Midlife, Rewritten

Ever feel like you’re doing “all the right things” for your health and still spinning your wheels? We open up a different path with health strategist and Grace & Grit host Courtney Townley—one that trades perfection for practical skills and turns midlife into a launchpad rather than a slowdown. Instead of chasing one-off outcomes, we build the foundations that make change stick: honest awareness, smart organization, reliable follow-through, and the courage to realign without the drama.

We start by unpacking why the wellness rulebook fails so many women—especially at midlife. Courtney shares how a postpartum wake-up call revealed the blind spot in mainstream health: obsessing over weight while ignoring mindset, identity, and nervous system capacity. We explore integrity pain (that inner friction when your habits don’t match your values), the stress bucket model for simplifying life’s load, and why resilience is less about gritting your teeth and more about how you recharge. From micro-recovery breaks and nervous system respect to habit design you can actually maintain, the conversation offers tools that feel doable on your busiest days.

Midlife becomes a liminal space—between who you’ve been and who you’re becoming—where health serves as base camp for the climb of your life. You’ll learn how to reduce unnecessary stressors, add intentional challenges to build capacity, and parent your brain with useful thoughts that pull you forward. We also cover when talk therapy isn’t enough and how somatic support can unlock long-stuck patterns. If you’re ready to lead your health with clarity and grace, this is your roadmap to living full out.

Grab Courtney’s free Midlife Magic Quick Start Guide, keep an eye out for her book The Consistency Code (November 4, 2025), and connect at graceandgrit.com. If this episode helped you rethink your health story, subscribe, share it with a friend, and leave a review to help more women find it.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome and Episode Focus
• 2:29 Meet Courtney Townley
• 5:20 From Dance to Wellness Industry
• 8:13 Beyond Fat Loss: The Sustainability Gap
• 11:10 Motherhood Epiphany and Redefining Health
• 14:03 Skills of Transformation Overview
• 17:05 Skill One: Awareness and Hiding Habits
• 21:00 Skill Two: Organization and the Stress Bucket
• 24:45 Intentional Stress vs Unnecessary Stress
• 27:45 Skill Three: Follow-Through and the Nervous System
• 32:03 Skill Four: Realignment and Resilience
• 35:33 Health as Base Camp for Life
• 38:03 Resilience: Recharge, Don’t Just Endure
• 41:23 Integrity Pain and Sustainable Change
• 44:53 Habit Design in Real Life
• 48:53 Resources, Coaching, and Investing in Yourself

Transcript

Cassandra: 0:28

Good day out there to all my listeners. And I'd like to welcome you to Is Your Way in Your Way podcast. And I'm your host. My name is Cassandra Crawley Mayo for those new listeners out there. And I also want to share with my new listeners what this podcast is all about. First of all, Is Your Way in Your Way is my book. So I'm like, what better title to give my podcast for those individuals that are in their way? So this podcast is about guiding purpose-driven women who are ready to get out of their way. It's time to go from your limiting beliefs, emotional exhaustion, unclear purpose to identifying internal blocks, reconnecting with the vision God has for your life and moving forward with confidence, clarity, and to live your best, most fulfilling life on your terms. And I talk about topics related to self-improvement, self-development, business development. And also a lot of the topics will enable you to do some what I call self-reflection. Now I have a uh special guest coming on today, but I'm going to ask uh well, let me tell you this. First of all, the topic is let's live full out, redefining health at midlife. Now I have a question for you before we before I introduce you. Have you ever felt like no matter how many diets you try or how many wellness trends you follow, you're still stuck. Like you're checking all the boxes, but something is still missing. What if I told you that the problem isn't your willpower, but the wellness culture itself? So today I'm joined by the incredible Courtney Townley, a health strategist, behavior change expert, and host of the Grace and Grit Podcast. So let me introduce you to Courtney. Hi, Courtney. How are you today? Amazing. I'm so happy to be here. I am so happy that you are here. And you know what, uh, my listeners, Courtney's gonna help us uncover why we've been hitting the same wellness walls and how we can start leading our health journey with clarity, confidence, and alignment. So if you're not driving and you're sitting somewhere, you may want to sit down and journal this, get ready to rewrite your wellness story from the inside out. So, what I'm gonna do first, as I usually do, is I'm gonna share a little bit about Courtney's background so you will be able to see why she is qualified to talk about this topic. She is a transformational health strategist, host of the Grace and Grit podcast, with over two decades of experiences in health coaching, behavior science, and personal development. She helps women break free from the noisy perfection-driven wellness culture. She guides them towards sustainable, grace-filled habits. I'm going to talk about habits now, rooted in alignment and self-leadership, not shame or deprivation. Her approach blends science and soul, empowering women to reclaim their health, their confidence, and their joy. So, this to me is a perfect fit to is your way in your work because it dismantles what I call internalized wellness myths and helps women realign with her truly, what truly serves them physically, mentally, and spiritually. So, and guess what, guys? She is known as uh what I call a mover, a shaker, and a queen, midlife queen maker. How about that? Wow. So um Courtney. Now you had you initially had started with a program called Butts and Guts. Yes, it's a long way. So this is like Grace and Grits. Now tell us a bit about what was happening with you before the butts in the guts thing.

