Ep. 16 - What Do You Really Want? A Conversation Every Midlife Woman Needs to Hear

What if the question that's shaping your future isn't "How do I age well?"

What if it's:
What do I really want?

In this episode of Tea With Sophie, I explore a conversation that has been on my mind lately: the tension between "aging gracefully" and "anti-aging" and why I believe both perspectives may be missing something important.

Rather than choosing sides, what if we focused on becoming more fully alive?

This episode is ultimately about much more than aging. It's about desire, courage, self-trust, and giving yourself permission to want something more from this next chapter of life.

We explore why so many women lose touch with their deepest desires, how fear can quietly drive our decisions, and why midlife may actually be the perfect time to become bolder, not smaller.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• Why I believe there's a middle ground between "aging gracefully" and "anti-aging"
• The surprising role fear plays in many of our choices
• The difference between growing older and growing bolder
• A quote that has shaped my life for decades
• Why so many women struggle to answer the question, "What do I really want?"
• How reconnecting with your desires can transform your health, relationships, and future

If you've been feeling restless, disconnected, or unsure about what's next, this conversation is for you.

Pour yourself a cup of tea, get comfortable, and let's explore what it means to create a life you truly love—at any age.

I'd love to hear from you.

What is one desire you've been putting on hold that deserves your attention today?

Connect with me:

