Ep 31 - Why Midlife Women Stay Stuck in Survival Mode | Nervous System Healing, Joy & Authenticity with Jen Liss

What if the reason you feel stuck isn’t laziness, lack of motivation, or fear of failure… but a nervous system that simply doesn’t feel safe receiving more?

In this vulnerable and deeply honest episode of Midlife Audacity, Celeste sits down with authenticity coach and business mentor Jen Liss to unpack the subconscious programming so many women carry around worthiness, hard work, visibility, joy, and success.

Together they explore:
• Why survival mode keeps women playing small
• The connection between nervous system safety and authentic living
• How guilt and people pleasing are often rooted in childhood conditioning
• Why fun, ease, and joy can actually feel unsafe
• The hidden beliefs many women carry around money and worth
• Simple nervous system regulation tools to feel more grounded and empowered
• Midlife as a powerful season of identity expansion and truth telling

This conversation blends neuroscience, somatics, spirituality, personal growth, and raw real-life reflection in a way that feels both healing and empowering.

If you’ve ever questioned your worth, struggled to trust yourself, or felt disconnected from your joy… this episode will meet you exactly where you are.

Connect with Jen:
Instagram: @Jennifer.Liss_
Website: JenLiss.com

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 summer theme is identity FLOW and we start May 7th. For four weeks, we’ll study together using, The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, as our anchor text. Together, we will explore reconnecting to creativity, intuition, fun, movement, and authentic expression.  

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

Welcome back to Midlife Audacity. I'm your host, Celeste Dota, teacher, writer, speaker, and guide for women who are ready to rise into their next chapter boldly, soulfully, and unapologetically. I sit down with authenticity coach, business mentor, and the host of the F Around and Get Paid podcast, Jennifer Liszt. This is a powerful conversation about nervous system safety, people pleasing, inherited beliefs around worthiness, and why so many women stay trapped in survival mode even when their soul is craving more. There were moments in this conversation where I found myself being coached in real time, and honestly, I let myself go there because I think that's what makes these conversations so meaningful. Not really polished, not perfect, just real. And I didn't even know it was going to happen, but when it did, I was so incredibly grateful. So if you've ever felt stuck between who you were taught to be and who your soul is asking you to become, this episode is absolutely for you. Let's dive in.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Well, welcome, Jen. Thank you so much for having me on. In short, I have a podcast called F Around and Get Paid. That's what I tell people to do. Have more fun, make more money, do it the easy way.

SPEAKER_00 1:34

Right. That is the most simple way to talk about what you do. Love it. I love it. So let's let's start there actually. Like, how did you get to this point? Because I know your background was hairdressing and then marketing. And now you are running your own coaching and running your podcast. So take us through a little bit of that journey. And was there like a pivotal aha wake-up call that you were like, you know what? This isn't really feeling good anymore. Where did that go? How did that work out?

SPEAKER_01 2:10

Yeah, such a great question. And really, it was a double decker. My moment happened twice. So the first time was when I was doing hair and I love doing hair. It was such a phenomenal career. It's what I had always wanted to do. And I built a successful business and I had clients who I loved. But one day I just realized I was, it was actually one of my favorite clients was sitting in my chair. She sat down and I had this thought in my head. I hope she doesn't want anything different. And I instantly was like, something's wrong because I love her. I love doing creative things. I had rainbow-colored hair and I had lots of clients who had really fun colored hair, but I found myself not wanting what I had always wanted. And I it was a little signal in my head that basically triggered me to completely leave the hair business. I went back to school. I went into marketing. But then the same thing happened about four years later. I was building my marketing career. Things are going really well. I was really loving what I was doing. I was traveling for work. I was writing scripts. I was on these sets where we had disco balls and confetti, and I had written the script and we were like bringing it to life, and it was so much fun. And I found myself hating my job again. And I was like, okay, two times is a pattern. What's happening here? And that led me down a journey of discovering why I am not having fun and getting paid. And so yeah, we can dig into that as much as you want.

SPEAKER_00 3:38

So fascinating about what you just shared was that you recognize that there was like this pattern happening where you didn't feel that spark anymore in what you were doing. And then you made a change. I think a lot of people notice that that's happening, but they don't actually take any kind of action toward changing it. So what was what was it like in you that was like, I cannot do this anymore. I have to change because that's not an easy thing to do.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Yeah, it definitely is not, but I have a very strong intuition and I always have. So I will credit my deep sense uh intuitively, I just knew. And I tell people this. There will be people that are like, I don't know if I should quit my job yet. I don't know, I don't know. I'm like, when the day comes, you will know. And you, and if you just tell yourself that, I tell clients this all the time. Like, you will know when the day comes. You absolutely will. And the more that you can trust in that, the more that you're going to know. Now, what you did say that was different from me, that is different from some people, I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand it, which is why it happened twice. And then when it began to happen a third time, and when this thing that is happening still comes up for me, I now know what it is and I can recognize what it is, which is that I have a very, very, very deep inherited from generations belief that you have to work hard to make money. You cannot have fun and make money. I have it right now in my coaching cohort that where it is going so easy and so fun, and everybody's having such massive, huge transformations that I started to find last week ways to make it hard. And my husband was like, Hello, do you know what you're doing right now? You're like making it harder than it needs to be. And I'm like, there it is again. So we all have these little awarenesses that come up for us. This one in particular is mine, and it's a lot of people's, which is why it's my passion to help people understand that they can have fun and make money. Your life gets to be fun, it gets to be easy. And in fact, that's the way it's intended to be.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

