Ep. 195: The Framework That Changed Everything: How I Stopped Spinning and Finally Felt Steady

Hey friend.

Can I be honest with you for a second?

There was a time—not that long ago—when I looked completely capable on the outside. Put together. High-functioning. Like I had it all under control.

But on the inside? I was drowning.

I was in constant motion but getting nowhere. Trying everything. Starting and stopping. Resetting every Monday—sometimes every morning—and still ending the day feeling behind.

And the worst part? I couldn't figure out why.

I'd wake up with good intentions. I'd make the plan. I'd set the goals. I'd tell myself, "Today is going to be different."

But by 3 p.m., I was already behind. Already overwhelmed. Already thinking about the wine I'd pour at 5 o'clock just to take the edge off.

I kept thinking if I could just find the right system, the right planner, the right routine—everything would click into place.

So I tried them all. The morning routines. The decluttering challenges. The productivity hacks. The 30-day resets.

And for a few days, I'd feel hopeful. Like maybe this time it would stick.

But then life would happen. A kid would get sick. My husband would need something. I'd sleep poorly. The dog would throw up on the carpet at 6 a.m.

And the whole thing would fall apart.

And I'd be right back where I started—except now I felt even worse because I'd failed again.

I started to believe something was wrong with me.

That I was lazy. Or undisciplined. Or just not capable of the kind of life I wanted to live.

But here's what I know now: I wasn't lazy. I wasn't broken.

I was just overloaded. And I didn't have a framework to make sense of it all.

By the end of this episode, you're going to know the four-part framework that's helped hundreds of midlife women stop spiraling, get steady, and lead their life again—with clarity, confidence, and peace.

Not because their circumstances changed. But because they did.

Let's go.

Resources mentioned in this episode: The 4 Pillar Foundational Framework - get it HERE

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Transcript

So I know what I just described in the opening is something that we can all relate to. And I know it because I hear it every single day from the women I talk to, whether they're the women I talk to while standing in line at the grocery store or sitting at a sporting event for my kids, whether it's an email that I get emailed into my inbox or whether it's on a survey because I'm always surveying women to learn more, figure out more. How can we do this better? What do you need?

And I hear it all the time. It's this never ending feeling like you're failing at everything and you have the best intentions. But those intentions just don't hold up when life derails. And so we end up setting all these things into motion and putting them all into place and figuring them all out and color coding them and being so excited to start. But then life creeps in and everything falls apart.

then you would be right back to where you started except for you'd feel worse because now you failed and now you're starting to step into the territory of why bother anyway. Maybe you're like me and when this was happening to me I started to believe that something was actually wrong with me. That I was lazy or undisciplined or unmotivated or just not capable of the life that I actually wanted to live. But here's what I know now. I wasn't lazy. I wasn't incapable. I wasn't broken. I wasn't any of those things.

I was just overloaded and I didn't have a pathway, I didn't have a framework to help me make sense of it all. I was treating the symptoms instead of solving the real problem. This is what I talk to women about all day, every day. We are out there just treating symptoms. All of those solutions that I shared with you in the beginning, all those things I tried, they were all just treating the symptoms. They were putting a bandaid on what was actually failing underneath.

Essentially, I was trying to out organize confusion. I was trying to out hustle burnout. I was trying to white knuckle my way through the chaos and it didn't work. It doesn't work. It never works because you can't fix what you can't identify. And I couldn't identify what was actually happening until I finally stopped. Until I stopped the constant motion. I stopped the endless trying. I stopped pretending.

that I had it all together. And I asked myself the question that really changed everything. The question is, what if the problem isn't actually that I'm not doing enough? What if the problem is that I don't actually know what the real problem is? I don't actually understand what is going on. I have no idea what is happening. And that question, it really kind of cracked something open because it forced me to get honest. It forced me to stop pretending, to actually look at my life

and see what was actually real. And what kind of came out of that honest reckoning in some way is a framework that I'm gonna walk you through today. And know that this isn't theory. This isn't something that I learned in a book and handed to clients without testing it first. This is the exact path that pulled me out of drowning in survival mode and helped me rebuild my life really from the inside out.