Courtney: 4:57

Yeah. Well, I grew up in the dance world, so I was very much like embedded and meshed. All I wanted to do with my life was to be a professional dancer. Um, and I happened to go to the University of Michigan on a dance scholarship. And as most college students eventually figure out, I needed to make some money to have spending money and put food on the table and pay my rent and all the things. And you know, you're kind of willing to look at any job when you're that age. And someone had proposed that um the University Athletics Center was looking for fitness instructors. I had no fitness background. Oh, wow. Okay. I'm a mover, I could teach people how to move. Why not? Right. So I went to apply for the job, and the job just happened to be titled Butts and Guts. I mean, that title would not fly this day and age, but that was like 30 years ago.

unknown: 5:46

Right.

Courtney: 5:47

So I did. I started teaching butts and guts classes for the university, and I fell in love with uh being a teacher of movement. And after college, I went on to work for a pretty large fitness company out of Canada, which exposed me to a lot that was happening in the wellness industry. So I got to see like the nutrition and all the fitness trends, and just I was just exposed to so much. And that really lit me up that there was a path here. Like there was a whole world here that I really didn't know about.

unknown: 6:19

Wow.

Courtney: 6:20

So, long story short, I got a lot of education in fitness. I got a lot of education in nutrition, behavior change science. I got very heavily rooted for about a decade in fat loss. And fat loss is a very sexy topic, right? Like a lot of people are kind of obsessed with losing weight. And please don't hear me saying that I don't think losing weight can be very healthy. Of course it can be.

unknown: 6:43

Sure.

Courtney: 6:44

But I noticed a trend when I was enmeshed in that culture, which was people can follow a list of rules and regulations. Anyone can follow instructions, and you can lose a lot of weight, but can you sustain the weight loss? And the answer was often no. People couldn't sustain the weight loss. And that got me wildly curious. Why have people worked so hard to achieve an outcome that they then can't sustain? And that kind of opened up a whole nother box of just curiosity and education for me because I really started to understand the role of self-image, how we see ourselves, how we talk to ourselves, what we believe about ourselves. Um, I started to understand the mindset, our capacity to feel difficult things or not, and how all of that was really um going to determine if we maintained a result or not. And also the joy of the process.

unknown: 7:46

Yes.

Courtney: 7:47

You can I have followed a lot of rules and regulations in my life that I did not enjoy. And if you enjoy it, there's no way you're gonna keep doing it.

Cassandra: 7:55

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that that's really good. And you know, um, the health and wellness industry has really boomed. Uh, like you said, oh my gosh, it's just a whole whole new thing. Yeah, and an individual say, okay, well, all you need to do is exercise, you know, that that's very important. Keep it moving, but you have you have defined it a little differently, and what I mean by that, um, you kind of because you pivoted, you pivoted and you went to grace and grits because you had an epiphany. What was that epiphany that made you say, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pivot a little bit and do this. What what really happened?

Courtney: 8:44

Yeah, it was very defining for me. So when I was about probably around 35, um, I had my son. I gave birth to my one and only child.

unknown: 8:54

Uh-huh.

Courtney: 8:55

And it was a pretty traumatic birth. Like it was, you know, he was healthy. I turned out just fine, but there was just a lot of um, it was a difficult birth. And I always say that some women really kind of waltz into motherhood. I more face planted into motherhood. Like I was not scared. I just weren't okay. I didn't feel like a natural mother. I kind of felt like my identity had been really obliterated overnight. I didn't know what to do with this adorable little child.

unknown: 9:24

Yeah.

Courtney: 9:24

So everything kind of like was really shaken up and I was incredibly disoriented. And I had, as you know, most new mothers do, I had a lot of family and friends coming over to the house to meet the new baby and see me. And the topic of conversation was consistently, wow, Courtney, you lost the baby weight so fast. Like everyone was hyper focused on my body.

unknown: 9:48

Yeah.

Courtney: 9:48

And the fact that I was struggling in every capacity to manage motherhood. So mentally, emotionally, physically, I was a mess. Okay. I lost the weight fast. So somehow that was worth talking about. And at that moment, I mean, I think I had had inklings that obviously things were awry in the wellness industry for a long time, but that experience really made me pause and recognize how strangely we think about health and well-being.

Cassandra: 10:21

Yes.

Courtney: 10:22

In the world, and for women especially.

Cassandra: 10:25

Yeah.

Courtney: 10:25

And at the time, of course, most of my clientele has mostly been midlife women. And like I had told you before, I was seeing a lot of women put all of their effort, time, and money into weight loss, but then they were unable to sustain the results.

unknown: 10:40

Yes.

Courtney: 10:41

All of that kind of came to a head where I was like, hang on, there is a deeper conversation here that is not being had. And that's when I really started to get into the mindset work and the self-image work and the self-coaching work because I realized that we can keep teaching once-in-a-lifetime transformation work, which to me is what fat loss is. It's what weight loss is. It's once in a lifetime transformation. That's how we sell it.

unknown: 11:06

Yes.

