Midlife Confidence Lab
Midlife Confidence Lab (formerly Edge of Real) is a podcast for women in midlife who want to rebuild confidence, trust themselves again, make aligned decisions, and create a life that finally feels like their own.
Hosted by certified life coach Kristin Hamilton, this podcast blends storytelling, coaching, practical tools, spirituality, psychology, and lived experience to help you understand what’s happening inside you during this midlife identity shift - and how to step into the next chapter with clarity and confidence. Expect real talk and developing the kind of midlife confidence that comes from choosing yourself - boldly, imperfectly, and on purpose.
This podcast will help you explore the following:
- Unlearn outdated roles
- Midlife identity shifts and how to feel fully alive again
- Mindset work and how to overcome self-doubt
- Break old patterns and heal emotionally
- Reconnect with your desires
- How to rebuild confidence from within
- Rediscovering yourself after 40, 50, or 60
- Signs you are living out of alignment
- Midlife self-trust and aligned decision-making
- How to stop people-pleasing and create healthy boundaries
- Somatic and nervous system support
- Midlife reinvention and identity evolution
- Manifestation and trusting your intuition
- Midlife women feeling lost
- Midlife identity change and transformation for women over 50
- Signs of midlife awakening to purpose and meaning
- What to do when life looks good but feels empty
If you’ve ever thought:
Is this all there is?
Who am I now?
Why don’t I feel confident anymore?
Why do I doubt myself?
I want to feel alive again…
…you’re in the right place.
Whether you're navigating empty nesting, divorce, career change, relationship shifts, or personal reinvention, this podcast gives you the tools to feel more yourself than ever. If you’re ready to feel alive again, trust your decisions, and move through midlife with strength, intention, and confidence… welcome to Midlife Confidence Lab.
Midlife Confidence Lab
7 Life-Changing Things I Learned This Year - #17
In this episode, I’m sharing the seven lessons from the year that completely transformed my life as I learned how to reinvent myself in midlife and learned how to be more confident at 50+. From becoming the CEO of your own days to embracing imperfect action, these are the mindset shifts and practical tools that build real midlife confidence, self-trust, and momentum.
We talk about what it looks like to design a life that fits your wiring - not the expectations you’ve outgrown. I have learned how to create a life I love! I share how understanding my nonlinear, curious, ADHD-coded path helped me release shame and finally lean into the way I’m naturally built. You’ll also hear why lightness is a skill you can practice, how to choose your response instead of reacting (think the Let Them Theory), and why discomfort is often a sign of growth, not danger.
You’ll learn how to do a simple values audit, check whether your calendar matches the life you say you want, and make aligned decisions that support reinvention in midlife, so you can take action when you feel overwhelmed and also simplify your life. These seven lessons will help you stop playing small, expand into your next chapter, and create more freedom, clarity, and joy - starting today.
If this episode resonates, follow the show and leave a quick review so more midlife women can find the confidence and alignment they’re craving.
Links to episodes mentioned:
6 Ways to Reclaim Your Visibility in Midlife
🦋 Would you like help walking through these steps, or with accountability, or deeper dives into these topics? Interested in learning more about working 1:1 with me to transform your life in your rediscovery? Schedule a free Discovery call with me here: https://stan.store/MidlifeConfidenceLab
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✨ Find me on Instagram @MidlifeConfidenceLab
📌 Leave a review, then email us a screenshot at midlifeconfidencelab@gmail.com and we will send you a beautiful free digital journal to help you work through some of your thoughts and get some clarity about what you truly want out of your life.