Yes, I totally totally agree with you. And I I also have one of those um sort of subconscious beliefs going on in the background for myself as well. There's definitely a part of my wiring and generational for sure, where I've recognized that I won't let myself make the money that I know that I can make, because if it comes too easily, like then what was that? Like, where was the reward in that? So I associated always, yes. And I always and I associated it with my worth. So a little bit of a backstory, and a lot of my audience knows this. I am a teacher by trade and I've been teaching for 20 for 31 years. Um, but 12 years ago, I started getting involved in a network marketing business. And it came at a really pivotal time in my life. I was looking for a distraction. There were a lot of things that were going on in my personal life that weren't feeling so great. And this came along, and this felt new and exciting and fun. And I was drawn to it. And at the time, I didn't know that it was a distraction. I just felt drawn to this opportunity. And throughout those 10 years of working in the network marketing world, I learned a ton. I'm forever grateful for having that experience. It taught me about money, it introduced me to the world of personal development. It brought me amazing coaches like Tracy Litt and Kathy Heller. And so I'm so grateful for my time spent there. But what I recognized was that that entire 10-year span was me having to prove my worth by working so hard. I burnt the candle at both ends. I was up early. I was going to bed late. I was doing my day job. I was working so hard for the reward that I was getting. And I finally stopped and stepped away and said, huh, isn't this interesting, Celeste? And I got really curious about why I was so driven, why I was so obsessed with this opportunity. And it took, you know, a year of sitting in a lot of stillness to recognize that it was because I had a worthiness issue. You know, it was deep down, it was a worthiness of like, oh, if I work hard and I prove that I can be successful and I can be this entrepreneur and I can earn all this money outside of my teaching career, that like I'm worth something. And those are all just a lot of like old programs that are we're running in the background that were really just lies.

SPEAKER_01 9:00

Yeah, for sure. They are lies. They are lies that we're looking through. Can I can I just challenge one little thing? And I think that you probably already know this. I'm just gonna point it out though for the listener, because sometimes we can say things like that whole 10 period was just to 10-year period was just to learn this lesson. And then we can question that and say, is that all that 10-year period was for? What else was gained during that time? What else did Celeste become? What else did you learn? What other skills were gained that you now have that you would not have had without that experience? Is there anything?

SPEAKER_00 9:38

Yeah, oh, for sure. For sure. I gained, I gained knowledge of social media. I gained how to network and talk to clients. I gained um a knowledge in the sales realm that I had never experienced before because that's totally outside of the realm of teaching. Um, I learned about e-commerce. I learned about digital marketing. I learned um and all the personal development stuff that I learned in terms of, you know, how we work on the inside. And the more that we grow on the inside, you know, we can grow our business. So, you know, our business actually grows to the extent that we actually grow ourselves. And so that was one of the biggest takeaways that I learned from that experience. Um so, like when you're talking, I mean, I appreciate that question so much because I think that that's really valuable, right? We usually walk away from an experience with multiple, multiple lessons.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

You know, and in terms of part of the work that I do is helping people recognize what are the gifts, talents, skills, experiences that you have in your bag of tricks that can earn you money, that you can F around and get paid with, that you can have have fun, have a good time using the gifts and the talents and the skills that you have gained along your unique path. So if we don't do the reflection, if we just say, oh, it was just to learn this really hard lesson, and we don't recognize all of the beautiful things that we learned along the way, it's much harder for us to see very clearly, oh my gosh, look what I have here. Look at all of the skills that I have. Um, part of this for me comes from my grandfather would always say, I'm a jack of all trades and a master of none. And my great-grandfather said the same thing. And my I have other relatives that say the same thing. My uncle says the same thing. So I have all of these relatives have who have had this breadth of wide experiences, but they never saw that they were a jack of all trades and a master of one. They're a master of becoming really good, really fast at a lot of things. And that's that's my skill. I have that skill too. And so it's in it's something that I grew up with, I learned, and now I can recognize that that's my own skill. A lot of people don't see that when you change careers, huge skill set that you just gained. We sometimes just look at it as, oh, I gave up on that thing and now I'm doing this thing. Right. A lot of people who have jumped from job to job. So it's it's one of my passion points is really doing the reflection, that healthy reflection that helps us to see all of the gifts. The you broke free of something massive, all of those gifts were in service to that massive thing. You also got all of these really cool things along the way.

SPEAKER_00 12:24

Yeah, I love that. And is that so when you are working with people, whether it's in your expansion room community or whether it's one-on-one coaching, walk us through a little bit about how you take someone through that journey. And I'm sure it starts with this reflection piece of like, let's let's step back and look at what is it that you've been through, because oftentimes what we've been through ends up being our greatest asset.