Courtney: 11:07

But what really makes us healthy as humans is learning skills that help us to navigate a life of transformation because that's what life is. Life is consistent transformation. Me becoming a new mother, that was transformation.

Cassandra: 11:24

Yeah.

Courtney: 11:24

Me working my way through midlife, that is a transformation.

Cassandra: 11:29

Absolutely.

Courtney: 11:30

Yeah. So transformation is a baked-in part of our experience, but we're missing so many of the skill sets that allow us to navigate that with ease and grace. And so that is what I wanted to learn. I want to learn the skill sets that no matter what the transformation, how can I help women navigate it without so much, without all the unnecessary suffering?

Cassandra: 11:52

Mm-hmm. So let's talk about, I'm not mistaken. Did you say there were four skill sets? Yes.

Courtney: 11:59

That I teach I teach four primary skills. Yeah. Tell us about that. So I teach these four skill sets. I call them like the skills of transformation. But the first one is awareness, you know, and it seems so absurdly simple, right? Like awareness. Aren't we all aware? Not really. A lot of us are awake, but we're not aware. We're not paying attention to how we're thinking, we're not paying attention to how we're talking to ourselves. We're not paying attention to our behavior or why we feel what we feel. We just dismiss a lot of big emotions because we don't have time for them. So awareness is really, I always say it's like lifting up the rug to look at the dirt underneath.

unknown: 12:40

Yeah.

Courtney: 12:40

Right? Like if you're in a clean house, you gotta lift up the rug. And so to me, that's what awareness is. It's shining a light on the things you would rather keep in the dark. That's what awareness is. And we don't like it because it's not comfortable. It's sexy. It makes us kind of look at the parts of our life we'd rather nobody ever saw.

unknown: 13:03

Yeah.

Courtney: 13:04

So we it's really easy to hide from that work. And I think a lot of people have mastered that skill of hiding from that work. So awareness is kind of that first invitation. You can't fix what you don't face. So that's what you're looking.

Cassandra: 13:19

Right. Courtney, let me ask you this with your clients. Yeah, what are some I say common denominators of individuals that like what are some of the things that they like keeping in the dark that they don't want to expose that you're finding?

Courtney: 13:35

Yeah, I I think uh so many things, but I would say some of them um are certainly the like the language they use to talk to themselves and about themselves. Right. So the self-narrative, they definitely hide. They're embarrassed to talk about it because they know it sounds so demeaning and disrespectful, but we have to change that tape.

unknown: 13:58

Yes, okay.

Courtney: 14:00

Their life is governed by that tape. So I would definitely say self-narrative, I would say um like making mistakes, right? Like we've all made mistakes in our life. Uh, we've all messy bits of our life, we have areas of our life that we don't give much attention to. Maybe it's a relationship, maybe it's uh, you know, maybe it is fitness, maybe it is our nutrition, and there's shame there for a lot of us, right? That I should be doing better, I know better. What's wrong with me?

Cassandra: 14:27

Right.

Courtney: 14:29

But your life, you just have patterns in your life that have allowed you to hide from this work, and so now we're just gonna call you into that work.

unknown: 14:37

Uh-huh.

Courtney: 14:39

Um, so yeah, I would say those are some of the big ones, right? It's just our decisions that we've made, the self-narrative. I would also say buffering, the buffering patterns, which is the things that you do to avoid the work. So instead of feeling sad or stressed, are you pouring the wine and eating the chips?

Cassandra: 15:00

That's right.

Courtney: 15:01

Right? That's right. Instead of going after that new job that you really like it's on your heart to go after, are you just Netflixing at night? So you never have time to work on your resume, right? Like we hide in those ways.

Cassandra: 15:15

Procrastination, all of it.

Courtney: 15:17

All of it. Oh yes. A couple hiding habits. Like when we're being called to become more expressed, when we are being called to put more life into our life, is terrifying because we don't know how it's gonna turn out. So it's easier to hide. It's easier to not feel the emotions, it's easier to not be brave and take those risks. And so we just hide. We hide behind the behaviors, we hide behind the self-narrative, we hide behind um pretty much anything and everything.

Cassandra: 15:49

Right.

Courtney: 15:49

Do not have to do that work.

Cassandra: 15:51

That's right. Avoidance, huh?

Courtney: 15:53

Yeah, and the only person who suffers plus.

Cassandra: 15:56

Right. That's right. That's right. Okay, what are the other three skills?

Courtney: 16:01

Yeah, so we start with awareness, and then the second piece is once we become aware of where some of the gaps are, where some of the work needs to be done, we have to start taking initiative to organize our life in a way that allows us to be more thoughtful about those things. So I call it the practice of organization, right? And there's a lot of things baked in the practice of organization. You cannot clean your entire house at one time, you can clean one part of one room at a time, and health and well-being is no different. Where do you want to start? And here's the thing, just for people listening, you do not have to start with diet and exercise. This is the stress. So I like to explain to people that you probably heard this analogy before, but I like to think of stress as a bucket. Okay. And there's a lot of things that contribute to our bucket of stress.

unknown: 16:56

Yeah.