Website: www.sophieuliano.com/podcast

Instagram: @sophieuliano

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Most women that I know are either aging gracefully, they're sort of saying, I'm just gonna let everything go as it will, naturally, or they are resisting aging and doing absolutely everything within their power, every procedure, every hack, every trick in the book to stop aging. But what if it doesn't have to be either or? What if there is a beautiful middle ground? So, in this conversation, in this episode of Tea with Sophie, we're gonna talk about that middle ground. And I'm gonna give you a practical test so that you can see where you are on this scale and indeed where you want to be so you can move boldly forward into the next chapter of your life. So I have got my cup of tea this time. This is a brand called Art of Tea. They don't sponsor this podcast. I just happen to love Art of Tea, and they have some really delicious blends. So brew yourself up a beautiful cup of tea, and let's sit down and have this important conversation about aging. All right, so there are these two camps. So, and there's no judgment on either. And this is actually what I see, I sort of see online on Instagram a lot, probably because the algorithm algorithm is serving up everything to me as a woman in her 60s, everything about aging. Obviously, the algorithm serves up a lot of outrage content, you know, like I can't believe that this woman thinks that this is beautiful and somebody else going, and it's just as usual, as in with everything nowadays, there is this absolute polarity between two camps, two sides of the aisle, in pretty much whatever it is that you want to talk about. Obviously, that works beautifully for the algorithm, but I am a great believer that there is nuance in everything, and often the middle ground is a really beautiful ground to be. So, in terms of this, we could talk about aging gracefully, could be I'm letting my hair go gray, I'm gonna just do no cosmetic nothing, not even you know, particularly bothered about skincare, and I'm just gonna let everything be, and nature take its course. So that's one end of the spectrum. And then the other end of the spectrum, you have got women who are going all out with whatever it might be. It might be procedures, it might be insane sort of skincare tips and tricks and hacks and dressing a certain way and obsessed with with this, you know, trying to not necessarily look younger, but but trying to sort of stave off the inevitable. And rather than going either or, my thought is, why not and? So instead of or, if we put an and in there, then there could be something really beautiful in that. And I want to give you an example. So, what about I'm letting my hair go gray and I am really committed to taking care of my skin and my body? So that is a beautiful example of both. It could be I'm dyeing my hair, which is definitely the case with me. You know, I'm dyeing my hair, and I am committed to, you know, feeding myself and nourishing myself in the most quote-unquote natural and holistic way possible. So there's nuance. And I think the thing that I'm getting to here is there's no judgment either way. There is none. It's like you do you. The only thing I don't like is women judging other women for their choices on either end of that spectrum because you don't know. And I always say, unless you walked a mile in somebody's shoes and you know what their life story is and everything that they've been through, and their childhood, and their trauma, and everything else, unless you have walked a mile in somebody's shoes, it's like we don't need to judge, we just choose the path that works best for us. So the middle ground for me is where we come from love and not from fear. Because in the extremes, in pretty much everything, but certainly as far as this concerned, can be coming from fear. I am not gonna have a single thing done, I think is absolutely terrible. Why would women want to dye their hair? Sort of situation, which comes from, in a way, a contracted state. I often energetically talk about these energetic states of kind of fury or contraction, scarcity. But it doesn't have to come from there. It can come from a beautifully expanded place. A very good friend of mine actually decided that she, she's a beautiful woman in her 60s, and she decided that she was going to let her hair grow, uh go grey in COVID because she couldn't get to the hair salon and she has she had dyed her hair dark for years and years. And she started to get she was like, I look like a raccoon. But she was sort of super cool about it and just very like, I just kind of want to give this a go. I think it could look like a really good vibe on me. And it actually did. She looked, she actually looked even younger in a way, because she she's got this be, she's got she's been blessed with these beautiful cheekbones, and she's just a very beautiful woman. And so when she had her hair grey, and then it got to the point where she had it in a little ponytail, and the only bit that was dark brown was the ponytail, and it looked very, very cool and very avant-garde, and she looked absolutely stunning and she looked amazing. Um, and then there are other women that I see that I think, ah, I don't know whether the grey really I don't know. I don't know whether it really suits you. And actually, my hair colourist is she who's absolutely brilliant. She's been colouring my hair for years, and she says the same. She goes, It's so funny, Sophie. We were talking about it the other day, and she said, There are some women, and she's very, very honest, and she's so sweet. And her clients will go, what do you think? Do you, you know, do you think it would look good to go grey? And she says, Sophie, it's a funny thing because she said, in some people, it really does look amazing, and I'll be really honest with them. And in some, it just won't, it won't really do them any favors. I think I'm in the latter camp. I think she said, Yeah, I think for you, mind you, I have a lot of grey in my hair, and the advantage of having grey in my hair for me is that it they're now highlights. So I don't need