It's what saved me during some of the hardest seasons of my life. And it's what I now use to guide every woman that I work with. And it's the foundation of everything that I create. There is these four pillars that are part of this framework. And they are this, clarity, capacity, carry differently, resilience. Clarity, capacity, carry differently, and resilience.

And so if you've been stuck in this never ending reset, start over mode, this downward spiral, this never ending spiral, if you feel like you're disappearing inside your own life, if you're tired of white knuckling through the chaos and wondering when it's finally going to feel easier, this is your lifeline, it's here. By the end of our time here together, you're gonna know what the four part framework is. And it's the same framework that has helped hundreds of midlife women and women everywhere.

stop spiraling and get steady and lead their life again with clarity and confidence and peace. Not because their circumstances changed. Let me say that again. Not because their circumstances changed, but because they did. So let's start with clarity. This is where we see what's actually happening. And the core truth is this. You can't fix what you can't identify or name. And here's the hard part. Most of us are trying to fix something

that we've never clearly identified. And so we know we feel overwhelmed. We know what it feels like. We know we feel overwhelmed. We know we feel stuck. We know we feel behind. We know we feel scattered. But when I ask what's actually happening right now, they don't know how to answer. There's just fog. Know that the fog, it's not failure. It's just feedback. It's essentially your brain saying,

I am over my limit. I am overloaded. cannot process this much input. I need you to slow down and see what's actually real. But we don't slow down. And so instead, we keep trying to push through and keep going. We tell ourselves we just need to try harder. We need to be more disciplined. We need to get up earlier. We need to meal prep on Sundays. We need to color code the calendar. And all of those things might be really helpful things eventually.

but not until you know what you're actually dealing with. I'll never forget the day that I kind of realized I was stuck in a swirl of doing, doing, doing, but totally unclear on what was actually going wrong. I was moving all day long. I was checking off the boxes. I was cleaning the counters. I was answering the text messages. I was running errands. I was picking up kids. I was making dinner. I was folding laundry. But by the end of the day, I still felt behind. I still felt like I was failing, and I couldn't figure out why.

My house wasn't clean enough. My kids weren't managing their responsibilities well. My business wasn't growing fast enough. My body wasn't where I wanted it to be. Everything felt wrong. And I felt like I was the common denominator in all of it. And so one night after everyone went to bed, I sat down literally with a blank piece of paper and I asked myself, what's actually happening right now? Not what I wished was happening, not what should be happening, not what used to work. What is, what is going on? And

When I got honest, really honest, I could see it. I was measuring myself against an ideal version of my life that didn't exist anymore. I was holding myself to standards that belonged in a different season, a season when my kids were younger and easier to manage, a season when I had more energy, a season when my calendar wasn't so packed, a season when I didn't have aging parents who were beginning to need me. And I was trying to fit into routines that no longer served me.

No wonder I felt like I was drowning. I wasn't behind. I was just essentially living with the wrong blueprint. And here's the kicker. I teach this all the time. I tell women not to compare their current season to someone else's highlight reel. I tell them to work with what is, not with what they wish it was. But for a time there, I wasn't doing it myself. I was carrying around this mental image of who I thought I should be and beating myself up every day for not being her.

And so here's the reframe really that needs to happen. You need to stop trying to out organize confusion. You don't need another planner. You don't need a better system. You don't need to hustle harder. You need clarity. And clarity doesn't come from thinking harder. It comes from what I would say is compassionate confrontation with what is. You have to see it, but using the lens of compassion.

