Ep. 14 - The Secret to Aging Powerfully: Stop Expecting It to Be Easy

If life feels harder after 50 — your energy, your motivation, your body, your health goals — this episode of Tea with Sophie is for you.

Today, Sophie explores one of the biggest lies we’ve been sold by the wellness industry and modern culture: that meaningful change should be easy.

But rebuilding your health, strength, confidence, and vitality after 50 requires effort, challenge, discipline, and perseverance. And that doesn’t mean you’re failing — it means you’re growing.

In this episode, Sophie talks about future-self thinking, SuperAgers, the anterior cingulate cortex, good stress, resistance, flow state, and the powerful language shift that can help you embrace hard things instead of avoiding them.

This is a mindset episode for any woman over 50 who feels discouraged, defeated, or tired of starting over.

Listen to more episodes at sophieuliano.com/podcast.

Transcript

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If you're a woman over the age of 50 and you are starting to feel that things are getting really hard, there's so much in your life that is hard right now from getting up in the morning, getting out of bed, doing all the things that you have to do to take care of everybody else, to do your job, to do your life. It just feels challenging. And you are beginning to feel a little bit defeated. Is this what life is now? Every time you try and set out on a new goal of I'm gonna do this thing, then you get discouraged after a few days, weeks, or months, and then you give up and then you feel even more defeated. So if any of that sounds like you, then you're in the right place. This is the right episode for you. Uh welcome to another uh conversation, another episode of Tea with Sophie. In this episode, I am going to be talking to you about why you feel that way and exactly what to do with it. And you are gonna walk away with a powerful mindset shift that will change everything for you. I promise. I am drinking, I sometimes like to share what tea I'm drinking at the beginning of my episode. So I'm drinking a iced hibiscus tea with fresh orange slices in it. And the weather's getting a little bit warmer now. It sounds odd for me to say here, living in Los Angeles, that it's ever cold, but it has actually been chilly recently. So I've been enjoying my lovely warm teas. But today is the day for a hibiscus. I'm drinking it with a straw, if you're if you're not watching on YouTube, so if you're hearing a little clinking here, um, because the hibiscus can stain teeth, so well, all tea can actually. And it's delicious and it's so refreshing. So with that being said, let's jump straight in. So I'm gonna start off by talking about the the bigger lie, the bigger lie that the particularly the wellness industry, I think, but it's a lie that many of us have been told, is that it should be easy. And it is a big fat lie because it's just not true. Nothing worthwhile getting, achieving, doing, being is going to be easy. It's going to require an enormous amount of effort. It's going to require challenge, grit, discipline, and perseverance. And I'm sorry if you don't want to hear that and mind nobody's talking about that because people don't talk about it because they know it's not what people want to hear. They want to hear it's easy, it's a quick fix, you can press a button on your app, you can have the food delivered straight to your front door, you can take this supplement, it's gonna magic, whatever the magic thing is that you want to do or solve the problem is that you've got, you can take an injection and no judgment there. There's a definitely a place for you know medications for some, but I think we're living in this culture more and more now where don't worry, you don't have to do anything. Either we're gonna make it easy for you with a robot, and then you really don't have to do anything, or we're selling you this this lie, if you like, um, that it's gonna be easy. And where this is so dangerous, this lie, is that when we start trying to do something, assuming that it should be easy, and it's not, it's difficult, it's tough, it's hard, it requires challenge. The danger is that then we blame. So we either blame the system, the thing that we're doing. I remember there's so many times in my life. I remember having a trainer years and years ago, and I had a particular um sort of goal in mind, physically, uh a goal in mind. And this trainer said to me, I can a hundred percent get you there to this physical goal where you want to be. Um, and I remember it obviously, it was extremely challenging and required a lot of hard work and a lot of what I didn't feel like doing. And along the way and along the journey, the moment it started to get hard, unpleasant, challenging, and I may add that I didn't see immediate results, then I started blaming the system. I started blaming him, the trainer. Oh, I'm not sure he knows what he's exactly what he's talking about here. Seriously. I mean, come on, I'm doing all this hard work, I'm not seeing the instant results, you know, and really picking apart what he was telling me to do. And thank God I didn't bail on it. And I just stayed the course. He was a good coach, actually, and he was a good trainer, and I stayed with it, and I got through all the difficult ups and downs, and I was had so much