highlights. I just have a sort of very natural base colour, and then the grey acts as the highlights. But anyway, I don't want to talk about me and my hair, but you get the drift there. So I want to move on to what I've been thinking about a lot recently, which is the idea of instead of growing older, growing bolder. Now, there's this quote that I absolutely love, which is attributed to German poet and philosopher Goethe. And I've always loved this quote. And I've had it for years and years and years since I was extremely young. It's almost been my kind of guiding principle. And it that's why I wrote it in, I think in the Ford or the very, very beginning of my first book, which which um necessitated boldness to get that darn thing written in the first place. But the quote is that, you know, whatever you whatever you dream, whatever you can do or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it. Begin it now. Hope I haven't butchered that quote, but it's pretty much that. So let's just take that apart for a moment. So whatever you can do or dream you can do, that means a dream, something that you dream you can do, is a desire, isn't it? Gosh, I dream that I could do that. I dream, I have daydreams, I think about that. It's a desire, right? And so my invitation to you in this episode is to get bold with your desires, because he goes on to say, whatever you can do or dream you can do, meaning whatever your desire is, begin it. Begin it. And then he goes on to say, boldness, and I love the word bold, boldness has this genius and magic in it. And I really believe that to be true. Because stepping into bold inspired action, and only by stepping into bold, and the opposite of I mean, bold is being courageous, isn't it? And the opposite would be to be scared and and cowardly. That's why, you know, the the women that I admire most, certainly online, are women who have a voice and can risk in a way. They're bold enough to risk being disliked. And they say what they mean and they take a stand for what they really believe in. Whereas the opposite, which I don't admire, um is a coward who just who'll just sit behind a screen and and um be a troll or a hater. And that I don't admire at all because that requires no courage at all, and that person isn't in the ring. And I think being in the ring, whatever that is, of life, it requires courage and it requires boldness. You've got to be bold to step into the ring. But I think the problem is a lot of women in midlife and beyond don't even step into the ring because they're really, really afraid. And so what I help women do is to go, come on, step into the ring. Come on, let's let's get you in there. Let's get you off the fence, the sidelines, let's get you in the ring. And a lot of all the women that I work with, all my beautiful clients, and if you're listening to this, you know who you are. You at some stage have made a decision to step into the ring and to say yes to what you desire and to say yes to your future self. And I really admire you and acknowledge you for having the courage to do that because that is not always an easy decision to make, particularly in midlife and beyond, for many, many reasons. But I believe that midlife is the perfect time to do this. I think it's the perfect time to start stepping into our boldness, to age uh boldly. And I really believe it, it's not the time to shrink. And I think we get to a certain age, or it isn't necessarily an age, it can be a defining moment that happens to you, something that happens to you. I've had a couple of these moments that have happened to me in my life where two roads available to me were either I am gonna shrink because I've been so knocked sideways by this thing or this event or this phase or this thing that I've been going through, that I'm either just going to shrink or I'm gonna have to be really bold and step into something different and step into a different version of me. And that's kind of happened over and over. And that's why I'm obsessed with transformation. That's why I built a program around transformation, because I've been through that process of transformation over and never, it's never ending, but I've been through that so many times, sort of pulling myself up from the ashes, as it were, rising from the ashes. And I've seen so many women that I've worked with do exactly that. And along the episodes of this podcast, which is relatively new, you're going to get to meet some of those women whose stories are really courageous and incredible. So, you know, in midlife, our roles shift. There sometimes is a little bit more space. Identity shifts, it sort of dismantles, doesn't it? Our old identity. It just does as we age. And sometimes we get to a point where if you're not even saying this consciously to yourself, there is something within that is kind of saying, Well, who am I now? Where am I now? Where's my value now? Where's my significance? And it can be very unsettling and very, very challenging for a lot of women. I speak to a lot of women about this, women who have maybe gone through a lot of grief because they've said goodbye to parents and it's changed their whole life. Clients who have gone through even, you know, tragedies of losing children, women who have aged out of jobs, been let go of before they were ready to be let go of. And all of this gives rise to this shifting period, this unsettling time. But, you know, when when things are unsettling, it can be a very important fertile, it's a fertile and important time for growth. So some of the biggest growth spurt that you'll probably ever have beyond, you know, when you became a mother or or got married. Now, let's go back to Goethe. So Goethe said, whatever you can do or dream you can, let's go back to this idea of desire. Now, most women I work with, they don't know what they desire. They don't know. So when they come and work with me and they come into the Ignite uh program, my Ignite methodology, one of the first things that I ask them is, well, what do you do, what do you want? And we have them write out a little bit of a thing, a paragraph about their future desired self. And I think one of the biggest hurdles