And again, you're looking at what is, you're not looking at what you wish it was, not what it used to be, what actually is happening right now in this season, in your reality, in your circumstances. And it's coming from, here's the truth you need to know. Most of the overwhelm that you're feeling, it isn't coming from your circumstances. The reality is that it's coming from the gap between your circumstances, where you are,

and your expectations, where you think you should be. You're trying to live up to a version of yourself that doesn't match your current reality. It's not attainable. And that disconnect, you feel it. You know from where I am here, I'm not going to get there. And that disconnect, it's exhausting. And so the first step in the equation, it isn't to fix everything. It isn't to fix anything. It's to see everything, to get honest about

What's actually on your plate? What is actually draining you? What's actually working and what's not? Without judging, without trying to fix anything, just naming, just identifying, just unpacking it. That's what you're doing. And so it's time to do what I call a truth inventory instead of a to-do list. Here's what it looks like. Grab a piece of paper or open a note on your phone or your

laptop or whatever it is, and set a timer for 10 minutes and answer these questions. What's actually happening right now in my life? What's actually happening right now in my life? Things to consider. What season am I in? Am I parenting young kids? Am I caregiving? Am I business building? Am I health recovering? Am I in an empty nest transitional phase? What's actually happening in life right now? What season am I in? Also,

What's changed in the last six months that I haven't fully acknowledged? A lot of times we're so head down, just trying to keep our head above water that we don't even notice that the circumstances all around us have changed. So what's changed in the last six months that I haven't acknowledged? Another question, what's taking more energy, more bandwidth, more of my internal resources?

than I expected, what's bleeding me out more than I thought? So that's question number one, what's actually happening in my life right now? And those are some things to consider. The second question, what am I pretending is working, but isn't? So again, this is when we get so head down focused and we think that what used to work will continue to work, or we think that if we just try harder or stay the course a little bit longer, it will eventually snap into place. But in reality,

that probably isn't going to happen because what used to work isn't going to be working, isn't going to be able to work in every season. So here's some things to consider. Are there routines that I'm clinging to that don't fit me anymore? Are there expectations I'm holding onto that need to be released? Are there relationships or commitments, really good relationships, really good commitments that are draining me?

What am I pretending is still working but isn't? And the third question to ask yourself is what do I need to let go of? Essentially, what standard or expectation can I lower? What task can I stop doing, at least for right now? What responsibility can I release, again, at least for right now? Write it down, no judgment, no fixing, just sharing, just naming it, putting it out on paper, because once you can clearly see what's going on, you can finally stop.

fighting an invisible enemy and start really adjusting to your real capacity and bandwidth and abilities for this season right now where you are. And so once we have done pillar number one, which is really when we are looking at clarity, once you've gotten some clarity, then you're ready to move to the second pillar, which is capacity. And this is when we really step into understanding your real

limits because the truth is this your bandwidth what you're capable of it isn't broken or out of sync it's just buried under a bunch of a bunch of shoulds you're not behind you're not taking too long you're not failing you're just trying to function at a capacity that doesn't match your current season and no amount of discipline is or organization is going to fix that

So let me say that again, you can't discipline your way out of a capacity problem. You can't hustle your way past your real limits for forever. You can try and you can do it for a while and you've probably succeeded. But then you've also tried and you've done so past your limits and you have probably pushed yourself past those limits and ended up where you're at now. Eventually your body catches up, your mind catches up.

and you hit a wall. So I remember the day that I realized I was measuring myself against kind of this ideal me, not the real me in this season. It was a Tuesday morning. There was nothing dramatic. It was just a regular, overwhelming, chaotic Tuesday. And I had this mental picture really of what a capable Jennifer should be able to handle, how much she should be able to get done.

how pulled together she should look and feel and be. This woman was someone who woke up at 4 a.m. and she worked out and she had a quiet time. She made a healthy meal plan for the day. She got the kids up and going and moving in the right direction on time. And she worked and homeschooled, in my case, for a full day without distraction. There was a wonderful home-cooked meal and connection with the family at night. And then there was cleaning the kitchen together.

prepping for the next day, and going to bed feeling accomplished. This version of Jennifer, she had endless energy. She never scrolled mindlessly. She never snapped at her kids. She never avoided doing hard things or having hard conversations. She never felt resentful or tired or like she was failing. She was calm. She was grounded. She was in control. And I kept trying to be her. But in reality, that woman, she didn't exist.