Courtney: 16:56

How you eat and how you move are two of those things.

Cassandra: 16:59

Yeah.

Courtney: 17:00

It's also your emotional health, your mental health, your relationship health, the environment health, spiritual health. All of those areas have the capacity to add stress to our bucket.

unknown: 17:13

Yeah.

Courtney: 17:13

Now, when you have a very, very full bucket, that's when problems start to come in, right? Because we can only tolerate so much stress. The body is only built to handle stress. So I always say that health is really an exercise in two things. Number one, we want to reduce unnecessary stressors. Now, unnecessary stressors are the negative self-narrative, the buffering behaviors, um, the uh, you know, not moving your body, not putting yourself to sleep at night. Those are all unnecessary.

Cassandra: 17:50

They don't meet absolutely.

Courtney: 17:53

But simultaneous to that work, we need to be leaning into stress on purpose to build our capacity. So this is things like going after that career you're really passionate about.

Cassandra: 18:06

Yes.

Courtney: 18:07

Going on a date so you can find a relationship that you want to be in.

Cassandra: 18:11

That's right.

Courtney: 18:12

Doing the work of changing yourself narrative, going to a hormonal specialist to find out how you might be able to better support your hormonal system.

Cassandra: 18:20

Exactly.

Courtney: 18:21

So it's not just about removing stress, it's about adding in intentional stressors. And those two things together are what to really amplify the health of a human.

Cassandra: 18:34

That's good.

Courtney: 18:35

So here's another way to think about it. Like I mentioned the stress bucket, right? The stress bucket, we have all these stressors coming in. We need that bucket to be incredibly strong. Because if it has holes in it, if it has a crack in it, if it has a leak, then we start to suffer even more.

unknown: 18:54

That's it.

Courtney: 18:55

I look at the stress in the bucket as the unnecessary stressors.

Cassandra: 18:58

Okay.

Courtney: 18:59

And I look at the strength of the bucket itself as the intentional stressors. Can you strength train to make your body a little more resilient? Can you practice so you're a little bit less reactive today in your eatings?

Cassandra: 19:10

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely.

Courtney: 19:13

And the bucket.

Cassandra: 19:15

Exactly. And that reminds me of, I don't know why. Um, you know, you you all that's in a bucket and you have holes and cracks in a bucket, and then it all comes out and you're empty. You have nothing left. Like the tank is drained. That's it, you know. So that's that's a part, and all of what you're talking about is how you would define health. Yeah, you know, all of that is uh all of that is part of it. So yeah, and so what are the what are the last two ones?

Courtney: 19:51

Yeah. So the last two, that so the third one we talked about awareness, the practice of awareness, the practice of organization. Then we have the practice to follow through. You can make all kinds of promises to yourself, you can get really organized. Like how many women do you know that spend a whole day planning their week, but then they don't follow through with any of it, or they don't follow through with any of the things that are for them. That's right. So I would say the practice of follow through is where I do most of my coaching. It's probably the bulk of my coaching work. Okay, two well, I would say there's three primary skill sets baked into it. Number one, we have to respect the nervous system. Your nervous system can all it's meant to oscillate throughout the day, it's meant to go through periods of stress and recovery. Stress and recovery all day long. But where do most women live? They live in stress, stress, stress, stress, stress, and crash at the end of the day.

Cassandra: 20:40

Exactly.

Courtney: 20:41

We've got to fix that because our brains don't function and our hormonal system takes a huge hit when we are oscillating between periods of rest and recover and stress, right? Most that we should have the oscillation. So we've got to respect the nervous system. We have to parent our brain, which means we need to think in ways that are useful to us.

Cassandra: 21:01

Right.

Courtney: 21:01

Telling myself I'm a jerk and I'm incapable, not useful. Telling myself I have some skill sets to learn and I have some gaps in maybe what I know, that could be useful. So it's not lying to yourself, it's just thinking in ways that actually encourage you to show up to do the work. And then the third part of follow-through is you're gonna have to feel hard things. I cannot prevent that for you, and no one can prevent that for you. So it's build your ability to be with difficult emotion and not run away from it because you're going to get frustrated, you're going to get disappointed, you're going to get sad and stressed and all the things. And in those moments, you can either retreat or you can just experience. And I'll tell you what, experiencing has a lot less suffering attached to it. And I know that sounds like the opposite, but when I feel sad rather than eat my emotions, yeah.

Cassandra: 22:01

Exactly.

Courtney: 22:02

And the final of all of it is just the practice of realignment. We're all gonna get, we're all gonna trip up, we're gonna make mistakes, we're gonna give ourselves one too many permissions because that's all you and take those moments and and think about them in a way that makes you want to quit. Or you just consistently practice realigning. And that's what success demands is that you realign and you realign and you realign time and time again that all friends.

