💛 Midlife Is a Portal - Part 2: What To Do While You're Waiting

You know you're in it. Something has shifted. The old life doesn't quite fit anymore, and the new one isn't fully here yet. And you're sitting in that in-between space, wondering, okay, but what do I actually do now?

This is Part Two of Midlife as a Portal.

What We Explore In This Episode

• Where you're still waiting for permission in your life, and what it looks like to start reclaiming that authority
• Why the things that lit you up before you learned to be practical are not nostalgia, they're data
• How to start pulling those joy-threads back into your present life, one small honest decision at a time

Resources & Links Mentioned

• 🎧 Midlife as a Portal — Part One
• ✨ 7 Days of Self-Trust audio series
• 📩 One-on-one coaching with Elena: DM me with any questions-->  @elena_lipson or book your session HERE

Transcript

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Welcome back to an intuitive life. This is Elena Lipson, your intuitive coach and mentor. And today we are diving back into Midlife as a Portal part two what to do while you're in the waiting. So last or a couple weeks ago, I recorded Midlife as a Portal and I got some great feedback, lots of feedback actually, around this episode and how so many of you are feeling this feeling of like, what am I actually feeling right now? What is happening? Why am I so restless? What is happening in my body, in my mind, in my soul right now? So if you haven't listened to that one, I really do want you to go back and start there because I shared my own personal sort of milestones through this time and what triggered my exploration of this as a topic. And it gives you context for what we're talking about today. But if you don't listen, that's fine. The link is also in the show notes. I will go back through some of it, but there's some really great concepts there that I think will give you great context. So today I want to answer this question like, okay, Elena, I'm in I'm in the midlife portal. I get it. I'm restless. I'm what is happening? So now what? Like I get it, I'm in the portal, I can feel it, but what do I actually do now? Like, what do I do while I'm in the waiting? That's where we're getting into today. And the doing is great. Like it's awesome. It's exactly what we are wired to do as ambitious creatives, entrepreneurs, um, entrepreneurs. We love doing. Like we love doing shit. And this is not the time. This this particular moment is not the time to do more. It is not the time to do more. So, first thing, this part is the thing. Like this pause, this portal, this threshold, it is the thing, even when it doesn't feel like it. And I know that's super annoying to hear because we are women who do things. We make the lists and we execute, we figure it out. Like people say that men like to figure things out and give answers. No, we are the ones who love to figure shit out, right? And so we want to do something. We want to go talk to a doctor, talk to a friend, talk to whoever, get advice, read a book, listen to a podcast. Like we just want to do something. And I invite you to take a breath. This is not the time to do more. And the more you push against pausing and really being with yourself, the louder that restlessness gets. So, as I mentioned in part one, Carl Jung said, and I'm not going to make this like super heady, I promise. He basically said that the second half of life has a completely different job description than the first half. In the first half, you have so many questions: your building, your career, your identity, your relationships, your life, you're like, you have all these question marks on your vision board. You don't exactly know how things are gonna are gonna go. So you're constructing and you did, and it matters. All of that matters. None of that is deleted or goes to waste. It is the wisdom that makes you you. It is the experience that makes you you. It is all of the life that you've created and responded to because some things, a lot of things just happen. We don't create them, they just happen, right? We can get metaphysical and that we are the creators and all that. We're we're gonna touch on that today, but not for this particular episode. We're not gonna go super deep on that. Um, but Carl Jung said that midlife is when something shifts underneath all of that creation, and the question stops being, what do I need to do next? and starts being, who am I actually being and becoming? And he called it individuation, which it's really just the part of parts of you that got set aside, pushed down, and quieted. They start to come back and you're like, wait a minute, who am I now? Wait a minute. Um, why am I not super satisfied with everything that I created and feeling restless and want to do the next thing, or I don't even know if I want to do the next thing, or maybe you've lost some motivation, maybe you you're not as ambitious as you were before because the things that used to turn you on in that way just don't, right? And you cannot rush it, you cannot project manage your way through it, although that would feel very satisfying to a certain extent, right? You can only stay with it. Now, Erickson, another psychologist, came at it a little differently, but essentially landed in the same place. He said the season is essentially a confrontation between stepping into something that actually feels alive and purposeful in a whole new way, or just slowly disappearing into the life you built by default. Now, hear me, this doesn't mean your entire life was built by default. It's not that. But disappearing into the life or aspects of the life you've built by default, that one stayed with me for a long time. Because that kind of disappearing doesn't happen all at once. A lot of it is in the name of being a good mother, a good wife, a good woman, a good worker, a good entrepreneur. We've learned all that, right? But now the volume on your real authentic self, the one that got quieted and muted and layered over through society's contract, constructs, and expectations and the family you built and your partner and your friends and society and blah blah over time until one day you look around and think, wait a minute, is this actually what I wanted? Not your