She didn't have kids who were getting older and needing her in different ways. She didn't have teenagers with emotional needs that couldn't be scheduled or happen or unfold at a convenient time. She didn't have a business that she was building from scratch. She didn't have the exact combination of responsibilities and relationships and realities that I was carrying. She was a fantasy. She was a composite of different women that I saw on Instagram and knew in real life.

maybe productivity gurus and the version of myself that I maybe used to be closer to in a completely different season. And I was running myself into the ground trying to keep up with her. One morning I was making breakfast and mentally running through my to-do list. I had 12 things I needed to get done that day, 12 important things. And as I was thinking about those 12 things, I felt my chest tighten. I felt that familiar wave of panic and the overwhelm and I stopped.

and I put down the spatula and I asked myself, what's actually possible for me today? Not what I want to be possible, not what used to be possible, not what the fantasy version of me could handle, but what is actually realistically possible for me today with the energy that I have, with the responsibilities that I'm carrying, and with the season that I'm in? And when I actually got honest about answering that question,

Three things, maybe four, if I was lucky, were important. Not 12 things, I was down to three or four. And in reality, in full honesty, that felt like failure at first, like I was giving up, like I was being lazy, like I was giving myself the easy way out. But when I did those three things really well, without rushing, without resentment, at the end of the day, I still felt good. I felt...

Steady, I felt capable. I didn't feel like I was drowning and it wasn't because I did more but it was because I finally stopped lying to myself about what was possible and so Like me you need you you need to know that you don't need to become more You need to work with who you actually are today in this season with this body with this energy with these limitations

with these responsibilities because here's the truth, capacity, it isn't fixed. It ebbs and flows. It is subject to the fluidity of life. It changes. What you could handle five years ago is different from what you can handle now. What you could handle before kids arrived, before teenagers later in life, it's different from what you can handle now. What you could handle before perimenopause, before...

maybe aging parents, before grief, before burnout. It's all different now and it doesn't signal a failure, it's just part of life. Life changes, bodies change, seasons change, capabilities change, and your capacity changes with them. But most of us are still operating, really holding ourselves to standards that don't match our reality. We're still operating from an old capacity blueprint.

And then we wonder why we just feel like we're constantly failing. And in reality, it's not that you are failing, it's that you're overloading yourself with things that aren't possible. And the fix, it isn't more discipline, it's an honest assessment. So let me give you a different framework here for assessing your real capacity. I call it the three lenses. And the three lenses are time and energy and responsibility.

So lens number one is time. How much time do you actually have? Not theoretically, but realistically. Most of us think pretty much straight across the board all the time that we have more time than we do. We look at the calendar and we see open blocks and we think, great, I can get so much more done, but those open blocks, they're not actually open. They're transition time, they're drive time, they're meal prep time, they're cleanup time. They're also filled with a moment.

to help try to filter through, sift through some of that mental load, some of the decision fatigue. Then there's all the interruptions and disruptions and the stopping and starting that those require. And there's all the unexpected things too. And so ask yourself this, if I'm being really honest, how much focused uninterrupted time do I have in a day? Because for most women I work with, it might be one to two hours.

three hours at most, and that's on a good day, and that's okay. But you need to know that number for you because if you're planning like you've got eight hours of uninterrupted time and you really only have two, you're setting yourself up to feel like that failure every single day. So lens number one in this framework is time. Lens number two is energy. Because you can have all the time in the world sometimes, but you don't have the energy, right?

So what's your energy level like consistently right now? Not on your best day, but what is it like on the day to day? Your physical energy, your emotional energy, your mental energy, because you, again, might have time on the calendar, but if you don't have the energy to match it, it doesn't matter if you have the time. If you're coming off of a hard week or a sleepless night or an emotional conversation or a stressful season,

your energy is going to be lower. And that means that your capacity is then lower. And that doesn't signal any kind of weakness. It signals reality. And so ask yourself, what is my energy level at today, most days? Is it high? Is it medium? Is it low? And then you adjust your plans accordingly.

