65: Life Audit for Midlife Women- A Midyear Reset: How to Make The Next 6 Months Count

How Midlife Women Can Stop People Pleasing, Set Healthy Boundaries and  Live With Intention ...Writing Their Own Recipe For A Life That Feeds Their Soul.

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Have you ever looked up in July and wondered, "Where did the year go?"

If someone handed you a movie of the first six months of your life, what story would it tell? Where did your time, energy, and attention actually go—and did they reflect the life you truly want to create?

In this heartfelt episode of Life Is Delicious, Marnie shares a powerful midyear reset designed especially for women navigating midlife. Through personal stories, practical reflection, and a little neuroscience, you'll discover why nearly half of our daily lives are driven by habit—and how understanding your patterns can help you intentionally create a more meaningful second half of the year.

Together, we'll explore:
• Why your habits shape your future more than your intentions
• The surprising neuroscience behind automatic behaviours and neuroplasticity
• How your calendar reveals your true priorities and values
• Why it's never too late to course-correct
• A simple reflection exercise to help you finish the year with greater purpose, joy, and intention

This isn't about beating yourself up for the goals you didn't achieve.

It's about celebrating what you've learned, recognizing the seeds you've already planted, and intentionally choosing what you want to grow next.

Because the second half of your year is still yours.

In this episode you'll discover:
✔ Midyear reset strategies for women over 50
✔ How to identify the habits that are quietly shaping your life
✔ Why your values—not your to-do list—determine your direction
✔ Practical mindset shifts for intentional living
✔ Simple ways to create lasting change through small daily choices

If you're ready to stop living on autopilot and start creating a life that truly feeds your soul, this episode is for you.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Happy July. I can't believe we are halfway through 2026. That's insane. I don't even know where the time went. But I got to thinking that we are exactly halfway through the year. And then I got to thinking, what on earth did I do with my time for the last six months? And am I on track for what I hoped this year would bring? And it just got me thinking that this would be a wonderful episode to discover how we actually navigate the last six months of the year. So let me ask you a question. If I was to hand you a movie of the first six months of this year, and we sat down together with a big bowl of popcorn to watch it, what story would it tell? Not the story that you posted on social media or the story that you imagined back in January when you were making those New Year's resolutions. But the real story. And who got the very best version of you over the past six months? And I think this question is actually the most important one is did you did you get the best version of you over the past six months? Because here's the beautiful thing about being halfway through the year. It isn't the end of the story.

Halftime Questions That Tell The Truth

SPEAKER_00 1:32

It's only halftime. And halftime is not where the championships are won. You know, I love a good halftime show on the Super Bowl, and uh it's always the place where we're excited for the possibility of what is yet to come in the second half. So this is the time where we can make adjustments that make winning possible. Whatever winning means for you is where we pause long enough to ask ourselves, what's working? What's not working? What is leaking my energy? And how do I want to play the second half of this game or this year? I think so many of us look at January like it has some kind of a magical power. You know, we start the year off with our new planner and we choose a word for the year and we make a vision board and all the good things, which are really important, and also, you know, I'm not discounting the power of those things, but somehow we promise ourselves that this will be the year we finally get our shit together. You know, you know that feeling. And then by February, it's kind of business as usual, and we're back to real life, and maybe our parents are sick, maybe we have a work project that's hugely overwhelming. Maybe there's a relationship that needs your attention, or grandkids have arrived. Maybe the washing machine died, or the roof was leaking, or your body just reminded you that you're not 25 anymore. I know mine's done that a few times. But before we know it, we're not really living intentionally and for those resolutions and towards those goals. We're simply reacting to life. And then we look up one day and we go, oh, it's July. Oh my God, where did that six months go? And how did they quietly slip away? Where did the time go? That's the question. And it's not because we weren't trying, it's because somewhere along the way we got out of the driver's seat and into the passenger's seat and let life kind of take us wherever it was going. And maybe the funny part is maybe we didn't even actually get off track at all. Maybe life was just really revealing to us what mattered most in the last season. Either way, there's something really valuable to learn by looking back at our last six months. And you know, the interesting part is our brain is is kind of lazy. And there's some fascinating neuroscience behind this because our brains are kind of like prediction machines. They like to do things that are easy and that they know how to do and that are simple. You know, researchers actually talk about this, and it's fascinating because they estimate that close to half of our daily behavior is just automatic. You know, we go through our day thinking that we're making conscious decisions all day long. But in reality, much of what we do just simply runs on habit. Our brains are constantly looking for ways to conserve energy. So when we repeat a behavior over and over, not only does it strengthen our brain's neural pathway, so it becomes the default, but it also conserves energy. And it becomes something we just do over and over again. It's kind of like walking the same trail through the forest every day. Eventually the path becomes worn and you don't even have to think about where you're going anymore, which can be awesome. You just go. But sometimes you want the path to go in a different direction. And that's why intentions alone rarely change our lives. Intentions are important for us to acknowledge and to pay attention to, but most often we are all running with repeated choices that are habits that basically shape the way we do our day. And I know I am a hundred

