Midlife Crisis or Midlife Revolution? (How to Take Back Your Power in Perimenopause)

What if everything you thought was falling apart was actually falling into place? Midlife isn’t your downfall—it’s your power era. Today we talk about shifting from external validation to internal empowerment. 

Ask yourself, "if nothing was holding you back, what would you try now?"

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Transcript

Welcome to the Unmute Your Midlife podcast where we take you from foggy and
forgotten to focus and lit up. I'm Joyce, your nurse turned midlife resurrection
strategist and the cheerleader in your pocket. And I'm here to remind you your next season in life is your power era.

Today's episode is Midlife Crisis or Midlife Revolution. How to take back your power in perimenopause. Some like to call it a midlife crisis. I call BS on that.
This is your chance for a midlife revolution... or a radiant resurrection.
I'll just share about a time when I thought everything was falling apart,
but in hindsight, I can see that everything was just falling into place. As you
know, I'm a nurse. I was working in the burn center for a long time. I really
really enjoyed that work but I felt like I needed to move on to something different
and I decided to go work in the CVOR, Cardiac OR. And after a few months there I moved into a management position and I loved the work. I loved the patients, I loved the staff, I loved the doctors, but I didn't love the hours. 

I was working constantly and it was very high stress and during that time I gained probably 40 pounds. There wasn't really time for me to take normal meal breaks. I think I lived on vending machine food and those little peanut butter cups that we keep in the cabinet at the nurses station. Many days that was my meal. I did sometimes get really proactive and meal prep on Sundays, but I usually worked 10 to 12 hours a day Monday through Friday and then I was on call every night and I was on call through the weekends. Sunday I would get home from church and pull up my computer, and there I would sit at the kitchen table until bedtime doing time cards, working on chart reviews, planning the week, making the schedule. It was never ending. Just never ending. And I loved it because at the end of the day you always felt like you made a difference! The types of surgeries that we did, and even the way I would help, you know, the people on the team, I always
went home feeling like I made a difference that day. But I was also completely
shredded! My health was going downhill. My family never saw me And I didn't know it, but my husband hated that job. 

So, we had this huge project. We were building a new basically a new wing at the hospital, and I worked my tail off with that for our area. And it makes me happy when I go back...I'll float over there, pick up a shift here and there, and I'll see all these things that are still in place that I did, and it's a good feeling! Like, it was a
great feeling of accomplishment when we launched that new opening. Unfortunately, my hours went up too. I had about 16 hour days, and I would be up there on the weekends just organizing, and putting things up, and planning things out, and making it better. Making it where it was easier for people to find stuff. There was just always something that needed to be done, or needed to be improved so that things would flow smoother or faster. Because everything needs to happen in an instant in the OR! You know, you've got somebody asleep on the table, you want to move fast. You want all the staff to know where everything is, and we just had so many specialty products and implants and valves and all these things. 

I worked with the IT department a lot during the building project, and when it was over, one of them came to me and said, "Hey, would you ever think about joining our team?" And I said, "I can never leave this place." And I kind of laughed it off,
and when I went home and told my husband about it, he was like, "You go back and talk to them. I hate your job and I need your help." Because my mother -in -law
lives with us and she has advancing dementia and she's requiring more caregiving and my husband was getting a little burnt out doing it all himself. So I took a couple of months to do interviews and consider the other position, and I ended up taking that position. And it wasn't my dream job. I was already at my dream job,
but it was what my family needed. And then after a couple of months in the new
job, I realized how much the OR job was just draining me because there was no
downtime. So when I switched from those crazy hours to just an eight -hour day job, I suddenly had time to cook dinner, to go get groceries for the family, to help
participate in, you know, taking my mother-in-law to her doctor appointments, or
taking the dogs for a walk at night in the neighborhood. I could start exercising
again. I could start riding my bike again. I could start seeing my friends again. Like,
I could have a life again, and I didn't even realize that I had given so much up
for that job (for the OR job). And I'm not saying that I was right or wrong.  I'm
sure if I was to go back and do it again, I could set some boundaries and try to
do things differently. But my point is: it felt a little bit like things were falling
apart and I was making a big sacrifice, but then once I started the new job and the
new schedule it gave me a chance to realize how much was going wrong with my own health, and start taking control and taking action to bring things back into order. And that was kind of the turning point for me for getting my own energy and radiance back in menopause, and then learning how to help other people do the same thing. 

