Episode Details

If you love the show and you'd like to support it directly you can tip the host here https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/support

In this episode of The Art of Imperfect Adulting, Amy Stone speaks with Brenda Florida about choosing radical change as a tool for personal transformation. Based in Southern California, Brenda shares her experience of putting her life in storage, temporarily moving to Playa del Carmen, Mexico, and intentionally disrupting her routine in search of growth. Listeners will hear how Brenda used a six-month international relocation. This was not an escape, but as a catalyst to break deep-seated patterns, confront internalized beliefs around work, money, and identity, and ultimately emerge with a renewed sense of purpose.

About Brenda Florida:

Brenda is a certified life coach with over eight years of experience helping hundreds of clients break patterns that no longer serve them — like people-pleasing, guilt, overgiving, and overfunctioning. Her work focuses on pattern interruption at the identity level, helping people recognize the subconscious dynamics driving their decisions and consciously choose a new response. This includes ambitious women navigating major life and career shifts — retirement, reinvention, stepping away from leadership — and redefining who they are in their next chapter. Brenda’s approach is practical, direct, and grounded in real-time change — not theory, but lived experience.

Main Topics Covered:

• How intentional relocation can catalyze deep personal transformation
• The logistics and realities of being a digital nomad: minimalism, storage decisions, and Airbnbs
• Disrupting internalized patterns around work, money, and gender roles
• Navigating loneliness and self-reflection during a “cocooning” season abroad
• Overcoming expectations: why outward adventure became a journey inward
• The challenges (and comedic realities) of living abroad without speaking the local language
• Practical support tools for reinventing yourself later in life
• The importance of reframing discomfort and uncertainty as growth opportunities

Quote from the Episode:

“It was very much a cocooning time for me...the whole six months ended up being so internally transformative. I was spending all my energy on myself... It totally changes the chatter—you’re not absorbing that noise from your regular environment. It leaves you to yourself in a different way.” — Brenda Florida

Timestamps:

[00:00:00] Introduction to Brenda Florida and episode overview

[00:01:05] Planning the Mexico move—timing, storage, logistics

[00:03:28] Why Playa del Carmen? Geography, practicality, digital nomad research

[00:05:16] The need to disrupt patterns: burnout, business plateau, and personal stasis

[00:09:56] Family and friends’ reactions to taking a big risk

[00:14:22] What she was trying to shake up—specific patterns and old beliefs

[00:18:32] Approaches to “pattern interruption” before moving and why relocation was different

[00:20:12] Living in Mexico with limited Spanish; daily challenges and language barriers

[00:25:00] Adapting to new systems: grocery stores, finding familiar products, and reliance on tech

[00:29:55] Socializing, expat communities, and why Brenda chose solitude

[00:32:23] Dealing with environmental factors (like sargassum) and shifting expectations

[00:35:13] The rooftop pool, redefining “beach” joy, and embracing what works

[00:36:18] What she thought would happen vs. what actually transformed

[00:37:36] The retreat analogy: why changing environment unlocks new insights

[00:41:08] Mindful living: what daily “friction” reveals about subconscious beliefs

[00:44:33] Unpacking deep conditioning around work, pa