More Than Anxiety

Ep 135 - Redefining Success & Confidence in Your 40s

• Megan Devito • Episode 135

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Your 40s are this weird mix of feeling like you should have life figured out, but also questioning everything. You’ve spent decades putting everyone else first, and now you're realizing... something’s missing. 

In this episode, coach Megan Devito is digging into:
🌟  The strange crossroads of your 40s and why you feel both wise and totally uncertain
🌟   How perimenopause isn’t just physical, it changes how you see yourself

🌟   Why confidence doesn’t just happen with age but comes from trusting yourself
🌟  How overthinking keeps you stuck and second-guessing every move
🌟   What it actually looks like to be unapologetically YOU, making decisions without guilt, setting boundaries without stress.

If you’re ready to quiet your mind, trust yourself, and start enjoying life now, I’ve got you. You can learn more about how to work with me or get a free Boundaries and Balance Audit at www.megandevito.com

**Be sure to check out Episode 46 featuring Leslie Duffy to learn more about how Perimenopause gives you freedom to be yourself.

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Ambitious Overthinkers Anonymous is a community for high-achieving women ready to stop overthinking, manage stress, and build confidence. You can learn all about what's inside and sign up now HERE.

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Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome to the More Than Anxiety podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety spiral so they can stop overthinking and actually enjoy life. This podcast is all about real talk, simple shifts and light bulb moments that'll change the way you think, feel and show up for yourself and everybody else in your life too. You'll get straight up truth, actionable steps and the inspiration to finally break free from the stress and second guessing. Let's get to it. Hey everybody, welcome to episode 135 of More Than Anxiety.

Megan Devito:

I'm really glad to have you back again this week to hear more about navigating life in your 40s as a woman in America who feels stressed and anxious and overwhelmed, so that you overthink. All those things that I keep showing up with every single week to help you guys feel better, to help you make progress and get really excited about your life, because there is so much good stuff going on, even in the midst of the crazy stuff that's going on, which we've all been there, right? So if you're in your 40s and you're feeling like you should have everything figured out by now, but you still find yourself questioning everything. This episode is for you. So let's talk about how being in your 40s can feel really, really weird. You feel wise, or like dang, like I've made it this far, I feel really good, but you're also like what the hell is going on. So I thought by this age that I would have everything together, but instead sometimes I find myself wondering wait, this is it, this? Is it Like I'm 40? Like I'm staring my life in the face? Or why do I care so much still about what a high schooler thinks about me? Do I actually care? Sometimes I do, and when do I just get to be happy without feeling guilty about things? So if that sounds like you, yeah, me too. Let's talk about it.

Megan Devito:

Today we're going to talk about the pressure, we're going to talk about the overthinking and we're going to talk about the quiet, or maybe the not-so-quiet voice that's inside of you asking what about me? And I want to refer back quickly to episode 46, which is an episode I did a while back, because what is this 135? With Leslie Duffy. Leslie is amazing, and we talked so much about perimenopause and hormones and how those can affect not just hot flashes and weight gain and all of those things, but how it changes how you see your life. So if you have not listened to episode 46, wherever you get your podcasts go back and listen to that episode, because there's some really important information there that Leslie has to share with you from a practitioner standpoint about what your body is doing and how your brain and your whole attitude does change. Sometimes we fight those changes and I want to talk about that in this episode.

Megan Devito:

So let's start by talking about why 40 feels like this really scary intersection. Now, when I say that, I'm picturing this one episode of Supernatural where they were in the middle of a cornfield and there was nothing around, but it was kind of spooky. That's how I find myself feeling sometimes. So I think that there's this expectation that's put on us, maybe by society, that tells us that we should have everything checked off right Career check, marriage check, kids check, check, check, check. I got a nice house, I got a retirement plan. But what if you have all of that but you're still like, oh, there has to be something more? I know that this was true for me. I have a great husband, I have four amazing kids, I have a nice house, we've got some retirement money Maybe not as much as I think we should have, but I was still like what am I doing with myself?

Megan Devito:

When I turned 40, I was teaching and I was a good teacher and I had some good lessons. I taught subjects that I really liked. I taught history and government. You might think that that's crazy, but I really love teaching history and government.