is beyond saying, Well, I want to be healthy, I want to bring my biomarkers down, I want to get into the you know, better shape, and those sort of physical things, which are relatively easy and easy to see and admit, and and and are the slightly more obvious things. Great, okay, we we know that. Want to be a few dress sizes smaller, you want to get your confidence back, energy back, inflammation down, and all of that. Okay, got it, got it, great. But beyond that, what do you desire? What do you really, really desire? A lot of women have a very, very hard time with this. You might listening to this. And one of the reasons why is that it's not that the desires aren't there, it's that they haven't been listened to for years and years and years. They've been buried. They might have never been listened to. Because when we were small and we had these desires bubbling up of things that we might love or that we love to do and gave us joy or were around our creativity, or we thought sometimes that was just stamped out of us by life. Maybe others didn't listen to your desires, or made fun of them, or kind of poo-pooed them, or just thought they were irrelevant. And then you started burying those desires. Maybe you even tried to move in the direction of those desires, and you had a few doors slammed in your face, and you were like, oh, ouch, not gonna, not that that's not for me. So there's many reasons why we bury it, we stop listening to it, or we never listen to it, but we bury it deeper and deeper in our heart. But I really believe if there is a desire on your heart, if it is a desire that is unrealized, if you are not listening to it, if you're not putting it out there, you know, laying it out there, letting it bubble up and seeing what that is, I believe that it would be very sad if you got to the end of your life. And you, and and we hear this. I speak about this so much, you know, the main regrets of the dying. I wish I'd lived a life where I was more true to myself instead of the life that others expected of me. And within that, which is one of the top regrets, is I wish I'd lived a life where I was more true to myself. What is that? You know, if that person was asked, what is more true to well, things that I wish I'd done, things that I really believed in, that I desired, that I really desired to do. How incredibly sad if you got to the end of your life. And it doesn't have to be some big thing, it can be little things, trying small things that you just just didn't, you just kept pushing down. The other thing is, another reason why I think women in midlife tend to push these down even deeper is because life can get hard. I spoke about hard, doing hard things in in um in a past episode. But when we're in the sandwich generation, we've got kids that we're dealing with, adult kids trying to figure them out in the world. We've maybe got health issues, maybe we're caretaking, others, elderly, partners, whatever. So when that it goes on, even then we're we're not even burying, even if there's a flicker of a desire, it's like, oh no, no, no, you can't do that now. That's for another time. Nope, we're putting that off until. Until. It's what I hear a lot. And I'm like, until what? Because some women go, well, I'll I'll get to that, I'll get to working on myself and do it. I just can't do it now. I haven't got time. I've got too much going on. And as I point out to women, life is in session and it's always going to be in session. And so that is a real mindset. It's a psychological hurdle with a lot of women who I really encourage. Hey, take my hand, let's get bold with this, let's step into doing this now. So when I ask you, what do you, what do you desire? What do you really want? If you don't know, it could be fuzzy, it might be unclear. That's okay. The desire is there, it just hasn't been listened to. And so, and it may not pop up overnight. And a lot of women that I work with, it doesn't pop up overnight. First, we just have to let some of the layers, we have to slow off some of the layers. And a lot of the layers that we work on, certainly in my methodology, are the invisible stories. It's the limiting invisible stories that we immediately tell ourselves. The moment we that desire even bubbles up, then you're gonna start telling yourself that voice, that hard voice, but we call it the voice of the supervillain, is gonna slap you back down. Oh, you can't do that. That's ridiculous. There's no way you're too old, that's stupid. That that's ridiculous. You know the voice I'm talking about. And so the minute we let it bubble up, then that voice will come in and just slap it down. So a very important step is to become aware of when that happens. And then we start to dismantle those beliefs and those stories to allow this beautiful desire to actually blossom like a beautiful lotus flower to open up to its full uh expression, which is really what we all want to be doing, isn't it, in our life? So one of the things that I want you to think about, and this is the little test that I, a practical test that I promised you at the beginning of this episode, is when you think about whatever the desire is that you're desiring, whether it is a desire to get healthier, whether it's a desire to change the way you eat, whether it's a desire to write a book, to change your career, to start a new hobby, to volunteer, to whatever it might be, you want to put it through the clean fuel, dirty fuel test. Okay. Because if your desire, and this is what we work on a lot in my mastermind group, which is a group of small group of women who are very committed to realizing their full, full potential and having a lot of coaching around that. And we were just talking about this the other week, that I'm dirty fuel because in this group we create goals and we create a lot of 90-day goals so that we really stay on track. And so these women are very brave and very courageous in this group because they really are in the ring and they are putting their goals, declaring their goals and being very, very specific about it and their desires. But if that desire and that goal is fueled by dirty fuel, dirty fuel is I must, I should, I've