Start in the Middle

Revamping Midlife Transitions: Mastering Emotional Homes

• Kristi Ballard Falany

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Ever caught yourself in a spiral of negative self-talk as soon as you open your eyes in the morning? That was me, Kristi Falany, a certified trauma-informed life coach, until I stumbled upon the profound power of intentional self-talk. In this enlightening journey, we’ll explore the concept of 'emotional home' - the three dominant feelings that unconsciously become our go-to emotions. These can often be negative, particularly during midlife transitions, shaping our life in ways we may not realize. Drawing from my personal experience, I reveal strategies to help pivot those default feelings into more positive ones, transforming not only your days, but your life.

Midlife is a tumultuous period, brimming with change, but what if it could be a time to rediscover the woman you're meant to be? Coaching could be the key to unlock your authenticity and passion. I share my insights into the transformative power of coaching, which helped me navigate through my own midlife changes, prompting a major lifestyle makeover. Know that it's never too late to create new habits, routines and mindsets that you love. I've been where you are, and I'm here to help guide you through this journey. Let's get started in the middle, together.

Sources: 
Big Think.com, 5 Reasons talking to yourself is good for you
HelpGuide. org, Midlife Crisis: Signs, Causes, and Coping Tips

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Speaker 1:

Hi, I am Kristy Ballard Fellini. I am a certified life coach who found herself at 42, freshly divorced kids off to college and having never dated in my adult life. I was starting in the middle. If you haven't yet hit start on your middle time in life, let's do it together. Let the journey begin. You are listening to Start in the Middle, episode 104.

Speaker 1:

Hey, I have a question for you. Are you a midlife woman who is ready to take control of their lives? Are you someone who is ready to raise the bar on things that you have been settling for in your life? You are in the right spot. I am Kristy Ballard Fellini and I am a certified trauma-informed life coach. This is exactly what I do inside my practice. I help midlife women who are going through transitions in their lives. Perhaps they are finding themselves in a career that is no longer serving them. Maybe their life is not going the way that they thought that it would at this point in their life. Maybe you are an empty nester trying to figure out what being a parent of adult children is actually supposed to look like. These are all of the things that I help midlife women navigate during this time of their lives so that they can create new habits and new routines and new mindsets so that they actually love the life that they are living.

Speaker 1:

I have a special topic for you today. It's all about how you talk to yourself. This idea came to me the other morning when I first woke up. I was feeling heavy-headed, I was still recovering from COVID, and negativity was the first thing that entered into my brain. I can't remember the exact sentence. I'm sure it was something like I don't want to do this today. There's too many things on my schedule. Can't I just pull the covers up over my head? Who knows what that thought was. It could have been any number of thoughts, but I do remember it was some form of negativity. Once I caught myself doing this, once I caught how I was talking to myself first thing in the morning, I quickly shut it down. I literally said to myself nope, we are not doing this today. Of course, this was in my head that I said this, but nonetheless I was intentional that that was not the road that I wanted to go down starting my day.

Speaker 1:

So what I did was I intentionally thought about joy. I literally brought to mind things about my day that I knew was going to bring me joy Activities that I had planned, where I would get to share about my business, the client that I was going to work with that afternoon, and how much joy it brings me to get to help other women in their own lives, the podcast episode that I had on my schedule to record for that week. And then I thought about things that have brought me joy in the past. You guys, one of my favorite images that I like to bring to mind when I want to fill joy is a flower growing in the crack of the sidewalk. So whenever I want to immediately bring joy to my awareness, I bring into my mind this image that I've seen several times and I see it pretty regularly when I am taking walks through my neighborhood. There's this little yellow flower just randomly growing in the crack of the sidewalk, and if you've known me for very long, you know that yellow is my favorite favorite color. So sometimes I will just totally forget about, you know, this flower when I'm on my walk and it surprises me when I come upon it and I get to see it again and it instantly brings warmth to my heart. So I'm talking today about intentionally deciding what you want to bring into your thought pattern rather than just letting your brain randomly come up with things, because I think, as you know by now, that your brain is going to do that. Your brain is going to offer up all kinds of things that you didn't even ask it for. Okay, and so when your brain does this, it is an automatic defense mechanism that your brain does because it thinks that it is trying to keep you safe. So I want to talk to you about why being intentional is so important when it comes to the thoughts that you are allowing into your mind.

Speaker 1:

So the other day, I was talking with a client about emotional home. Now, you may not be familiar with this, but your emotional home are the top three feelings that you feel on the regular, the top three feelings that you feel the most out of all human emotional experience feelings. What are the three that you automatically feel on default? I'm talking about the ones that just automatically happen, that you don't even have to negotiate. They're just there, just like that feeling that I mentioned earlier when I first woke up. Your top three feelings are your emotional home. Those are the three that you automatically feel by default and continue to live your life by. Now, be honest with yourself as you're answering these questions Are those the feelings that you actually want? Because I'm going to tell you that there is a huge possibility that your top three feelings are negative feelings. And here's how I know.

