Why Midlife Is the Perfect Time to Unplug, Unsubscribe & Let Go (And How To Do It!)

Midlife is so often framed as a time to add more — more routines, more supplements, more goals, more self-improvement. But lately, I’ve been craving the opposite. Less noise. Less pressure. Less clutter. More space, calm, and freedom.

In this episode, I’m sharing a simple framework that’s helping me simplify life in midlife — built around five small but powerful shifts, all starting with “UN.”

Inspired by the Chinese Year of the Snake, the transition into a new life phase, and ten years of running my work online, I explore how letting go — rather than adding more — can be deeply supportive at this stage of life.

In this episode, I talk about:

• Why unplugging is essential for calming our nervous systems
• How unsubscribing and unfollowing can dramatically reduce mental clutter
• What it really means to untangle overcomplicated routines and emotional obligations
• Why unloading physical clutter (and old identities) feels different in midlife
• How creating space allows us to unleash a more aligned next chapter

This episode is for any woman who feels overstimulated, overextended, or quietly pulled toward a simpler way of living — without needing to overhaul her entire life.

As a takeaway, I invite you to choose just one “UN” to try this week and notice how it feels in your body. Less effort. More ease. A lighter way forward.

If this episode resonates, I’d love you to share it with a friend who may be feeling the same pull to simplify.

