E6: A Menopause Mindset That Supports You (How to Shut Down Your Inner Critic For Good)

That critical little voice in your head? Let’s catch her.

You know the one. The voice that whispers “you’re too old,” “you’ll never get it back,” or “this is just menopause, deal with it.”

Not today.

So many of the thoughts that run through your mind each day aren’t facts — they’re habits. Today, we work on naming the triggers, the feelings, the negative messages, and then flipping those thoughts into something truthful and empowering.

Message me MINDSET to get a link to download the free pdf of the worksheets I talked about in today's episode. 

You can also book a free clarity call here if you need some personalized guidance.

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Transcript

Well, hello, midlifers. I don't know if it's the morning, the afternoon, or the
evening where you are, but good day, whichever one it is. I want to ask you
something. What if you could calm your thoughts and reconnect with your peace and have this whole transition into menopause be something that you were excited about and that you had great memories of later down the line? Today, we are going to be talking about mindset, and I think this is going to be a good one. 

Welcome to the Unmute Your Midlife podcast.

because let's be honest, menopause can be very unpredictable and disruptive and
exhausting to say the least. But here's a truth that we don't hear often enough.
It's not a disease and it's not fatal and it doesn't mean that you're broken. It's
just a natural phase of life, just like puberty or pregnancy or aging. The
difference is going to be in how we approach it. And that secret weapon that we
all have that's 100 % free is mindset. Mindset is your secret weapon to help you
navigate menopause. Your mindset is this internal lens that you look through when you experience the world. It's how you interpret the challenges you face, any changes that come along. It's how you internalize what you see in the mirror. So when it comes to menopause, mindset can either magnify your suffering or empower your resilience. Yes, the symptoms are real, the hot flashes, the weight gain, the sleep disturbances, the brain fog, the mood swings, the joint pain. The list goes on. But your experience of those symptoms can be greatly reduced by having mindset play its hand. A woman who views menopause as a sign of decline is probably going to feel defeated and resentful, Whereas a woman who sees it as a right of passage or even maybe a liberation from the reproductive pressures, she might feel empowered or wiser or more connected to her body than ever before. So you've got these two women, same biology, but different mindsets. And they end up having dramatically different experiences. 

Menopause might be a little uncomfortable. Yes, we'll all agree.
Maybe a lot uncomfortable. But it's, again, not a life -threatening illness. It's a
hormonal transition. It's temporary in most ways. Because once you hit
survived worse up until now. If you've had kids, childbirth, the whole pregnancy and then postpartum period, those were rough. Those were some rough months. And if you had a lot of kids, that meant those were some rough years. And then we, of course, have probably had career changes, some heartbreak, maybe lost some loved ones. So we have some survival tools in our arsenal, whether we realize it or not. Some people have this natural bend towards positivity. My husband is one of those people. He's the eternal optimist. Now me, I am glass half full versus half empty kind of person, but positivity overall is not my natural bend. I tend to be very cynical and sarcastic. And that comes from growing up in the family that I grew up in. That was our love language. If they weren't being sarcastic with you, then they didn't, they might as well not give you the time of day. So learning how to be positive has been a lesson that I have focused on through my adulthood.

And if you're one of those people who's not really all that positive either, then
sister, you are not alone. I've been doing this mindset challenge in my private
Facebook group with some of my other menopause besties. And a couple of the things that we were talking about is where do the narrative thoughts come from and then what do we do with them it's not enough just to tell someone well just be more positive well just go jump off a bridge that's what they want to say back to you and if you're watching this on youtube guess what i have visuals again today but don't worry if you're listening instead of watching. I'll describe it all to you. So,
this is a little diagram about how our negative thoughts affect us. The first thing that happens is there's some sort of what I call a triggering event, whether it's a mistake you made, a conversation that did not go well. You accidentally looked in the mirror and did not like what you saw. Whatever it was, it sparked a reaction in you. And you automatically thought something really negative. Before you know it, your brain served up, just like a reflex. I'm failing. I'm just too much. I can never change. Whatever the excuse is, I've got a long list of them. We'll go through some of them later. 

Step one, you get triggered. Step two, you have this reflexive negative thought. Step three, the thought causes an emotional reaction in you. Whether it's guilt, shame, anxiety, sadness, those emotions are real and they hit you fast. Let's move on to step four. You'll have a behavioral response to your emotion. You might withdrawal. You might hide in a corner on your phone and just doom scroll. You might procrastinate finishing something because you got criticism on it and now you're worried that the end product is not going to be good enough. So why bother? You might shut down completely. If your spouse said something rude or insensitive, you get your feelings hurt and you're just like, well, I'm just not talking to him. So that reaction becomes part of the cycle. And then the last step in the circle is reinforcement of your belief. So now that first thought you had, you've reacted emotionally. You've reacted with your behavior. And so now you've reinforced in your mind that belief is true. It's almost like your behavior
matched the lie. And so now that's going to be part of your repeating cycle. I have good news for you, though. A lot of that stuff that we believe, it's not
true. It's a lie someone else told us, whether it was a real person or culture or
a cue we picked up from someone else, it's a false narrative. It's a habit,
a habit that you have let worm its way into your brain and take root. But we're
going to talk about how to kick those to the curb. 