SPEAKER_01 12:52

Yeah, there is definitely some of that. I think a lot of self-development focuses there. I think that we don't focus as much on the more positive things. So I actually coach it's following the light, it's following your joy. That's my focus in coaching, is helping people to identify those things. So the very first thing that I have people do, they take a quiz and it helps them to understand their energy archetype. Anyone who's listening, if you want to, you can go to genlist.com slash quiz, understand your energy that you operate through. So we do that. And then the very next thing that we do is we identify their baseline joy. Okay what is joy for you? What feels like joy for you? What feels fun for you? What feels like it could be freedom, it could be peace, it could be all kinds of different things. So I walk them through that and then create a meditation that they do every single day. So that helps them to expand the joy. That's why we call it the expansion herb. So that's the first thing that I do. And then we begin to do some other reflection. So it's a little bit different than we've, and I do, by the way, very deep somatic release work and releasing mental prisons that we keep ourselves in, one of which, for for you, you know, that was that um the worthiness related piece. Right. Um I do believe that those come at different levels as you expand, you hit it again and again and again. So to be free of it forever, maybe possibly, but for most of us, the one lesson that we came here to learn, we're gonna keep learning it. So I do do that work, but we start, we start with joy. We start with because most people don't know.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:27

Most people just don't know. We haven't spent any time. We spent a lot of time learning math when we sucked at math or learning reading when we sucked at reading. We didn't spend a lot of time really focusing on why does this light me up? Yep. Why do I love that? Yeah. And why am I good at that? What do I love to do? What is it about that thing that feels so good to me? And that's actually where money flows and where ease flows, and where all of those beautiful things. That's how we create our most expansive life.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

And do you find that a lot of women that you work with um also aren't tapped into their dreams, what they see for themselves, their vision. Talk a little bit about that, like the vision casting that you do with them, because I think that's a big part of what keeps people back. They'll be like, I don't really know what I want, but they do. They just have never taken the time to allow themselves to bask in those dreams. They see because it doesn't feel safe. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So talk about that. The big realization, the big download for me, I'm climbing a hill, which is like so funny that I'm like, I'm like huffing my way up a hill and I had chosen the harder path, yeah, than the easier path. And I'm just like huffing up this hill, and I suddenly had this download that doing hard things is easier for me than doing easy things. Like I'm actually more comfortable being uncomfortable than I am being comfortable. So that was the download for me that has really shifted my work because that a lot of us have a discomfort with joy, a discomfort with so we can say joy, we can say fun, we can say ease, we can say desire, and then we take it to pleasure. And so it starts with that we feel unsafe, shameful, uh, doubting ourselves, all of these feelings around pleasure, desire, joy. How could you know what you want if you don't feel safe feeling pleasure, if you don't feel safe feeling joy, if you don't feel safe having fun, if that feels uncomfortable to you, if you'll you feel guilty. Yeah. I did grow up. I mean, God bless my grandmother and my mother, but I grew up very Catholic. And so guilt and shame is very much in the culture of that religion. We actually beat our chest in that religion and say, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy. Let's just like get rid of that since I said it out loud. But like that is something that in that religion you say. So I grew up with that very much steeped in, and so with discomfort to me personally, and and a lot of women that I work with, it feels more comfortable than having a good time. So our dreams like if you don't know what you want, if you don't know what you like, if you don't know what you enjoy, if you can't really name it, feel it, and claim it, you're going to have a very difficult time dreaming and expanding into those dreams. Or are we can only create the life as big as we dream it, yeah, as big as we visualize it. Our brain will create whatever you believe and dream. So if if you you can only dream as big as your joy, too. So if you can't do that, you're gonna have a hard time.

SPEAKER_00 17:38

Yeah, 100%. And I and I and I can definitely resonate that like all that you just mentioned, I totally resonate with that. I grew up very Catholic as well. Um, you know, and nothing against religion, but you're right, there was a lot of I'm not worthy um subconscious programming. But I remember questioning a lot of that as a kid. I remember questioning all of that because I was one of those very curious um disruptors. Like I never took anything for base value. I wanted to know, but why? But why? Like, and I and I never had gotten a solid answer from my parents when I questioned, but why do we do this? Why do we say that? What does this prayer really mean? Um and I left the the Catholic, the Roman Catholic Church for a very long time because I didn't feel like what I was doing and saying were of value. Like I wasn't, I didn't buy into the the whole the whole preaching, the concept of what what was going on there. And and because no one could give me a good answer, it it didn't feel right. And I definitely go with my feelings. Like that's a big part of who I am. And so because it didn't feel right, I was like, I'm gonna step back. Now that caused a lot of confusion and um problems in my family in terms of like they wanted me to be back in the church, and so there was that guilt. Uh, there was a lot of guilt. I remember my mom who listens to this podcast, but she'll probably remember this, um, you know, saying to me things like, Well, for Mother's Day, all I want is for you to come to church. You know, like, um, okay, but you know where I'm at with my religious stance right now. That's not, that doesn't feel good to me. But those were the kinds of things that I um I heard, you know, and so there was this overwhelming amount of guilt going on in the background. And that that over time does damage, you know, here hearing those kinds of things definitely, and I remember that was guilt was something that always played a part in my decision making. Like I was always nervous about doing something out of the ordinary or, you know, out of the box because is this what society wants? Is this what my parents would accept? Is this what you know people expect of me? And that never leads to any place good either. A lot of my personal development work was about around that, around that. And what I had to do, and I want you to talk about this because you're so good at this, is I had to learn to provide safety in my body and regulate my central nervous system to then allow myself to feel other things like joy instead of guilt. So talk about that a little bit because I think that that is so critical in our ability to experience joy and and you know, pleasure and ease. If we don't work on our body and keep, you know, get ourselves safe to feel that. I don't think we're ever going to be able to fully.

