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Courtney Townley 0:00
Welcome to the Grace and Grit Podcast made for women who want their healthiest years to be ahead of them, not behind them. Join your host Courtney Townley right now. As she breaks down the fairy tale health story, you have been chasing all of your life, indispensable action steps and lasting change.
Today, I want to talk about what I call the renovation years. Now the renovation years in my opinion, are the years spanning between 40 and 60. And I have to tell you, I have a very soft spot in my heart for this age group. I have a soft spot in my heart for all women of all ages. But there’s two reasons I think I have sort of a special connection to this group. Number one, I’m in it, and almost four, I’ll be 43 in February. So I am definitely in the thick of the renovation years. And I also have had the amazing honor of working with this population, most of my career.
Even when I was a young trainer in my 20s I was attracting a clientele in this age group between 40 and 60. And even today, I would say the bulk of my clientele, about 70% of my clients are in this age group. So I work with women in all age groups. But this age group really makes up the bulk of my business. So I feel like I have a strong understanding of the challenges that are presented at this age and stage of life.
Why do I call the 4040 to 60? The renovation years? Well, like I spoke about last week, I spoke to this last week, many of us spend our 20s and 30s, building a life building our identity, creating success accumulating responsibilities. Most women that I’ve worked with, have built, you know, amazing careers and homes and relationships and family units and really leaned into their passions and pursuits in those years. And many women have sacrificed their health in order to accomplish those things. And they didn’t do it intentionally. Right.
It was just a little bit of sacrificing themselves, you know, year after year to the point that they arrive in that mid life that 40 to 68 He’s range. And they kind of look around and marvel at the amazingness of their life, there’s a lot of incredible parts they are so grateful for, and they’re so proud of. And they also start to identify some parts that are depleting them, are really just not as fulfilling as they thought they’d be. Or they’re just not fitting anymore in the way that they once did. And so I believe that those years have been between 40 and 60. And of course, that’s a rough estimate, right? It might be in your late 30s, it might be a little bit further into your 60s. But we really get the the opportunity to start renovating. And I see many women Recognizing this, but then struggling to give themselves permission to actually do the renovation. So I want to speak to that a little bit today.
As we enter our 40s, we definitely start crossing that threshold into perimenopause. For some people, it starts younger. For some people, it’s going to start a little bit later. But in perimenopause, essentially, what happens is our body becomes more sensitive to cortisol, the stress hormone. And what’s interesting is we tell ourselves that our bodies betraying us, our bodies not betraying us, it’s just going through a natural hormonal cycle, right where progesterone and estrogen start to drop, which leaves us a bit more sensitive to cortisol. So your body is actually doing the best it can to support you, based on how you’ve been treating it. So women in their 40s and 50s are definitely feeling the effects of stress in their life more than ever, for two reasons.
Number one, their life is likely more stressful than ever, because they have more responsibilities than they’ve ever had. And, again, the our hormones are not really working in our favor to support stress. So we experienced things like the weight gain, the exhaustion, the lack of focus. And many women will tell themselves, they just need to eat less and exercise more to remedy that. And I want you to know that as a coach, the type of coaching that I do is called causal coaching. Right? So I want clients to really get to know what is at the root of the of the challenges they’re facing. Okay, so I don’t just put a bandaid over things, I really want to get to the root of what is causing the challenges. And when we talk about hormonal disruption, and and sort of this challenge, with having more stress than we’ve ever had in our life, and having less of the hormones that can help us actually manage that stress. Again, a lot of women will convince themselves that food and exercise are the answer. And I believe that is part of the answer. But there’s a really big part of this conversation that many women are not even considering.
What I have discovered is more commonly at the root of a woman’s physical dis ease at this age and stage of life between 40 and 60 are these things, her lack of self respect, her lack of taking time to honor the needs of her mind, body and soul, her lack of boundaries, her lack of knowing herself, or really knowing the habits that she has made out of compromising her own needs. what’s at the root of her dis ease in her body is her belief system around what’s possible for her life? Because many women I work with are trying to create a new future based on a past self and that’s never going to work. If you believe what you believed in the past, you’re going to create more of that. We have to create new beliefs. I also believe that the root of a lot of discomfort and dis ease at this age and stage of life is the overflowing to do list, the unwillingness to simplify and of course there’s a lot of relation Ship challenges, a lot of job challenges. Many women are trying to manage so many things at one time, right, you know, children careers, aging parents, marriages, households, right? There’s a lot for us to take on.
So in essence, what I’m trying to say here is the challenges that weigh on us, hormonally, are far greater than just diet and exercise alone. And as a woman moves into her 40s, and 50s, and beyond, because she is more sensitive to stress. She has also really presented with this opportunity to look at managing that stress better, to look at what is working for her life and what isn’t working for her life. And this is why I call it the renovation years, we can take stock of our life and decide that some things need a little renovation. So I’ve really come to believe that when a woman crosses into this age and stage of life, not only is she being presented with an opportunity to repair her relationship with herself, but because she’s more sensitive to stress than ever, she’s also it’s a great opportunity to look around again and look at the parts of her life that need to be renovated in order to better manage her total stress load.