Megan Devito:

But I knew that I also wanted something bigger and more, and that really had me questioning what have I been doing for the last 40 years, and what do I want my next 40 years to look like? Because you're kind of at that halfway point, right and that felt really uncomfortable and really scary. But if you don't have some of those things checked and you feel like you're behind, yeah, that's kind of the way I was feeling too. So if we add on top of that hormonal shifts like hello perimenopause, what the heck is going on inside my body? Plus, your parents aren't getting any younger and your kids aren't staying young, like they're maybe out of college and living their own lives. They may be not living close to you anymore, or you're raising teenagers, which is an adventure in and of itself, isn't it? Or maybe you're like me and you decided it was time to change your career.

Megan Devito:

This is the stage where you start to feel like you are being pulled in a million different directions and a lot of women realize that they've spent the first four decades of their lives putting everybody else first. As a kid, you want to make your parents proud of you, or you want to be the good girl, or you want to do the right thing, and then at work, you're just struggling so you can prove yourself and you'd be like. You know what? I am just as good as that guy over there. Watch me do this, and maybe you know, as you are working, to be like I just want to be this partner, that my husband trusts me and that we love spending time together. And I've invested so much time in all of these relationships and that's amazing those time in all of these relationships and that's amazing. Those are great things and that's exactly why you're set up to have even better things happen now. Because you've built that foundation, because you have put in that work and you've done some things. That maybe feel really great.

Megan Devito:

And maybe you're like, why do I keep people pleasing? That's okay, you've learned a lot of lessons, but let's use those so that you can decide who you are when you're not taking care of everything else. Because you're in this place in your life right now where I mean your teenagers need you, even your 25-year-olds need you, your parents need you and they also want you. But you also have more time on your hands. Yeah, you might be working a full-time job and you're probably being stretched pretty far with keeping up with your parents, keeping up with your kids and trying to be a good spouse still or a partner, but you do have more time because you're not having to tuck kids in and make all the food all the time and you're not necessarily having to run your kids to practice because they could probably drive themselves. So that frees up a little bit of space for you to decide what happens next for you. That can also feel really scary because you might be wondering but what do I want to do? And that's when we need to start talking about your values. What gets you excited? What did you like to do when you were a kid? All of those conversations that I have on coaching calls with my clients all the time.

Megan Devito:

So I want to tell you a story about this client that I worked with a while back and she was so used to being on the go. I mean, she was working a full-time job, she was raising her kids and at home, if she had a free evening, she didn't know what to do with herself. She felt lost and it wasn't like she was getting, she just it wasn't like she wasn't doing anything. Right, like the laundry was done, she made dinner, she did, she went to work, she, she worked out, she did all the things. But it was just that her body and her nervous system had become so used to going, going, going, going, going that when there was left to do, she started to have this feeling that maybe something was missing.

Megan Devito:

And yeah, it was nice, right, like just the fact that you don't have to figure out what to make for dinner every single night is kind of amazing, and the fact that you didn't have to do an extra two loads of laundry because there was no football practice is pretty cool, but your nervous system reads it as something is wrong, you're failing, you're missing something, you're not doing the work, and I hear this all the time from women who feel like they've forgotten how to just be themselves and who they are, who they were created to be from the very beginning. So that kind of leads us to this next conversation about confidence and why you might not feel like you're there yet, like where am I? I'm not a full-time mom anymore, I'm not a little kid anymore and I'm not like, I'm not at the end of my life. I don't know where I am and there's a lot of things to figure out in your 40s. But I'm here to tell you, at 49, like I'm on my way out of my 40s and if you ask me the best decade of my life so far, hands down I am telling you the 40s. It's amazing. So if you're coming into this, if you're like 39 and you're like I, better listen to this because something bad's coming. No, no, no, great things happen in your 40s. I love it.

Megan Devito:

It has been a challenging decade. It has been a really hard decade. It's also the decade where I learned how to get out of an anxiety disorder and feel really good and to be able to say, oh yeah, that's just. I feel anxious and everything's fine. That's what your 40s are like. But they can really push your confidence to the limit. So let's talk about this.

Megan Devito:

There are a lot of women who just assume that they'll be more confident when they get older, because suddenly they're 49 or 43 or 40, whatever it is and suddenly they're like, yeah, somebody said when I was 40, I was going to feel confident and I don't. But they're still battling this self-doubt. They're like but who am I? How do I know that's the right thing for me? What if I can't do it? There's this myth that confidence is something that you just kind of automatically get once you've done enough things. If I do all of these things enough time, I will be confident, everything will be great and I can go out there and not worry about a thing. And I just don't think that's true, because if you're not taking stock of what you're doing well and kind of tucking that into your pocket like I, I did that thing, so I wonder if I could do this next thing I wanted to do If you're not giving yourself credit for how much you've learned, how much you've grown, or if you're not taking a time, like a chance, to look back and say, whoa, I can't believe where I was and where I am now.