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Yeah. And let me let's use this as an example. Thank you for your honesty. I appreciate that so much, and to your beautiful mother, too. So, what happened there is that you made a decision. Something didn't make sense to you. And so, therefore, you made a decision from your own power, from your own choice. You discerned this doesn't feel good to me. I'm not going to do this anymore, at least for a while. You know, I'm not going to. Do this anymore. But then when somebody comes to us and says, Essentially, for Mother's Day, this is what I want from you. What we what we understand in our system is in order to gain the love of my mother, I have to override my own discernment. I can't now be in integrity with myself. I have to actually be out of integrity with myself and my own decision for myself, my own powerful decision that I made, in order to earn the love to be loved, to simply be loved by my caregiver, by the person who brought me into the world, which our system also recognizes as I will die if they no longer love me. Because as children, we literally need them to love us. That's why babies are cute. That's why pubies are cute. We need someone to caregive for us. So we have to have that love, or there's no survival. So Celeste's system said, must be loved, must do what mom wants in order to survive. So there it's actual to your nervous system. This is where it comes down to safety. So that I can survive in this world, I must go to church. Do we see how that like the system is recognizing that? Yeah. So then now what it also is the system recognizing, it is not safe for me to follow my desires. It is not safe for me to be integrity, to be integrous with myself. Myself. Yeah. With myself. So now your wants don't matter. You have to actually, in fact, go against your own wants in order to survive. Your system is not safe to be in truth. Your system is only safe to override your own truth in service to others so that you can be loved, so that you can survive. So it sounds it's very complicated, but this is what your system is doing all day, every day, in all kinds of ways. If we've not brought some awareness to the ways we're doing it, it all comes down to survival in our nervous system. Your nervous system is here to keep you alive. It doesn't care about you thriving, it doesn't give a crap about your dreams, doesn't give a crap about your joy and your pleasure. It just wants you to live. So I've got to completely override all of my desires so that I can survive. So it doesn't matter how happy you are. It just matters that you're here.

SPEAKER_00 24:17

And that's such a great point. Thank you so much for sharing that. I think my audience really benefits from you explaining that process. I feel like I'm getting some live coaching going on through this podcast.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Thank you for being willing. How amazing is that?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

I'm like, this is this is like coaching in real time by Jen Lis.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

You've already, I mean, you've broken yourself free in in so many ways. And that doesn't mean, again, that you won't return to faith. And maybe you have. And we we find it in new ways. But I do think this is important for us to hear so that we can be sovereign, powerful beings who have choice. And also for parents to hear that you're your children, like this is what's happening in their systems, it's what's happening in their bodies. Um, I I work with business owners who are dealing with some of these things. It comes up in social media, it comes up when they go to be seen, and when they go to sell, they feel like they're gonna be rejected. They're if I'm not loved, then I'm rejected. If people don't like me, if I come in and offer something and they don't want it. So all of these things that it's like primordial things that happen from the time that you're you're born and you come here that we gain, we we carry those into adulthood and it shows up in ways that you just don't realize that it is in your relationships.

SPEAKER_00 25:35

Yeah, and it carries through, like you said, it carries through in so many facets of your life. So while you might not realize it, it's it's overflowing into your ability to be a strong, successful businesswoman. It's it's overflowing into the relationships that you have, whether it's with your spouse or whether it's with your children or whether it's with colleagues at work, right? It overflows into all these different arenas. And that's why I'm such a believer in this work, in being a part of a community that works with this, one-on-one coaching. I am such an advocate of people, you know, working on this at the core so that, and then when they do, they see, oh my God, this is this was impacting this, this was impacting that. And I think it's one of the reasons why what we said earlier, people don't take that leap of faith and change the career or step out of what they have been doing for so long because they don't feel safe. They aren't good at feeling uncomfortable, and they'd rather stay at something that is just meh, right? That Super Bowl commercial, the meh, and just bringing them mediocre, right? Rather than miraculous.

SPEAKER_01 27:05

Yes, because again, your nervous system doesn't care about miraculous. Your soul knows, your soul, your heart is all about the miraculous, but your nervous system is absolutely not. So leaving a job, changing careers will feel like death to your nervous system. It feels like actual life or death. So to override that can feel so, so, so, so scary. And so the familiar hell is way better than the unfamiliar heaven that you could possibly step into at the nervous system level. So if you don't have awareness of that and you don't have practices and tools, some of the beautiful ones that you have and teach and have grown with, those kinds of practices, nervous system regulation practices, will support you in being able to touch base with the real part of you that can make educated decisions for your future versus just continuously acting based on just the nervous system, the amygdala part of the brain that's in fight, flight, freeze all the time and stopping you from doing the things that you know deep down you really want to do.