Well, the next thing I want to show you is the Thought Reframer. So, once we use that cycle to stop and identify those critical beliefs about ourselves, the ones that send us spiraling into self -sabotage, we can write them down and we can rework them. We can identify the lie that's in them and find a truth that's empowering to use instead. I got a whole list here. I'm going to call this my Emotional Vision list and I'm just going to basically give you the negative thought and then the reframed positive thought. This is just a short, one-word list, and we'll go deeper.

There's guilty versus grounded. There's confused versus curious. There's invisible versus seen. Abandoned versus guided. Dull or fading versus vibrant. Shamed versus accepted. Overwhelmed versus confident. You get the picture? So I'll be a little transparent here and share some of mine that I've already worked through, and this I'm going to give you the longer version, not just the one words. I trust my path, even when it looks different than someone else's. I am a vibrant person, not to get attention, but to spark someone else's ignition. I don't run from hard things. I've already been through hard things, and now I help coach other women through hard things. The old me would have stepped back and stayed quiet, but this me, I build people up with

every time they happen, I want you to start keeping track and write them down. You can't just leave them in your head because then you can't work through them. You've got to write them down on paper where you can read it and look at it and ponder it and rework it. Then you can keep a list like I did here of your reworks
because in the morning, I want you to read a couple of those every day to start
your morning off with some of your reframed thoughts. I'm going to call it your
morning bragging prompts. You know why? Because when you can brag on yourself a little bit, not to the whole world, just to yourself, in the mirror, to your
husband, when you can brag on yourself a little bit, that's going to help anchor
you into that reformed positive mindset. It's going to have a more longer lasting
effect for you. So you can start your morning off saying, I am proud of myself for
or a belief I'm choosing today is and then pick one off your list.

I'm reading a book right now called the 5 a .m. Club by Robin Sharma. I don't think
it's a new book. Let's see. When did they publish this thing? 2018. I'm about a
third of the way through it. And something that I read recently and highlighted and
then there was something else I read and wrote down because they were just so good and I thought this is what my listeners need to hear. "With better daily awareness, you can make better daily choices. And with better daily choices, you'll start seeing better daily results." I mean, who doesn't want better results in life? Okay, listen to this. "The beginning of transformation is the increase of perception." Do you see a pattern here? "As you see more, you can materialize more. And once you know better, you can choose better. It starts with you re -engineering your thinking and reinventing your awareness."

through some of that. That's the goal today. And I've got some examples for you
that I kind of brainstormed up here. Once you get your list of negative thoughts,
we're going to do a little exercise to reframe those. Now, just to clarify, I'm not
saying we're going to lie to ourselves. There's no need to lie to yourself. We are
going to weed through and find what is the actual underlying fear or feeling?
And then we're going to make it make sense and we're going to evaluate. Is that
even the truth? Because I'll bet you nine times out of ten, it's not. So let's
pretend that you're one of the ladies who has not been able to do any kind of
exercise because you just hurt. Joint pain is so real during perimenopause. So you
have this negative thought that if I move my body, I'll just feel more pain. I
hurt all the time. Exercise just makes it worse. But what's the truth under that?
If we dig a little deeper, what are you really saying? You're saying, I am afraid
to trust my body. I've been hurting so long that any more discomfort feels
dangerous. But let's reframe that in an empowering way. Movement does not have to mean pain. When you move your body with care, then your body starts to remember how to heal and strengthen itself. Another way to say that would be, my body isn't broken. It's just asking for some gentler attention. And then you can come up with some forms of movement that do feel kind and not punishing, whether it's stretching or just walking out in the neighborhood or dancing through the house while you're cleaning. Because in all honesty, you can move, but you're going to have to be your own cheerleader with that. You're going to have to take that negative thought that says, I can't do it because it hurts too much, and reframe it into, well, I can't do that, but I can do this. I've got some more if you're feeling front of you. Here's another one. I've actually heard this from people. I've tried everything. Nothing works. But they don't even want to bother. They don't even want to try anymore. So what they're, what they're believing, they believe that I failed too many times. This time is not going to be any different. So what they're feeling is they are tired of being disappointed and they don't trust themselves to follow through. But how about this for a twist? Everything that you've tried so far has taught you something about what your body and your mind needs. So this time, when you try something new, you're trying it from a place of wisdom, not desperation. Or to word it another way, it's not that nothing works, it's that you're still discovering what works for you. Do you see the difference in that, the thriving, having resilience versus failing and crumbling into a heap of sadness? I don't want you to be a heap of sadness. Now, maybe you're not feeling so negative and beat up by perimenopause. Maybe you're more like my forward -thinking Branny, who is trying to do her best to plan for the future and keep her body strong for the future. She might say something like, I don't want to be one of those women who's obsessed with aging, but what is she really feeling? I bet that she is afraid of being judged for caring about her appearance or caring about her vitality.

