Ep 26 - The 4 F Words That Will Change Your Life: Feelings, Flow, Fun & Flexibility in Midlife

What if the key to feeling more alive… wasn’t about doing more—but about allowing more?

In this real, unfiltered solo episode of Midlife Audacity, I’m sharing a lived experience from this past weekend that brought me face-to-face with four powerful forces shaping how we move through life: Feelings, Flow, Fun, and Flexibility.

This isn’t theory. This is what it actually looks like to do the work in real time.

From a full-body cry in the car… to unexpectedly laughing and dancing the night away with friends… this episode explores what happens when you stop suppressing your emotions and start allowing them to move through you.

We talk about:

•  Why most women override their feelings—and how that leads to disconnection 
•  The truth about emotional flow (and how we unknowingly block it) 
•  How one moment doesn’t define your entire day (even if it feels like it does) 
•  The surprising connection between emotional release and experiencing more fun 
•  Why flexibility—not control—is the gateway to presence, freedom, and receiving more from life 

This conversation also ties into the energetic shift into Taurus season and what it invites us into: slowing down, feeling more deeply, and being present with what is.

If you’ve ever felt stuck, numb, or like you’re holding it all together on the outside but disconnected on the inside… this episode is for you.

This is your reminder:
 You’re not here to suppress your life.
 You’re here to experience it.

Soulful Sunday Newsletter:  Each week, you’ll hear from me in a way that’s simple, intentional, and easy to stay connected to.

Book Study Seminars:  Soul School has opened up new room called, Book Study Seminars.  This room meets four times a year to read, study and unpack not only the words, but our lives, together.  Our spring theme is identity expansion and we start May 7th. For four weeks, we’ll study together using, The Big Leap by Gay Henricks, as our anchor text. Together, we will explore what has been keeping you in your upper limit, how your identity may be capping your expansion, and how to begin feeling safe stepping into your next level self.

Soul School: A curriculum for midlife women who are ready to remember their wisdom, protect their energy, project their power and come back into alignment. You don’t need fixing. You need to remember. Open for enrollment NOW.

