Well, hello ladies, it's Jax. Welcome back to the Midlife Glowgetter Podcast. I am so happy you're here today because I've got a really good one for you. We're talking all about self-care in midlife and specifically why you need to start treating it like a job you can't just skip whenever life gets busy.
But before we get into all of that, let's start this podcast with three affirmations to glow up your day. Say these out loud with me if you can, right where you are. Number one, I am worthy of taking care of myself, not just everyone else. Again, I am worthy of taking care of myself, not just everyone else. Number two, my body and my mind deserve my time, my energy, and my attention. Again, my body and my mind deserve my time, my energy, and my attention. Number three, I am allowed to put myself first without feeling guilty about it. Again, I am allowed to put myself first without feeling guilty about it. Say them again if you need to, let them sink in. Okay, let's get into today's episode.
Okay, this part of today's episode is the first segment and it's a life update. And I am excited to share this with you because I've been adding some new things in my routine lately. And honestly, they've already made a real difference in how I feel. The first thing is meditation. I've started doing a meditation practice based on Dr. Joe Dispens's work. If you're not familiar with him, he's known for teaching people how to use meditation to actually change their thoughts, their habits, and even their biology over time. I picked up his meditation workbook and I've started building two specific practices into my day. One right before when I go to sleep, and the other when I wake up. So here's how I personally do it. A lot of his practices are designed to be done sitting up, but for me, lying down just works better. That's purely a personal preference thing. I'm not a morning person who wants to sit upright the second my eyes open. So I do mine flat on my back, still cozy in my bed. In the morning, before I even check my phone or get out of bed, I lay there and I do a short meditation. I focus on my breath first, just slowing it down, getting present. Then I move into setting an intention for how I want to feel that day. Not what I want to accomplish, how I want to feel. Calm, confident, energized, whatever it is that day. I sit with that feeling for a few minutes before I actually get up and start my morning. At night, I do something similar, but the focus shifts a little. Instead of setting an intention for the day ahead, I am reflecting on the day I just had.
Sleep gets louder, energy shifts, mood can swing. All of that is happening in the background while we're also trying to hold everything else together. That is exactly why self-care matters more right now, not less. It's not a luxury you earn after everything else is done. It's the thing that makes everything else possible. So I want to refrain something for you because I think self-care gets a bit of a bad reputation. A lot of people hear that word and picture a candle and a bubble bath. And don't get me wrong, I love a good bubble bath. But self-care in midlife is so much bigger than that. Self-care at this stage of life is structural, it's maintenance, it's the stuff that keeps your mind, your body, and your emotions actually functioning well. Not just the occasional treat you squeeze in and happen to have a free afternoon. In your 20s and 30s, self-care may have felt optional, something you did when you remembered to. In midlife, it needs to become something you plan for on purpose, the same way you'd plan for anything else that matters in your life. Let's get a little deeper on why the season makes self-care even more important. Your hormones are shifting, which can affect your mood, your energy, and your sleep often all at once. You might be caregiving for aging parents while still showing up for your own kids, even grown ones. Your career might be at its most demanding point yet, right as you're trying to build something bigger for yourself. And there's real financial pressure too, between retirement, savings, and paying down debt, which adds a whole different kind of mental load. All of that stacked together is exactly the recipe for burnout and for mental, emotional, and physical fatigue. Self-care isn't about avoiding hard work, it's about making sure you can actually sustain that hard work without completely running yourself into the ground.
Let me walk you through how I actually do this in my own life because I think the how matters just as much as the why. Every single Sunday, I sit down and time block my entire week ahead. Not loosely, specifically. I block out my workouts, my walks, my meal prep time, my everything showers, time for reading, time for journaling, beauty time, shopping time with my friends and family, and salon appointments. I treat every single one of these blocks like a job because to me it is. My mornings are honestly full of self-care from the moment I wake up. I do the meditation and then I drink water and do a quick weigh-in. Then I journal. Then I take my supplements, then I get my workout in, including my somatic movement practice, then I take a quick shower, I do my skin care, my teeth care, I dress, I do makeup, I do my hair, and then I fit in a walk. My entire morning is built around taking care of myself first before the rest of the world gets its hands on my day. At night, I come home, I have dinner, I go for a short walk, I will watch something on Netflix or Amazon Prime or the news. And then I will do skincare, teeth care, turn my humidifier on, and read and then meditate. And then I also, before I get into bed, I review what I need to accomplish the next day to feel amazing. Not just what tasks I need to get done, what I need to do to actually feel good. The self-care. Those aren't always the same list, and I think that distinction matters.
I want to break this down in categories for you because self-care isn't just one thing, it's actually several different types, and a full week benefits from touching on more than one. Physical self-care includes things like workouts, walks, and those everything showers I talk about so often. Beauty and style self-care includes skin care, salon visits, and just taking time to feel put together. Mental and emotional self-care includes journaling, reading, meditation, and quiet time to just think. Social self-care includes real time with friends and family, not just texting back and forth for months. Practical self-care includes things like meal prep and shopping time, which might not sound glamorous, but they genuinely reduce your stress later in the week. And finally, rest and downtime matter too. Give yourself permission to just relax without guilt. A well-rounded week usually touches most, if not all, of these categories. It's not about doing everything every single day. It's about making sure nothing gets completely ignored for weeks at a time.
So, how do I actually build this into my life to make it stick? Here's what works for me. Every Sunday, I sit down with both my paper planner and my Google Calendar on my iPad, and I block out my self-care time right alongside everything else on my schedule for that week. I treat those blocks as unmovable, the same way I treat an actual meeting I couldn't reschedule. Then every single evening, I do a quick review for the next day. Not a huge process, just a few minutes to look at what's coming and make sure my self-care time is still protected on the schedule, not something that quietly gets pushed out by the day's chaos. It's something tries to take the time from you and something will try. You have to be ready to protect it. Decide ahead of time that the answer is no. This time is already spoken for.
You cannot pour from an empty cup. You've probably heard that phrase a hundred times, but let's make it a real instead of just a cute saying. When you don't take care of yourself, you run on empty. You get short-tempered with the people you love. You get tired in a way that sleep doesn't even fix. You start resenting responsibilities you actually care about simply because you have nothing left to give. But when you do take care of yourself consistently, on purpose, everything else gets much, much easier. You show up with more patience, more energy, more creativity, more genuine joy, even in the middle of a hard season. That isn't selfish. I need you to really hear that. Taking care of yourself isn't selfish. It's maintenance. And midlife with everything it's asking of you is exactly the season where the maintenance matters most. So
here's your takeaway from today's episode. Pick one self-care block this week, just one, and put it on your calendar like it's an appointment you absolutely cannot cancel. Protect it, show up for it, and notice how different your week feels when you actually do. If you try this, I want to hear about it. Send me a message and tell me what self-care block you're protecting this week. If this podcast or any of my podcasts resonated with you, please leave me and leave this podcast a positive review. It helps other women like you, like me, find us so we can continue to create a community of midlife women looking to make this season their best season yet. Have a terrific weekend. I'll track back this coming Monday. Keep glowing, keep growing. You've got this. Love the jacks.