SPEAKER_00 28:09

Yeah. And I and I think what you said is so important. Like, you know, we are constantly working with that programming, which is simply there to just keep us alive. You know, it's like, oh, look, here's a saber-toothed tiger, you know, and like you now, you know, you now can run and be protected. Like it's merely just for survival. And it doesn't give a shit about our dreams or our our passions or what brings us joy. It's really about giving us that safety. And that safety is not always what's best for us. You know, it doesn't, that doesn't match our soul's desire, our divine assignment. So I love educating women on this because once they understand that, and then they get the coaching either through you, through me, through another coach that provides this kind of uh work, they really do end up seeing, oh my God, I can, I can fuck around and get paid, right? I can go out into the world and show, show my light and be big and do the things that really bring me joy. And oh wait, I don't have to work so hard. Wait a minute. This can be fun and easy, and I don't have to prove myself, you know? And when I say that, I also want to cave that caveat that with that doesn't mean that you don't work. It doesn't mean that you just sit back. And I think that this is a big misconception that happens when people talk about manifesting and like really living out your divine assignment. That doesn't mean that you are sitting on the couch watching Netflix, but like, you know, money's just getting deposited automatically into your bank account. Um, there's work that's involved in doing those things, but it's it's such a different kind of work. You know, I have found that it it's oh, it feels good. I enjoy sitting down and doing that kind of work. It brings me joy, and I don't, there's nothing hard about it. Now, like you, I will go to work to make it hard, believe me. I've done my share of that. Like, oh, let me see. I think I should put another system in place. Oh, I think I have to do this. Take a depth, step back, Celeste. Take a deep breath, you know, like what's going on here? And it's because my nervous system has again reached that point, you know. And I think you mentioned this before, like we can reach that point several times over. You know, every time that we expand into a new identity and a new version of ourselves, all of that's going to come back. But I think that the more times that we go through that, the more we're able to recognize it quicker, like you said, and then then actually troubleshoot it in a way that allows us to recover rather than sit in the mock and dwell on what's not working and I have to make this harder and we end up self-sabotaging along the way.

SPEAKER_01 31:35

Yes, exactly. And it's actually why with my clients I work with, especially when we're working with really difficult things. So got a business owner, wants to grow their business, they're really struggling with taking the sales actions. We'll go back to sales because that's where it really comes up. Really struggling to take the sales actions that I that I know that I could be taking in order to grow my business. What I teach is not just at the big level of like, I'm leveling up into this brand new identity expansion, but in the little moments, we always regulate first, do a right nervous system regulation practice, which we can talk about a couple if you want to. Nervous system regulation, do the thing, regulate again, nervous system sandwich. It's like a regulation sandwich. Uh, we we talk about it keeping us regular. And then you take your regular sandwich. And if you do that, and I'm you've worked with Tracy Litt. I know that she teaches something very similar to this too. But when you do that over and over and over, it becomes a habit that you're always supporting yourself and feeling nice and grounded, connecting back to the heart, connecting back to the soul, getting out of that amygdala part, activating the front part of the brain. We're nice and regulated. We go do the thing. On the other side of it, we've got some activation in the body, and we come and we we're with all the emotions that are there and we regulate back down. That ultimately, building that little sandwich, ultimately expands your window. And so you're expanding your window gradually, action by action by action. Over time, that window is so much bigger, and you don't have to have this huge roller coaster breakthrough. You might still have those sometimes. They do happen, but you won't always have to go there because you're just slowly regulating it over time.

SPEAKER_00 33:17

Yeah, I love that. I think that that's such a concrete way to describe moving the needle. And like you said, it's the compound effect. So it's doing that over and over again. The more moves that you make in that direction, they become habits. Those habits actually become your daily actions that then change your reality. So you keep doing that over and over, right? Then eventually your outcome is going to shift because you've changed a pattern. You know, you've changed a pattern inside of your day-to-day. Um, I'm a big believer in microhabit stacking. So I teach in my mastermind, I teach them about creating a small microhabit and it doesn't have to be big and it doesn't have to like tear your world apart, but something really small that they can do every single day. And then once that becomes the habit, we stack another building block on top so that little by little, over time, we are now changing the actions that are going to then move the needle to changing our reality. So I think that that's very similar. I love that you add you had the whole nervous system regulation part in there.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