Cassandra: 22:32

Right, right. And you know, everything you talked about, the four skills, it's like when you don't have those, you're actually in your way. You know, a lot of people are like, What do you mean? Am I is my way in my way? Just kind of think about it. And as we were speaking earlier, we talked about if you want to live your best life, which health is part of it, you got to get out of your way. You know, think about listeners, what Courtney is talking about, the awareness and and the hiding and the procrastination. This is too hard, you know, that negative self-talk. That's that's a part of being in your way. I mean, come on, come on.

Courtney: 23:12

That's what I love about your show, and I love that I was able to come on your show because it's one of the things I'm constantly telling my own community is when you're feeling stuck, which is what your show is all about. Yes, I truly believe that there's a gap for you in one of these four practices. You're either not aware, you're not organizing and making decisions, you're not parenting your brain or feeling difficult things, or you're not willing to realign yourself.

unknown: 23:39

Right.

Courtney: 23:40

So what's awesome, I always think of these four practices as a circle because circles continuously, there's no end, right? That's how I think about health. You will be working on your health as long as you have breath in your lungs. I hope. I hope you will do that work.

Cassandra: 23:59

Yes, yes, yes. That is so true. Because you know, my mom used to say when I was younger, and this has stuck with me. And she says, Look, if you don't have your health, you have nothing. And I was like, What are you talking about? What do you mean? And now I get it. You can't live your you can't do the things because you don't when you're sick, you you don't want to. I mean, you you just can't.

Courtney: 24:25

So this is important. And I such a good point, Cassandra, because I I I really I always say that health is not the point of your life, it is base camp for life.

unknown: 24:37

Yes.

Courtney: 24:37

So think of base camp at Everest. People get to base camp and acclimate there so they can actually do the hike or the climb that they're there to do.

unknown: 24:47

Exactly.

Courtney: 24:47

That's what health is. It's like as long if you can get the the foundation of your health resilient enough, it will help you to make the climb of your life. And that is the point.

Cassandra: 25:00

Yes, yes. And you know, um, that word resilience, you know, I you know, I've been dealing with ants in my home. I'm like, they are the most resilient individuals. And then, you know, there is a a quote that you that you read, and it was an article in the Harvard Business Review. Yeah, and you said this quote you will never forget that kind of set the stage for you to do other things. It was like resilience is about how you recharge, not how you endure. Why did that what was it about that quote that stuck with you?

Courtney: 25:45

Because I think for me and for so many women, we are we are very gritty, right? Like we are we're hard workers and we are persistent and we will hustle and we will we will literally work ourselves into the ground. That is not resilience. When you are exhausted and burnt out and depleted, that's not resilience, that's the doorway to disease and illness.

Cassandra: 26:15

Exactly.

Courtney: 26:16

So when you resil the the in that quote, resilience is really that that recovery, it's it's like baked into recovery because the harder you push, the more of a demand there is from your body to give it rest.

unknown: 26:33

Right.

Courtney: 26:33

And we are terrible at that. We push, push, push, and we only rest when we get sick, or we have the two-time a year vacation, or our kids in the hospital, heaven forbid. Like life forces us sometimes to rest. That is not a way to become resilient. Because what happens when you're pushing all the time and then a family member really needs you? It demands more of you. And if you don't have anything in the tank already, exactly, how is that helpful? So a big part of the work that I do with my clients is again that oscillation of okay, you pushed really hard today at work, you had these meetings, you you know, you did all these things. What are you gonna do to help your body recover from that?

Cassandra: 27:20

Exactly. Right?

Courtney: 27:21

Are you gonna eat a nutritious meal? Are you gonna put yourself to bed at a reasonable hour? Are you gonna spend a little time outdoors? But what do we say to in response to those things? I don't have time.

Cassandra: 27:30

Exactly. I was just gonna say, I don't have time to do that.

Courtney: 27:33

But you're not enough hours in a day, right?

unknown: 27:36

Yeah. Yeah.

Courtney: 27:38

And we don't take the break because we can we tell ourselves I don't have time. But what I see in my own life and certainly with a lot of my clients is when we push so hard without the breaks, we actually become less productive, we're less creative, we're terrible problem solvers, and so everything takes us longer because we're not giving ourselves the time to reset and restore.

Cassandra: 28:00

Exactly. Exactly. I always say uh uh God is a redeemer of time because we do this, we do that, and so I just don't have time, I don't have time. So I always say that to individuals that say they don't have time to do this, but yet they have time to do scrolling on social media, they have time to Netflix it. I mean, you know, so it's it's like, what are your priorities? What is it that's gonna enable you to start living your best life on your terms? What like we talked earlier, Courtney, they have to want it. You can't you have to want what you want. You can't just, you know, if you don't really want to get healthy, you do the the whole gamut, the circle that you were talking about, if if you don't want it, you you don't get it.