resistance in me, which I'll talk about in a minute. We we find ourselves resisting these changes and resisting obviously when things get hard, but I did, and you know, eventually I got there. But what happens is we blame the system, or even worse, we blame ourselves. And when the going gets tough and we sort of bail out, or we let it slip, or we put it to one side, um, it's it's it does more damage psychologically, a much deeper damage to ourselves, because deep down inside we think that we um, you know, we failed, that there's something wrong with us, that we can't do things, that we can't figure it out, and that we we sort of always fail. And and that is that's damaging long term, particularly if that's happened many times for you. So just know that when it isn't easy, we blame the system or the thing or whatever it is. I I could give you so many examples. I I could give you examples of of uh clinical nutrition certifications that I've taken that were so, so hard when I first started doing them because it required a level of mathematical skill that I just didn't have. Um, that I just was like, this is ridiculous, this thing. There's no way that I can do it. I don't know why they've set the course up to be like this. Who do they think that we are? You know, la la la la. So uh first I'd go there. And then when I thought, oh, I just can't do this, luckily I stuck to it. But what could have easily happened is I could have just closed my computer and gone, I just this is too much, I can't do it. But then I would have actually really deep down inside, I could have blamed and blamed and blamed the thing, but there's only so many times you can do that if you see other people doing doing it and succeeding in it. You're like, oh, okay. Um so here's the thing: it it's not easy to do mindset when life is really hard. It's not easy to get back to the gym or get into the gym when you're exhausted. It's not easy to cook clean food in a sandwich, convenient, uh, deliver DoorDash to my front door environment or generation. It's easier to sit on the sofa. It's easier to pull the covers over your head, it's easier to easier uh to watch um hours of Netflix, but expect easy. Um it isn't, and then we conclude when that we failed, uh that and that we can't do it, and then we just give up. Um so you know, the paradox is that it's hard, but it's actually so much easier. It's hard, but it's harder not to, is the paradox. Oh, I'm just gonna say that one more time because I want that to land. It's hard to do the thing, but it's so much harder not to. Here's another little paradox for you. It's hard to do now, whether it's lifting the weight, whether it's cooking beautiful clean meals from scratch, whether it's going for your walk, whether it's creating boundaries, whether it's disciplining yourself to go to bed on time, or finish eating three hours before you go to bed, or wake up and get light in your eyes instead of screen light when you wake up. All those things might be hard now, and there might be another lot, a lot of other hard things going on in your life, but it's harder not to do it, and in doing it now, it makes it easier later. So, in my program, in the Ignite program, we often talk, and if any of you are listening, any of my lovely times, we talk about your future self. And we talk about creating a relationship with your future self, your future desired self, this version of you who you're gonna be. I mean, she's coming, whether you like it or not, she will be there. So we really connect with our future self. We connect with that version of you who's 85, 19, 95, and so on. We really form this very strong connection with her. Um, because what this does, it takes off short-term um quick and easy fixes and honestly, quick and easy being the operative word or lie. And we're really thinking about her long term. But if you think about it, if you do the hard things now, you're making life easier for her at a time when she may not be able to do the hard things. So I really look at every single time I do something difficult, like walk another mile, you know, pick up a heavier weight, um, go do another, you know, two hours of meal prep so I make sure I've got really healthy meals in my fridge, whatever it is where I'm taking care of myself, albeit in a very busy lifestyle, yes, it can be challenging and it be and it can be hard, but I know that I'm making life so much easier for her, this version of me, at a time when she may not be able to do those physically difficult things. So I'm making life easier for her. Plus, honestly, if I'm putting all these deposits into my future self-reserve account, then it's likely that she's gonna have a much easier time of life. Um, in her 80s and in her 90s, she's going to find it easier to get around, to get up and off a chair, a toilet seat, out of a car, to um bend down and pick up her grandchildren and do all the things that we all want to do as that older version of ourselves. So, in doing the hard now, I am making life easier for my future self. And she is depending on me. She is having a little conversation with me now and going, thank you, thank you, thank you for doing the difficult, for doing the hard now. You know, I've realized that with the women who I work with, the incredible women that I work with, these are women who are not looking for a quick and easy fix. And I think