SHE Asked Podcast

From Surviving to Thriving: Your Path to Meaningful Change

• Anna McBride

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🌟 Why Is Change So Hard? | Life Coaching for Women Over 40 🌟

Are you a woman over 40 rebuilding after divorce, career shifts, or major life changes? You’re not alone—and you’re not failing. In this episode of She Asked: Tools for Practical Hope, therapist and life coach Anna McBride unpacks why change feels so difficult, the neuroscience behind transformation, and the practical steps you can take to move from survival mode to thriving.

Anna shares her personal journey of divorce, loss, and ultimately stepping into new ownership of her home in New York City. With real tools you can use today, this episode will help you:

✨ Understand the true energy cost of transformation
✨ Spot self-sabotage patterns that keep you stuck
✨ Learn why trust + faith are the fuels for lasting change
✨ Act “as if” to bridge the gap between who you are and who you want to become

đź’Ś Ready to rewrite your narrative with support? Connect with Anna for 1:1 coaching: https://annamcbride.as.me/

✨ Schedule your Free Call with Anna

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Speaker 1:

Welcome back to she Asked tools for practical hope. I'm your host, anna McBride, and I am so glad you're here today. In today's episode, we're going to be responding to a question that really touches on every one of us, and that is have you ever wondered why change is so hard? Have you ever wondered that? Why change so hard? Have you ever wondered that? We set intentions, we set New Year's resolutions, and yet so many of us fail. We don't even track it very far into the year by now. If you haven't attained what you consider was what you were going for, most likely you're like I'm going to wait to the beginning of next year and I'm going to begin again.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to talk today about why change is so hard, and I want to first share a story. I got to spend last weekend with one of my daughter's fiance's family and one of them is a chemist and we got into this discussion about just how much energy it takes to change matter from one state to another, like ice to water or water into ice. He said you would be surprised just how much energy it takes, and so we talked about all of that and I got thinking. I think it's the same thing with humans. It takes a lot of energy to change, and I'm talking about consistent, deliberate energy to become who we want to be, you know, in keeping with our resolutions or our hopes, our dreams. I think many of us want to evolve into this better version of ourselves. We're just not quite clear on why is it that change is so hard.

Speaker 1:

I can tell you from my own personal experience that after my divorce, I had to go through a lot of change. I separated almost seven years ago, and so through these years I have been working on myself to become who I am today, and I would have liked to be able to tell you that it was easy. It wasn't. It was hard. In fact, we are now recording in my new home that I just recently moved into in New York City and that required a lot of change for me to get ready for this, to embody this version of me that could step into this ownership, and it was things that I did, deliberately, actionable steps. I did day after day, week after week, whether I wanted to or not, to get ready. So I want to talk about that today with you. To transform matter from one state to another is what I had to go through energetically, emotionally, to grow out of the version of me that felt broken at the end of my marriage to the person who finally shook off the victim perspective, and one that grew into the embodiment of someone who is the author of her story, the version of me that could really see myself owning property in New York City, and one that could see that process all the way through. I've shared in previous podcasts how hard it was to own something in New York City and yet that version of me at the end of my marriage could never have seen it through. And now I'm here to tell you it's possible.

Speaker 1:

But let's talk about why change feels so hard, and there is science to back this up. Why change feels so hard, and there is science to back this up. Think about water, as I was mentioning. To turn it into ice or boil it into steam, you need a surge of energy. Scientists call that a phase change. Humans aren't all that different.

Speaker 1:

Neuroscience tells us that creating a new habit literally requires the brain to rewire. We have to grow in new neural pathways to be able to see ourselves in the new phase that we are going to grow into. That takes effort. The brain burns more fuel, more glucose, which is the source that it looks for when we're learning and adapting. That tells me that to grow, to change, I have to really participate in that growth process. I have to be willing to not only nourish myself, to feed the part of me that needs to grow and adapt with food. I also need to do it with messages, with the story that I'm telling myself. I had to literally rewrite my narrative to go from being one of a victim to one that could be a homeowner successful homeowner here in New York City.

Speaker 1:

So if you've never thought about that, why can't I change? If that's been a challenge for you, I want you to hear me. You're not lazy. It's not about laziness. You're not failing. It's not about laziness. You're not failing. It's not about failure. You're simply moving through the energetic cost of transformation. There's a requirement that goes along with change and there is a big energy, big cost to what you want.

