Mid-Life Crisis or Awakening? It Depends on How You Respond

This episode is for the mid-ish life woman who finds herself asking questions like: 

• Is the path I'm on the right path for me? 
• Is it even what I want anymore?  
• Is this as good as it gets, or is there more to life for me?

 You’ve built the career, the family, the stability — but something feels off. The things that used to light you up don’t quite land the same way anymore. You’re grateful, but restless. Fulfilled, but craving more.

Welcome to what we're told is "the midlife crisis” — except maybe it’s not a crisis at all. Maybe it’s a midlife awakening.

In this episode of The Becoming You Project, we’re unpacking the moment when everything starts to shift — when you begin to question who you are, what you’ve built, and whether you’re still on the path that feels like you.

You’ll hear:
 ✨ The difference between a midlife crisis and a midlife awakening — and why it all comes down to how you respond to the discomfort.
 ✨ How psychological, energetic, and astrological cycles (yes, we’re talking Uranus Opposition and solar plexus activation) can stir these questions.
✨ Why this phase is actually an invitation to come home to yourself — not burn your life down.
✨ Tools for navigating the “messy middle”: nervous-system grounding, journaling prompts, chakra work, and clues from your natal chart that point to your deeper purpose.

If you’ve been feeling like success without soul doesn’t feel like success anymore — this episode will help you see that what you’re feeling isn’t a breakdown. It’s a recalibration.

Tune In & Connect

Listen to The Becoming You Project wherever you get your podcasts.
Explore courses, coaching, and energy tools at www.jesscallahan.com 
Want to go deeper? I offer one-on-one coaching on a limited basis. Apply at www.jesscallahan.com/coaching

Follow me on Instagram @jesscallahan_ and Substack at becomingyouproject.substack.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:03

Hey guys, welcome back to the Becoming You Project. This is a podcast about reinvention and rewriting the rules and reconnecting with ourselves on this journey to finding purpose and making an impact. And today I want to talk about this whole idea of the midlife crisis or midlife awakening, or maybe it's a reinvention or a recalibration. But whatever you call it, there's this time, and it happens around midlife, however you want to define that, you know, maybe early to mid-40s, but it could be earlier, you know, it could happen in your late 30s or or later. But either way, it's a time when we start to question everything we've built. We question if the road that we're on is the right one. It doesn't mean that we don't love the lives that we've built. Both can be true. We can love the life we've built, but also just to have this like deeper question taking root that asks, like, is this it? Is there more? And I know I've felt it myself when I've asked that question. And so many of the people that I've worked with and the women in my circles have had this feeling of like guilt in asking that question. Like, I can't believe I'm even asking this question. I should be so lucky about the life that I've built, the life that I've worked so hard for. But, you know, I'm I'm just I'm so grateful for everything that I've built. And so, you know, a lot of times we just we feel that guilt and immediately we kind of move on, we sweep it aside because we should be so grateful. But still, you know, this feeling of restlessness and maybe dissatisfaction, emptiness on some level, numbness on some level. You know, the feeling continues to take root, the feeling continues to expand, even. It doesn't go away just because we look in the other direction. It doesn't go away just because we busy our minds thinking about other things. This feeling of dissatisfaction doesn't go away until you decide to look at it directly and you know, go inward and and figure out where it's coming from and why it's there and what it is that you're searching for. You know, maybe you're wondering if there's a bigger purpose for you. But like, what is that purpose and and how do you find it? And how do you continue to feel successful when you no longer know what success even means to you? Maybe you've been chasing this version of success that always feels just out of reach. And so you start to question like, whose version of success is this anyway? Whose version of life am I living right now? And and how did I get here? You know, what what were the active choices that I made to bring me to this point in my life? And a lot of times I think that we find that we've been following this, like, you know, unwritten rule book or unpublished map, and it just tells us, you know, what we're supposed to do next. Go to college, get a job, get married, have kids, and you just keep following the rule book. And then you wake up one day and you're living life, defining success based on this rule book, and not not even feeling, never really feeling like anchored into yourself and what means the most to you. And you know, you've you've built this whole life and and it can feel really confusing and frustrating. And yeah, there's just there's so many unknowns when you sit in this moment of thinking, well, well shit, like how do I get where I want to go if I have no clue where it is that I want to go? And what do I do about all of this that I've already built? And, you know, my all of the commitments and the, you know, all of the things that are wrapped up in my life. And um, you know, do I have to tear it all