it's because they've done so many that haven't worked. So these are women who know that transformation isn't on the other side, uh, it never is of just phoning something in or doing something easily. Um, they know that it's worth transformation is worth the price of doing the hard work and they're committed and really up for doing that. And it's a very exciting community and dynamic to be around women where we're all doing that together. We're all sort of doing the hard stuff together and cheering each other along. We're not willing to fall out of the race, we're not willing to fall out of the game, we're just not, and that's really, really important to surround yourself with people who are doing those hard things too, because it inspires you. That's why I love the group, the groups, the group coaching in my program, because we see each other doing really hard things and it's enormously inspiring. And it actually humbles, we humble each other because we see certain women going through enormous life difficulties, but going through it in a way with so much resilience and fortitude and living in the in the solution instead of the problem, that that's what really this is all about, particularly at this stage of life. So I think often of my father, and he was somebody who very much did hard things for most of his life. He he was a pilot, a fighter pilot on the tail end of World War II and the RAF. And he grew up in that generation where they did really hard things, so did my mother, but they really did, and he was raised in a family that they that really pushed them, or him and his brothers and sisters to do really tough things. And when my father was in his early 90s and he stuck, he had the beginnings of dementia, but even then, when he could barely walk because his feet were so deformed, because he had very, very bad bunions and he'd never had the uh you know surgery on them, and he was hobbling around and and and his knees were aching bone on bone, and he had all these pains and things in his body, still he would make it to the gym. My dad would make it to the gym, and he would say to me, Flake, he called me Flake. My my nickname as a little girl was Snowflake, and he shortened it to Flake because of the probably the color of my hair. But he would go, Flake, you know, I just force myself to do the hard thing because I know that it is so precious when I do this and I feel so good while I'm doing it, which I'm gonna get to in just a second, and I feel so accomplished afterwards. And that feeling is just the best. And and and it was, it was I was so lucky to witness that. And he lived until he was 97 years old, even with a very less than perfect diet and and dementia, which turned into Alzheimer's, but he lived till 97, and he wasn't in a you know wheelchair walker, none of that. He he was he was sort of he was standing upright, and and and and I think that he had he the hard reps that he had put in, because this wasn't, he didn't just start working out when he was 80. He had been putting in those reps for many, many years. So he was a huge inspiration to me. Um, and we hear about the super agers. Now, the super ager is, I often talk about super ages. I'm fascinated with the psychology of super ages. I talked about this in a recent episode. So super ages are men and women who have the cognitive and physical abilities of somebody 30 years younger than them. And what they found was that they had an area of their brain that was enlarged, and it's called the anterior cingulate cortex. It's an area of your brain that actually grows, but it only grows through doing hard things, through through being massively challenged. And they found that superagers had massively challenged themselves. And so this area of their brain was considerably larger. I'm like, oh, when I heard that, I'm like, I definitely want to be enlarging my anterior uh uh uh cortex. And the only way that I can do that is by doing hard things. So that's where the idea that I often also talk about of good stress, which is um also called the technical term is you stress, is is something that I welcome now. So I welcome difficulty, I welcome challenge because I know that that part of my brain is going to grow. Um now, what happens when we are, when, when we're really challenged, when things get really hard? So, yes, we can get really beaten down by everything. I get that. Some of you are going through really, really hard things, and there's a lot of hard things, but we tend to get really beaten down. And sometimes we get beaten down by life. And oftentimes there's just too much. There's too much going on at once. So one of the things that that one of the first things that I would have you do, and this is what I have my clients do, is let's focus on the most important things first. What are the most important things that you really want to focus on? Because if we're trying to do tons and tons of hard things, we're putting out fires here, we're taking care of elderly parents, we're figuring out stuff with our kids, we're trying to do a job, we're trying to put food on the table, we're trying to manage or maintain our own bodies and whatnot, it's just too much. So the first thing is that you really want to laser in on the things that are most important for you to move you forward to where you want to go, the goal that you want. And the overarching goal