Why Habits Run Your Days

SPEAKER_00 5:39

percent in this category because there's a lot of things I do just out of habit all the time, and I'm really trying to pay more attention to that. Because what we do with our days eventually becomes what we've done with our life. But the good news is that our brains are remarkably capable of changing, and science call this neuroplasticity, which is our brain's remarkable ability to form new neural pathways. And every time we repeat a healthier habit or choose a different response, or make a new decision consistently and on purpose, we're literally helping our brains build a new trail. And then the other good news is that we are never too old to become somebody new or to learn something new or to change the way our life looks. So this week I was thinking about this and I was like, okay, well, if I'm gonna talk about it and we're gonna do the thing, I decided I guess I better take my own advice. So I grabbed a notebook and I poured myself a coffee and I went outside into the garden and I asked myself, if I was to watch the first six months of my own life movie, what would I actually see? And you know, at first I was feeling pretty discouraged. I thought, where did the last six months even go? Like, I don't even know. And it's interesting because it's so easy to discount what we've done and to just feel bad about something that we haven't actually really looked at very closely. So I sat down and I wrote, What have I really accomplished? Like, what was I spending my time on? What did I actually do? And you know what was cool? Something interesting happened. When I looked a little bit closer, I realized that the story wasn't what I thought it was. And that I had made some very powerful, significant changes, and I'm kind of excited about that actually. So here's how I did a recap. So number one, I know a lot of you know that I have been single for a very long time, but late in 2025, in November, I did meet a gentleman, and so for the past six months, we have really been building a new relationship. And I've been learning how to make space