Transcript

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I've been thinking a lot lately about how I want to simplify life and make it so much calmer with more space and more freedom in it. Midlife so often gets framed as a time to add more, more routines, more supplements, more goals, more self-improvement. But what I'm craving and what I hear so many other women craving is actually the opposite. Less, less noise, less pressure, less stuff, less expectation, a simpler life that feels lighter, calmer, and more aligned with who we are now, not who we used to be. And one word that keeps coming back to me lately actually, it's one prefix is un. Undoing, unlearning, untangling, unfollowing. So today I want to talk about five things we can do to simplify our lives, all starting with UN and why this feels like such a big moment to be having this conversation. Hi, and welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you are here. I've done over 50 podcast episodes now, and I know that some of you have been here since the start. And if you have, thank you. They have been spread out over the last three or so years. I have to admit. But since last autumn, I made an effort to be more regular with my podcast episode releases. And so far, fingers crossed, it's going well. If you are new to the podcast, it is amazing to have you here. I just want you to know how grateful I am to have you here as someone who is making a real conscious effort to consume less and to have less come into my world. I'm really appreciative that you've set aside a little bit of time to listen to this podcast episode today. Now, I dunno if you know this already, but we are currently in the Chinese year of the snake, which is traditionally all about shedding skin, letting go of what no longer works, releasing old identities, habits and patterns so that something new can emerge. And this is a metaphor that feels very real to me right now for a number of reasons. This year marks a few big personal milestones to start off with. Our youngest child has just turned 18, which means that we now officially have three adult children. We've actually got quite a big age gap between our children. Our eldest Flo is coming up to 27. Then we have a son, Freddy, who is 24, and then Matilda, our youngest, has just turned 18. So we've been parenting for 27 years now, which feels like a really long time in an amazingly fabulous way. Flo, just in case you're listening to this, and with our last child just turning 18. It feels like a really big milestone. If you've been through that or you're approaching it, you'll know it's not just a practical change. It is also quite emotional as well. It's quite symbolic for a number of reasons. Of course we are really proud of us as parents and also of them as children. And it's just that shift that we are all now adults. We are no longer two adults and three children, which is what we were for so many years. We are now five adults in our family. And that feels quite big. And for me, there's also been this slight relief. It's not that now that we've got three adult children, they're going to need us less or want us less. Particularly the youngest, we've still got a lot of parenting to do, a levels to get through, university to go through and all that kind of thing. But it's almost like a little sense of relief. Like, okay, so i've done a majority of the parenting. Now what's next? What's coming next? And it's the case of having a role that you've lived inside for nearly three decades is now slowly loosening. So that's the first big milestone. The second big milestone is that at the same time is the start of a new year, and that's very much a natural point for reflection and planning and taking stock and figuring how we might want things to look in the future. And for me, it's also 10 years since I pivoted and first started learning about online business. So prior to that, I'd started out as a lawyer. I'd reviewed miscarriages of justice, I'd investigated complaints against solicitors, and then I set up a business as a personal stylist. So that was very much one-to-one. And then with the arrival of Instagram back in, I don't know, 2012 maybe, I started doing more work on Instagram collaborations, influencer type work for want of a better phrase, styling photo shoots, styling TV adverts, working on tv. Lots and lots of interesting things. But then in 2016, that's when I first became aware of running a business online and I started to put my work online. And so 10 years feels like a real milestone in that sense as well. That became the point in time when I took a leap into something so uncertain. So out of my comfort zone, I had no idea what I was doing. I had to learn everything from scratch. So it has been 10 years of growth, of learning, of mistakes, of reinvention. So all of this together with it being the year of the snake, which is coming to a close, it being a new year, a new life phase, 10 years since I started popping everything online feels like a key point. Not to reinvent everything, but to simplify it. And so I'm going to look at five different uns that we can do to help simplify our lives. The first UN is an plugging. And I don't say this lightly because I do a lot of my work online. I love connection. I'm particularly enjoying being on Instagram at the moment. I feel like after many years of having lost my voice, I've found it again. I'm connecting with lots of women. I love learning. I love being inspired. I love listening to podcasts, but our nervous systems are already carrying a lot. Particularly at this stage of life, we are navigating hormonal shifts, mental load, emotional responsibility of caring for others, whether they're younger or older than us, decision fatigue. And then on top of that, if we lay a constant input from phones, notifications, news, tv, social media, podcasts, playing in the background of our own thoughts, whether we are in the shower, whether we're cooking, whether we're out for a walk, it's a lot. I don't see it unplugging as being about rejecting technology or rejecting people or anything like that. I just see it as a really conscious decision about who I allow into my ears, into my brain, into my vision, and into my nervous system. And two other quite major things that happened for me this year, and you might laugh at these, is the first one neighbors was taken off the air. And I would quite often do my early morning workout to neighbors. And that's quite a big part of my infrastructure that has disappeared now whether you can see the importance of that or attach any value to that, I don't know, but I think you'll understand what I mean when I say that's part of the infrastructure of my daily routine has gone. And then the other thing that has happened is that my favorite podcaster, Jenna Kutcher, has stopped recording