Speaker 1:

I was reading an article called Midlife Crisis Signs, causes and Coping Tips. Now, while the article states that the idea of a midlife crisis being inevitable really doesn't hold weight anymore, but some of us do face new stressors at this time in our lives, so you may start to regret your career path and feel trapped by your financial decisions. Maybe you worry about the decline in your own physical abilities, or maybe you worry about goals that you think that you've missed out on. Some people also see a shift or an increase in their responsibilities as they reach middle age. You might be in a situation where you're starting to have to take care of an aging parent, or maybe it's that you have to accept that your children are becoming more independent. Therefore, your relationship needs to change. So, of course, it makes total sense that some of these feelings that make up your emotional home may be of negativity.

Speaker 1:

There are other factors as well to why your emotional home may default to negative. It could definitely be your conditioning, what was modeled for you as you were growing up. Not too long ago, I did an episode that reminded you that you are literally the sum of the five people that you spend the most time with in your life. So if you take a look at your circle of friends or the family that you spend the most time around, how do they show up in their emotional home? These are all factors that could play into your current emotional home. Your emotional home also comes from your experiences and how your brain interprets those experiences. Again, I want you to remember that your brain is in constant pursuit of keeping you safe.

Speaker 1:

So, with that said, I want to share with you a little secret. You see, I have a child that talks to themselves, and always has, and when I first really noticed it, I didn't really know what to think about it, because I know that I didn't grow up talking to myself and it's not something that I modeled to my children as they were growing up. I just know that there are times, or were times, when this particular child was growing up that, behind closed doors, I would hear talking. But through the work that I have done in my coaching practice, not only as learning to be a life coach, but also in my trauma informed class. I know that I have all kinds of things that I will say to myself inside my head, but I never really experienced before how saying them out loud is power. Because inside my own thought process, of course, I have self talk, and oftentimes my self talk could look like a negativity, could look like self doubt, could look like criticism. But when I use that self talk and I actually use it for good for myself and I say those things out loud, my own voice has so much power. Okay.

Speaker 1:

So I want to share with you an article that I read. It's called Five Reasons why Talking to Yourself is Good for you. Okay, so five reasons, and the highlights are that it augments cognitive performance Okay, so it helps your cognitive performance. It also helps you with self encouragement. It also helps you when you are able to use that self talk out loud to remove yourself from harmful situations. It helps you exercise self control, and reading out loud reinforces your memory. This is why I always encourage my fourth graders to read out loud to themselves so that they could hear their own voice as it was processing through their brain. That's where that cognitive performance comes in, and they were able to remember the material and grasp the material and make it their own, which, in turn, helped them to understand the material better, okay. So all of these things are great things, right, of course. Having better cognitive performance, having more self encouragement to be able to remove yourself from a harmful situation, to have that self control, okay, or to have that additional memory mechanism of the things that you want to read and take in Of course all of these things are great things. But something that I really want to share with you today to help you protect your emotional home is the soothing comfort that your brain and your body feels from the sound of your own voice.

Speaker 1:

Remember when I shared with you earlier about the mood that I woke up with and I wasn't feeling great about the day, like when my eyes first opened and I knew that I was taking on a brand new day, and how my brain immediately went to negativity and how I consciously decided that I was going to stop that negativity in its tracks. Thank you. What I didn't tell you is the power that I felt when I said it out loud, when I said those words nope, we are not doing this today. When I said those words out loud to myself, my body immediately felt so much lighter. I literally could feel the tension in my forehead start to soften and I was no longer dreading getting out of bed. When I said those words out loud, it was like my heart and my mind opened up to bringing in that joy, and this is what made it so much easier for my brain to bring up that image of that beautiful yellow flower growing in the crack of the sidewalk. The sound of your own voice has the power to soothe your body back to a grounded space, to a space where you feel comforted in times of chaos or when your body unintentionally feels a sense of alert. I know that there have been times when my own brain thinks we're in danger when we really aren't, and I am able to use my voice to self talk and bring back my body to a state of calm and clarity.

Speaker 1:

You guys, I find this information just so fascinating about how much power that we hold with inside ourselves. It just takes some skill and some work to bring it all out and to bring it together, and I just really want to tell you with this podcast, my hope is that I'm creating for you light bulb moments like sparks of interest, tidbits of knowledge and wisdom, ideas that peak your curiosity. But the real magic for you happens inside my coaching program. Your coaching experience with me is completely different from what you learn here on the podcast. In fact, it's 10 times better because it is totally immersive in what you need in your life. So if you're ready to experience the power of coaching, I want to offer you a complimentary discovery session.

Speaker 1:

This is your opportunity to discover if coaching is right for you. It gives you the chance to learn some new skills and to make the best informed decision on how coaching can help you design a life that you love at midlife. So I ask you are you ready? All you have to do is visit my website, christyphilanicoachingcom. That's K-R-I-S-T-I-F-N-F-A-L-A-N-Y coachingcom. All of the information that you need to know to get you started is right there. There's also a free gift for you. It's called Unlock your Authenticity the surprising mindset sabotaging midlife women. So I encourage you to go grab that free gift, click on the work with me page and let's schedule your complimentary discovery call. All right, I hope to hear from you soon and you guys have an amazing week. Who is your life coach? I would love the opportunity to work with you as you are rediscovering the woman you were meant to be. Visit Christyphilanicoachingcom for more information on how we can work together to ignite that passionate, enthusiastic woman who may have been tucked away for some time. Let's start in the middle together.