Megan Devito:

Because the truth is that confidence comes from trusting yourself, even when you don't necessarily know if you are making the right or wrong answer. It's Putting yourself out there and saying, let's see how this goes, and there's a little bit of letting go. There isn't there that idea of why do I care what these people think? Confidence is going to tell you they might think you're an idiot and you should definitely go try that anyway. And then it's not feeling like no fear or feeling like everything's going to be perfect. In fact, it's being afraid and knowing that it's probably going to be a shit show and it's still okay.

Megan Devito:

That's where confidence comes from, and one of the things that is the biggest confidence killer is overthinking. This is one of the biggest things that I will still tell you that I will catch myself doing a lot. If you give me a long restaurant menu, I will think about it until someone forces me to order. I have a trick for that Just pick the first thing and then close the menu and get rid of it. Don't look at it anymore, because you're probably going to go back to that thing anyway. But overthinking is a huge confidence killer. Worrying about making the right decision what if I choose the wrong meal? I'm like what is this going to be my last meal? Is it going to be your last meal? Just pick and move on, because if it sounded good, you'll probably like it. Okay, are you making the right decision? Am I thinking about everything I've done wrong in the past that maybe I can't trust myself to do it right this time? Or am I afraid what everybody else is going to think if I did make this choice? What if everybody else thinks I'm an idiot?

Megan Devito:

Just one of my recent episodes I talked with somebody when she left her job. She said it's an episode with Pamela King it actually might be the episode right before this where she said, when she left her job, her parents and the people who loved her the most are like are you sure? Teaching is predictable. You have an income. There's not going to be a time when we don't need teachers. And she's like hey, I got this. Did she know that she was going to be successful right away? No, she was betting on herself. I did the same thing and you can too.

Megan Devito:

So how many times have you gotten ready to send a text to somebody and you write it out and then you read it and then suddenly you're like, and then you delete the whole thing? Or maybe an email I have something I need to say, I write it out and then I just I can't. Or maybe a different example would be like if you second guess saying no to something because you didn't want to make somebody feel sad or disappointed, so you said yes anyway. That's not lack of confidence, right? That's just years of conditioning. That's told you that you have to put everybody else before yourself. But you are in a place in your 40s where you get to say you know what, I'm sorry, I know you might be disappointed, but I'm not going to do that. You know why I like going to bed early. Ah, call me whatever you want. You can say that like I'm too old. You can say that like I'm missing out. You can say all that. But that's fine. You know what I want to do tonight. I'm tired and I want to go to bed.

Megan Devito:

I had this happen to me last Friday. My husband and I went out for dinner. It was just kind of like an impromptu, let's just go grab like a cheeseburger. And so we went to dinner and it was this episode like when I'm recording this, we're in the middle of basketball right, it's March Madness. So some of his buddies were in town that he hadn't seen in quite a while. He's like oh, let's go, let's go watch basketball, let's go, there's gonna be so many people there, you're gonna have tons of friends there. And I was like absolutely not, absolutely not. Like I just do not, I don't want to. I didn't have the emotional bandwidth at that point in the day to go out and try to talk to people. My battery dies really quickly. I am not shy, but you guys, I'm 100% an introvert. My battery dies really quickly. I am not shy, but you guys, I'm 100% an introvert. And I had worked all morning and I had been talking and I wasn't in a bad mood, I wasn't angry, I wasn't like, ah, I don't want to see any. I mean, I just didn't have it in me. I went home and I went to bed at 8.30 or like nine o'clock that night and I laid in bed and it was fun because I was actually.

Megan Devito:

This episode may have come from that experience. I'm not exactly positive, but I was laying in bed and I was thinking I don't feel the least bit sad about being in my bed tonight. I was like no, Kenny, you go. I said he went out, he went and watched basketball, had a couple of beers with his friends, he stayed out and watched all the games, had a great time with his buddies and I had a great night too. I was alone and I was happy to be in my bed. I laid there for probably 45 minutes before I fell asleep, just thinking.