her podcast. It was hugely successful. She'd done it for 10 years, and she just wanted space for other things. She used to release podcast episodes twice a week, Monday and Thursday. So they were always a key part of my week as well. But they have gone and I've made a conscious decision not to try and fill the neighbor's time or the Jenna podcast time with anything else. I'm just really trying to concentrate on having more white space, free space. I like to call it buffer zone in my life, so I'm not just replacing it with other things, and I'm being really conscious about what I'm allowing into my life and into my ecosystem. And the interesting thing is if those two things had still existed, if neighbors had still existed, and if Jenna's podcast had still existed, i'd been invited to remove two things from my life. I would not have chosen to have removed those two things because I really liked them both. But the fact that the decision was made for me has almost given me the permission to look at what else I'm consuming that I probably don't enjoy as much as those two things and remove those as well. And it's actually really quite liberating I have to say. You might be thinking to yourself at this stage. That's a really daft thing to say to us at the moment, Beth, because we are listening to your podcast. But the thing is, I only really want people to listen to it if it really benefits them, if it helps them, if it's a good use of their time. And so if you decide that isn't the case, you are very welcome. I hope that you don't, but you're very welcome to step away and either go and find something else instead, or. Not, fill that space at all. Just have that space for you and your own thoughts. So what might unplugging look like? It might look like not charging your phone in your bedroom so you can't reach for it first thing in the morning, and instead going back to an old-fashioned alarm clock, which frankly I think are quite cute. It might mean a tech-free hour before bed. I think we could all work on all of these, and I'm not saying I'm brilliant at any of them, but these are just some ideas of ways that we can unplug, we can turn off notifications that we don't genuinely need. Interestingly, that's something that I've done just before recording this podcast episode. I've just turned off all the notifications on everything, and as I did that, I thought, Hmm, I wonder whether I'm actually going to turn these back on again. The ones that I have as phone calls coming through from people who I know might need me, they will go back on. As for everything else, not quite sure. One thing that I've noticed as a result of unplugging is how uncomfortable it can feel at first. There's that real temptation to fill the void, to fill the gap, to fill the silence with something else, and I'm having to keep reminding myself and saying, no, Beth. You've decided not to do that. Just sit with it. Just sit with the quiet. Just sit with your own thoughts. And sometimes when I look at my teenage daughter, and I think you are always plugged into something when you're eating, unless it's a family meal, you know, if she's having a snack, she's probably plugged into something. She's watching something, she's listening to something. And I'm aware that I've absolutely been guilty of the same because it's always seemed like a really good idea to be able to. Multitask. So if I've been cooking dinner, I might have been listening to something only ever through one headphone, but it's like, how can I be really efficient? How can I kill two birds with one stone? I don't want to sit and listen to a podcast, but if I'm doing something else at the same time, all that feels like a win-win. But actually now I'm just trying to sit with my own thoughts and see where it takes me. And I might do a whole other episode on that'cause it's actually quite interesting. But all I would say is if you do unplug from anything, try and sit with the discomfort for a while and just get used to the quiet. Get used to your own thoughts. Get used to your silence and see how it sits with you. Because once you push through that initial kind of itch. I think something really beautiful does happen. Your nervous system, it starts to soften, it starts to calm down. Your thoughts definitely slow down and you start hearing yourself again. You really do start hearing your own internal voice. And of course if we are modeling that to others as well, then that's no bad thing either. The second UN is un scribing and unfollowing, and this one is really powerful. We often think of stress as something big and obvious, but so much of it these days comes from that low level, constant background mental noise. Every email asks something of you. Every post that you look at on Instagram certainly tells you you are behind or you're making a mistake or you are failing, or you are wrong, or you could be doing more. There's messages, pulling your attention in a direction that you didn't choose. It seems that if you look at something or subscribe to one thing, then you're suddenly inundated with. Lots of other similar things. I dunno whether details are shared, they're not meant to be, or whatever happens. Whatever goes on. But it can very quickly get very noisy and my aim this year has been to get to the stage where my inbox is really boring and really quite empty. There's a few people, and I love their newsletters, so I keep those coming in, but most of the brands, I think if I wanted something from you, I know where to go and find it. It's not a problem. I don't need you coming into my inbox every day, and so I've been unsubscribing from a lot of emails. If there's something that I see on Instagram and I rarely look at much on Instagram, I very much try and use it more as somebody who creates content necessarily than consuming it. But if I look at something and I recognize in myself that for whatever reason it doesn't feel great, then I will mute that person. That's nothing against them. I could love them dearly in real life. I could love them when I meet them, whatever it may be. We don't need to dive into that. It's just about how does that sit in my body and if it doesn't make me feel happy and joyous, then it's time to just put a few boundaries in place around that. And I think, You know, our inbox and our social feeds are environments. They're digital environments. But if those environments are cluttered, if they're demanding, if they're misaligned, that affects how we feel every single day. And we always have this drive to unclutter our personal possessions and our physical environment. But there's also our digital environment as well, which I think it's really important to look at. So. Now is such a natural time to ask, does this still resonate with me? Is this person's voice aligned with who I am now? Maybe it was a few