Follow @the_conscious_coach_ 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Before we jump into today's episode, I want to share something really special that's happening inside of our community. We just wrapped up the first book of the year, The Surrender Experiment by Michael A. Singer, and it was the perfect place to begin this work of awareness. Learning how to soften control, notice the voice in our head, and allow life to move, it set the foundation for everything that we're building on. Next month, we're stepping into the big leap by Gay Hendricks. This study is all about the upper limit problem. You know, those subconscious beliefs and identity patterns that quietly keep you playing smaller than you're meant to. We're going to uncover how these show up in real time and more importantly, how they keep you from operating in your zone of genius, which is where you are meant to live and lead from. You deserve to feel aligned, energized, and fully expressed in your life. And the truth is, most women are not living there consistently. That's why this room matters. Because being in a space where this work is practiced, not just talked about, creates real change. So if you're a woman who's ready to stop spinning in survival mode and start thriving, to start stepping into your soul power and expand into the next version of yourself, this is your invitation. I'll drop the link to join us in the show notes below. All right, let's get started with today's episode. Welcome back to Midlife Audacity. I'm your host, Celeste Dona, teacher, writer, speaker, and guide for women who are ready to rise into their next chapter boldly, soulfully, and unapologetically. Hey, hey, welcome back. All right, you guys, I have to start by apologizing. I was not able to get this episode out this morning, and that's because I had no voice on Sunday to record this show. So I apologize, but I definitely want to get into today's episode because it was something that I experienced in real time, and I really think that there's value in sharing. So this weekend, I was living all the things that I talk about on this show. So we're gonna get into some of my favorite F-words, and no, it's not the F-word that you're thinking of. Although that is one of my favorites, if I'm gonna be honest. We're talking all about feelings, flow, fun, and flexibility. So let me set the stage. Last week, and maybe it's just me, but I highly doubt it, there was, I could feel a really big shift in energy. And it makes sense considering that this was the week where we were entering Taurus energy, and we were leaving behind the Aries energy. And I was driving Saturday morning, I was running some errands, and I was sitting in my car, and all of a sudden, I just started crying like a full body, no holding back, not trying to censor it like a full rush of emotion. And here's the thing: a lot of us don't allow ourselves to do that as much as we should. We override our feelings, we push them down, we censor them, we often distract ourselves. And the reason why we don't allow is because feelings can be really confronting, right? And they sometimes can like bring you to your knees. And somewhere along the way, a lot of us learned that it was much safer to avoid them. It was much safer to not let ourselves feel so deeply because when you allow yourself to feel, you are immediately stepping into this unchartered territory. And it's uncomfortable because it's so vulnerable, right? Letting our emotions out is like taking the armor off and really being exposed for who we are. And so many of us have learned to keep the armor on, to keep ourselves guarded, to keep ourselves protected. And it's a lot safer to go through life that way, to go through life sort of numb and a little bit disconnected, right? Um, but that cry that I experienced on Saturday was so necessary, and it really had been building over the course of the week. And something that I want to bring up, and I actually wrote a post about this this week as well, because I knew I could feel this energy in my body. We often will define our entire day around one emotion, but in reality, we are human and we are meant to be experiencing the full spectrum of emotion. So in any given day, you can be happy and also sad and melancholy. You can feel frustrated and angry, but you can also feel joy and feel love and feel gratitude. But so many times we will say, I had a bad day. And it makes you really think, did you really have a bad day? Like your entire day was filled with negative emotions, or was it just one moment, one hard moment? And I remember I was working with a coach a while back, and he brought this up to me, and it was very eye-opening because the reality is that I didn't really have an entire bad day. My day wasn't filled with just one emotion, one negative emotion. It was filled with a multitude of emotions. But as humans, we also tend to focus on the negative as opposed to the positive. And so we will actually define our entire day as being bad when in reality it was really just one moment, right? Um, and emotion when we allow emotion, emotion can be such an amazing teacher. It can be such an amazing teacher. It shows us where we're holding on, it shows us where we're being triggered, it shows us sometimes the mirror, right? Being held up to ourselves. Um, it shows us where we're expanding, but only if we're willing to feel it. And so on Saturday, when I felt those emotions kind of coming to the surface, I could have very easily pushed them right back down. I could have just stuffed them back, it would have been safe, and I could have gone on with my day. But I know, and I had been feeling this kind of bubbling all week, and I knew that those emotions were grounded in an energy that needed to be released. I knew that the energy that I was holding in my body all week needed to move up and out. And by stuffing them and suppressing them, I would have allowed myself to stay in that uncomfortable um state of negativity far longer than I needed to. And so it was in that moment, that conscious decision to make a choice, to let those emotions up and out, that actually really became so freeing. And this really brings me to my next word, which is flow. Because when you think about it, feelings are meant to flow, they are meant to move, they are not meant to be stuck inside of you, suppressed, they are meant to move through us, but when we resist them, we interrupt the flow. And I feel like this is where so many of us get stuck. You feel this uncomfortableness like sort of brewing, but instead of letting it like move up and out, we clamp it down, we tighten, we try to control, we push it down, we distract ourselves so that we don't have to feel, right? Or maybe we use some form of um numbing, like maybe we have a couple of drinks, or we take a gummy, or we smoke a little bit, just so that we don't have to feel the emotion. And this may be hitting a nerve for some of you, and I get it, because feeling emotions can be really difficult. But then what happens is we end up walking through life a little shut down, a little guarded, and disconnected. And to be honest, that is detrimental to any kind of thriving, right? Because you're not showing up as who you are, and you're not letting yourself grow through the uncomfortableness. If you keep shutting down anytime something becomes uncomfortable, you are teaching your body, you are reinforcing in your body that it's okay that it's not safe to share. It's not safe to be exposed, it's not safe to be truly you, it's not safe to be authentic. And every time you shut your emotions down, you're teaching your body that it's not safe. And over time, this builds a very, very thick piece of armor that ultimately interferes with your ability to receive and it interferes with your ability to connect. It will certainly interfere with