And here’s the truth of it. Ladies, if you’re in this age bracket, you really have two choices. You can be pissed that your body has become more sensitive to stress. Right, because I do see that a lot where women are just my body socks and you know, the best of my life is in the past and my body hates me and you know, life is just downhill after you know entering perimenopause. That’s, that’s a choice to believe those things. Or you can look at the shift hormonally that’s happening in your body at this age and stage of life as a gift as a gift in allowing you to make some different choices. And the truth of the matter is you’re going to have to go through it either way. Right,
You are not going to avoid perimenopause and menopause. Although some of you might write if you had sort of a hysterectomy early on in life, you you went through that, you know at a much earlier stage. But most women are going to have to go through these years. And we have a choice. In our belief around these years. One of the ways that I love to kind of explain this to clients is when a woman is pregnant. We all recognize that literally something is being created right in the human body. Something new is about to be born a human being and hormones are shifting during pregnancy. So we all understand that self-care is going to need to look very different in order to support the growth of that baby to support the shifting of the hormones.
Now, while perimenopause and menopause is not birthing a human. I do believe something new is being born in these years. And if we can learn how to honor the shift of our hormones in the way that we understand that there’s an honoring that needs to happen in pregnancy, we will move through these years so much more proactively and so much more gracefully. So, of course I have a few words of advice to those of you in your 40s to 60 age group. Now, even if you’re not in this age group, if you’re beyond 60 i This is very applicable. Right because menopause isn’t just you know, happening in our 40s or 50s. It’s happening once we enter menopause, we’re in menopause. The rest of our Life. So this is applicable to everybody over the age of 60. And everyone who is younger than 40. I think this is such great stuff to know. Because it gives you a lot of compelling reasons to take excellent care of yourself in your younger years, okay, so here are some words of advice. First of all, in your 40s, and 50s, grant yourself permission to reacquaint yourself with yourself. Many women have sacrificed their relationship with themselves, to build relationships with others, right to focus on the marriage focus on the kids focus on the relationships at work. We focus on everyone else to the point of kind of losing ourselves.
And what I see a lot of women doing a lot of my clients doing is they’re dictating to their bodies, rather than really communicating with themselves. And I think a big reason we do that, why we dictate and don’t communicate is because communication takes time. And most women don’t have time. Or at least that’s what they tell themselves. Right? They’re so busy, they don’t have time to consider what lights them up anymore, or what feels true to them. And what I think is interesting is those of you who are married or in relationships, when your relationship with your partner starts to sort of plateau or get a little bit stale. If you’re in a healthy relation relationship, you’re going to identify that and recommit. And what is recommitment look like in a relationship with another person, it looks like making time, maybe you start going on regular date nights again, maybe you plan a vacation together, right?
But you definitely carve out time in your schedule to spend with the other person. And that’s what you need to do with yourself. If you want to repair your relationship with yourself, reacquaint yourself with yourself, you gotta get carve out time to get to know yourself. So that means carving out time to spend by yourself. Maybe you travel alone, maybe you plan a weekend trip by yourself. So you can get wildly curious about who you are, at this age and stage of life, what lights you up, what doesn’t. And when you know that, I always say this, but I’m going to say it until the day I die. When you know yourself better, you can lead yourself better. But if you don’t take time to get to know yourself, at different ages and stages of life, you’re not going to lead yourself very effectively.
Another piece of advice I have to this age group is really commit to your growth and what you wanted for this life. And maybe what you wanted in your 20s is really different from what you want now in your 40s or 50s. And that’s great. But you need to get clear on that. What do you want for your future. I see a lot of women entering their 40s and 50s with the attitude that the best is in the past their best body, right? Their best. Everything, like just the best of our life is in the past.
And if you believe that is true, you will search for evidence that that is true. You could choose to believe that your best is yet to come. And I am going to choose to believe that. And when you believe that that your best is yet to come, you are going to seek out evidence for that. You are so much better equipped to step into the woman that you have always wanted to be at this age and stage of life. Because you have more understanding of life, you have more skills, you’ve made more mistakes, you’re more resilient. I have witnessed so many women stepping fully into their power in this age bracket and beyond. But it’s a choice. Right?