down? Do I have to start a whole new career to feel like I'm following my purpose? But how am I gonna do that if I have to pay the bills? Or is it even realistic to start something new? And we're gonna dive into all of that and how you can reconnect with purpose without tearing it all down. We're gonna dive into all of that. But first, I want to talk about whether or not there's a difference between midlife crisis and midlife awakening. Because we talk about this often where we're just like, well, it's not a crisis, it's an awakening, right? Like I say that myself. But I actually I want to acknowledge that there are two different, like they are we're not talking about the same thing. So midlife crisis is rooted in the same thing as a midlife awakening, right? It's rooted in this feeling of like just this feeling of inner discomfort or conflict or friction around how you're showing up in the world and and how you want to show up or who you are as your truest self. It's rooted, they're both rooted in that same thing. But a midlife crisis is about avoiding the feeling of discomfort instead of exploring it. So a midlife crisis might look like uprooting a career or making big moves, you know, moving across the country, or um, thrill-seeking activities, skydiving, buying a motorcycle, and you know, riding fast, or, you know, all of it is it's an attempt to like recapture this essence of youth without like actually confronting reality while trying to escape reality. It's it's this whole effort to like try to escape the self instead of returning to the self or reconnecting with the self. Midlife crisis often lives in regret because instead of going inward and figuring out like, how do I shift my life? How do I honor my truth and live in alignment with who I am? It's it's an avoidance of all of that and just this feeling of like, well, if I did it wrong and now I'm here and I only have, you know, half of my life left to live, what am I gonna do to just, you know, feel the highs and experience the thrills without ever actually like going inward. So a midlife awakening, on the other hand, is a really soul-led process. It's an inner journey. It's rooted in like self-inquiry rather than avoidance. It's it's about tuning into the body, tuning into the intuition and your heart instead of seeking any kind of like external validation. So it's like it's really this journey to find answers to questions like what matters the most to me now, and what impact do I want to make in my world? And instead of like fast cars and new jobs, the changes are more subtle. You know, you might actually find that somebody going through this awakening journey goes inward, like energetically, but at the same time, like really may go inward, like avoiding social situations. And um, you know, it's like this like whole hermiting kind of idea, wintering. Um, because it's often a period of like deep reflection and release. And so, you know, some of the changes that you see are learning to set and hold boundaries and learning to like sit in the quiet, rediscovering what joy feels like. Not joy through thrill seeking, but like genuine, aligned, joyful moments. The awakening process happens when we stop running from the discomfort and instead tune into what it's trying to teach us. And on my own journey, I've asked myself time and time again, like, you know, why now? Because it's like almost without fail. Like every time I like I spend a lot of time on Substack. I love Substack. And when I connect with other people who are, you know, in a similar age, um, I find that we're a lot of times we are we're writing and speaking about similar things, this process of awakening. And it doesn't have to be awakening specifically. There's a ripple effect of what awakening means to different people and what the awakening is like bringing forward for them. But it's like clockwork, you know, and and I think writing, you know, just on a side note, I think writing is such a tool for healing for so many of us that it's not surprising that, you know, we would be congregating on a platform like Substack because, you know, it's sort of not yet part of these like algorithms and advertising machines, and it's a place where people can really just genuinely connect through deep thought. And so um, either way, you know, I have found that it shows up time and time again in this like general age range where, you know, the people that I'm interacting with are just going through this process of starting to question everything. And so I wonder, you know, I'm I've asked myself many times, why now? And so I've come up with a few reasons and they varied, you know, drastically. Some are just like everyday reasons, and we move into the energetic and metaphysical. But one of the most practical ones, I think, that is that like as for those of us who are parents, especially who have kids who are getting a little bit older now, um, it's like this period of emerging from that haze of the parenting that depletes you on all levels, not just like emotional and mental. And I think that that type of depletion, at least from my personal experience, doesn't ever really subside. Um, my oldest is almost 12, and I know I've got, you know, most of middle school and and high school ahead of me. Um, but I I can say with certainty that the emotional emotional and mental depletion has not let up. But um, you know, the early years where you're just like physically exhausted too, and then you have that whole like trifecta of total exhaustion. Um, you know, you're awake at all hours of the night and you're