So this myth of the midlife crisis, it's only a crisis if you let it be one. You don't have to settle for depression and weight gain and poor health. You don't have to settle for being in pain all the time. You don't have to settle for disappearing into the background. Don't accept defeat. That's not what's planned for you. So this stage in life can actually be a rebirth. It's a huge opportunity for you to redefine who you are, what you stand for, what you expect from others and yourself, what you want to do with your time and money, whether you want to keep pursuing the career that you're in or go after something completely different. 

There's this psychological shift that you have to do. You have to move from external validation to internal empowerment. I think one of the things that was hard for me leaving the OR job was because there's a lot of external validation in doing what I was doing. I had instant feedback throughout the day on whether or not I was doing a good job and instant feedback at the end of the day on whether we helped anybody or saved anybody and so when I went to this new position it wasn't like that. Your results aren't instantaneous and it's all behind scenes. I could save the day and no one would know or care. They're just happy that things are working again. You have to let yourself do this psychological shift of moving from external validation to internal empowerment. I know I just said that, but it's worth repeating! It's gonna take effort, but if you're gonna get to a place where you feel comfortable in your own skin, or even to a place where you feel like a complete badass, you have to move to that point of internal empowerment. 

I have in my unmute your midlife coaching program, I have a lot of mindset work that we do one-on-one and on your own. And I have a lot of worksheets that I've created to help move you through those steps of mindset. Oh, yeah, in the the energy reset pack. There's also some mindset worksheets in the "It's Not Just Stress" workbook, and I want I just want to share one of these with you. The Villain vs the Hero: Your Emotional Battle Map. It's really cute. I know you can't see it on a podcast, but it's a made like, kind of like, comic book graphics with the villain versus the hero. The real villain in your isn't your stress. It's the story that says you're not allowed to outgrow it. A lot of times we're not really stressing out about  the stress, or the situation. We're stressing about the story that we're playing in our
head. And so when you learn to identify those stories and call them out, separate
the truth from the story, then you develop this new power belief and you operate in that new power belief. That's what I mean by internal empowerment. 

(dogs barking) Sorry, I have a canine audience present today, and they're trying to participate in our podcast. So, if you hear dogs in the background, just ignore them. 

All right, so I'm just going to go through this worksheet just so you can get a little sample of the different tools that you can get on my website, or that you can work through with me in the one-on-one coaching. So this worksheet you start with: "I always think..." This is where you write anything that's a recurring fear, a recurring fear or doubt, something that you suspect is like a script or movie in your mind that you play too often. So for me, especially when I was at my old job, my story that I told myself was, "I always give too much and I get walked all over by everyone."

"So what's the dramatic, exaggerated narrative that your inner critic plays on loop? Add all the emotions, all the triggering thoughts, all the assumptions about the other person that you're having, too." The same example, what I wrote down was, "I volunteered to help everyone else. I stay late, I pick up shifts, I listen to their problems, but then when it's my turn to need something, crickets. I guess I'm just too compassionate."

"Versus the truth: if you remove all the emotions and you look at the raw facts,
what really happened? What would a trusted friend or coach say about this situation?" So when I looked at my situation, what I wrote about it was: "I didn't have to say yes to everyone's requests. I need to make sure that I'm not draining myself by giving endlessly to everyone else. When I need help, I should ask sooner so people have time to be available. It's okay to ask them, 'Why aren't you reciprocating? Remember I helped you? How come you're not helping me?' And so my new power belief from that situation, my 'drop the mic' moment is, "my compassion is boundaried and wise. It's a superpower. And now I give from overflow, not depletion. I see the difference between caring and carrying." (And whenever you come up with this new power belief, you always wanna say it in the present tense.) 