So the third lens that you need to use to look through is responsibility. So this is when you have to actually look at what's actually on your plate. And we're not just talking tasks. We're talking emotional labor. We're talking decision making. We're talking emotional regulating for yourself and others. We're talking problem solving and helping others carry their weight. And we're talking about caretaking. This is the one that most women miss pretty much straight across the board.

And it's because we can visibly see the tasks. We can count them. But we don't count the invisible load or the invisible work, the mental load of managing everyone's schedules, the emotional labor of navigating a teenager's mood swings, the decision fatigue of figuring out what's for dinner every single night. All of that takes capacity. And so ask yourself this, what am I actually responsible for right now beyond the to-do list?

What is it that I don't see but I know is there? And then give yourself credit for it. And so when you run your current reality through these three lenses, time, energy, responsibility, you're going to see yourself and what you do every day and how you feel every day as you're doing those things in a completely different way. And you need to write these things down for time. How much focused uninterrupted time do I realistically have?

today, be honest. When you think about what your day is gonna look like, ask yourself this question every day. How much uninterrupted time do I realistically have? And then energy. What's my energy level right now? Is it high, is it medium, is it low? And then responsibilities. What am I carrying beyond the visible task, the obvious ones? Mental load, emotional labor, decision making.

caretaking, problem solving, thinking 12,000 steps ahead all day long, every single day. Now, look at your current to-do list, your current expectations, your current commitments. Do they match? Do they align? Or are they not even close? Know that if they aren't even close, you're not broken. What's going on is that you are proving to yourself by this misalignment that you are overloaded. And know that the fix here isn't discipline.

It's adjusting. It's giving yourself permission to work with your real actual capacity that you have right now in real time. Not the imaginary one, not the ideal one, not the one I used to have or the one I wish that I could have. And it's working with what is real and where you are at here in real time. And that brings us to pillar three.

So pillar three is all about being able to carry differently. And what this means is building systems and supports and frameworks that actually support you. Because the truth is this, you don't need routines that drain you. And a lot of times we hang on to those kinds of routines. We think we're supposed to have the routines that other people's have, that the planners lay out, that the latest productivity guru lays out, or the one that you know your sister uses, or...

the woman you admire down the street. Your structures, the truth is this, your structures, the things that you have that support you, they actually need to support you. They actually need to lighten the load because here's what most women do. They create rigid systems that work in an ideal world, in an ideal environment, in an ideal life. But that means that they're gonna crumble the second that life gets loud or life pushes you off course even a little.

And when the system then falls apart, they blame themselves. They think, I'm just not disciplined enough, or I'm just not motivated enough, or I'm not consistent enough, or I'm not committed enough. I'm just lazy. But the problem isn't you. The problem is the system. You've been building systems for the ideal you, not the real you. And the real you needs flexibility. It needs grace. It needs structure that supports.

rather than is so rigid that it suffocates you. So I used to have a morning routine that looked great on paper. Wake up at four, journal for a half hour, spend 10 minutes in prayer, move my body for 30 to 45 minutes, drink 32 ounces of water, plan my day, review my goals, make sure that it aligns and that it all makes sense. And when it worked, it felt amazing. I felt amazing. I felt like I was winning at life, like I had it all together.

But here's the thing, it only worked when conditions were perfect. And do you wanna guess about how often that was? These conditions, worked when I got my full night's sleep, when my kids didn't wake me up early, when my husband didn't need something that I needed to find for him late at night when I was already settled down in bed, when I didn't have a headache or feel exhausted or have a morning.

a morning meeting that I had to be out of the door for at 7 a.m. But those perfect conditions, they don't exist in real life, at least not in mine, and I'm guessing not in yours. And so here's what actually happened. I wouldn't even get up at four. I would get up closer to five, and I would already feel like I was running behind. And I would have to decide, what am I gonna shorten, or what am I gonna cut out? Then I would get a call from my daughter at work who needed me to work through something with her.

she works an early morning shift. Or maybe I would end up with a kid who got up much earlier than expected and wanted to interrupt what little quiet time and peace of mind time I had left. And the whole routine then, for the whole rest of the day, the whole structure would fall apart. And I would feel like a failure again. And I started to dread this morning routine, which is wild because I love morning routines. I teach about the importance of them.