really is what is the most important thing for you to be doing now and then every single day as we make those goals smaller for your future self. That's what I really want you to start thinking about in the great scheme of things. I get that there's endless, endless distract uh distractions. I guess that I get that there's 50,000 things on our to-do lists. I get that. But it's super important if you're gonna really get the takeaway from this episode that you find a way of honing it down. We need to slough off what is not absolutely necessary on that to-do list. And we need to really focus on the one to five things that are the most important things. And then oftentimes you want to find the one thing that is the really big challenge, and that very often will be presented to you anyway. Life will present you the really big challenge, it might be a big job that you're doing or a job that you are doing because you have to do it, but that's the thing that feels really hard for you right now. It might be a diagnosis, it might be looking after elderly parents, it might be trying to take care of yourself, or it could be just I don't know, getting into the gym and lifting heavy weights. But very often you will know, you'll be presented with this is the hard thing that I am navigating and getting through right now, or these are the hard things, and just determine what those are and get clarity around those. Now remember what I said. If you expect things to be easy, that's where we, that's where it all goes sideways. Well, I thought life would be easy, or I thought this would be easy, or I thought this course or this thing or this project or this whatever it is would be easy. Well, nobody, I think what one of the one another great piece of advice that my dad, my wonderful dad, gave me, was you that he would say repeatedly, if it were easy, everybody would do it. And when I would complain about, oh, but it's so difficult to do this, that, and the other in earlier careers that I was doing in my 20s, he'd go, Well, you know, if the kitchen's too hot, get out. Which made me even more like, no, I am walking into the hot kitchen. I can take the heat. But I think that really set me in good stead because it was the expectations of don't expect it to be easy. And most people drop out the moment the going gets rough. Now, this is where the resistance happens, and this is what I want you to really look out for. When you're trying to do something challenging, you very often will feel resistance. Why? Because it's human nature, because we're not wired to, you know, have to challenge ourselves to do, we're wired to basically conserve energy, which might mean pulling the covers over your head or watching hours of Netflix and eating while you're eating high caloric foods. We're wired for that. Um, so the thing is to understand that when you're trying to do something and you're trying to grow and you're trying to get outside of your comfort zone and you're on what I call your growing edge, you should feel resistance. It would be really odd if you didn't feel resistance at all. If you were like, oh, this is so easy and I don't feel any resistance whatsoever. I mean, just think of if you, I don't know if any of you have ever run a marathon or trained from a marathon from nothing from scratch. You know, it'd be like saying, well, I just get on there and I ran the whole way and it was easy. It's just not gonna happen for a completely newbie who's running it. You've got to train in all weathers, driving rain, you know, when it's really, really hot, when you maybe twisted your ankle, you've got horrible blisters, and every stage of the way, there's gonna be moments when you're like, this is ridiculous. Why was I even thinking of this? This is too hard. I want to give up. I absolutely hate this. This wasn't for me. I can't do it. But that is part of the journey. That is part of the journey. It's part of every single thing that you do that that uh that that you build that has value and leads to the feeling of accomplishment is going to require you going through, pushing through walls of resistance. Fantastic. Everything you want is on the other side of that resistance. I promise you, everything you want. The only thing that you can do wrong is when you start feeling resistant, you you you you step out of the ring, you step out of the game. You're like, yeah, because you make meaning of the resistance. Like I said at the top of this episode, is there something wrong? It should be easy. That's the only thing. Okay. So accept the hard, just accept it. It is whatever it is, is hard. Accept the resistance piece in you because that's part of being human, it's part of growth, it's a beautiful thing. You will kick and scream and resist. I have done on every hard thing I've ever done. And then you will. Move through it, and this is what leads you to the best feeling. I think the best feeling in the world is a feeling of accomplishment. I did it. The sweet, sweet feeling of job well done. And job well done can be anything. It could be taking care of a very, very difficult relative or parent where you showed up in the most extraordinary way. Job well done. Could you be going through cancer treatment? As one of my beautiful clients, Diane did, massectomy, chemo, and still managed to do all the things that I had taught her in the months that she worked