🎵 Theme Music: Home by Vlad Gluschenko @vladest_art — Home
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
Welcome back to Midlife Confidence Lab, formerly Edge of Real, where we make boldness feel natural, decisions feel doable, and self-trust and confidence feel like home. I'm your host, Kristin Hamilton, certified life coach helping midlife women who are in their what's next chapter of life. I am so glad you're here. Today we're talking about the seven things I learned this year that genuinely changed my life. Not in a dramatic or cliche, uh new year, new me kind of way, but in a deep identity-level transformation kind of way. The kind of lessons that shift the way you think, the way you move, the way you make decisions, the way you live your life. This year has stretched me and challenged me, expanded me and taught me more about myself than almost any other year before. And today I want to tell you exactly what those lessons were. Welcome to the lab. Now let's dive into the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Number one, I am the CEO of my own life. This year I finally understood what it means to be the CEO of my life. Not in this hustle culture way that a lot of people are talking about right now, but in the sovereign kind of way. In the I own my time, my choices, my days, my dreams kind of way. I realize that I'm in charge of my bank account. I'm in charge of my calendar. I'm in charge of how I spend my energy, who I allow into my life, and what I build next. Nobody is coming to give me permission. Nobody's coming to design my dream life for me. Nobody's coming to make me feel proud of who I am. That is my job. Being the CEO of your life is about high agency. It's about seeing yourself as the owner of your days. It's about crafting a life you love and then showing up fully engaged in it. It is command and purpose. It's taking back the parts of your life where you've been passive or apologetic or just waiting. I shared in, oh my goodness, episode three, I think it was, titled Six Ways to Reclaim Your Visibility in Midlife. I'll put the link in the show notes about an acting class I took where my acting coach asked me how assertive I am in my personal life. I shared how that question coming from him at that time in my life reached deep into me and planted that awareness that I often speak of. The awareness that you have to have in order to make changes. So since that moment, I have worked on owning my own life and self and fully stepping into that. I made huge strides in that this year and had further realizations and awareness points that help me to truly and fully step into that responsibility. I mean responsibility in the best possible way here. This one shift, this decision to step into the CEO role of my life, has changed everything for me. Number two of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Taking imperfect action. Imperfect action is the only action that actually gets you anywhere. And I fully believe that. Starting this podcast was my real-time lesson in this this year. I didn't wait until I had the perfect audio or the perfect brand or the perfect clarity or this 40-step plan on how to proceed. I just hit record. And I have figured things out along the way, and here we are, evolving and growing and shifting and refining. You learn by doing and you evolve by moving, by action. You gain clarity through this action. Sitting and thinking about things was my kryptonite. It actually made me powerless because it dug me deeper and deeper into decision and analysis paralysis. Just acting without the need for perfection has been the game changer for me this year. Number three of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Embracing the parts of myself that I used to judge. I have always had a wandering, curious, multi-path nature about myself. And I used to think that that meant that there was something wrong with me, that I lacked discipline or focus or stick to it-ness. But this year I learned about my human design, which is eerily on point. And I was also diagnosed with ADHD, which I hadn't realized was my thing. I always figured I just didn't sit still very well, or that my mind was just overactive and the completion of thoughts was a luxury, not a given, or that my extreme procrastination was laziness. I could go on and on with all of the things that I had previously thought were wrong with me, that popped into place once this was determined. And it helped me realize something really pretty profound for myself. This wandering, interested in so many different things, bouncing around nature that I've always had. It isn't a weakness. It's my brilliance. It's where my creativity comes from. This is the way my brain works, the way my body works, it's the way my magic works. I am not meant to be linear. I'm not meant to follow one path all the way through with no deviation. I'm meant to explore and pivot and wander and discover and follow what lights me up. This realization dissolved so much shame that I have carried for really pretty much my whole life. My path isn't wrong, it's just different. And different is allowed. It's powerful and it is so incredibly freeing. There is so much ease and flow now that I'm not fighting my natural energy. I recently heard someone say, I stumble all the time. I just make it part of the dance. And this is everything I am embodying right now and moving forward. Number four of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Stop making everything so hard. This is another big one for me. I learned that life doesn't have to be so heavy. I don't have to take everything so seriously. I don't have to be precious about every single little decision. I don't have to overthink or agonize or micromanage every detail. It's just not that deep. I can let myself enjoy things. I can let myself be goofy and silly and playful and free. I can have fun. I can relax into a moment. This year has taught me that joy is sometimes a skill. Lightness