Yeah, I love that. I love the idea of, I think sometimes they call that habit stacking. My take on that, since we're on the topic. Yeah. And that this will show you the joy because I think sometimes fun, like we get real serious in the nervous system work. And again, I do big deep release, emotional release work with people, but fun is your trapdoor because everything is easy when you are having a good time. You naturally are regulated, you naturally are creative, you naturally, when you're having a good time, this part of your brain, the front part of your brain, that prefrontal cortex, is turned on. We've got the the, is it the right side of the brain? I always mix those up. Uh, turned on, like the amygdala is turned down when we're having fun naturally. So I call this sprinkle stacking. When you're having a good time and you're you're in flow with something, add another thing. So maybe this helps some people with their habit stack. It's like you don't always have to do like a hard thing in your habit stack. It can sometimes be a fun thing. Actually, what if this week, when I'm having fun, I go do another fun thing? What if I could extend the amount of time that I'm spending on this thing because I've got an extra five minutes. So, like after this podcast interview, I might turn around and go record a podcast because I'm already in flow. I've already been having conversation. I've got ideas that I'm building. So for me, maybe some of your clients can build on that concept here and there and see, oh, maybe it doesn't always have to be the hard thing because we just focus so much on the tough thing. Yeah, the things that are hard in life. And oh, I've got to work over here. Yep. What if we build the muscle of working in the other direction where a little, we're a little all of us are a little bit atrophied. I like to say that fun is every adult's least favorite F-word. Yeah. It's like, when did that be fun? You're like, I am having fun. Don't you see how fun I am? With our gritted teeth.

unknown 36:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:37

Exactly. Exactly. That's like when if you're doing that and you and your kids are like, Mom, you are not having fun. Our children sometimes are best reflectors back to us because they see face value. They always see face value. They used to say to me, like, mom, when you're on a phone call, you're like so different than what you're really like. And I'm like, Really? They're like, Yeah, your whole voice changes. I'm like, isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_02 37:05

Isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_00 37:06

Like they definitely bring things to the forefront that we may not see for ourselves. So our children are always teaching us. I always say they're like my greatest teachers because they've reflected back to me things that are in my blind spots.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

I love that. Well, we see our own identities that we wear. We see what we are through reflection in others. You know, other people reveal that's just the way of the world. Yeah. It's that other people reveal ourselves to us. So they reflect it back to you, which is it is such an interesting question, right? We all do this. But for you, since you just brought this up, it's like, do you have a belief that moms have to be disciplined? Like this is the mom voice. This is and so is there a belief there? Or is there a mask that's going on while you're phone? While I'm on the phone, I have to be pleasant. Hello. Yes, yes, yes, you know. So is there that? Like it's it's probably could possibly be a little bit of both, right? It's probably a little bit of question that's like why am I doing that? Yeah, why is doing that? And what would feel better, more true, more authentic in my nervous system?

SPEAKER_00 38:11

Yeah, 100%. And I found that I do that a lot less now that my children are older. I found that I did that a lot more when they were young and they brought it to my attention, which is very interesting. And now that they are young adults, 20, 22, 17, I find that I'm much more able to be who I really am in front of them. Whereas when they were younger, I found that I definitely wore a lot of, well, moms do this, and I should be like that. And there was like a definite disconnect from my true self and mothering, so to speak. And that's also how I was in the classroom, too, which is which is, I'm saying this out loud now, like sort of like, huh, isn't that interesting?

SPEAKER_01 39:06

It's making me think too, I don't have kids, but I was my niece and I are practically the same person. She's five years old, but the two of us are just like the same, the same. We love unicorns and all fun things. But she came up to me, I was home a couple of months ago, and she said, Aunt Jennifer, you're like a really big little baby. I just got insulted. I was like, What did she try to say? But what I see in what she was saying is she's trying to justify I have a lot of fun when you're here. Like we're having fun and you're playing Barbies with me, and mom's not always doing that, and other adults aren't always doing that. So she's trying to make sense of where do I fit in the scheme of things? Yeah, why is this adult like my friend? But you know, so it's so interesting. Kids will reflect all kinds of things back to us. And I was like, huh, that's interesting. That's interesting. Just a big baby.

SPEAKER_00 40:04

And you know, what's funny is because um Tracy Lit used to say this as well that our minds are constantly meaning-making machines. So she at five is like trying to make meaning of like, wait, there's this adult that's like this, and then there are these other adults that are like this. How is that possible? Like, is that okay? And she noticed a difference. She definitely noticed a difference.

SPEAKER_01 40:32

And for the when we're we're always in survival mode, right? So she's trying to see where she fits. Where do I fit if I'm trying to see understand how the adults fit so that I she's at that age where you can see that she's seeing us see her, you know? And so you're starting to see some of that come about. It's it is fascinating to watch the world through the eyes of a child. Again, I don't have children, but uh I can see it through my niece's eyes. And it's it really is fascinating how fast they learn when she was two. And I would babysit her, I would see her, you know, like she was learning what to touch and what not to touch. And one week I told her no, the next week she came to go touch it. And I'm like, ah, that's what's happening with us too. And so we have to question those things like, why, why am I doing it? You're naturally, it's why you're a teacher, obviously, and why you are a podcaster. You're you're a why person. So you're always asking those questions of like, why? Um, and I think at midlife, we just we start to do that a little bit more. We just took on so much and we're so busy, and you're momming, and you're we're just trying to survive for the first half of our life. And then we get to this point where things are shifting and changing, and we start to say, huh, is this how it has to be? Um, I say no, it doesn't have to be. You get to build it whatever way you want it to be.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