chasing runaway kids through Target and doing tons of extra loads of laundry and your hips and back hurt from carrying the, you know, four-year-old who still doesn't want their like feet to touch the ground, right? Like it's just total exhaustion. And so as we start to reach, if you know, depending on the age that you had kids around this time, I find personally that the the space, the toll is maybe less, and I have more space and time to think and feel and evaluate and introspect and more time for myself. I think like with it comes this return of like when you can create space like that, when you can start to focus on yourself. The the energy that we've been repressing for so long through all of this, like constantly just like doing and achieving and people pleasing and self-sacrificing. Once we start to create a little bit more space, there's this like awakening of intuition and spirituality, creativity and a connection to something greater, and knowing that we're part of like a larger whole, a collective, if you will. Sometimes like the awakening can be started maybe not by the opportunity to create space, but it can be sparked by a life event, um, you know, the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job. It can be sparked by for many women, you know, we've talked extensively about the link between illness and burnout. So um living with that constant like stress coursing through your body and the damage that it does, and the fact that it can ultimately lead to, you know, there's so many health outcomes, um, autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, um, chronic tension and migraines and IBS. And so there's there are so many of us who have found ourselves spiraling in some level of chronic illness. And a lot of times the chronic illnesses are linked to stress. So um, you know, it can be it can be the moment that the healing begins, really, is or or that's the moment that sparks this awakening where we say, like, I'm not living my life like that anymore. I'm not going to self-sacrifice forever because, like, who is that actually benefiting? Like, by my calculations, nobody, but it's just like what I've been trained to do. And so, yeah, I mean, there, okay, so there's a couple of other things that can spark it in psychology. So Eric Ericsson calls this phase of life um generativity versus stagnation. So stick with me for a second. Erickson has this map of like, it's like the life timeline where he's broken down each phase of life into like this period of inner conflict. And when the conflict is resolved, you have the opportunity to like develop a specific virtue. Generativity versus stagnation happens around this time of life where we start to wrestle with the idea of creating something meaningful and lasting. And, you know, we've spent most of our lives at this point um really like focusing inward on like it's it's very ego-driven. And so at this point in development, according to Erickson, we start to wrestle with like what is the impact I'm gonna leave in my world. And we have to overcome feelings of stuckness or being self-absorbed, a fear of failure. And when we resolve this inner conflict, that's when we're able to develop the virtue of care. But so he says basically, it's in the conflict, it's it's how that conflict takes root, is really what sparks this process of midlife awakening. Through an energetic lens, we might call it solar plexus chakra activation. Your solar plexus sits like in your upper abdomen. So if you're looking at the chakras linearly, starting with your root chakras red, it's it's at the base, like where your legs meet your pelvis. Um just up from there is your sacral chakra. And then right above that is your solar plexus chakra, right in your abdomen, like under your upper abdomen, like under your ribs. And this is where it's this chakra that governs like personal power, autonomy, will, confidence, self-trust. It's where you find your ability to hold boundaries, make decisions that are aligned with your life. But around midlife, as we just talked about, you know, according to Eric Erickson, the ego, your your focus on like an ego-driven life starts to shift. It has the opportunity to shift. Not all of us feel the shift and go inward when they feel it. So, you know, the ego can continue to dominate the later years, but when you start to feel this like stirring of, is there something more? It can be pegged to this feeling of the ego shifting to satisfy the friction that happens um when you do start to search for deeper truth. It's all about like basically just like learning how to like genuinely hold the frequency of authenticity, not just like dipping in and out of authenticity for yourself, but like truly understanding yourself so deeply that showing up authentically isn't something you do in bursts, but it's a way of living and it takes practice and cultivation. I think my favorite way to look at this like midlife awakening process, and probably the one that's helped me the most in understanding like how to how to like ease the feelings of like discomfort and inner friction is through like an astrological lens. So um I love astrology. I think that NATO chart astrology holds so many answers to your energetic signature and the challenges you're here to overcome in this lifetime, and you know, the energy that you're meant to live into. And when you're working through one of your own like personal challenges, it can almost like provide a roadmap of how to overcome that. And so the Uranus opposition happens. It's an astrological transit that happens around