years ago, maybe it isn't anymore. Do I leave this content feeling inspired or diminished? Do I actually need any of these things that people are trying to sell to me? And it's okay to outgrow things. It's okay for us to go through that phase in life where it's all about acquiring more and, and building and wanting more before getting to that stage of life where we go, do you know what? This is all so noisy and so loud. And actually I'm all about less right now. I see it unsubscribing as an act of clearing things out. It's setting a boundary. It's something really positive. It makes me feel lighter. It makes me feel brighter. I don't think that we are closing ourselves off if we are doing that. We just. Curating what we want our environment to be like, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. The third UN is untangling, and this is one that often goes unnoticed. I think there's so many women who are walking around in invisible knots, whether it's due to overcommitment, whether it's due to decisions that have been half made, whether it's due to emotional obligations. Or whether it's due to complicated systems that once made sense, but which don't anymore. An untangling can look like something practical. It can be. Simplifying routines. It can be reducing our commitments. It can be streamlining our schedules and for that to take place, it might be a case of just looking at what you are doing in a week, or how your systems are set up or, what routines you've got, and figuring out whether you can untangle some of them and whether you can simplify them. And sometimes it's emotional. It's maybe having a difficult conversation. It is saying no, or maybe it's allowing something to be incomplete. We don't have to justify our need for simplicity. We don't have to earn ease. And the stage of life we are at gives us permission to stop making everything harder than it needs to be. I think inevitably if we get to this stage of life, we come with, with wisdom, with ideas, with solutions, and it's probably more a case of stepping back and saying to ourselves, okay, what can I do to make this simpler? What's the simplest way that I can go about doing this? And that's a question that I keep asking myself this year. If I'm about to embark on something new or if I'm thinking of doing something, I just think, what's the simplest way that I can do this? So it doesn't create more stress. It doesn't create overwhelm, it doesn't confuse me, and I don't get lost in the thought process of what I'm meant to be doing and, and how I'm going to be getting there. Whether that's literal or metaphorical, how can I keep it simple? And I think untangling can mean different things to different people, but it's definitely an UN that is worth having at the back of your mind. If things feel. Over complicated. The fourth UN that we're going to come to is unloading. And yes, this is about stuff, physical stuff, but it's also about identity decluttering at this stage of our lives, hits differently than it did in our twenties or our thirties because now the things we're surrounded by often represent past versions of ourselves. Whether that's clothes for bodies we no longer have, it might be items tied to roles without groan. It might be things that we keep out of guilt obligation or just in case or because they've got massive sentimental reasons. Probably most of the things that I keep now that I don't actually want, I keep for sentimental reasons, I'll look at them. I'm talking about clothes in particular, I suppose, but also objects. I think, oh, I remember when I wore that, or I remember when I was given that part of me would love to be one of those people who is very unsentimental about things. But then, that's just not how I'm made. So that feels all kinds of wrong, and I don't think I could be that person. I dunno if any of you have spoken to your friends recently and said, oh, I've got so many things to sell on Etsy. It feels like everyone I speak to says I've got so many things that I really want to get rid of on Etsy, and we are all at that stage of wanting to simplify, to declutter, to part with things all of which has the result of lightening the mental load, and I think that's probably where it comes in. I almost want to get our home to the stage where it feels so light that if we suddenly decided to move, which we won't, we could pack it in a day. Because everything has been sorted, organized, and it just feels like that would be a lovely light place to be. It's not that we're a million miles away from it, but there's probably work to be done and there's probably work in progress. So thinking about this on a smaller scale, I had a shelf in one of my wardrobes. You know, like people have the Room of Doom. I had a shelf of Doom and every time I opened my wardrobe, I saw it there and it had got beauty products on it. They were all of a specific genre, but it were beauty products. There were hair products, there was makeup, there were eye masks, you know, everything was on the shelf. And part of me quite liked that little chaotic shelf because a lot of things in my life felt quite neat. So I almost needed that slightly chaotic shelf. But then I realized that the chaotic shelf was adding more mental stress. So what I did is I just. Emptied the entire shelf off. I've obviously over the months, kind of tidied it within itself and I just thought, no, this is not going to work anymore. Take everything off, put it in a bag. Pick out the bits that you can easily put back on the shelf that you know you want, and then deal with the other bits. And honestly, that has been one of the best things that I've done this year. I haven't even finished it yet. I've kind of come to a bit of a standstill, which is quite usual for me, I have to say. So I need to motivate myself to actually finish the job. But the joy I get from looking at that tidy shelf, I'm sure you will probably be nodding your head, and going, yes, I absolutely get where you are coming from on that. What unloading asks of us is, does this reflect who I am now? Does this support the life I'm living today? Am I keeping this because I love it or because I feel I should or because there's a just in case moment. I will keep that extra suitcase just in case the rest of the family are away at the same time and we need an extra suitcase. I'll keep that pair of heels just in case I'm demanded to wear something that requires heels. Why? I've got no idea. But there we go. I'll keep those extra 4,000 cushions that I've bought over the years just in case what I suddenly have to furnish an entire hotel. And I'll keep all those curtains from three houses ago just because in case, again, I need to furnish an entire hotel. Who knows? And it doesn't mean that these are big changes that we have to make all at once. But definitely unloading can