And it's supposed to be the thing that grounds us. Until one day I realized it wasn't my routine that was the problem, it was my expectation of the routine that was the problem. I had built a structure that required perfect conditions. And perfect conditions, again, they don't exist. And so I rebuilt it from scratch. And so instead of a rigid 60 minute routine, I created a flexible framework that took anywhere from between 20 to 40 minutes, depending on

how much time I had, and what the interruptions looked like that day. I identified three non-negotiables, the things that actually made a difference in how I felt. I moved my body, I drank my water, I planned my meals for the day. That's it. I made sure those three things got done and I could get all of those done in 20 minutes or less. Any of the additional stuff that I wanted to do, it just became icing on the cake at that point. This allowed me to have flexibility within

the chaos that life so often hands us. Know that some mornings I got all of those done and then all of the extras too. Some days I was lucky to get just those three done. And that was okay. It was okay whether it was just those three or whether it was the full gamut of my morning routine. Because again, the goal wasn't perfection. The goal was progress. And that changed everything. So know that perfection isn't the goal.

Permission is permission to adjust, permission to simplify, permission to react and respond, permission to let go of what's not working without guilt. Because here's the truth, the best system is the one you'll actually use, not the one that looks perfect on Instagram, not the one that your friend swears by, not the one that worked for you five years ago or even five months ago, the one that fits your life, your season, your capacity today.

that might look messy, it might look simple, it might not be Instagrammable, but you know what, if it works right for you, if it works for you, it's the right system. So when you're building or rebuilding any routine or habit or system, run it through these three questions to make sure that it's rooted in reality. Question number one, does this actually serve me or am I doing it because I think I should do it?

This should be part of my routine. And this really is the big one because so many of us are carrying routines that we don't even want. We meal prep on Sundays because everyone says that we should. We wake up at 5 a.m. because productivity gurus tell us that's the right time to get up. We follow a cleaning schedule because Pinterest told us to. But does it actually serve you? Does it make your life easier? Does it create more peace or more pressure?

Does this actually serve me? That's question number one. Question number two, can this flex when life gets loud? Know that a good system, it should essentially be like a riverbank. It provides structure, but it can hold more water when needed. And a rigid system is like a dam. It works great until the pressure builds and then it cracks and lets loose. And so ask, can this routine,

fit and can it, am I allowing for it to adjust when I'm tired or when someone gets sick or when life happens? If not, you need to rebuild it with more flexibility baked in. So can this flex when life gets loud? Question three, am I building this for my actual life or my ideal life? And this is the trap. We build systems for the life that we wish we had, the calm, the organized.

the spacious life. But most times we're gonna be living in a loud, chaotic, very full life. And when the system doesn't match that reality, we blame ourselves. And so ask, does this system fit my actual life today, or am I building it for a fantasy life? And so it's time to do a, really what I call an audit on your current routines. Pick one area, pick a morning routine that you have.

an evening routine that you have, a routine that you have for meal planning or the cleaning schedule or getting people out the door in the morning or work habits or whatever feels like the hardest routine right now. Maybe it's a workout routine. And then ask, what can I simplify? And what that means is basically making it easier or shorter or more flexible or a combination of all of that. So what can I simplify? What can I strip back? So where can I?

downsize it, where can I remove steps, where can I reduce expectations? And then the third question, what can I stop doing altogether? And knowing that that means that you're going to let it go without guilt. So as you do this audit on your current routines, write down your new simplified version that has been filtered through all of these questions, and then try it for a week, just one week.

not to prove that you can do it perfectly, but to see if it actually serves you. Because you don't need more structure, you need a structure that supports you, not the other way around. And that brings us really to the final pillar. And the final pillar is resilience. This is where we learn how to recover quickly. Because in reality, life will get loud again. The power lies in how fast you can ricochet or recover. Because

Here's what I've learned. Stability isn't about staying steady all the time. It's about knowing how to get back to being steady again. It's about going from the chaos into the calm steady. It's about knowing how to react and respond when you have a bad day or hard weeks or seasons that knock you off balance and knowing what to do. Because in reality, you're gonna have all of those things. You're gonna have the bad day. You're gonna have the hard season.