midlife, so it can be like 40, 44. Um, and you know, midlife used very loosely, obviously, but like, and you can feel the energetic signature of that, like 18 months before to 18 months after the actual transit, right? And the transit happens. If you don't know your natal chart, like just stick with me for a second, but like Uranus is a really slow-moving planet. And so it goes about halfway around the zodiac in 40-ish years. So your Uranus opposition happens when Uranus is directly opposite, like in the sky today, it is directly opposite where it was at the moment that you were born. So where Uranus sits in your NATO chart. And so when this transit happens, it's basically like it's all about like upheaval and shaking all of the foundations of who we thought we were. Like Uranus is a planet of liberation and it disrupts patterns and beliefs and attachments. It helps you spot what no longer serves you so that you can live into that like most authentic version of you. And so when you experience your Uranus opposition, it's usually like that's when you feel the spark to like change things suddenly, or you feel restless, or you feel this urgency to reinvent. And so, okay, so if you're listening to this podcast now, obviously around like the time that I am recording it in 2025, it's likely that if you're feeling the nudge of the Uranus opposition, you're feeling these like stirrings of questioning and reinvention, it's most likely that your Uranus opposition is going to be happening in either Taurus or Gemini. And so, you know, because it it's it's um, as I'm recording this, it's in a moment of like going back and forth based on like retrogrades and um stationing direct, it's between Taurus and Gemini. And then with that like 18-month window where you can still feel it after the trans after the transition is like direct. Um, we're really like totally straddled over two different signs where the Uranus opposition could be taking place. And so if yours is taking place in Taurus, um, it would mean like you might feel inner tension that centers around stability, security, and values. So, like this opposition can can shake up foundations that you thought were permanent, like especially related to like money or possessions or things that make you feel stable and grounded. So a core theme would be like liberation through embodiment, meaning like you may feel called to redefine what security means to you, what self-worth means to you, or what it means to feel like safe in your own body and values. So some of the ways that it might show up, like maybe you feel the need to examine your foundations and like whether they're truly yours, or whether you built your foundations based on like those that were inherited from your like family or culture. It could be for you about learning to trust like a felt sense within the body instead of trusting external validation, seeking your answers through like advice from others or approval from others. It could be about breaking free from a scarcity mindset or the need to like control everything. Could be about reconnecting with pleasure and nature and like simplicity, simple abundance. It could just be like a drive to live more simply, or it could be about releasing attachment to things that like once felt essential, but now might feel like they're weighing you down. Okay, if your uranus opposition is taking place in Gemini, this disruption would show up in your mental world. So especially like how you communicate and how you share your ideas with the world and your circles and you know those around you. So maybe you feel called to speak a different truth, expand on new learning, or like break free from old thought patterns that keep you small. A core theme is awakening the mind and liberating your voice. And it might feel like a strong pull to like write, teach, speak, or podcast, but in your new, like authentic voice versus like the one that was polished and acceptable and curated so as to like not offend anyone. Um, it could be about breaking cycles of silence, secrecy, or like inherited family communication styles. It could be like asking yourself deep questions about what you genuinely believe, or even like a restlessness around surface-level conversations, like small talk, maybe small talk you were never a fan of, but now it's like intolerable. Um, you know, what so whatever the cause, okay, whether it's through like a psychological drive to resolve tension, an astrological transit, like Uranus opposition, or maybe like the activation of your solar plexus chakra, or simply like more time and space as your kids get older, or a life event, like whatever the cause, if you find yourself like wrestling with this feeling of wanting more, I encourage you to approach that discomfort with curiosity and intentionality. Like, don't turn away from it, don't put a band-aid on it. And like what you do in this moment genuinely defines the rest of your life. And and you know, it can feel scary because it can feel like well, I don't have time to define my purpose. Like, I don't I can't tear everything down, and and I don't think you have to, but I think that when you give yourself the time to really intentionally ask yourself what you're searching for, I think that the answers will become a lot more clear. You know, and maybe it's maybe you're searching for deeper connection or greater impact, but I find most of the time the search is really centered around purpose, and maybe purpose leads to purposeful connection or expanding your impact on the world through you know, purpose, bringing more