Courtney: 29:16

But if you really want it, there's two things I want to say to that because the first thing is that I remember really early in my career, I wanted it so bad for my clients. Like I just wanted them to have the world, right? I wanted them to have this feeling of health that deserved. And I remember having a conversation with a mentor of mine, and I was really deflated and disappointed because I had a handful of clients at the time that like they just weren't showing up, right? Like they weren't doing that, and I I looked at it as a personal failure, and I was really beating myself up. And and and I will never forget this. My mentor said to me, Courtney, the day that you start working harder than your client, probably the day you should hang it up. You can't because you can't run your career that way. You are here to educate and lead and inspire and you know help them problem solve, but it's exactly what you're speaking to. You cannot do their work.

Cassandra: 30:17

Exactly.

Courtney: 30:18

And if you convince yourself that you can, you're gonna burn yourself out and you're gonna be a completely un you know, useless coach. That was like a really big awakening for me. But the other thing I wanted to say in response to what you said is that when people ask me, like, what's the problem you really solve for people in the health arena? I always say I help people to lessen integrity pain. And integrity pain is the very real pain that we feel internally. It comes from living our life out of alignment with what we actually want. So we say that we want to wake up with energy and vitality, but we stay up watching the hundredth episode of our favorite Netflix show.

unknown: 30:58

Yeah.

Courtney: 30:59

We say that we want to feel um like strong and resilient in our bodies, but we refuse to move our bodies. So integrity pain is that internal friction that if you do not address it, it turns into dis-ease, right? Dis-ease, which leads to disease. So we all have integrity pain. I don't want anyone listening to think, oh, I have so much integrity pain. Like that's you know, and it's a shame thing. It's not, we all have it.

unknown: 31:27

Yes.

Courtney: 31:28

And none of us will probably ever completely resolve every ounce of our integrity pain in our lifetime. But if we can reduce it just a little bit, our health would improve just a little bit.

Cassandra: 31:38

Yes, that's true every day of the game.

Courtney: 31:40

It's not about diet and exercise, it's about solving your integrity pain.

Cassandra: 31:44

Exactly. Exactly. Um, you hit on a lot of things, and I I, you know, it a lot of what we do is habitual. It's just like we get in the car, we drive, we don't even think about it. Um, you know, when you do the same thing all the time, it's really hard to disconnect and try to do something different because you've you've not done it before. So you talked about how how can well how do you develop new habits? Like how can they develop different habits?

Courtney: 32:23

Well, it goes back to what we talked about earlier, it's those four steps. It's I have to become hyper-aware of what I'm doing on repeat that's basically harming me. And then I have to really consider what could I do in this in the scenario that actually helps me? So if every day you come home from work and you're exhausted and you have an intention to cook a healthy meal, but you once again order out and pour a glass of wine, that's right. That's a pattern that's probably harming you. So, what could we do in the same scenario, still coming home at the end of every day exhausted, but that would make eating healthier easier? And I would explore a lot of those options with my clients, right? Maybe we figure out which restaurants could deliver a relatively healthy meal. We just get more considerate about what we order. Maybe we go to the store and get a rotisserie chicken that's already been baked and we turn it into a healthy. There's a thousand ways that we can simplify it.

Cassandra: 33:20

That's right.

Courtney: 33:21

And then it's the the the the second piece of that is the practice of organization, like that organ, right? Am I going to go to the store after work and pick up that rotisserie chicken? Now, once I have the rotisserie chicken, am I gonna follow through with eating it? Because I bought it, it's in my and that's where some of that parenting of the brain and experiencing you know a little bit of discomfort with something new comes in. And inevitably one night you're gonna find yourself ordering pizza again or eating something that you don't feel proud of, and there's your opportunity to engage with the practice of realignment again.

Cassandra: 33:54

Yeah.

Courtney: 33:55

Again, it's all about your resource availability. So if you think about it, if you slept well last night and you, you know, you your stress bucket isn't overflowing right now. Yeah. You wake up in the morning and you've got a lot of resources on board, right? You've got mental bandwidth available to you, you've got energy, you've got time. But as the day goes on, what happens is all those resources start to fade. And so a lot of women will say to me, I don't know what's wrong with me. I come home at the end of the day and I just eat like garbage and I want to drink and I want to veg out in front of Netflix. And I'm like, this is not a you problem. I mean, there's nothing wrong with you, right? But your resource availability is so low that if you don't make healthy habits easy, there's no way you're gonna engage with them. If I have a book, if I have to do like a huge effort to get a healthy meal on the table after a day of exhaustion, right? I don't have the resources. I'm not doing it.

Cassandra: 34:55

Exactly. Exactly.

Courtney: 34:57

So again, how can we just become more considerate about what's in the fridge and how you prepare ahead of time and where you might order food from and how you might organize your life earlier in the week and earlier in the day. So by the time dinner time comes around, eating healthy is an easy choice.

Cassandra: 35:13

Exactly. That's where the organization comes. You have to be prepared, you know how exactly. Exactly. Um, doing that process though, when we talk about those resources, and I want to talk about um the quantitative, you know, um resources. Like, what about an uh a coach? We can say, or um accountability partner, yeah, you know, you kind of talk about these are the things that I want to accomplish, and I would love to have somebody to hold me accountable for it, because then what individuals say, I don't have the money for a coach. I'm like, okay, well, how how bad do you want it? Well, I want it bad, you know. So there are different things you could do in the meantime, but I always say never underestimate the investments you make in yourself, yeah, and that's what we don't do. No, and that's critical. We don't go out and buy dress, shoes, um, stuff we don't need, but what about us?