You're gonna have the trying challenges. None of these signal that anything is failing or that you are failing. That's just the way that life rolls. But you don't have to spiral along with these hard times. You don't have to start over from scratch. You just need to know how to reset as quick as possible. That's why I like to think of ricocheting. It's quick. You need to be able to reset quickly and compassionately and without shame.

So there was a season right in the middle of my husband's nursing school journey when everything fell apart. He had been in an accelerated program for 18 months and it was brutal. Accelerated equals brutal. He was studying and doing schoolwork constantly. I was holding down the fort at home and with the family. We were exhausted. We were broke and we were running on fumes. And then just as he was about to finish the last, as he was about to step into the last segment of the program, he failed that second to the last segment.

by 0.8%, 0.8%. He missed passing by less than one question. And that one failure meant that he couldn't graduate at the right time. And he would have to wait nine months to retake that segment. Nine months of more uncertainty, nine months of more financial strain, nine months, nine months longer of holding our breath. This was devastating.

I remember sitting on the couch that night staring at the wall thinking, I don't know what to do. And I don't know if I can do this. I don't know if we can survive the next nine months of this. And we had kids counting on us to survive. I wanted to spiral. I wanted to give up. I wanted to rage against the unfairness of it all. And maybe I did that just a little bit in my closet in privacy. I did that for about 24 hours. But then something kicked in. A voice in my head said,

Yep, you know what, this is hard. This is painfully hard. But you've been through hard times before. You've done hard things before. And you know what to do. And I did. I had learned over years of coaching myself and others that I had stabilizers. I had things that could bring me back into a steady feeling again, that helped me reset instead of collapse underneath the weight of it all. For me, one of my steady things

that always steadies me is walking. Even just 10 minutes clears my head. For me, sometimes it's journaling, just three sentences. No pressure, just naming what I'm feeling. Sometimes it's texting a friend who gets it, not so that she can fix it, just to say, that sucks. And it often includes asking myself some grounding questions. And one of my favorite grounding questions is what's one thing I can do today

that will help what I'm feeling. Not fixing everything, not fix the whole problem, just one thing. And that was enough to keep me steady. All of those little lifelines that I had, they kept me steady during that time. Nothing was perfect, and I also wasn't pretending everything was fine. But I was steady enough to be able to keep going and not feeling like I needed to collapse underneath it all. And we did make it through those nine months. My husband passed that segment and then moved on to the other.

and he graduated and we came out stronger on the other side. Not because we avoided the hard thing, but because we knew how to recover from it and stand in it. And so you don't need to avoid hard seasons. You need tools to recover from them and to stand in them sometimes. Because life is going to knock you off balance. That doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong. And again, it doesn't mean that you're failing. That again is just life.

But the difference between spiraling and resetting is this, it's knowing what brings you back, whether it's the walking or the journaling or the raging in your closet for 24 hours, whatever that is, the texting a friend, whatever that is for you, it's knowing what brings you back. Most women don't know what that is. They don't have a list of things that bring them back. They're winging it every time that life gets hard. They're just hanging on, gritting their teeth and hanging on for dear life. And that is exhausting.

You need to build your reset toolkit now before you need it. Because in the middle of the storm, you're not gonna have the bandwidth to figure it out. You're just gonna buckle down and grit your teeth and hang on for dear life again. You need to already know that when I'm overwhelmed, this is what I do. When I'm spinning, this is what can help ground me. When I feel like giving up, this is what can help give me the strength I need to keep going. And so,

Let's call these personal stabilizers. Your stabilizers are the things that always help you feel grounded, even when everything else around you feels like it's in chaos. They're not big things, they're not time consuming, they're not complicated, they're just reliable. And so here's how to identify what yours could be. Number one, step one is to look back at your hard seasons. Think about a time when you felt overwhelmed or lost or stuck, but you found your way back. What helped you?