Speaker 1:

So I always ask myself, when I'm struggling to change, if I haven't quite gotten to where I want to be. I ask myself a couple of questions, and the first one is do I really want it? How important is it? And if it's something that I really want, like I wanted to own a home here in New York City. You know, I always rate my things on a scale of one to five, where five is a yes heck yes and one is a hell no. And I really want to measure, like, where am I in that scale? And I want to tell you this that if you're not greater than a three in really wanting it, then you're not going to be able to create or sustain the energy it takes to transform to get what you want.

Speaker 1:

So once I determine that it's what I want, if I then notice that I'm still not making progress that's measurable, then I have to ask myself what's getting in the way. What's getting in the way? And here's something that I'm just recently learning about, and that is how we tend to self-sabotage ourself. If we have a lot of fear around what we're attempting to grow into or own. In this case also, we might tend to do things like we've always done old patterning and therefore what could come out of that old patterning, at least for me, is a lot of fear.

Speaker 1:

And without getting too deep into the neuroscience of it, I want you to know that there's a part of the mind, the brain, that we call the ego, and the ego is built for survival. It's what neuroscientists would say. It's what's really the one part of our anatomy concept that has survived all the evolution of man. It always wants us to be safe. Now, let's be clear. Ego has a bad rap right, and that's because ego is only focused on survival.

Speaker 1:

Now, growing into something that's new and different might feel threatening to the ego, and the ego wants you to feel safe. So acting out of your comfort zone, growing into something new and different, can feel unsafe, and so it's going to really require you to take on new patterns of behavior. We call this acting as if you are who you want to become, or really challenge yourself to take on new behaviors, new patterns, new ways of being so that you can actually attain the goals that may somewhat seem like they're out of reach, that they're above where you have been living to this point. So what we were talking about is going from survival to thriving, and there's an ingredient that's really required for you to get out of the survival mode and into the thriving mode, and there's an ingredient that's really required for you to get out of the survival mode and into the thriving mode, and that is called trust. How well do you trust and what does trust mean to you? This thing called trust right?

Speaker 1:

My understanding of trust is that it is a belief that, no matter what I am aiming for, I will get there. That also. There's another side to trust, and it's known as faith. Faith is the knowing. Trust is the doing meaning, the day-to-day actions that are going to get you in the direction of where you want to go, knowing that there's no real destination that we're striving for. There's the journey, the growth is the journey, what you want to grow into. You could see that as a destination or you could just see it as one level of growth and then you'll grow into another level. But just for sake of argument, let's say that you want to grow into somebody like I wanted to own a home in New York City.

Speaker 1:

That mindset that it took to get here is not the same mindset that I came out of my marriage with. When I got divorced, I was thinking, as I mentioned, I was a victim. Things were happening to me, nothing was working out, not even my marriage, not love. I was losing the home. I knew I had to sell it. There were lots of things that were changing and I saw change as a threat To grow into the mindset of somebody who could really feel safe enough to commit to owning a home in New York City. I had to grow a great deal. I had to start looking at in what ways I was thinking and behaving. These are called the obstacles. These are the things I'm talking about, the self-sabotage, and they can be very insidious and very, almost like coming from out of nowhere, like such survival is so embedded in us we don't even see it when it's happening. See it when it's happening. We only know it when we're stuck or when we're unable to reach what we're striving for.

Speaker 1:

So I'll give you an example from my own life. About a year and a half ago I attempted to buy another property here in New York City. I was really certain I had enough money, I had cash in hand and I had a settlement for my divorce that I thought was going to help me cover it all. Let me tell you this I did not account for some additional expenses and I didn't even factor into the fact that I couldn't get a loan to cover those expenses because I was in the rears on some tax paperwork, some taxes I hadn't filed, and because I hadn't attended to that, because I wasn't willing to ask for help with that, because I was too afraid to be honest about that I got myself into a situation that I lost that apartment and it felt awful at the time. However, I am so glad that happened because, first of all, I didn't really want that apartment, I just wanted to own something.