purpose into your business in a way that allows you to grow because you're doing it in a really like authentic and aligned way. Okay, a few examples of purpose, specifically like soul level purpose, are to be a beacon of kindness, to foster community and gathering spaces for others, to create beauty that awakens emotion, to cultivate peace and stillness in a chaotic world, to live in harmony with nature, to facilitate healing of some kind, or to share knowledge and wisdom. So purpose doesn't always have to be about your career. I think sometimes we get confused, like commingling purpose and identity with our careers. And if we're lucky to establish a career that aligns with purpose, I think that's amazing. But it's not always realistic, especially not right away from the from this moment, like when you're sitting in this like messy middle where you might not even really be sure what it is that you're looking for, let alone how to find it and infuse your life with it and align your you know entire career with it. But there are ways that you can infuse your life with purpose and meaning, you just you have to connect with what that means first. But like, you know, if you think about some of those examples that we talked about, like to be a beacon of kindness, a sole purpose around kindness doesn't mean totally shaking up your career. Of course, if you're, you know, if the work of your life is in direct conflict to something like that, then then yeah, it might require bigger decisions or, you know, other practices that help you get through the day until you can make a shift. But generally speaking, if it's a purpose like being a beacon of kindness, like that's something that you can intentionally infuse your life with more. It might be, you know, if it's creating beauty that awakens emotion, maybe it's spending more time, you know, with whatever the creative art is that you love, um, writing, singing, making music of some kind, painting, whatever it is, um, you know, taking your art seriously. These are changes that you can make, but when you don't know what it is, when you don't know what that what purpose means for you, it's really hard to know what the pieces are that you have to start to thread your life with because you're just really sitting in this massive unknown. So I came up with a few tips to get you started. If, you know, if this feeling of searching for purpose feels alive for you, here are just like a few ways that you can get started in trying to figure out what that looks like for you. So the first one always, always, always regulate first. So it's really hard to be introspective and to seek any kind of change or transformation when you're living in a place that is dysregulated. So breathe deeply, get grounded, reconnect with your body. You know, if you suspect that you're living in a survival state of your nervous system, take seriously, you know, your nervous system health and regulation. Um, I have a new course on nervous system regulation. It's available on my website. It's a self-guided course, but it talks through all of the practices that I use that I used to manage my fibromyalgia, which is a nervous system disorder, and just stay in regulation so that I can live a life of purpose and meaning without falling back into dysregulation. Um so always I say that to say just like regulation is so important. And it's something that we bypass and um so a thousand percent start there. The next one is really embracing this practice of like a balance between release, uh releasing and receiving. So in order to reconnect with inspiration and start to listen to your intuition or your higher self and let it guide you towards your purpose, there's an element of release and an element of receiving. So releasing is getting rid of stuck energy, unprocessed emotions, resolving situations that are just like sitting with you. So some of my favorite ways to do this are through journaling, um, just like stream of conscious journaling, movement, um, intuitive dance, shaking. I love circulation plates or just like like you can just literally like dance and shake your limbs. Breath work is a really powerful way to move stuck energy. And then receiving is creating space through meditation and mindfulness. So disconnecting from your thoughts to allow new information to come in. And I want to point out two of those specifically. So um journaling. I think stream of conscious journaling is one of the most important ways that you can release stuck energy, but also reconnect with subconscious thoughts that can guide you to purpose. So, you know, finding a pen that you love, I think it's really important to have a pen and paper that feel good to write on. And just starting with a question like, what does purpose mean? And maybe you have to approach it a couple of different ways. And, you know, it might involve several sessions of stream and stream of conscious journaling before you start to get those little like nuggets of gold. But when you start to get them, like you won't want to stop journaling because you're like, wow, I had no clue that I could like unlock these layers of knowing. But you just have to get through like the junk first, you know. So, and if if journaling's not your thing, if you don't like to write, voice notes are a really, really good way to do it too. Um, just getting voice memo app, um, voxer you can use, like any kind of voice memo that you can just record yourself, you can delete it or listen back. But um, I found that that's like it's just another really great way to tap into the like that