And how amazing is that? You know, like that's what I feel, like that's that's a lot of my messaging out there in the world right now because I'm 52, and because when I hit my 50s, it it blindsided me in a way. And I had to step back and and really reflect on a lot of different things that were going on in my life. And and it allowed me to take inventory. I always say midlife is the best time to just take some inventory of like, where are you? And kind of like audit yourself, right? Like, am I showing up the way that I really want to show up? Am I doing the things that I really want to be doing? Am I am I saying the things that really stand true to myself? Am I leading an integral life? Like, these are the big questions. Um, and they're scary and they're bold and they're audacious, but I believe that so much can come out of taking that pause and really reflecting. Um, and you may not have had the bandwidth before that time. You may not have had the courage before that time, you may not have had the um ability to really step back at that time because, like you said, you we're doing a million things, right? Um working, mothering, wifing, all the different aspects of our life. We get very busy and we forget like God created being and we forget to be. We forget to be. We're so busy in the doing of everything that we forget to be. And and my message to midlife women is sit in the bee, like be and and and sit and see what happens when you're there. Because for me, amazing things came out of that. I reestablished my relationship with God in that period. I re re looked at my values, and I got very clear on my aligned values and And those are my guideposts in everything that I do now. Um, and that was a really big pivotal point for me. Um, and it allowed me to just start stepping into my truth and really, and really living from this like soul-centered place. And I think that that's a beautiful thing. So, can you share with us as we end this podcast together? Can you share with us a couple of really great nervous system regulation techniques that my audience could maybe do and and practice on their own when they start feeling like life is kind of coming at them and they want to step back and take that pause, but it feels really uncomfortable and they're scared. They're scared to do it. What can they start with? What's something that's that's not intimidating to begin with?

SPEAKER_01 44:58

Yeah, I love this question. Thank you for bringing us back to that. So I'm a breath worker and I do a lot of supporting people in moving a lot of emotion through the breath. Here's what I'll say a lot of people will say, take a deep breath, go do some breath work. If you're new to this, or if you're super hyper stressed, anxiety is really high, taking a breath is probably going to make you more anxious for a lot of people. Not everybody, but for a lot of people. So I would recommend starting with some somatic, somatic means of the body uh activities. So one of the ones that I like to do is just can you one by one press each of your 10 toes into the ground or as many of them as you can, starting with the left pinky toe and moving toward the right big toe, and then move over to the left big toe and see how many of your toes can you feel. We're all doing it right now. I'm doing it right now, yeah. So that's a somatic practice. What this does is it's brought you out of this swirl of the mind and all of these thoughts back into the body. We have all these different bodies. I know we think we have one, but you have your intellect, you have your intellectual body, you have your physical body, you have an emotional body, the emotions running through you. You also have an energetic body that's you are made of energy, but also this field outside of your body, and you have your spiritual body. So there's all of these different things that are happening. Like we see ourselves as one person, but there's all this different stuff that's happening. But what we can do for our nervous system, first and foremost, is move into the physical body. So that pressing your toes down is a beautiful way to do it. My second favorite is to use your voice. Your voice is the most soothing thing to your nervous system. Your voice stimulates the vagus nerve. It's why I'm such a passionate. I have taught podcasting and supported Kathy Heller with that for years, because podcasting, women beginning to use our voices when we felt like we can't, introverts beginning to use your voice and voice, your nervous system really calms down when you talk. It's why sometimes we get really anxious before talking. It's like there there's a release that's there's a buildup and there's a release that needs to happen. So when you start voicing, so um, you don't have to talk. You don't need, I'm not telling everybody you need to start a podcast, but some of you might. But hum. So just take a nice big deep breath in and then hum it out. Until you run all the way out of air. And then either one of those practices or both stacked, can sprinkle, stack it, do a little, create your little habit stack and um micro stack, did you call it? And then you'll be back in your body. Now you might be able to take a deep breath. Now that might a breath might feel a little bit more accessible. Now I've come into the body where it feels like, okay, ha, I can take a breath. Um, a lot of people will use box breathing or suggest box breathing. It mega triggers my anxiety and a lot of clients too, because it's just like the holding of the breath actually can activate your sympathetic nervous system, which is fight-flight. So you might not necessarily want to reach immediately for box breathing. Again, it might become more accessible after a couple of other embodied practices.

SPEAKER_00 48:19

That's so interesting. My my daughter suffers from a lot of anxiety, especially academically before tests in different classroom situations. If she has to speak in front of the room. And um, we had a guest on a couple of episodes ago, Suzanne Barron, and she was teaching about tapping your finger. And we almost taught that one. Yeah, and I love that. And I have shared that with her. She she took that episode and I said, This is such a great way because we do do over the phone, because she's away at school, we do do some of that breathing stuff. But I have noticed that when she is in such a high anxiety state, the breathing is not working. It it's almost like it's setting her into like a hyperventilating response. So we have started with the fingers. And you did it intuitively. Yes, and just the touch has allowed her to just get back into her body. And that has been really, really great. And then once she is calmer and more centered, she can do the breathing. And then once we do the breathing, she then can talk it out. But we can't, we can't even get to the you know, solution part of any of it until we've regulated because it's like it it just it's it's blocked.