your ability to have authentic relationships, it will interfere with your ability to communicate because you can never really express yourself because it feels too threatening to do so. It shows up in so many different categories, right? And flow is not something that you find, it's something you stop interrupting. And for me, that moment in the car was all about flow. I was literally just letting it up and out, and it was ugly, and it was uncomfortable, and I was like, I can't believe I am letting myself kind of lose it. But it was so necessary because the release is so much more valuable, and every time you do that, you're teaching your system that it's safe to do that, it's safe to let yourself be authentic and real and human and human. And it may not be pretty, right? But it's real. And here's the really, really interesting part about this share, and this is what I really wanted to get to. So that was in the morning. I had that ugly, honest, raw cry. And because I made that conscious decision to let my emotions flow, my second F word, I was able to shift my energy. And later that night, we were going, we were heading down to Jersey, and we were gonna watch this live 70s rock show, which was a cover band in Asbury Park. And all week, I told you, I was feeling really off. My energy was not the way that I normally um hold myself. And I had said to my husband, you know, I really feel like the wind has been knocked out of my sails. Like I don't even want to go. I I don't feel, I don't feel good. And little did I know that because I was able to have that release in the car in the morning, all of my energy shifted. And so later that day, when I was out with friends, I ended up having such a good time. Like it was so freeing. It was like the weight had been lifted off of my shoulders. The shift in energy was so noticeable to me, to me. Because early in their day, earlier in the day, I was not in that place. In fact, I wasn't even sure that I really was gonna go. Um, so that was why this was so valuable to share with you guys. And because I had allowed myself to feel earlier in the day, I didn't bring that stuck negative energy with me into the night. And because I had made that conscious decision to let myself feel, I was able to actually prioritize fun. My third F-word for today's episode: fun. I had so much fun. So what I came to realize was that when you allow your feelings to show up and you honor them and you let them flow, my second F-word, then what ends up happening is you start to move into fun. You are allowing yourself then freedom and fun. I didn't even plan freedom, but it falls into this to this podcast very nicely with that F-word. It really allows for freedom and for fun to start happening. So let me ask you, how often do you do that? Do you release your feelings or you allow your feelings to really flow in real time when they're happening? Like you step into an awareness of the whole spectrum of emotion and feelings that you are experiencing on any given day. And without censoring those feelings, you let them flow. The good, the bad, and the ugly. You let them flow. And I'm curious that on the days that you really do do that, I mean, take take this as an experiment, you know, experiment with yourself. You know, check in and say, oh my God, on the days that I allow my feelings to flow, do I end up having more fun and freedom? I'm curious if you will have the same result that I ended up having. So it was really about giving myself the permission to do that. And the result was fantastic. So this brings me to my last F word of this show, and that is flexibility. And this happens to me, my word for 2026. And I didn't fully understand how powerful it was going to be until I started to practice it because flexibility is not um my strong suit. Like that doesn't come easy for me. I am someone who tends to thrive in structure, and I do like predictability, and I like having a plan, and I like having things set up and knowing what the outcome might be. Not all the time, but a lot of the time. And what I've really learned about flexibility is it's not just about being easygoing, it's about being present. That's the biggest lesson that I've learned with this word of flexibility. It's about being present and not gripping so tightly to how things should go. It's about allowing life to move and then kind of moving with it. And it's interesting that in my book study seminar, the first book we picked was the surrender project, the surrender experiment, because so much of that book was about allowing life, right, and moving with it. Not gripping so tightly to what you think it's supposed to be, but noticing that things are showing up for you and saying, hey, if it's here, there's a reason. I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow it this and see where it leads. And that's not usually something that I'm comfortable with doing, but after having read that book and knowing that flexibility is my word for 2026, I have been practicing this a little bit more. And you know, it's funny because when you're rigid, you resist, but when you're flexible, you receive. And this last week, and actually it's been for two weeks now, I've been listening to the same hypnosis. It's like a guided hypnosis, and it's all centered around intention. And what I'm realizing is this. The more flexible I am, the more available I am. I'm more available to being in the moment. I'm more available to the experiences that come my way. I'm more available to my feelings. And I'm definitely more available to the fun in my life or the fun that I could be having in my life. Flexibility as I'm practicing it more and more in real time is actually creating that space. A space where life is actually happening and I'm a part of it. I'm actually a part of it. So this entire episode was me really experiencing all that I believe and teach and have read, but really seeing it play out in real time this week and then into the weekend was fascinating. And I had to share it because I would ask each and every one of you, try it on for size. See how it fits. See if you allow yourself to experience the full spectrum of your feelings throughout the day. Experience it all. Let all of those feelings flow. Let them be expressed. And then see if you if that leads to more fun and more freedom in your day. And the more flexible you are, right, the more available you are to experiencing all of these things. So that's the work. That's the episode. That's what I wanted to share. This is not, you know, something that is gonna be polished and scripted and neat. Hey guys, it's messy. It's messy in the middle. The work is messy while you're moving into this new version of yourself, and that's okay, right? That's okay. You're allowed to be a C student, you're allowed to be messy. So roll up your sleeves, get into it. Who cares? Right? This is about you allowing yourself to really experience life at its fullest. And the more that you allow your feelings to really flow when they show up, you are doing yourself such good. You're doing yourself such good. And that's really where the magic is. Honestly, that's really where the magic happens, is in that first step of awareness and then making that conscious choice to allow the feelings up and out, right? Let them flow, and then see what happens, see what unfolds. And I am so curious to see how your days turn out when you start to implement this regularly into uh your daily routine, your daily practices. So, like always, if this episode resonated, share it with a friend, leave a review, send me a message and let me know if you're trying this out and how's it going. I would love to hear from you. And remember, we are doing all of this work inside of our book study seminars, which will be starting again May 7th. So join us. I'm excited to see what unfolds. Okay, bye bye.