stream of consciousness, like thinking. And the other one is meditation. So meditation is really important um in creating space. It's just this idea of like disconnecting from your thoughts. Maybe it's by focusing on your breath or using a mantra or following a guided meditation. But when you get used to stillness and you get used to not needing to like run that to-do list through your mind or think through situations, you know, you just release the need to like control your thoughts. That's what creates space for inspiration to come in. And so it doesn't have to be a formal meditation practice. It can be, you know, two or three minutes of mindfulness outside or driving without the music on, taking a shower without listening to music or a podcast, or you know, going through your to-do list. There's there's a lot of ways that you can practice meditation without actually like sitting down and meditating. I do suggest both for sure, but starting some type of meditative practice is really important in letting those like intuitive sparks come through. Connecting with others, so connecting with like-minded people in community, finding a guide or a coach or a teacher to just like hold your hand through the process and remind you that like it's normal to feel ungrounded. Um, I think sometimes we can get stuck in these like thought loops and emotional vortexes when we're learning to do things like process emotions that we haven't like ever actually really had to deal with. And so having somebody, you know, whether it's a friend or a guide to help you along the process is important. Um, learning to trust your intuition. So, you know, again, tuning into the body, figuring out what feels like a yes and what feels like a no, and learning to trust those nudges. That's really important too. You can start to play with the idea of welcoming discomfort. And so, you know, our nervous system is trained to keep us safe, and discomfort is a threat to our safety sometimes, especially when we're living in a heightened state. Um, you know, maybe there's some level of survival mode happening, maybe there's just extra stress that hasn't been shed. But either way, our nervous system works really hard to keep us safe. Discomfort means safeness, it means a threat to our safety. And so if you can start to play around with this idea of like of discomfort, of intentionally making yourself uncomfortable, sitting through uncomfortable situations, it'll help remind your body that this discomfort is okay. And it'll help you create space to lean into that discomfort with curiosity and ultimately like overcome more fear and um lean into your growth edges and go deeper inward into like the shadow work that can sometimes be really important in getting at our like deepest truths. Um like one small example is um, this is like silly kind of, but it's just it's a it's a way, it's a small example of a way that of overcoming discomfort, right? So there was a point this spring that, and I might have talked about this on the podcast before, I have no clue. So you can fast forward if you've heard this story already. It's it's a really simple story, but this spring it was it rained for weeks. It was gross and cold and rainy and like just not fun to be outside. And finally, there was a day where the sun was shining, you know, that like early spring where when you walk out and the sun is warm and you just like want to feel it on your face and your neck, and the birds were active and chirping because, you know, after so much rain, like they're just all over the place, and my dog's outside chasing bugs, and I just wanted to like sit outside and write. And I didn't have a ton of time, but um the cushions that we like keep on the outside furniture were locked away, and you know, without having a lot of time, I was like, Well, I'm not gonna do that. And then I looked at the seats and I was like, uh, they're all still covered in rain. So I guess I can't do this. I have to go back in and I walk back inside. And then I was like, wait a minute. I could just go and sit on this wet seat. And yeah, my I'll have to probably, I want to probably change my pants afterwards because they're gonna be wet, but like I can still sit outside in that discomfort because that is a very like I'm willing to make that sacrifice to be able to like have this experience of just soaking up this like beautiful spring day after all of this rain. And so that's what I did. I just I walked outside and it was cold. It was very cold and jarring at first, but it was fine because within four seconds I felt totally fine. You know, the water in on my pants was the same temperature then as my body. And so I sat there and I wrote and I enjoyed the sunshine and the birds and my dog running around. And it was great. But it was just one of those like instinctive moments, such a small shift. But my reaction was I can't sit on the wet chair, so I'm going inside. And I was when, you know, I over overcame that thought over, you know, I like my inner voice like spoke over that like subconscious reaction and was like, no, we can do this. Like we're sitting in this discomfort so that we can enjoy the bigger picture. So anyway, that's just one example. But really, like finding different ways to coach yourself through feeling discomfort will help you, it will open doorways to just knowing yourself more deeply. Okay, the next way to start to reconnect is we talked about solar plexus chakra activation. And so some ways that you can work with the solar plexus chakra to just like build inner confidence and reconnect