#75 - How Much Longer Are You Willing to Wait? Breaking the Comfort Zone in Midlife

Is there a friend you keep meaning to call — and you haven't?

Is there a life you keep meaning to start living — and you're still waiting?

This is one of those episodes that came from real life, raw and unfiltered. This week, Kena lost a dear friend. And in the weight of that loss, she returned to the question that changed her life after losing her father — and she's asking it now, directly to you.

🦋 You'll Discover:

• Why the comfort zone isn't a safe place — it's just a familiar one. And the difference between the two might be costing you the life you actually want to experience.
• How self-grief can become the most powerful doorway back to yourself, and why slowing down in those moments brings clarity and wisdom.
• The one question that changed everything for Kena — and that has the power to shift how you move through your life from this moment forward."

💜 Coming Home Question: 

If you knew — really knew — that time was not guaranteed, what would you stop waiting for?"

💜 I created Coming HOME for the woman who has done everything right and still feels something is missing. It's free, it's private, and it might be the most important thing you listen to this year — sign up here!

🦋 Midlife Butterfly is a podcast for high-achieving midlife women navigating emotional exhaustion, people pleasing, self-abandonment, nervous system healing, identity shifts, and midlife awakening. Hosted by Kena Siu, Identity & Embodiment Guide.

Instagram: @midlifebutterfly
Website: midlifebutterfly.ca

Music: Back Home by Alex Productions and  Reborn by Alexander Nakarada

Transcript

[00:00:00] Kena Siu: I lost my friend this week. I lost my father over six years ago. And both times, I realized the same thing. I was waiting, but waiting for what?

[00:00:18] Welcome to Midlife Butterfly, for the high-achieving woman in midlife who has spent years showing up for everyone except herself. This podcast is where emotional exhaustion meets nervous system healing and where people-pleasing gives way to self-remembrance. I am Kena Siu, identity and embodiment guide.

[00:00:44] Because I know you are doing the inner work, it's time to settle that wisdom from your mind into your body so you can feel alive again.

[00:00:57] Kena Siu: In this episode, you will [00:01:00] discover why the comfort zone isn't a safe place. It's just a familiar one, and the difference between the two might be costing you the life you actually want to experience. How self-grief can become the most powerful doorway back to yourself, and why slowing down in those moments brings clarity and wisdom.

[00:01:23] The one question that changed everything for me, and that has the power to shift how you move through your life from this moment forward.

[00:01:35] And before we dive in, you may have noticed things look a little different around here. We are in a beautiful revamping stage at Midlife Butterfly, including a brand-new podcast cover.

[00:01:46] I don't know if you have seen it. And there's more goodness coming. Starting this Friday, we're launching something that I'm very excited about, butterfly Practice Fridays. Short, intimate [00:02:00] episodes dropping every Friday focused on embodiment and self-care integration. Little doses of coming home to yourself once a week, so make sure that you tune in this Friday for the very first one. And stay until the end of today's episode because I'm leaving you with our very first weekly pleasure challenge.

[00:02:24] You'll know exactly what to do with it when you get there.

[00:02:29] So let's start with today's conversation

[00:02:34] We think we have time, but what if we don't? I got the news this week that a dear friend of mine transitioned, meaning, she passed away Uh, we actually met in Romania while I was living there, and I think her, her [00:03:00] husband, and I, we were the only Mexicans at the time in that town that we were staying And ends up that she got sick of cancer, and it seems like it went very fast a few months later and then she transitioned in the last days.

[00:03:22] And it gave me a lot of sadness, you know? And at the same time-

[00:03:33] It gave me a lot of gratitude. I felt it, and I can feel it now. And the thing is, I think it's one of the persons that I've been more grateful for having in my life because she accompanied me through one of the hardest moments in my life, and I'll be eternally grateful for that. Besides the fact that she was such a [00:04:00] beautiful, peaceful, loving being. We didn't talk that often because, I mean, we were living then in different countries and different time zones and stuff.

[00:04:14] But at the end, I know she was already living back in Mexico and I don't know, in the last two or three years I was telling her that I was going to, to go visit her

[00:04:34] And now then that plan is canceled.

[00:04:43] We really think that we have time, but we don't know when Or what better say, life has for us.