got to. And clean fuel is I want to, I get to, I choose to, I'm excited to. Now, dirty fuel is not sustainable. That you the vehicle's gonna putter out after time. Also, dirty fuel is clouded, cloudy fuel, by shame. Because every single time you start shoulding or shouldn'ting yourself, but shoulding yourself, then that leads to shame. Because when you should yourself, you're you're gonna end up probably not doing a lot of what you tell yourself you should, and then you're gonna go back to shame. It comes from shame, it comes from not being enough, not being good enough, it comes from a place of fear, it comes from a place of scarcity, and there's shame in and around that. That is the dirty fuel. So, whatever you start thinking about, oh, I'd love to do this, this is a desire, you want to make sure it's clean, you are being fueled by clean fuel. So I get I get to do this. I want to do this. I get to. I choose to. I'm excited to. And very often, your clean fuel has a really deep why behind it. There's a reason why. And I get my clients to really dig into what is your big why of why you want to do that? Why do you want to do that thing? And once you really dig into why, then it gets really exciting. And then you'll come up with an answer. And then you might want to ask another why. Okay, to that answer, you can journal on this. These are ways that you can start getting in touch with that really beautiful desire fueled with this clean fuel. So your desire must be yours. It's got to be yours, obviously. It's nothing to do with what anybody else is doing. And that's why I think on social media we've got to be careful. And certainly I have to be careful, because you see a lot of what everybody else is doing, and you kind of automatically think in some ways, well, I should be doing that, or maybe I should. And honestly, I encourage you to switch off your phone as much as you possibly can and just give yourself quiet time because your desire will bubble up in the quiet time. It'll actually bubble up when you're almost not thinking about it. You can journal about it, but you don't want to try and force it. It'll be like when you're talking, taking a walk, when you're doing something that's just really relaxing and you feel very connected to either, it could be cooking, it could be shopping for some beautiful flowers, it could be walking in the woods on the beach, it could be just sitting with sunlight pouring down, it could just be noodling around. But it can't, it's in that moment of release often when you're not trying to force the desire. I promise you this will happen. It could be when you're having a hot shower. My best ideas are always when I'm having a hot shower. Um, that it'll just bubble up. And when it does, capture it, don't let it go. Capture it, hold it, go, okay. And then maybe then go maybe go write it down and then let it sit, maybe for a few more days, and then revisit it. All right, so growing bolder, okay, turning towards yourself and asking yourself what you desire, and let yourself sit with that a little bit this week. Begin it. And when you start, and I'll finish on this, when you start getting an idea of what it is that you really want, and again, don't force it, but when you start getting an idea of maybe what that is, then you gotta begin it. You gotta begin it. Like Goethe said, boldness. Don't just let it sit in your notes on your computer, in a notebook, in a journal, because there it might just die. Might never see the light of day. And how tragic would that be if the thing that you wanted to do, you never showed up to do that thing, whatever it is, being there, connecting with others, doing something that could change somebody else's life, or could be part of changing lives of others, or could be something so simple that changes a dynamic in your family, just because you are happier and more fulfilled, and your partner, your children, see wow, my my wife or my partner, or my mother, or my grandmother is doing something that is that that makes her alive, that makes her walk through this stage of her life feeling alive and connected and full of joy and gratitude. That's a gift. That's a gift to give to everybody around you. So once you start becoming uh getting in touch with what you desire and it bubbles up, capture it and then take one bold action. I can't tell you what that bold action is for you because I'm not coaching you in this moment. Um but that next bold inspired action, you've got to get into action because then it's going to start living. And as Goethe said, when you take bold action, something else comes into play. It's almost like for me, it's this power that comes in. Call it what you want: higher power, higher self, God power, God. But I really believe this power, he calls it magic, but I call it this, it's really hard to even express what it is. I'm just going to call it a power, sort of comes in and takes over. And it's almost like you're you're in the jet stream now and you're flowing. And the magic that he talks about for me is the and the genius, if you like, is it taps into something in you. I think we all are geniuses, and it taps into something that you think, wow, I didn't even know I could do that. And the magic also is serendipity, because when you start moving towards something with clean fuel, then you'll start noticing all the little things that line up. The right person comes into your life, the right teacher, helper, mentor, um, piece of inspiration, book, um uh phone call, whatever it is, serendipity. It all starts lining up. All right. So that's it for this episode of Tea with Sophie. Oh, I forgot about my tea. It's now actually it's the perfect temperature now. So go visit me, um, SophieYuliano.com forward slash podcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, leave me a comment and let me know what you desire to do that perhaps you haven't been listening to and you now are going to listen to. And um and have a look uh below in the description where I always pop um all sorts of different materials and trainings and whatever I've got for you to continue this conversation and continue learning. I'll see you next time.