Speaker 1:

And to only want to own something that you don't really like I don't even know what that is that's a definite ego trip and it's not a home I was after. I was after holding on to something that I could call my own, because there was so much of my life that was changing that I was losing, that. I had lost my marriage, my other home, and so, yeah, I was reaching, I was grasping Not really a good foundation to buy through, particularly in this city. So that happened a year and a half ago, and just to go from that situation to get to where I can be here today, sharing this with you in my new home, took a lot of growth. It took a shift in perspective. It took recognizing, identifying where I was sabotaging myself, and I quickly understood the things that I already mentioned that I wasn't willing to look at or hadn't looked at or even asked for help on, and I had to have a willingness to admit where I had messed up, where I needed to ask for help on and identify who could help me and what were the steps to get me there. This is what I'm talking about. We have to be willing to look at the measurable impact steps to take us in the direction we want to go.

Speaker 1:

Survival is about conserving energy. Thriving is about expanding energy, and expanding energy really requires a lot of courage, because, again, going from where I was just even a year and a half ago to where I am today required a lot of growth. I wasn't even sure if I could do it, but I acted as if I could and I asked myself what would I be doing if I knew I couldn't fail? What would I be doing if I knew that people wanted to help me? What would I have to get done and ask for help on so that I could have the keys to this apartment here in New York? And I knew what I had to attend to and I knew that I had to ask for help on it.

Speaker 1:

So I went about the business of attending to what needed to be done. I had to attend to that in the REERS tax filing. I had to attend to being able to ask for help in getting a loan in case I had extra costs that I couldn't cover with the cash I had in hand. I had to be willing to involve an attorney with true honesty, and I had to engage the real estate agent to help make sure that I was buying a home that would be approved for a loan as well, as that would meet all the standards that I would want, and I knew what I wanted in a home. I just didn't know about all that other stuff.

Speaker 1:

So from the very beginning, this time around, I admitted what I didn't know. I asked for help every step of the way and I acted as if everyone wanted to help me, and you know what Turns out they did. That's what thriving looks like. Thriving isn't afraid to ask for help. Thriving isn't afraid to want something more than what you think you deserve. Thriving isn't afraid of failure. Thriving's not afraid to just ask, because you never know what's in store for you. None of us do. Because you never know what's in store for you, none of us do. We only are called to really go for what we desire, what we want.

Speaker 1:

So I want to offer you some ideas to understand this shift, because what we're really talking about is the fuel it takes to change to sustain the change, and we're talking about that fuel through the change has got to change to sustain the change. And we're talking about that fuel through the change has got to be trust, got to trust and have faith that what we're aiming for is where we're meant to be. In this sense, they are the fuel that will propel you from the one thing to the next thing, to the next thing, so that you are actually working towards what you really want. The energy will shift, the thriving will become natural, and it's all about acting as if you're always going to go and attain what you're aiming for. Now I want to offer you something to sit with, something to consider.

Speaker 1:

Here's a question when in my life am I expending energy to create change and do you really want it? On that scale of one to five, where five is yes, I want it, and one is no, where are you on that scale? If you're not a three, I'm telling you you don't want it because it's going to need more energy to get you there. And if you are a five or a four right and yet you're feeling stuck in the process, I want you to ask yourself what is getting in the way? Where am I sabotaging myself, maybe? Or where is fear creeping in that's keeping me from really stretching and reaching? And maybe?

Speaker 1:

The third question is do I need to ask for help? If you are open to considering those things, I promise you you could quickly identify what it is that you really want and how hard you're willing to work for it. What's getting in the way and what do you need to do about it? I want you to give yourself time to consider those questions At least 10 minutes and just write and see what comes out. Write freely and, as the information shifts up, if you want to dive deeper, reach out. I'm here. I can certainly help you honor this change process.

Speaker 1:

Now let's just anchor in with a simple affirmation towards this. So let's just sit back, take a breath together and say to ourselves I honor the energy it takes to transform. I honor the energy it takes to transform, I am patient, I am resilient and I trust the process of transformation. I promise you, patience is required because the time it takes for you to grow into the best version of you is time well spent as long as you are really considering the energy that will take to become what you're becoming the best version of you. So thank you for listening along to.

Speaker 1:

She Asked where healing meets practical hope. If this episode sparked something in you that you want to explore, something you want to reach for, or a memory, curiosity, a longing, I invite you to go deeper. Growth requires change and I believe that's what we're all here for to grow into the best version of ourselves. If you'd like support in bringing that about, that lasting change in your life, reach out to me, either through a comment on this or email me at Anna at AnnaMcBridecom, so that I can help you reach for something that matters to you, like I have been doing in my life. Until soon, remember, the path to healing is not about changing who you are. It's about changing the process that you're using to get there. Maybe your narrative, maybe some beliefs, but it is possible. So until soon, be well.