What grounded you? What gave you clarity or peace or just a little bit of relief in that little push that you needed to just stand up and just do today or just do this hour or just do this next five minutes? Write it down. What was that for you? Step number two is to look and identify patterns. You want to look at your list. What shows up more than once on that list? For me, it's always movement, walking specifically, running. It clears my head every single time.

For some of my clients, it's talking to a specific person or sitting in silence or taking a shower or journaling. What's your pattern? What helps ground you? And step three is to then create your reset menu. Write down five to seven things that always help you feel more grounded. Think of it like a menu at a restaurant. You're not gonna order everything. You're just gonna pick what sounds good in the moment, but you've got a decent selection to choose from.

So some examples could be to take a 10 minute walk or journal three sentences or text a friend or take a shower or sit in silence for five minutes or listen to a specific song or playlist, do a specific workout, make a cup of tea and sit down to drink it. Do one small task that makes you feel capable. Maybe it's making the bed, clearing the counter, writing one email and then post it somewhere visible so that when you are in the middle of a hard moment which can erupt with no

warning whatsoever when you're in the middle of one of those moments, your brain, it doesn't have to work because it won't work in that moment. You won't remember what helps. And so you put your reset menu somewhere where you're gonna know where it is. Some place you're gonna see it is ideal. Maybe it's gonna be on your phone. Maybe it's gonna be in a bathroom drawer. Maybe it's gonna be in your planner. Wherever it is, you know where it is and you can find it quickly so that when life gets loud, you don't have to figure it out. You've already done that. You just pick one thing from the menu.

And so you create your personal stabilizers list right now. Do it right now as soon as we are done here. Grab your phone, grab a piece of paper and answer this. What always helps me feel grounded even when everything else is chaos? Write down five to seven things, maybe more, be specific. And then put it somewhere where you know where it is, post it somewhere visible. Because when life gets loud again, and it will, you don't have to spiral. You already know what to do.

know that this framework, didn't just help me get back on track. It helped me learn to get honest with myself. It helped me learn how to look at what is actually happening, to diagnose the actual problem so that I could just stop treating the symptoms all the time. And that changed everything because here's what I learned. Even when life feels completely overwhelming, you don't need a big overhaul. You don't need to burn it all down and start over. Like me, you need clarity.

You need to actually be able to see what's happening, not what I wished was happening, and maybe even not what I thought was happening. I needed to get honest and actually look like it, look at it, and so do you. I needed capacity. I needed to stop measuring myself against an ideal that didn't exist and start working with who I actually was. I needed to carry differently. I needed systems that supported me, not suffocated me. And I needed resilience. I needed to know how to recover quickly when life got loud again.

That's it, that's the framework. It's clarity, capacity, carry differently, resilience. Four simple steps that have reshaped my life and now kind of underlie everything that I create. And here's the truth, you don't need all four at once. You just need to start where you are at. And so ask yourself, where am I in this framework? Do I need clarity? Do I need to get honest about what's actually happening? Do I need capacity? Do you need to adjust your?

expectations to match your life? Do you need to carry differently? Do you need systems that actually serve you? Or do you need resilience? Do you need tools to recover quickly when life gets loud? Start there. Give yourself permission to start in that one spot that feels like it would be the most beneficial for you to start right now. And know that it's not about perfection, it's about progress. And you can start again at any moment. You're not broken, you're not lazy, and you're not failing.

You're just overloaded and you've been trying to fix it all without a framework, but now you have one and that changes everything. So if this resonated with you, know that you're wanna grab the freebie down in the show notes. It's gonna help you get started on this identification progress. It's gonna help you see a little bit more clearly how this framework works, what it is, how it works and how it can help you.

So make sure that you grab that down in the notes and know that again, you're not lazy or unmotivated. You just haven't known where to direct your efforts and now you do. So until we talk again, make it a great day.