Courtney: 36:23

It's so true. And I think this day and age, it's like there's so many different layers of support available to people. Like, for example, your podcast, Cassandra, it's a free resource, right? It's an entry point for support. Um, you know, there's support groups that relative, you know, have a very low uh most of them you don't even have to pay for. But then I think as we start getting a taste of dipping our toe into that pool, like we dip our toe into the pool of self-development and really doing the work, we start to see the benefit. And then that makes us hungry for another level of support.

Cassandra: 36:57

Exactly.

Courtney: 36:58

And I feel really fortunate. I don't know why I've been this way, but I think my whole my pretty much my whole life, I've always had mentors and coaches and teachers that I rely on. And I have probably spent, I should probably have 12 graduate degrees for the amount of money I've spent on support. And yes, you could argue that part of it's my career, so it's education and all the things. It I would say what keeps me going back is I see such a radical difference in how I show up when I have that level of support versus when I don't. And so you know what? If I know that I'm going to achieve something sooner and with less suffering because I pay for the support, I'm gonna pay the support.

Cassandra: 37:44

Exactly. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's that's worth it's val so much value in that.

Courtney: 37:51

It there is, and we you're right, we tend to value material things, and you don't see well, you do see eventually, of course, the the transformation and all the goodness that comes from working with a coach, but it is it's like you're paying more for an experience than you are for stuff.

Cassandra: 38:08

Yeah, that's so good.

Courtney: 38:10

What's the point of stuff if you don't actually love your life?

Cassandra: 38:13

Exactly, it's not gonna make you feel better, maybe temporarily, but as you talked about sustainability, yeah.

Courtney: 38:21

I'd much rather live a very um minimal life so I have the funds to do the things that help me to experience life. Yes, but oh my gosh, if I have to spend a whole day on Sunday doing laundry, like I just feel like I have too many clothes, and then I'm gonna get rid of things because I don't want to spend my life that way. I don't want to spend my life managing my stuff, I want to spend my life living my life.

Cassandra: 38:49

Amen to that. Amen to that. It's a more meaningful, fulfilling life, absolutely, because life is short. Courtney, I have a one another question because we talked about our title. The title is Let's Live Full Out. We kind of we talked about that. Redefining health at midlife.

Courtney: 39:10

Yes.

Cassandra: 39:11

What age would you consider midlife?

Courtney: 39:16

I I always answer this question in a couple two ways. Okay. Like to quantify it, like I would say midlife is it could be anywhere from like your late 30s, probably up to your early 70s. Like that's the rule of the room. There's also, I also like to think of midlife as the liminal space between who you have been and who you want to be moving forward. I love that. So it's not, it doesn't have to be a number, right? Like I run a community and I have outliers. I have girls I have women in their 20s, I have women in their 80s. Um, but I think that they're attracted to being in the community because that's the way we approach it. It's like we're all doing the work of transitioning from who we've been with all these patterns for the first however many years of our lifetime, many of which those, you know, many patterns of which are hurting us. And we're we're really committed to doing the work of leveling up into the person we want to be. And that's good life. You're just mid mid-versions of you.

Cassandra: 40:18

Yeah, I love that. That's great. That's great. And we talk about um the transitioning being so challenging when it comes to behavior change. Why, why do you think why do you think that's so challenging? Because I loved it when you say it doesn't have to be an age, you know. If somebody, you know, they they used to always say for men, they went out and bought a motorcycle. Oh, that's midlife. We went and bought a motorcycle, you know. So why is the transition so challenging once they like, okay, this is who I am. Now I've had this experience, and now I'm I'm coming into myself and I'm realizing I'm aware of what it is that I want to do. Why is that challenging?

Courtney: 41:04

I would say the number one reason is a whole lot of thoughts. We have a whole lot of thoughts about not making other people uncomfortable with our choices. We have a lot of thoughts about being judged by the outside world that we fail, that this could be the wrong decision, that I'm not the kind of person who uh I mean it's endless, right? The amount of thoughts that we have that keep us stuck, right? Where we're at. Like I think it's a whole lot of thinking. Um, and I would say too, you know, on a deeper level, um, because you know, thinking is I think a deep level, but an even deeper level is that nervous system that if you have experienced a lot of stress and even trauma in your lifetime, yeah, it's probably more difficult for you in some ways to coach yourself into this new version of yourself. So that's where I would say like everyone has a different level of healing to do. Um, but I would definitely be neglectful if I didn't mention that I think um sometime our nervous system is actually physically stuck because of things we've experienced earlier in life. And if that's true, I would really encourage you to work with a nervous system expert and do some nervous healing, like nervous system healing. Because when our nervous system isn't come isn't doing the job it's meant to do, our we actually can't access our prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking part of our brain. It's the part of our brain that lets us step into possibility and do hard things and consider how we want to live. So if you are someone who feels like you're doing all the right things and you are consistently stuck, yeah, I would say it might be worth looking into some nervous system healing, um, which is not my specialty, but I do work with a lot of other coaches and people who who specifically do that work because I do belie I do really do believe in it so much. And it's I don't think everyone necessarily needs healing on that level, but a lot of people do, right?