So I know that this is probably hard to follow, just listening to me read it off, but I have some other questions that you can do. Some reflection questions that you can ask yourself. 

If nothing was holding you back, what would you try right now? Is there a hobby? Would you travel? Would you change jobs? Would you try to make new friends? I mean, I don't know if you're single or married, but would you change something about your relationship? It's a good "what if" question to ask yourself, and maybe you'll come up with something that you actually wanna go and do. 

And so, in that same self-reflection, ask yourself, "what drains me? What excites me? And what small step can I take this week towards excitement?"

You're only stuck if you want to be. And you're the only one who knows whether or not something is draining you, or exciting you, or helping you move towards a life that's more exciting. 

I want to go through one more exercise with you guys before we sign off. So, first I want you to picture your circle of control. So you've got this small circle, that's your circle of control. The things that you want to put in that circle would be like anything that you can control. So you can control your mindset. You can control how you react to things. You can control what you eat in a day, what you drink, what you put in your body, how much sleep you get. I mean, to a degree. I realize if you get woke up in the middle of the night by your hormones, that's not your fault. But you can attempt to get your seven, eight, nine hours of sleep at night by  putting yourself in bed and setting your alarm clock to get up. You control which job you decide to say yes to, or which tasks you decide to do. 

Then you draw a bigger circle around that one and that is for things that you cannot control. So you can't always control what your hormones are doing. That's out of your control. You can't always control what other people are doing. You can't control the weather. You can't control the economy. Does that kind of make sense? So you want to make a list of the things that are happening in life, in your life right now, and separate them out between things you can control and things you can't control. Because then, when you start to spiral, you can do this little thought interruption for yourself. 

So you start with a fear or trigger, whatever it is that's making you feel life is out of control. What's stressing you? And then, what's the story you're telling yourself? So you wanna name it, name the fear, or the shame, or the story, the self doubt,
whatever it is that's polluting your mind and making you feel like things are out
of control. And then ask yourself, does this thing land...which circle does it land in?
Does it land in the circle that's IN your control or the circle that's OUT of your
control? So if it's out of your control, if it's in that bigger circle of things
that you can't control, then you've got to... let it go. And then decide, what energy
are you gonna reclaim from this by letting it go, and letting it not disrupt your
whole day, your whole mood, your whole attitude? What energy do you get to claim back when you let that go? And if it IS in your circle of control, what is an
action step that you can take right now to change the situation? Because remember, if it's not in your circle, it's not your circus. You remember that old saying, "not my circus, not my monkeys?" We could even expand on to that and say, "get this monkey off your back." 

I hope that's helpful. I hope that gives you some idea of how to reframe. My goal is for you to not feel like you're in crisis mode. I want you to feel like you're in revolution mode. I want you to feel like you are actively taking steps to make things better. Because remember, what's our goal? We're moving from external validation to internal empowerment. We want to get to that point where no matter what's going on around us, whether or not people are acknowledging us, we can still feel empowered inside and that we have the tools and the resources to get to that point. 

Okay, my friends, that is today's dose of midlife truth. Just remember you are not foggy, forgotten, or finished. You are just getting lit up for your next season. If today's episode, hit home. Don't keep it to yourself. Share it with a sister who needs some help unmuting her own midlife. And if you need help creating that internal empowerment that I was talking about today, I have more confidence stacking worksheets and I'll send them to you absolutely free. Just send me a message on Instagram. I think there's even a link in the podcast that you can click (a button) to send me a message or just send me the word 'invisible' and I will get you your copy. But until next time, keep unmuting, keep rising, and remember your midlife reboot starts right now.