Megan Devito:

I felt really good that I didn't feel guilty about not going. In the past that wouldn't have been the case and that's because I trusted myself to know what I wanted and knew that he was going to have fun anyway. And I think that he felt bad when he went. He kept trying to explain himself and I'm like no, I said go, I'm not upset, I don't have my feelings hurt, I'm not going to ask you to stay, because I'm perfectly happy just going to sleep. So when you can get to that point where you're like you know what, I'm going to put my needs first. That's what changes your relationship, not only with yourself, but with other people. Because if I would have chosen to go out with him, I would have been tired and grouchy and had no emotional bandwidth when I woke up. I woke up in a great mood. I got myself up, I got around to go do other things. I would have been spent and kind of mad at myself for going out and I didn't feel that way.

Megan Devito:

So I want you to imagine your most confident and unapologetic self, like this is me. Take it or leave it. So I want you just to imagine this for a minute and if you're not driving, you can close your eyes. Or you know, if you're sitting in your office, you might not want to, so you can always go back and listen to this. So, but take time to do this at some point.

Megan Devito:

I want you to close your eyes and I want you to imagine waking up and deciding things without overthinking. You're not second guessing every decision that you make, because you have that little feeling inside of you that's showing you the right direction and where to go and what to do. I want you to picture yourself putting down a boundary, just like the boundary that I put down about going out to watch basketball, without over explaining, without having to say every single reason, why you didn't want to go and to make up a story, and with absolutely no guilt, because you followed that feeling inside of yourself. And then I want you to picture yourself wearing what makes you feel really good, not what you think is in style or what somebody else would tell you to wear, but what makes you feel confident, maybe comfortable too. Some people value comfort over confidence. You pick what's best for you.

Megan Devito:

I want you to picture yourself speaking up at work and speaking up with your family and standing your ground, with no 10-minute apology speech. You just say this is what I'm doing. No is a complete sentence. And I want you to just get curious about what does your life look like when you stop waiting for permission and you just show up as you always have been, and maybe you let that version of yourself out every once in a while, but Think of it as your ta-da moment, like this is me, and I wonder how you feel about that, because my guess is there's some really uncomfortable feelings, maybe in your chest or in your solar plexus, about what you're afraid would happen if you did that, what you're afraid your parents might think, or your kids, or your spouse or your partner or your coworkers or your boss, or your partner or your coworkers or your boss, or maybe even yourself. What do you think about yourself? Because you're not changing. You're just becoming more authentic and becoming more truthful and becoming more sure. And when you do those things, you automatically become more confident. Because confidence isn't about having all the answers, it's not about over explaining. It's just about showing up as who you are and deciding that you already know the right answer. That's it. So I want to tell you one more story before I go.

Megan Devito:

I was working with another client and she she was an overthinker, like kind of like me the way I explained to you, and she was really just. She wasn't trusting herself. She was questioning everything, trying to make everyone else happy, which is such a typical, such a typical behavior for so many women, right? And she had this job that she had been in for a very long time. She hated it. I mean, we talked about how much she hated her job so often. She hated it and it was all because she was so afraid to say what she wanted. She just wanted to say this is the right way, and this is what I know is true. I mean, the woman was brilliant, right, like she'd studied this, she'd been in this job, she'd been making decisions that somehow got passed off to other people. So there was a little bit of resentment there. But she was like, look, this is the way it is and she just didn't want to rock the boat.

Megan Devito:

So she started overanalyzing everything. What will people say if I actually say what I know? Or what would I think? Like she never, ever, ever put herself out there to go first or prior prioritized what she knew. She let everybody else kind of do it. She didn't let people take credit for her work, but through coaching, through working with her, she started to recognize how much time and energy that she wasted on doubting herself and finally she gave herself the kind of the permission to say what she needed to say and to speak up for what she wanted.

Megan Devito:

This is what I want, this, this is what I want my position to look like and this is the position that I would like to create. These are the things that I am brilliant at, these are the reasons you hired me and I've been doing all of these things behind the scenes. So this is the position I would like to move into. She said it. She was scared like really scared, to say and today she's got the job she asked for, what she wanted. Was she afraid she was going to fail 100%? And we talked about that. We talked about what it would be like if it didn't work. And she's like, well, I guess I would just stay right where I am right now, and if that wasn't good enough, I would just probably find a different job. Okay, yeah, can you handle that? Can you handle somebody saying no, or I'm not sure that's what we're going to do today? You used to say it to your kids all the time, but are you okay with that If you are confident enough to say I know what I bring to the table, I know what I want, this is who I am, this is what I'm so good at.