entire life, perhaps, but a restlessness in many areas. Maybe it is your entire life. And it's not to discount your life, it's not to say you don't want your life or your children or your partner or your friends or your home, but there's something different about it now, right? And this restlessness is not really a problem, it's more like an alarm going off before like the volume disappears completely. And it's your whole self coming to the table and refusing to go quiet on you anymore, like no more. Okay. And here's where I want to go. And it's somewhere that psychologists don't generally go because as much as Young and Ericsson map this era of your season of life so well, I live in a slightly different dimension of it. And honestly, I think you do too, or you wouldn't be here. I believe that your intuition right now is working overtime on your behalf, not as a vague feeling, not as like you should eat more oranges or you should go get a spa day. Not that, like not as wishful thinking, but as an actual signal coming from these two places that I talked about last time, which is one is it comes from like your highest self connected to divine source, the universe, God, whatever feels true in your body, call it what you will. It's something that has known you the entire time of your soul's existence, right? And in seasons like this one, whether it's grief or stillness or restlessness or quiet, that signal gets louder, not softer, because a lot of those question marks of your life have been answered. Maybe some of them have been answered and then broken, right? But the noise has cleared out enough for you to actually hear it more. And the other source of your intuition is the forward direction, your future self. It's you. I'm not saying this is a different entity, it's you. It's you who has already lived through this, whether it's a month from now, a year from now, five years from now, 20 years from now, right? This is not a concept. This is a real metaphysical aspect of you existing in the future timeline of you. And this version of you is sending you signals constantly. That's what I believe intuition is. I've seen it so many times. It's not about having a five-year plan or a clear logical roadmap, it is a pull, a whisper. So it's like read this book, time to rest. Say yes to that. Don't do that. Go there, send that message. It is very action-oriented. Sometimes people don't get this. Like intuition is very action-oriented, whereas fear feels more like a big fog, a big cloud of all the things that can go wrong, right? That's not intuition. Intuition is subtle, it's easy to dismiss because it sometimes seems very simple, but that's her. She's reaching back toward you right now. And the work of this time, this space in your life is learning to recognize her, recognize that divine part of you, and trust her, even when there's not a full explanation, which there normally isn't. It's not going to give you the next 200 steps. Like that will be overwhelming, right? You're just going to get the very next action step. And sometimes we can miss it because it seems too simple. Go to that dance class, right? Like I talked about this in part one. I was sitting in Santa Barbara several years ago with my best friend, feeling completely lost at a soul level where life is good, right? But the only answer I had, and she and I ask each other these questions, like we go really, really deep. She said, What do you want for this next season of your life? And without thinking too much at all, actually, I quickly said, I just want to dance. Like it came from this part of me that like didn't overthink it, and it wasn't even random. That was my future self and my highest self reaching back to that woman sitting at the table and saying, Here, start here, pull this thread. And that's what intuition is. It's pulling a thread on the next thing. So I want to ask you, what is your? I just want to dance. What keeps coming up quietly that you keep setting aside because it's not practical, you don't have time, it's not monetizable, it's not in the plan. What keeps nudging you that you keep talking yourself out of? That thing is a signal and it's worth paying attention to. So, okay, this is the next part that I want to be really direct here because this is something that so many of the women I work with have talked about when not like as the first layer of this is what's going on, but really as a deep down inside that we have somehow been socialized as little girls growing up to get advice, to get direction, to get permission from everyone else but ourselves. And I'm not saying this in like a rah-rah, you got this, you know. I'm saying it because I know how deep this habit runs. For so many of us, and I include myself here completely, there has been this pattern running underneath for a long time. A pattern of waiting, waiting to feel ready, waiting to feel more certain, waiting for someone to say, yes, go ahead, you've got this, go for it. And I want to ask you something honest. Like, where in your life right now are you still waiting for someone else to tell you what to do, when to do it? Not in a big obvious way, but quietly. Where are you handling handing the decision to someone else? Maybe it's a mentor or a therapist or a partner or course, an opinion that isn't yours, because it feels safer than trusting yourself. And maybe that's not something you really verbalize, but think about it now. Where are you waiting for a green light outside of yourself that actually only you can give? This is the work of this midlife season, really reclaiming that sovereignty, the authority over your own life. It doesn't have to be dramatic and it doesn't mean burning down your business or moving to another country, though, if you want to go for it. But it's more about pausing before you answer in your day-to-day life. People want a big, like huge life change, and that feels sort of satisfying, but that's not where real change happens. Like you'll still end up being somewhere else, but you'll still be with yourself, right? So pausing before you answer and checking in with your body and your intuition before anyone else, that is the work. Noticing when you're about to defer to someone else out of habit or something else, or timing, or or a season, or