Cassandra: 43:05

And and so when we know that we're stuck and we know that we need help, we you know, a lot of people go to therapy for sure, you know. So the nervous system person, what did you call that? How would how would individuals know it may be a nervous system issue?

Courtney: 43:24

Um, I think honestly, if you've done a lot of therapy and it hasn't helped.

Cassandra: 43:28

Okay, right?

Courtney: 43:29

Because think about therapy as like a top-down uh exercise. Like we're in our kids and we're trying to think our way out of a problem.

Cassandra: 43:37

Uh-huh.

Courtney: 43:38

But if you've been doing that work for a really long time and nothing's changing, I would say that probably there is a um a feeling of unsafety in the body.

unknown: 43:49

Uh-huh.

Courtney: 43:50

Right. And that you, so there it's like somatic practitioners. Somatic just means body, but you can literally Google somatic practitioners, nervous ceiling, nervous system healing experts. I will tell you a shameless plug because I I love her work. Irene Lyon is brilliant in this word, um, in terms of helping to educate people about the nervous system and and what happens in the body when it's stuck.

Cassandra: 44:13

Okay.

Courtney: 44:14

Um, but yeah, if you've been doing a lot of cognitive therapy and you feel like you're not getting anywhere, I would say you probably have some healing to do on the level of the nervous system. And not all therapists do that work.

Cassandra: 44:27

Yes, exactly. Yeah. And yeah, and that's something new for a lot of my listeners, just to hear that concept and to entertain or be open to that. You know, you can get to a point where you're just sick and tired of being sick and tired. I've tried this, I've tried that. Okay, so let me let me let me let me try this. So that's why you sense value and listening to podcasts, reading, think about who's in your community, who are your resources, anybody there to that to serve you that has your best interest at heart? Because what we're talking about, you cannot do it alone. Yeah, period. You can't do it alone.

Courtney: 45:05

And I always say, like, he I say this, I mean it's partly joking, but it's also very true. Healing is a team sport, right? Like healing is a team sport. You are not meant to go it alone, you are meant to be surrounded by community, you are meant to be in the company of people who can normalize your struggle. Um, you know, it's it's not a solo effort, and yet that's part of hiding, is that's what we do. We don't want to show people that we need healing, and so we isolate and we contain and we hide, and then it just fasters.

Cassandra: 45:37

That's right, that's right, that's right. Wow, this is good. This this is good. We can't talk all day. I know, I know, we could talk, but you have what I call a call to action, and I love it. Now I want you to explain to my listeners, and it's free, they like free stuff. That midlife magic quick start guy. What is that about that my listeners can get from?

Courtney: 46:04

You know, it's really the uh midlife magic is really uh kind of a culmination of podcasts that we have pulled out of Grace and Grit that we just feel like kind of summarize the the the bare bones of kind of what we've talked about, like even on this show, it just really gives you a great overview of um redefining health at midlife. Like that's exactly what it is. So it gives you some journal prompts and it kind of gives you some some deeper questions to consider. So I think if someone is just in midlife and they they're enjoying this conversation and they want a little bit more um to roll with, I think that that could be an awesome, uh awesome thing for them to check out. Yeah. I think this is important, like the four practices that we talked about today, um, I call it the consistency code because consistency to me isn't about doing the same thing over and over, it's about consistently self-honoring what is true. That's what consistency is, and that's what I teach. Um, but I have a book out in November called The Consistency Code, and it basically explores all the those four practices. So if like kind of into that and they like they want to hear more about that, uh the book is November 4th. And I would just tell people to keep their eyes and ears open for it because uh great resource.

Cassandra: 47:23

Okay, November 4th, 2025. Congratulations to you!

Courtney: 47:27

Thank you. Yeah, super exciting! It's been a long time coming. You know, look, it's like it's a whole thing. So awesome!

Cassandra: 47:36

That's awesome, awesome. How can my listeners get in touch with you, Courtney?

Courtney: 47:41

Um, the best place is really disgraceandgrit.com. Just go to my website, you'll find my contact form and the things that I offer, the podcast. Like it's kind of a one-stop shop.

Cassandra: 47:49

Okay, okay. Well, we have to wrap this session up, unfortunately. Uh, I would like to thank you again. I want to let my listeners know, I know without a shadow of a doubt, that this podcast has been so valuable to you and not only to you, but think of individuals that are in your community that could that would want to hear this discussion, this conversation, want to hear what it means to be what I call less live full out. Talk about the health that we redefining health at midlife. Listen to the the the four um crucial skills, which I think is phenomenal. And also remember get their book when it comes out in November 2025. And Courtney, again, thank you. My listeners, thank you. I love you guys, and as I always say, bye for now and God bless you. Thanks again.