[00:04:54] I, I think that we, we get so [00:05:00] busy in life because life happens, right? But we get to focus on achieving things, on taking care of other people, that we postpone reaching out to dear ones, like in my case this time, or we postpone that dream until something else is done, or we don't take the decision of leaving a relationship that doesn't spark us anymore.

[00:05:36] Or we don't dare to leave a job that is already draining us but it give us, you know, the financial security.

[00:05:49] And life keeps happening. Time keeps [00:06:00] going.

[00:06:02] Then we fell into this autopilot

[00:06:08] That sometimes, or most of the time actually, becomes the comfort zone.

[00:06:20] And we believe it's comfort, but it's so fucking dangerous, man. That's what it is

[00:06:34] It happened in my second marriage.

[00:06:39] That's what I'm just ... Ah, that's what I just paused a bit because some memories came through. Mm. But that's the thing, we keep thinking of postponing things. When I turned 40 years old, that year I chose [00:07:00] to take a trip, a safari in Southern Africa. So I chose not to go on vacation for the holidays with my family.

[00:07:12] So I planned a vacation to go the next year in November

[00:07:19] Well, it ends up that I went in September because it's when my father passed away. He had a stroke, and suddenly he was gone.

[00:07:37] Like in this case, life happened. How I was supposed to know what was going to happen with his life? Nobody knew

[00:07:51] But it's just for you to

[00:07:57] To shake the hell out of you [00:08:00] basically because that's what happened to me that time

[00:08:05] If you think the comfort zone is protecting you. It is not. It's just something familiar there so you can feel safe The thing is when something is familiar, it's not the same as alive. And we are here to be alive, to live and not to survive.

[00:08:42] When the transition of my father happened,

[00:08:46] It really was a wake-up call for me. That's what it was. Um, it really guided me to question everything in my [00:09:00] life. And that's exactly when I realized that I was waiting for things to happen. Waiting for people to change, waiting for the right moment to leave that job, or waiting for things to finally align.

[00:09:26] But waiting for what exactly? Life is so precious. It is so precious. So if you are waiting for permission to do something that you really love doing, go for it. This is your permission slip. If you're waiting for your kids to grow up so then you can go dancing again, or you can [00:10:00] study something again, no, just start doing it now.

[00:10:05] If you're waiting for your relationship to shift, huh, I was there for over two years. So if you're willing to wait for as long, or as much, or the rest of your life. Please no Please don't. We are already midlife, and the other people, they are already grown-ups, and so are you. So you have the power to actually choose. Choose you and choose something that you are actually wanting the deep desire to do because you deserve it, [00:11:00] Okay.

[00:11:05] Again, life is going to happen. Get out of the autopilot. Get out of the waiting.

[00:11:19] The grief, I think it's a very powerful way of loving because that's what grief is. It just make us questioning life, Right? And why do we have to wait until moments like that to react, to move, to start something new No, no. No, no. There's no time. We don't know how much time we have, you know? And the [00:12:00] funny part is, with time, even though at the end, it was just created by humans.

[00:12:05] Anyway, uh, when we think about time, also, if you suffer, because I do believe it's a suffering, of anxiety, it means that you most likely either are very worried about the future

[00:12:31] But would you really like to know more about the future?

[00:12:38] Like seriously, if you will know when you were going to die or when a dear person of you was going to die, oh, I think I will be like in this stress all over the place, and even the anxiety will be worst. I remember even when I was in [00:13:00] university, my friends, they loved having tarot card reading. And you know what? I was never interested in it. You know why? Because I'm like, life at that time, now of course it's completely different, but at that time in your 20s, that you are all stressed out of what other think and how to people please more, and then what are you going to do after finishing university, that was already enough.

[00:13:35] Like, for me to have someone telling me what the future's supposed to bring in, I was like, "Hell no. No thank you. I'm not up to that. I'm sorry, but, but no." Oh, yeah, yeah. So

[00:13:57] Since I don't want you to have [00:14:00] to wait to grieve someone. Not even yourself, because self-grief happens, right? These are some of the questions that, After my fa- my father passed away that I started questioning my whole life, and I turned it around 180 degrees. These are some of the questions that I actually wondered

[00:14:33] And it was like, am I still happy in this relationship? Do I enjoy my job? Do I feel in alignment? You know, like having that coherence of what am I doing, feeling, and, acting on And most of the answers to those questions [00:15:00] were no.