the weather, or anything else other than you. And instead, just getting quiet for a few seconds and asking yourself what you actually think. And if nothing comes up in that moment, you wait. You wait, you have patience with yourself. It's like we ask, we, you know, we can ask a child we love, and if they don't know yet, we're okay with that. We wait, we give, we give them time, we think they're not just not ready yet. But for ourselves, we just like want to take that pressure off of not acting because it feels so uncomfortable, and we just do something, something that someone else says, right? So when we're connecting with that future self of you or that divine highest self, she is trusting herself in the small moments first, and that's how you build it slowly, one small, honest decision at a time. And this is the part I really love, and the part that I really want you to sit with, to actually sit with or walk with or lay down with, just not action. Think about what lit you up before you learned to be practical, before someone told you that wasn't realistic, or you needed to grow up, or there was no money in that, or that was just a phase. Before all of that, what made you feel so alive? What did you love? What did you do for hours without noticing the time passing? When I was little, six, seven, eight, nine, I would for hours, I kid you not, for hours, I would grab a record and grab my neighbor friend or whatever friend was around, and I would choreograph spontaneously to each song. It was like, it just was pouring out of me. It's just so natural for me. I love to dance. So it was no surprise that dance is such a huge part of my life right now in this season of life, and it will continue to be. So, what were you drawn to naturally, effortlessly, before the world started telling you what actually quote unquote mattered? For some women, it's movement, some kind of movement or making things. For some, it's storytelling, being in nature, singing, teaching, creating, building, healing people in some way they never gave themselves full permission to pursue. And those things are not frivolous, they're not childish, they're not just nostalgia, they're not indulgent, they're not impractical. They are data for your soul. They are your soul showing you who you are early before you even had the words for it, before you knew that you were preparing yourself for a career, right? And here's what I know: that those things don't go away. They simply go underground and they wait. And midlife is when they start pushing up through the surface because you have some space. A lot of those questions of your early life have been answered. Maybe you got married, maybe you got divorced, maybe you got this house, you live here. Like you know, certain things about your life that are answered. So it creates more space for your soul to just like hold on. And now that you're ready, it starts, it starts to bubble up. So this week, not as an assignment, just as something to sit with. Ask yourself, what did little me love? And when did I decide it didn't count anymore? Write it down, let it surprise you. Write down the questions and don't make it mean anything yet. And just notice it, even if you don't have an answer right away, be with that question. What did little me love? And when I when did I decide it didn't count anymore? Because the woman that you're being becoming is built from those threads. She didn't leave them behind, right? She's gone back to get them. So here's where I want to land today. If you're in that restless in-between, in the not yet clear, in the I know something is shifting, but I can't see the whole picture yet. Here's what I invite you to remember that this restlessness is fine. It's exactly where you're meant to be. Doing doing something is not necessarily the thing. So just let it be. And your intuition is starting to get louder and it's signaling to you. So now is the time to start to learn to recognize it. It's time to stop waiting for permission and it's start, it's time to start going back and pulling some of those threads, those early, early loves of your life, the things that made you feel most yourself before you even knew there was something different. You can start replanting some of those now because they belong in this chapter of your life, not just the last one. What was it? What were those things you love to do? So you're in the most like cool, important passage of your life right now, up until now. And the fact that you're here and asking these questions, staying with the discomfort instead of just moving on, that is your future self and your higher self telling you that you're already moving exactly where you need to go. So until next time, please answer some of those questions. Hit me up if you have any questions. I'd love to hear your reflections in the show notes. There's a little blue heart. You can tap that and just send me a text. It goes directly to my phone. So no bots in between. You can also message me on Instagram, Elena underscore lipson. All those links are at the bottom. And if you need some intuitive mentoring support to help you navigate the season, I'm a girl. Like I have a beautiful framework process that I will be teaching in a workshop very soon. It's called the Vision Anchor Process. And I do it one-on-one. I did it very recently with someone who just came back and said, Oh my God, that process we went through, it was able to give me such clarity around the boundaries I want to set in my life, the projects I want to focus on, the delight and the joy that I want to lead with. And it just really transformed her whole year. And so I want to do that one-on-one with you if you are ready for some support, because things can seem very foggy when we're trying to sort of do this with ourselves. But someone else, me especially, who's super, super intuitive for you, can help you see some of those things very clearly. So thank you so much for being here. I don't know if there will be a part three. There might be, because I created the part two based on the reaction to part one. So we'll just see how it goes. And again, if you have any questions, you know where to reach me. Thank you so much for staying with me, and I will see you on the next episode of An Intuitive Life.