with your like personal sense of power is through um like yellow is the color of the solar plexus chakra. So you can use that to guide you know a lot of this when you're like reaching for something. Um so like eating yellow or golden foods, like lemons, corn, turmeric, bananas, ginger, even chamomile tea, they symbolically feed your inner fire. And fire is really associated with the solar plexus chakra. So even like working with fire, um, because the two correspond like solar plexus chakra with fire energy, you can light a candle during a meditation. You can visualize a golden light expanding from your center. If you're a visual person, um, I will say this to say I spent so much of my life feeling this like subconscious level of failure because every time somebody told me to visualize something, I'm like, I'm not doing it right. I can't see the yellow light. And I later learned that I'm just non-visual. Like I have it's called aphantasia, and it's uh it's the inability to like actually visualize imagery. I was shocked to know that like people could actually like pull up images in their mind, like they're watching a movie and or even just like still shots. Um, I can't do that at all. And so I only say that here to say if you can't visualize, that's normal. We'll talk about that more later. Okay, but you can sit near sunlight to recharge. Um, anything working with fire would would work here. You can do breath work for inner fire. Um, there's so many different breath work tools. I have some on I think my website, I'll link to them here for some breath work practices. And there's also we do a section on breath work in the nervous system course. So you can check that too if you want. Um, you could do some core strengthening movements. So, you know, any kind of core exercise if you're doing yoga, maybe you also want to do some twists. Um, but like planks, twists, anything. Um it's basically like awakening your like energetic center of willpower. So it's just like when you work the core, it's a reminding your body that you can hold your own power safely. All right, a few affirmations around confidence and worth that would work could be like I trust myself and my decisions. My power is safe and sacred. I stand strong in who I am. Practicing healthy boundaries is a great one for solar plexus chakra work. And um yeah, then just like any journaling activity that will take you closer to your purpose will help you realign. It's like a cyclical, right? Like doing the solar plexus chakra work can give you the pathway, especially when you're dealing with like inner power and confidence, that leads you to purpose, but also finding purpose leads you back to developing a stronger solar plexus chakra. So, um, and then lastly, I really love um if you know me, you know we can't end this list without some sort of nod to astrology. So I think reviewing your NATO chart is really important when you're looking for purpose and you're trying to find answers. I think it can literally give you an energetic map of like what to follow based on where you're feeling the most significant pain points at the moment. And so, like, you know, look to placements like your north node, your south node, Chiron, Uranus Opposition, your mid-heaven, um, even like your rising sign and your moon sign. Each of them have so many different layers, and when you peel them back, you can find that path to purpose through your natal chart. Okay, so there is the list. And these are just, you know, they're just starter ideas, honestly. They are just like the early, they're just like the, you know, a couple of a couple of ways that you can start to reconnect with purpose. And I think the most important of them being regulate and then practice this balance of releasing and receiving. When you can get into that flow of releasing the emotions that are unprocessed, the energy that's stuck in your body, the stress that's coursing through your body, when you can release that and then create space for receiving through mindfulness and meditation, when you have that balance, it's a lot easier to find a path to any level of like change or transformation. So if you're searching for purpose and you're intentional about where you go from there, you know, your journaling practices, your meditation, how you're moving your body, what you're asking, you know, what you're asking for guidance on, especially like if you're, you know, connecting with your higher self or guides or anything like that, um, your intuition, um, you know, however you search for answers within yourself and within the larger whole that we're all connected to, um, the more you get grounded and regulated and connected with yourself, the more clear that path becomes. All right, guys, that's all we have for today. And I look forward to seeing you guys next week. If you've been enjoying the podcast, I would be so grateful if you would leave a review, share it with a friend, um, all of your support, feedback, send me feedback directly. Um, I'm looking for guests. I'm loving, loving, loving the interview process. I'm really loving the people I'm meeting and the stories I'm getting to tell and share. Um I have a couple of really fun interviews lined up for you guys in the coming weeks. But if you or anyone you know would be interested in being a guest, um definitely reach out if you have feedback. If you have questions about coaching or courses or any of the above, all of my contact information and how to find me is um right in the show notes. And I look forward to connecting again next week. All right, see you later.