...is something that we heard a lot as Gen X people. Stuck it up, Buttercup. I heard
it a lot. So we might be saying, I just need to push through. What was it that
Hillary Clinton said all the time when she was running for president? Power through. That was her phrase. I just need a power through. We just need to power through. There's this lie that equates rest with weakness. And your body actually needs rest. It needs recovery. And during perimenopause, you need extra rest. You need an extra hour or two of sleep at night because you're going to do this transition. You have chemical changes going on. You have hormone imbalance happening. And you need the rest so that your body can restore. Recovery, instead of saying, I just need to push through. That's the negative thought. The positive reframe is recovery is where strength is rebuilt in the gym, in my hormones, and in my mind. I have to. focusing on myself when life slows down. They're afraid of seeming selfish or lazy, but I have to point out that when you take the time to care for yourself, everything else runs smoother later. When you get enough sleep, you think clearer. You have less brain fog. You have less mood instability. When you take the time to eat right, you have more energy. When you take the time to go to the doctor and get the prescriptions that you need, Everything, everything runs smoother. So we're going to take that negative thought of, I'll start focusing on myself and life slows down, which really is, I'm not going to act selfish and lazy and take care of myself. And we're going to reframe that to caring for myself right now is going to make everything else run smoother. And not just for you, for your spouse, for your kids, for everyone that's in your household is going to benefit them when you take the time to take care of yourself. 

I hope you can take your list of negative thoughts, rework them into something that's positive, truthful, and empowering, and then use that to anchor your mindset into something that serves you well and serves the people you love. See, as women, we have this tendency to always be in performance mode. When the whole family is sick, who's still up taking care of everyone? Us? I mean, I remember going to Walmart to buy flu medicine and Emitrol while i myself was holding my hand over my mouth trying not to barf on the poor little sales lady. It's deeply embedded in most of us to always be in performance mode, and by performance i don't mean like like we're putting on a show. I mean performance as in productivity. We're always the one who is cleaning the house or
making the food or picking up the groceries or picking up the kids or packing a
diaper bag or whatever it is. There's all these tasks. Now, I think that the
millennials and the Gen Zs, they have caught on, and they're making sure that their
partners split the duties. But Gen X and the generation before us, yeah,
we didn't learn that very quick. We unfortunately did all the domestic duties and
worked outside the home. So when I say performance, that's what I mean. We're always performing tasks, performing duties. We're always in go mode. But when we can allow ourselves to stop performing, emotional and physical self and then reconnect with that woman that you are beneath all the noise because you are confident and you are capable and you are radiant and
if you don't think you're any of those things it's because something is varying all
of that and dimming your light.

If you can see my screen i want to talk about
anchoring yourself in the now this is the last part of today's topic midlife can
definitely feel like a storm but this grounding practice should help you drop an
anchor right.
and you're going to focus on your breathing. We've talked about different kinds of
breathings, but basically you're just going to close your eyes and take a deep
breath in, hold it for a heartbeat, and then exhale out and remind yourself that
you are, all those things I just said, you are confident, capable, and radiant.
Take as many breaths as you need. I want you to engage your senses. I want you to
be aware of all your five senses. What can you hear right now? What do you see?
What do you feel? Are you feeling a warm, cozy blanket? You have the snuggly kitty
curled up in your lap or are you in the car? You feel in the heat or the air
blowing on you. What do you smell? Does someone need to vacuum? Is it time to
change out the air freshener? Maybe you're outside and it smells fresh. Smells like
outdoors, smells like ozone. What do you taste? Is your mouth tasting dry because
you've been neglecting your hydration today? Or are you chewing gum right now?
Is it tasting minty fresh? But engage your senses because that helps to anchor you
in the present. Now I want you to think of a mantra or an affirmation that you It
could be, I am safe. I am here. This moment is my moment. Just say it with your
whole heart until your body believes it.
Now, if your mind starts to wander, which, hello, you're a woman, it's probably
going to. Just bring yourself back to the present. Focus on your breathing. Focus on
the five senses. And once you feel like you're calm and anchored, take a couple
more deep breaths and ta -da the a
I will send you a link and you can download all of these worksheets that just went
through. Totally free, no cost, no spamming. I think I've made it pretty clear my
stance on mindset. And if you found any of that's helpful, then you should know I
do offer coaching. I have a six -week program that helps you rewire your identity. I
also have lots of free resources on my website. If you're kind of a self -starter
and you don't want one -on -one coaching, you're welcome to use any of those
resources, however they help you the most. But if your mind has been your worst
enemy lately, it's time to take back control. So send me the mindset message so
that I can send you these worksheets and you can start resetting your own mindset
and learn how to turn your self -doubt into self -trust. All right, my beautiful
friends, that is today's dose of midlife truth. Remember, you are not foggy,
forgotten, or finished. You are just getting lit up for your next season.