have a huge impact on our mental load as well as just our environmental load. And the final un, which is quite an exciting one, I think is unleashing, this is the fifth one, because it's something that we can aim towards and something that the unplugging, unsubscribing, untangling and unloading facilitates. The unleashing is kind of the final icing on the cake because we've simplified so much. And it doesn't mean to say that that's about shrinking your life. It means it's about making room for expansion and allowing other things to come in. For, making room to experiment, to try new things, to test new things, to go to new places, to meet new people. And I dunno about you, but I'm much more able to do those things if I feel that I've cleared away the other stuff that needs clearing. As with all of these ideas, as with all of these uns, they can present themselves in many different shapes or forms. So unleashing for you could be something completely different. Unleashing could be releasing the old beliefs around things like, oh, I should have figured it all out by now. Or, oh, change is selfish, or It is too late to pivot Because Midlife is such a powerful time to really start trusting ourselves to leaning into our experience and believing in ourselves more deeply to be speaking more honestly, to stop editing ourselves so much. Of course, whilst being mindful about who's around us and what we are saying, but unleashing might actually look like saying what you really think, choosing ease. Rejecting so much of what we've heard about Hustle is the only way forward, and we have to strive and we have to achieve and we have to be successful if we want to be. Anything It might look like just following your nose, following the breadcrumbs of what's coming your way. Just tuning into what feels good in your body, what makes sense to you, What feels light, which doesn't come with a whole lot of resistance. And of course there are all the obligations in life. I, I'm not saying for a minute, oh, you know, cooking the family meals, that feels quite heavy and I've got resistance around that, so I'm not going to do it. It, it is not that, it's more about creating those pockets of time in the first instance so that you can then get to ask yourself the questions and see how you react to them. I don't think we grew up in a space where we intentionally designed our lives. We kind of followed the well trodden path and I mentioned that Jenna Kutcher was my favorite podcast host and she actually taught so much about online businesses. That was what her podcast was about. But over the years, I really watched her pivot as she made conscious decisions about how she wanted to live her life and not only did she make the decisions, but she put them into practice because you'll see so many people who say how they are living their lives, but the reality is nothing like that whatsoever. Whereas she actually was, I can't pretend I know her personally, but from the things she was saying, the things she was talking about online, the, the picture she was posting, I very much got the impression that she was very much walking the walk, not just talking the talk. And her view was, I want my business to be the least interesting thing about me, even though she was hugely successful. And so she had started experimenting with different things. She started to rose, she started to bake bread. She started to work in a soup kitchen. Bearing in mind, she got two young children and she built so much. Space around her business and tried and tested out so many different things because I think that she felt along the way, she'd become a business owner and then she'd become a mum and she'd totally lost who she was. And for her, it was about how did she rediscover who she was and also have a very spacious life. And I know it's easy for us to land on a place and say, oh, well that's okay for her because she's got a lot of money and she has, she won't deny that. But if that's the only place we go to, then it means that we never make any decisions for ourselves about how things might be different. And that's something I'm really working on this year, is trying to create more space, not fill it immediately and just see what comes in. So one of the things I really want to do is grow some dailies. And it sounds small and you may be listening to this and thinking, but Beth, I do that in my sleep. That's so easy. But it's just something different for me and it's figuring out how I want my days to look and how I want my weeks to look and how I want my work to feel when I'm doing it. And I think these five uns are going to be really helpful in helping me to achieve that because If we don't have a framework in place, it's so easy just to slip back into old habits. They're habits for a reason and they're so ingrained in us. So having this kind of UN framework. Will hopefully be helpful for anyone who is looking to make a few changes and to simplify things. And so when we join the dots on the five uns unplugging calms our nervous system unsubscribing, clears mental clutter, untangling, reduces emotional weight, unloading freeze, physical and energetic space, and unleashing allows the next version of us to step forward. And I actually think we might be onto something with this. I think that this could be a really simple and uncomplicated way to start us on the path to simplicity, to ease, to freedom, and just to having a little bit more space around us. This is the year of the snake in action shedding what no longer fits, not forcefully, but intentionally. And if you'd like a simple takeaway from this episode, just try one UN for the coming week ahead. Just one. It could be. Unsubscribing from say, 10 emails just to lighten the load in your inbox. It could be unplugging from something and not filling the space with something else. Just pick one thing and notice how it feels in your body. Notice what shifts. Notice what changes. Notice if it feels lighter and more ease. Useful for you. If this episode resonated with you, I'd love you to share it with a friend who might also be feeling that same. Quiet pull to simplify things around them. And if you're not already following the podcast, please do. It helps these conversations reach more women who need them. There will be a subscribe button near to where you are listening to this podcast episode. I would like to thank you so much for being here. I hope you've enjoyed this little conversation and that there's something positive that you can take away from it. Thank you so much for listening. I hope that this week is the week for allowing yourself to shed what no longer fits, which makes me think of some slightly tight jeans in my wardrobe, but nevermind. And until next time, have a great week and I look forward to seeing you again. Lots of love. You take care. Bye for now.