is a choice, and I choose lightness. Ease is allowed in our lives, and it is highly welcomed. Everything opens up when you stop squeezing so tightly. This is definitely something I learned this year. Number five of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. You always get to choose your response. This year showed me over and over that I always have a choice in how I respond to whatever life throws at me. Just because something happens that I don't like does not mean I have to personalize it or react from emotion or let it derail my whole day. I get to choose my response. I get to choose the meaning I attach to it, and therefore I choose my outcome. I think of it as similar to Mel Robbins' let them theory. I know a lot of people are probably really familiar with this at this point, in that if people are doing things in the world that I don't like, I don't have to let that become a part of me. I can have a feeling about it, but I don't have to let it fully affect me. There will always be stimuli out there that make us feel a certain way. But we are entirely within our own agency about how we respond and how we let it affect us, and therefore the outcome of how it does or does not affect our lives. Life will always give us moments that we didn't choose. But our power lies in how we respond. And we don't have to give that power away to the moment. Number six of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Be kind to yourself and give yourself grace. Awareness is a very powerful thing, but it's not meant to be used as a weapon. And this year I learned that you can notice a pattern within yourself without shaming yourself for it. You can see an old wound without blaming yourself for having that wound. You can acknowledge a mistake without collapsing into self-judgment. Giving yourself and honestly others grace is not avoidance. It is emotional maturity. One of my favorite coaching tools is looking at your past as though it's a movie you're watching. You see it as an objective observer, not a participant. And then you watch it again through the lens of love and acceptance and gratitude rather than judgment. So you can ask yourself, what did I gain from this experience? What did I learn? What love did I give and receive? How did this shape who I am now? Because without the experiences you've had, all of the experiences you've had, you would not be the version of yourself that you are today. And that version of you is absolutely worth honoring. And number seven of the seven things I learned this year that changed my life. Growth and expansion can be uncomfortable. And that's okay. The final lesson is that staying small is no longer an option. If I say that my values are freedom and growth and alignment and expansion, then my life has to reflect that. Not just in intention, but in action. Not just in thoughts that I want to put into action, but in what I actually put into action. As I talked about in the last episode, which was seven things I'm doing to finish the year strong. I'll link that one in the show notes as well. I've been doing some deep value audits recently. I've been looking at my calendar, my habits, my choices, my energy, my relationships, and asking, does this actually reflect who I am becoming? Because growth requires discomfort. Comfort creates a heaviness, a stagnation. When you choose growth, real true growth, you are choosing to stretch yourself. You're choosing to walk into an unknown and feel the discomfort that comes with being in a new place and sometimes as a new version of yourself. Your body and your nervous system, your subconscious will try to apply the brakes and toss in some fear and resistance. And remember, those parts are just trying to keep you safe and say, thank you for wanting to protect me. But I got this. And the beautiful part is when you sit with that discomfort, when you stay in it and you don't run and you don't become numb and you don't retreat, you expand beyond it. And then all of a sudden, what once felt scary has become your new normal. And your self-trust expands, it grows, your confidence grows. You feel a pride that no one can take from you because you did it. You stretched and grew. You stayed and you expanded and you became a bigger version of yourself in the process. We are done being small. These seven lessons truly changed me this year. They grounded me, they challenged me, they strengthened me. In some cases, they softened me. They reminded me that midlife is so not a decline. I am proud of where I am. And frankly, I'm proud of who I am. And I'm proud of you too. You're here, you're learning, you're discovering yourself, rediscovering yourself. And I am so proud of you. And I'm so glad you're here doing this with me. If you take anything at all from this episode, let it be this. You are allowed to evolve. You are allowed to grow. You are allowed to rewrite everything because you are the boss of you. If this episode made you think or feel something, anything, how about gifting someone else with that and share it with another woman in midlife who is also ready to feel powerful and purposeful again. Until next time, stay curious and keep playing and experimenting in life. And remember, trust the woman you're becoming. She is done playing small. Choose bold, choose aligned, choose the life you want to live. Love you. Bye-bye. If what we talked about today feels close to home, if you're tired of dimming yourself down, second-guessing every decision, or feeling like you've lost track of who you really are, I want you to know we don't have to figure it out alone. Sometimes we all need a guide, someone who can hold the mirror, remind us who we are, and walk alongside us until we're steady in that truth ourselves. If you've been listening and thinking, yes, that is what I need, I'd love to invite you to book a free discovery call with me through the link in the show notes. I'd love to meet you and walk this path of rediscovery with you.