[00:15:05] So the questions that I have for you now are, what do you want to be in this present moment? How do you want to feel now? How do you want to live your life from this moment forward? What do you choose to do so you can live with more ease, with more peace and harmony.

[00:15:35] Who do you need to forgive? Starting with yourself. Because unfortunately, We live with so much guilt and so much shame.

[00:15:57] And that's why you are actually kind of waiting, [00:16:00] and that's why you might not be choosing yourself, now or before.

[00:16:11] And the thing is that shame and that guilt, it lives in your body. It lives in your nervous system. That's why you don't feel safe to move forward, to do something different, to take action, to go towards what you desire because you don't feel safe.

[00:16:42] That's something I encourage you to work on. Because the body is the one who's keeping the score The body is the one who is actually holding you back because of course it's not safe [00:17:00] to go towards your dreams if you haven't done it before.

[00:17:10] But what it feels safe to keep chasing and achieving and trying to prove ourselves, but to whom really? And how the hell that's supposed to feel safe when you're not in control of any of that?

[00:17:35] Because people, they are always going to have an opinion.

[00:17:43] A good one or a bad one. There's always going to be an opinion. And you know what?

[00:17:51] That opinion, it might take 10 seconds, two minutes, and then they move [00:18:00]forward with their lives because they don't have time. They're going to keep thinking about themselves, so why don't you take the time to think about yourself? Stop giving your power to other people, and stop giving them that credit instead of giving that credit to yourself.

[00:18:23] Because you are the only one living your life. You are the only one who knows what you're actually going through- Therefore, the opinion of someone else should not affect you as much as you think, on any level.

[00:18:55] It's up to you, To move forward in life. [00:19:00] It's up to you to live the life that you desire, a life that you love. You don't have to wait anymore.

[00:19:09] You gotta understand that your life is not constructed only in, in whatever you are achieving or in the checklist.

[00:19:24] It just has to be a little bit better than the day before.

[00:19:35] And yes, ups and downs are gonna keep happening, and sometimes you might think that you're walking backwards. Sometimes life actually call us to slow down. And that's what it [00:20:00]is.

[00:20:03] The way we are living, in autopilot, with all this programming and conditioning , from the society, the matrix itself. We're always going to live inside of it, , it's about getting the matrix out of you! One conscious choice at a time, even though we're still living around it.

[00:20:37] So your life doesn't keep happening on autopilot. So you bring more awareness, so you can choose every time better and better

[00:20:51] And you can experience a life that is enjoyable and pleasurable to you, because that's the only one [00:21:00] you have. 

[00:21:06]

[00:21:06] Kena Siu: In this episode, you learned why the comfort zone isn't a safe place, it's just a familiar one, and the difference between the two might be costing you the life you actually want to experience. How self-grief can become the most powerful doorway back to yourself, and why slowing down in those moments brings clarity and wisdom.

[00:21:30] That one question that changed everything for me, and that has the power to shift how you move through your life from this moment forward.

[00:21:42] In midlife, there is no more time to waste. That's why I created Coming Home for the woman who has done everything right and still feels something is missing. If that's you, it's free and private, and it might be the most [00:22:00] important thing you listen to this year.

[00:22:03] The link is in the show notes.

[00:22:07] And closing with the coming home question, if you knew, really knew, that time was not guaranteed, what would you stop waiting for?

[00:22:24] And now, our first weekly pleasure challenge. Ta-da-da-da. This week, I want you to ask yourself one simple question: What brings me pleasure? Not what should bring me pleasure or used to. No. What actually does right now, at this very moment in your life. And then do one pleasurable thing every single day this week.

[00:22:55] It doesn't have to be big or earned. It just [00:23:00] has to be yours. Either if it's having dark chocolate, read a book outdoors, go for a walk, being barefoot, taking a bath. You know, this is your invitation to start returning to yourself, one small pleasure at a time.

[00:23:19] So I'll see you next week to hear how it went. Take care, and much love to you, as usual.