like everything just freezes. So I stayed on that little kind of platform near the edge and my kids walked on the glass. That’s the only I could do. ‘beause I couldn’t step out. My muscles were just frozen.
Lisa Niver:
This is the one where you are in a suit with a tethered harness.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Oh, you did it on the outside?
Lisa Niver:
Yes.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
My lord. No, I didn’t even anticipate that you did the outside CN tower
Lisa Niver:
In the rain. It was so fun.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Lisa. Oh my goodness. Okay, when we come back, I wanna get into the nitty gritty because also in this travel you had a few little sex exploits. You worked at a Club Med. I want to know what happened at Club Bed for Lisa Niver when we come back.
Lisa Niver:
Author ,travel writer, Lisa Niver. Her new book is coming out on September 19th is called Brave-ish,One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless.After 50. You did 50 Crazy Challenges –Swimming with sharks –Hanging from the CN Tower all over the world. And that’s why you have so much great travel material to share. You originally left California for Colorado to work at a Club Med. Tell me about that.
Lisa Niver:
Club Med was so much fun, but a little overwhelming for me. At first, there was a lot of club bed happening. <Laugh>,
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
It was a ski one, not a beach one, So club bed happens in the ski resorts
Lisa Niver:
Club bed happened when I was there everywhere. I remember once being at a staff meeting and the chief of the village saying, there’s a lot of single women coming next week and I want them to be happy.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
So they kind of tell people to put out,
Lisa Niver:
Yes they did. I kept thinking, Dorothy, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Because I had been an elementary school teacher and that was not what we talked about at staff meetings.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
I’m afraid to ask you this question, Lisa, but there you got the nickname Spin!
Lisa Niver:
What happened to me is at Club Met everyone had a roommate. And so if you wanted to make out, you had to find a place to go. One of the ski instructors and I actually made out in the laundry room. I learned by the next day that you could do something alone in a locked room, but pretty fast everyone would know. So at lunch, one of the other ski instructors who I didn’t know, I was new, we used to eat with the kids. I was skiing with the kids. And he came and he put a quarter
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Children, what your teachers do at night?
Lisa Niver:
Put a quarter next to my plate and he said, in case you wanna go for a spin with me later.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
What?
Lisa Niver:
Because that would turn on the laundry machine. because I was sitting on the laundry machine.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
On the spin cycle!
Lisa Niver:
And so for the rest of that season, everyone called me Spin.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Oh my, oh my. Well let me ask you this though. When you were growing up, were you in a conservative house? A liberal house? Was this a sexual awakening for you? All this travel stuff? She’s nodding yes. You can’t radio nod on radio!!
Lisa Niver:
I grew up very myself, conservative. I did not date much in high school. I went to all girls school. I think some of it had to do with my eye issues. I didn’t always get all the social queuing. And I got confused. I remember somebody asked me at a party, do you wanna go on a walk? Because It’s hot in here. And it was hot and I did want to go for a walk, but then he wanted to kiss me. And I thought, why did that happen? In college, I did date, but not so much. And then when I was at Club Med, it was basically a buffet.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
You were learning about yourself after your divorce. You’re 50 years old. That’s a time when women’s hormones are going down. What was your experience?
Lisa Niver:
I was back at the buffet and I met men everywhere. I slept with a guy I met on the plane, someone from salsa class. I was traveling and I was having so much fun again. And I felt like I could be myself and I was out in the world. That drew a lot of people to me.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
The research on cougars and menopause is that depending on your environment, it can impact your hormones. So in other words, if you are in an old stayed conservative relationship doing the same kinds of sexual acts on a regular basis, your hormones are gonna decline. But if all of a sudden, as you use the term you’re at a buffet, hormones charge up again. And so I like to use the saying, if you don’t use it, you lose it. So it’s about using it.
Lisa Niver:
Yes. And I had so much fun. It was great. I met someone on almost every adventurous trip I went on. I was collecting new memories.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
So let me ask you about this. I was never one who was good at hooking up. I did a lot of hookups, but I didn’t like it because I always thought they would be a stepping stone to a relationship. And when the relationship didn’t happen, I had all kinds of attachment anxiety. Now we do know that women are more likely to fall in love during sex than men are because their bodies emit so much oxytocin, the big bonding hormone. Did you have that problem that you were falling in love?
Lisa Niver:
I think after working on the cruise ship and people came for seven days and left, that when I was meeting people on adventures, I knew it was finite. I think when you’re home and you meet someone at the corner bar, you think you’ll see them again. But when you’ve flown from Los Angeles to Dublin and you meet someone from Canada, you don’t think, wow, this is definitely happening.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Well, some women do. Oh, and they pine away. And send emails forever and say, when are you coming to visit? So you’re able to let go when it is over. What’s up for you with your relationship life? What is your plan?
Lisa Niver:
Well, I was actually just talking to someone this morning. I asked him to set me up with one of his friends. So we’ll see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Are you looking for long-term monogamy now?
Lisa Niver:
I definitely am not part of the whole polygamous, ethical, non-monogamous thing in Los Angeles. If I’m going to date someone, I’m only going to date one person.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Hear that gentleman Lisa Niver. You can look her up. The book is called Brave-Ish, One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless after 50. Lisa, where do they find the book?
Lisa Niver:
You can find the book everywhere. But the best thing is call your local bookstore and ask them to order it and pick it up in the store. You never know what treasures you’ll find in the store, but Barnes and Noble Bookshop, Walmart, Target, all have my book. It’s everywhere.
Dr. Wendy Walsh:
Thanks for being with us.
Buy Lisa’s book BRAVE-ish and Dr. Wendy’s book, The 30-day Love Detox
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