SPEAKER_01 49:52

She's absolutely physically and scientifically, physiologically in the body, you do not have access to creativity. That's really where a lot of this came from for me. My very first podcast was called The Creative Commute. And it was like, how do we how do we activate creativity? So you can't access that part of your brain. It's it's turned off when we're in hyper stress, when we're in the sympathetic nervous system, when that's hyperactivated. You can't access your creative thinking. You can only access this very narrow way of thinking. So um, it's so beautiful that you're doing that with your daughter and helping. I I mean, I wish when I was in school, I had understood these practices and understood what was happening physiologically in my mind and in my body to help me move through it in a more healthy way.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

I agree. I agree, me too. And it's one of the things that I speak to a lot of women that are also moms, and it's one of the things that I am so passionate about because when we start learning this stuff for ourselves, the gift that we are able to pull forward generationally is just so powerful to be able to start to break those generational blocks are just, I think it's like one of the greatest gifts that we can leave as our legacy moving forward is that we worked on ourselves enough that we're that our children are able to see and benefit from that so that they can in turn do that for their own children, nieces or nephews, or whoever is in their life. Um, I just think is such a is just such a gift. And right. And so in midlife, like why not start, you know, paying attention to some of that stuff now.

SPEAKER_01 51:45

And if if what we think might be true of the quantum is true, it's not just future forward, it's past, present, future, and energetic shift in you creates ripples through all of time. So all of time, it's never too late. Like, think about it from that perspective. If that's true, indeed, that's there's a lot of questioning on spring theory and if all of those things are correct. But if it is, you're never too late. You can't possibly be too late. At 80 years old, you could heal a previous version of yourself or and your your grandmother. It's amazing to think about, kind of wild to think about. We don't need to obviously dip into that, but um it's just any time is the right time and the perfect time, and somebody's gonna learn from you. It could even be just the it could be the checker at the grocery store that you have a different uh way of being because you regulated yourself before going into the grocery store, you know, or somebody didn't tick you off in the aisle and you came to the register with an attitude. You came different and it changed their life. You have no idea. No idea. So powerful.

SPEAKER_00 52:45

Oh God, so powerful. Thank you so much, Jen, for joining me today. This was such a great conversation. I think people, the audience definitely benefited from a lot of your wisdom, your teaching, your ability to um help us understand our nervous system and the the the fact that you know what? Life can be fun. Life can be fun. And and like, so let's go out there and fuck around. And when and when we decide, when we decide that, like, oh my god, I am worthy of all of that, you know, and we start to uncover all of our gifts. Oh my god. And we could get paid for that too.

SPEAKER_01 53:34

Heck yeah. That's how we exchange value in this society. There's no reason for you not to.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_01 53:39

So where can people find you? Yeah, you can find me at I'm on Instagram, jennifer.lis with an underscore after it, or you can just go to jenlist.com. I've got all my links there.

SPEAKER_00 53:48

Excellent. Awesome. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. In listening back to this episode, there were so many great coaching moments and takeaways. I so appreciate the time that I was able to spend with Jen on this recording and hear something really funny. When I went to go look for this interview, I had originally thought that we did not record it. There must have been some kind of technological glitch, and I was so disappointed because I know that we had talked about some really real and vulnerable things. Um, but in going through my computer the other day, I actually found it, and I was so happy that we had it. So um you guys are able to benefit from our conversation. So here are my five biggest takeaways from our talk. Number one, your nervous system is designed for survival, not necessarily joy. Jen explains that many women unknowingly stay in familiar discomfort because their nervous system equates change, visibility, ease, or success with danger. Number two, hard work and worthiness are often deeply connected. Many of us inherited subconscious beliefs that we must struggle, overwork, or prove ourselves in order to deserve money, love, success, or rest. Number three, joy is not frivolous. It's a compass. Jen teaches that following what feels alive, expansive, playful, and energizing is often the clearest pathway toward alignment and authentic success. Number four, nervous system regulation changes everything. Simple somatic practices like grounding through the body, humming, tapping, or using your voice can help regulate stress and reconnect you to your truth instead of fear. And number five, midlife is an invitation to return home to yourself. This season of life asks us to stop performing, stop abandoning ourselves for approval, and start living from a place of authenticity, integrity, and soul alignment. This conversation also beautifully connects to the work we'll be doing inside of August's book study seminar as we dive into the artist's way by Julia Cameron. So much of what Jen and I discussed nervous system safety, reclaiming joy, allowing creativity, reconnecting to desire, learning to trust yourself, and stepping out of survival mode lives at the heart of this work. The artist's way is not just about becoming creative, it's about remembering who you are underneath the conditioning, the performance, the proving, and the pressure to get everything right. It's about reclaiming play, reclaiming fun, reclaiming curiosity, reclaiming your voice. And honestly, that may be some of the deepest healing work a midlife woman can do. Inside August's book study seminar, we're going to explore creativity as healing, joy as nervous system expansion, the stories that silence women, perfectionism, guilt, and self-abandonment. We also will talk about trusting your intuition again and what happens when women finally give themselves the permission to create, dream, play, and take up space. So if this episode stirred something inside of you, August's book study seminar is exactly your next step. I will post the link in the show notes below, and you can join us in August for another book to unpack and community for support. Bye bye.