Megan Devito:

If you are not right now, I can help you get there. You just have to be willing to believe in yourself. So do you. You do not have to do this by yourself. As a matter of fact, trying to do it on yourself will take a lot longer and there's going to be a lot more mind drama involved, because coaching is all about finding the thoughts that you think about yourself or about your situation that are keeping you stuck right where you are. There are a lot of women out there who are trying to self-help their way out of this position. There are amazing books. There are podcasts just like this podcast and they all have great information, but they can only take you so far. Coaching gives you real accountability and it guides you based on your own thoughts and decisions, especially if you are working one-on-one with a coach. Group coaching can do it too, but if you want to get there faster and with less drama, go one-on-one. I've got some spots open. If you get in there, you can have a spot. You can go right to my website. You can get on there, jump on and say yes, I listened to the podcast, I want to go. You can purchase a plan right off the website. I'm going to help you find actual steps to help you stop breaking those patterns that are keeping you there.

Megan Devito:

So trying to figure out confidence on your own is sort of like trying to assemble a piece of like. Let's say you buy a box, a dresser or something at Walmart or IKEA. Okay, there's no instructions in the box. It's just like ta-da, here's all these boards and like 500 screws Go. Don't ever give me that project. Trying to put things together like picture how things go in my head sometimes is really a big challenge. You could absolutely do it right. You could get on the internet and look up the instructions. You could try to draw it out first, look at the picture on the box and try and match it up. You could do that. But it's going to be really hard and it's going to take a lot longer than it needs to be, unless you have an instruction manual. And that is really what coaching does. It gives you the okay.

Megan Devito:

Where do you think needs to happen next? Where do you think this needs to go? How are we going to get there? You get to decide. It's all about you and your thoughts. I'm just there to keep you moving forward and help you see the things that are keeping you stuck. So if this resonated with you, stop and ask yourself right now what is keeping me from making a change? Why am I scared to move forward? Why am I afraid to ask for what I want? Why am I afraid to put down a boundary? Ask yourself that. It's a legitimate question. You have to know why. And then I want you to take the next step and I want you to book a call with me.

Megan Devito:

Okay, there are two options there. You can do a Boundaries and Balance audit. That is totally free, no commitment, no sales pitch. It's just a chance for you to talk with me and for me to say, hey, let's talk about what's going really well in your life. Let's talk about where you're stuck. Okay, I see where you're stuck. These are the things you're thinking and go. You've got a place to focus. If you want coaching, great, and if you don't, that's okay too, because that's not a sales call. But if you're like I really need to know what it's like to work with you, I have some questions about coaching. I think that's the path that I want to go. Whether it's one-on-one or group, you can schedule a Confidence Catalyst call. Those are both available on my website, on my front page. If you just go to megandevito. com, that's all about that Boundaries and Balance audit and if you click the work with me tab, you're going to read all about the options to coach with me, whether it's one-on-one or in a group.

Megan Devito:

Okay, you don't have to wait until your next decade, until your 50s. Right, like I'm dangling over the edge, like really excited to see what happens in the next one, because if it's going to get better and better, I'm here for it. Okay, you don't have to wait. You don't have to wait to feel at home in your own life or like you can speak up for yourself, like you can go out and do whatever the heck you want to do. Let's just do it now. Let's do it now. Okay, all right.

Megan Devito:

You guys, I hope this is super helpful. Just remember, there's nothing wrong. Yes, I know your body feels weird and there's hot flashes and you're like what is happening to me right now. You're just at a weird crossroads and that can be a really amazing place to be, because you get to decide what you want to do next. You've got all the options right. Okay, you are just at the beginning, my friends.

Megan Devito:

You're 40s If you are listening to this and you are 41, I am jealous. My 40s are my first decade. That I would do over again. Absolutely, I would. All right. This is the start of you owning who you really are, so I cannot wait to talk with you this week. I hope this was helpful.

Megan Devito:

I hope that you'll check out episode 46 with Leslie Duffy. Share this with a friend, subscribe, leave a review, do all the things, whether you're watching this on YouTube or listening to it on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks for listening, and if I don't talk to you before on a call, I will be back again next week, take care. Hey, there, before you go, I just want to say thanks for hanging out with me on More Than Anxiety.

Megan Devito:

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so the other people can find it too. And if you're ready to quiet your mind, stop overthinking and actually enjoy your life, there are two ways I can help. One, I have a group called Ambitious Overthinkers Anonymous. It's my monthly coaching community where you'll get live coaching, real talk and a super supportive crew who get it. And the second way is through one-on-one coaching. So if you're ready for a deep, personalized support to help you feel calm, confident and in control head over there, you can find both of these places in the show notes. Just click the link and let's talk.