with me. And she still managed to do those things, what we call our no matter what's every single day, even throughout all of the pain and the treatments and the and the difficulties involved in that journey. Job well done. She felt so, so good about herself. And so that's really what I'm talking about. Now, there's a book that we're reading in my mastermind group right now called Flow. And it's a wonderful, wonderful book because what the author posits, and I'll I'll put the book in the YouTube description and on the show notes on the podcast page. But what the book really, the the summary of the book, if you like, the the thesis statement of the book is, and this is through years and years and years of research, is that really happiness is found, true happiness is found in what the author coined. He was the first author or first person to talk about this flow state. Now, the flow state is not lying on a beach. The flow state, as he talks about it, isn't on the other side of doing the difficult thing. The flow state is found in the midst of the challenge. This is what's so fascinating about this book. So he'll give examples of a surgeon performing an intricate, one of the hardest surgeries. Um, things that require this laser-sharp focus. He calls it, he talks about it as being your psychic energy, your psychological energy that you were zeroing in on this challenge, this challenge that you were involved in in that moment. So it's the surgeon, it's the rock climber, it's the worker on a factory assembly line who has made his job enjoyable by creating enormous challenge in this one little job that he has to do every single day, day in, day out, to make it so interesting. He creates this challenge to beat his time of putting this thing together and keeping a log of it. And every day he now comes to this job with so much excitement and this mission because he's going to do it the best than anybody else could ever do it in record time. So it's so inspiring to see these examples of anybody from the rock climber to the somebody doing something incredibly mundane, but finding what their growing edge is. That's the key. Where is their growing edge? Obviously, a rock climber has a growing edge. A surgeon who's performing a difficult brain surgery has a growing edge. The man in the factory assembly line, he created a growing edge. And you can make the mundane and difficult and sometimes less glittering tasks that you have to do so much more enjoyable by creating this challenge whereby you can access this flow state. You're on your growing edge. And often I'll say to myself, with very simple things, it could be meal prep, it could be anything. It's like, how can I, how can I seek my personal excellence in this? How can I do a little bit better? How can I take this to my growing edge, either mentally or physically or in some way? So that's what he talks about, this flow state. And that's really what he talks about. He really turns it on his head that happiness isn't from just kicking back or what we think happiness is, that in the years of researching people, this is where the happiness was found was in accessing this flow state. And and I want to make the distinction that, or talk about the distinction that he makes, which is that the flow state is when you have challenged yourself enough that you are, what I call this, you're on your growing edge. You're on a growth edge, you're pushing, pushing. It's like think of yourself as a little plant. The edges of the leaves, the buds are growing. It is challenging. It requires a lot of you. It requires an enormous amount of focus and presence. So there's a dis and he makes the distinction between that and then the distinction between it's just too much. There's too much, you're completely overwhelmed, and then you shut down. So it is finding that little growing edge, which is not hard to find in everything that you do. How can I make this? How can I better myself? How can I make the best soup that I've ever, ever made? You know, when I'm pulling out a pot and thinking, okay, we're doing another minestroni that no, how can I make it interesting? How can I be so involved in this? How can I? And it sounds silly, but it's also very zen in a way. It's like, how can I mince and chop the onions to do it like a chef does it? How can I, you know, and suddenly I'm now enjoying it, I'm in it, I'm present with the task in hand. So just remember that difficulty, when things become difficult, it is not a stop. Okay, that is the mindset shift that I want to give you, is a signpost. So this doesn't mean there's something wrong because it's difficult or because I'm resisting it. Far from it. In fact, it's the opposite, it's a signpost. And this, all this um episode is not a pull yourself up by the bootstraps talk. Um, it's really understanding that you are giving, you are making your life so much easier by embracing hard. Now, I want to finish with this. So, as a neurolinguistic um is an NLP coach, which is what I am and and my team are as well. Um, what that means is that we look at how we use words and how our clients use words, because words are not just words, words are codes of energy. Words change, your language changes how you feel about doing uh about what you're doing. It either can amplify a really powerful emotion or and or and it can minimize a disempowering emotion. And