Neuroplasticity And Building New Trails

SPEAKER_00 8:00

to receive love, to have connection, to play, and to spend time with someone, and that's something that I haven't done in a really long time, and that feels like a really worthwhile investment to me. So I was excited about that. So number two was that I noticed how much energy I've poured into building this business. The podcast, my voice work, creating frameworks and getting ready to launch a course, and there's all kinds of new good things coming. Of course, promoting my book, developing ideas, and laying foundations that most people won't really see, but I know they're there. And so I'm really proud of where where my business is now as opposed to where it was six months ago. So again, a good use of my time. The third thing I noticed was how much I decided consciously that I wanted to invest some time learning about AI to help my business, to help me as a solopreneur to streamline things and to research a bit quicker and to just save me some time. So that's something I've consciously been taking a few courses and spending daily um time on, you know, accessing that so that I could become more proficient at it. And so that also feels like a pretty good use of my time. I personally, I know there's mixed reviews about AI, but I personally think that it's actually pretty cool and is gonna change the way we do business. So I'm happy about that. It's not gonna be great for my voiceover work, but I'm gonna pivot. And then number four was my garden. And for the longest time, as long as I can remember as a young woman, I've always wanted to have enough cut flowers in my yard that I could have a fresh-cut bouquet in every room of my house all summer long. And this year, I actually intentionally planted that. I think back in a couple of previous episodes, I talked about my milk jug experiment where I planted a bunch of perennial flowers in milk jugs, and they lived in my bathtub for a while, and it was really kind of strange and weird. But then I put them outside and they did their thing in the cooler climates. And lo and behold, I ended up with more perennial flowers than I could possibly plant. And so I actually ended up having to create another garden bed, and now it is just starting to bloom. It's wonderful. And then my my other garden, my uh vegetable garden, I've put a lot of time and energy into learning about what goes where, how to companion plant, all of that, and that has been a lot of energy, and now all of those things that I was doing back in February and March are starting to grow and flourish, and soon I'll be harvesting things. So again, I really think that is a fairly good use of my time and energy. At least it brings me a lot of joy and hopefully will throughout the whole summer. Number four is I started playing golf again, and it helps now to have a partner that loves to play golf, so that's really helped to get that process going. But you know what? I love to play golf, and it's one thing I do almost every summer and have for many, many years. But over the last two and a half years, I was so busy helping my mom and dad transition from their family home into assisted living and selling their house and managing their health care and their bills and their finances, that I just didn't have time or energy, frankly, for golfing. So that has been such a beautiful joy since March. We have been golfing one sometimes two times a week, which I am just so excited about because that has brought a lot more joy to my life again, and uh I don't plan on stopping anytime soon. And pickleball. I've been playing lots of pickleball this year too. So so that's felt really good for my uh mental health and my physical well-being. And then number five, I would say the most important one that happened this year is I finally I let go of overfunctioning and trying to hold everything together in my adult son's life. And unfortunately, it came after a pretty significant falling out, and it certainly wasn't easy. I had to cut ties and stop seeing him for a while. And even though that really hurts still now, looking back, I realized I had to create a boundary for my own life in order to create space for him to become responsible again for his own life and choices. And that one decision has given me something that I desperately needed, which is my space and my peace back. So that has been hard but necessary and a really valuable part of the lesson that I needed to learn in this last six months and that we talk about on this podcast a lot. So that's something that I had to do. But you know what I really realized when I actually looked back at all of these things is none of the things that I did were really about golf or flowers or business. They were really about my values. And without realizing it, I was living my values. And that was an interesting realization because I've been waiting for a long time to find somebody that I can share my life with. And I feel really excited that, you know, I've made space for that to happen. And it hasn't been easy. There's been a few bumps in the road, no, not gonna lie, but it's been a learning process and something that I know has enriched my life in so many beautiful ways. And investing in my business, that's a value I hold really dear. Um and my garden and all of those things that I do, it's that's how I create joy in my life. So I think that that's such an important thing because we don't always realize that our calendars will tell us where our days went, but it's our values that'll tell us why our time went there. And there's this saying that I've heard many times, and I believe it is a hundred percent true. We always have time, money, and energy for the things that are important to us. So the question really isn't whether we have priorities, the question is whether we're choosing them or simply

A Real Midyear Recap By Values

SPEAKER_00 14:42

inheriting them from habit or obligation or other people's expectations. So maybe the invitation at halftime, early July, is to not judge ourselves or to be harsh or look back and shame ourselves, but to become curious. What did the first six months of this year teach you? Where did your energy naturally go? And what brought you alive? What are you excited that you spent your energy on? And what maybe did you spend your time on that you really didn't want to, but it was a habit, and you just did it anyway? Or maybe what are you incredibly proud of that you almost forgot to celebrate? You know, we're very, very quick to forget the stuff that we've done right and really quick to know what we've done wrong. So this exercise is not about that. It's about looking back, taking stock, and giving ourselves the chance to pivot and try something new. So let's not underestimate what we can do in a six-month period because we can get a lot more done than we think. Six months from now, you'll be standing at the end of another season and you'll be harvesting whatever you plant between now and then. Because you know what? The second half of this year is still yours. So let's look at it with intention and choose how we want to create it.