this is the takeaway that I want to give you. So we're gonna assume that I think we're now in full acceptance that growing and everything that you ever want to do that's worthwhile is going to involve hard and is going to involve challenge. It's just a thing. We can just accept that. We don't have to fight that. It just is. But the language we use around these tasks needs to change. So I'm gonna give you the the example of working out in the gym and lifting really heavy weights, which is what I am trying to do as in my early 60s, is very important for me to do. So if I keep saying to myself, it is so hard, it's so hard to do this, it's so difficult, it's so challenging, I don't have time, it is exhausting. If then I am doubling down, and I am basically giving this messaging to my subconscious mind, and my subconscious mind is listening, right? So, and then it doubles down even more on what I'm saying. So, step one, acknowledge it. Yes, this is hard. This is against my biology. I'm not wired to want to pick up heavy weights in the gym. I am wired to want to sit on the couch, okay, and eat bonbons and watch Netflix, right? Accept it, don't keep repeating it. Then flip the language, and in flipping the language, I want you to attach a very exciting emotion. So it could be I love lifting weights because I feel so empowered during and after. That completely changed the whole playing feel for me. Because I would say that I wrote it, I always in my in my with my clients, we say it, write it, but I say, say it, see it, feel it, be it. And when you say it, I love lifting heavy weights because I feel so empowered during and after. But I keep repeating that. I write it down, it becomes my mantra, I say it as I'm saying it, I'm seeing it, now I'm feeling it, and now I'm gonna go do it. And then that it becomes a reality. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am actually loving, doing it, I'm feeling it. It's so important to attach this emotion, this exciting, elevated um emotion. It could be, you know, I love how I feel. I'm so proud every single time I show up. And you can do this with absolutely anything. And I mean anything that is hard. You find the, you want to change those. Well, I got to, it's so hard. No, I get to, I choose to, I love doing this, and then put in a because, a because really helps, because I get to serve these people at the highest level, because I feel so good about myself, because I can, because this is what I was born to do, because this aligns with my values, because this is getting me stronger, because this is what I'm doing for my future self, etc. Okay. And put in words like I love or I'm elated when, or it's so exciting to, because you're saying that now, that language is literally changing how you feel. It's changing your emotions, it's changing your biology. So give that a try. All right. So your little takeaway this week is think of one thing that is possibly really hard for you to do, that's on your um on your agenda right now. As I say, it could be something that life has presented you with, an enormous challenge that you're trying to figure out right now. Um, but most of the time, and I want to bring this back to what I said at the at the top, I want you to really think about wellness, right? That the wellness industry sells us this lie, that it's easy. Just take a pill, pop a pill, take an injection, have something delivered to your doorstep, whatever it might be, don't worry, it's easy. You don't have to do the work. So just maybe pick one thing in your, in your to do with your wellness and apply what I've gone over in this episode. Just accept that. I hope that mindset shift is just not expecting it to be easy, getting excited about the hard, getting excited about the challenge, and changing your language around how you approach that particular hard thing. All right, hope you found this episode useful. I hope that was a little good mindset shift for you. When you have created a new affirmation or a mindset shift around something that you find hard, drop it as a comment. If you're watching on YouTube, leave me a comment. I love watching your comments and your comments or reading your comments, I should say. And your comments are very inspiring for everybody else. So get in there and leave us a comment. Or if you're really struggling with something, let me know too. You can also go to SophieUliano.com forward slash podcast. SophieUliano.com forward slash podcast. And you can get all sorts of details there, and you can watch some of my past um uh in um episodes. And finally, please leave me a review. Please, if you are following on Spotify or Apple Music or any of your podcast platforms, please do. That's me doing something hard to ask for you to leave me a review. But this is such a new podcast. I was a bit a little bit late to the party with this one, and honestly, it was this was one of those things. It was like, oh, it's so hard to do, and I've got to do this and edit it, and la da. And I was just like, no, you can do hard things, Sophie. This is we're gonna do this. Haven't got time. Nope, you can do it. So it's very, very new. So it's very, very helpful for me. If you could spread the word, share the episode if you found it useful with somebody, leave me a little review. That would be much appreciated. And I will see you on the next episode of Tea with Sophie.