It’s a choice in how we choose to think about this age and stage of life. I recently posted up a little meme instead. i The Women of Grace & Grit Facebook community. And it said it was from Joan Rivers who I adore. I’ve always been a fan of Joan Rivers, I have so bummed when she passed away. But the quote was, I wish I could tell you it gets better. But it doesn’t, it doesn’t get better, you get better. And that’s really what I’m speaking to here is that by your the time you’ve arrived in your 40s, and 50s, you are so much
better. To handle, right, you’re so much better equipped to handle the complexities of life. Because you’ve lived a lot of life. Another piece of advice I have is be honest, about how much stress you’re really caring about your total stress load. And here’s the truth. Stress is a really great, it can be a really great thing, right? It’s what creates growth. But stress is great until it isn’t. Because if we have so much stress packed into our life, that we’re suffocating beneath it. That’s problematic. And it’s especially problematic in our 40s and 50s. When again, our hormones are not really positioned to be handling buckets of stress. Right.
You can definitely navigate stress Well, gracefully, you can definitely learn how to better manage stress. But you have to be willing to take responsibility where you can. Otherwise you are going to suffer unnecessarily. And I do believe that learning how to manage stress at this age and stage of life during these renovation years, really requires that we make some hard choices. And I always call this kind of trimming the fat, trimming the things out of our life that are not supporting life. So these are tough conversations, the career that you’ve kind of had resentment and loathing around for the past 15 to 20 years. The marriage, right that’s been fading and crumbling for years, and is now really in a position that you don’t even recognize it anymore. Maybe there’s some friends in your life that you’ve outgrown. Maybe there’s things that have been pressing on your heart for decades, that you still have not granted yourself permission to explore. These are the hard choices I’m speaking of.
And please don’t hear me saying that if you do identify that you’ve hated your job for 20 years are your marriage is falling apart. It doesn’t mean you got to get rid of those things, doesn’t mean you have to quit your job or get a divorce. It could mean those things. But it could also mean that you need to be proactive about looking for the ways in which you can change your relationship with those things. Because I’m all for I’m all for throwing in the towel at the right time. But the right time is never when you haven’t made a fierce effort. You want to know that you did everything you could to salvage that thing before you walk. So what things can you do to mend the parts of your life that feel off kilter? Where can you take responsibility? That’s a great question to be asking.
I also want to stress that at this age and stage of life, I think many women are rumbling with this idea that people have expectations of them, that they don’t want them to have any more. In essence, women are recognizing that they need to reteach people how to treat them. The amazing thing about being an adult is that you get to change at any point. But women have a really hard time doing this because they’re so concerned with how it will affect everyone around them. I have women who will cook two separate dinners at night. Which is crazy to me, because their family doesn’t want to eat the way that they’re eating. Because they don’t like it and in my opinion, I’m like, Well, if you’re cooking dinner, why should anybody have a say in what you’re cooking? Right?
Or women really struggle to grant themselves more time to be just with themselves and to be alone, they feel guilty about that. And here’s, here’s why I really think what’s at the root of that is we have trained people in our life, to have certain expectations of us, based on how we’ve been moving through the world in the past, right? We’ve we basically trained people what to expect from us. But you get to reset those expectations at any time. Is everyone gonna love it? Probably not. Right? People don’t people don’t want to see they don’t want you to change if it’s working for them. Why would they want you to change. But what a lot of people don’t understand is that if they grant you the grace of evolving and changing, it actually ends up benefiting them. Because you’re happier, you’re more of a whole person, you’re more at peace, you’re more joyful. So there is a rough patch, with a lot of these transitions right in in retraining people what to expect of us, but it’s so worth it.
I also just want to say I won’t spend a lot of time on this because I did a whole episode just a few weeks ago on unconditional love. If you have not visited that episode, I strongly encourage you to. But learn how to love yourself hard. Right, I mentioned that I call that the 40s to 60s, the renovation years. Because we look around. And again, marvel at the great parts of our life. And we also identify some parts of our life that just aren’t working. And if you choose to look at the parts that aren’t working, and use that as an opportunity to beat yourself up, and kind of bully yourself, and tell yourself that you know, you’re never going to succeed and you’re a horrible person for letting this happen. That is not helpful. That is not how you step into your most fulfilling life. People grow when their loved well. True story. And you know that about your kids, you know that about your other relationships in your life. That’s also true of your relationship with yourself. When you love yourself, well, when you love yourself without the conditions without the agenda. You help yourself to heal and move past and rebuild.
So again, if you’re someone listening to this that has a really hard time loving yourself, I get it. It can start with self respect. I always say that’s the gateway to self love. But do yourself a favor and listen to that unconditional love episode. I wish I could tell you off the top of my head what episode it is, let it get remember. So you can go to the website and just go to podcasts at the top of the page and you’ll find it it’s just it was just a few episodes ago. So your best years ladies can truly be ahead of you not behind you. Right? I say that all the time in all of my marketing, that’s kind of our tagline. But they can’t be ahead of you if you don’t know what needs to be changed, right? Even if you build the house of your dreams, even if you buy a car that you’ve always, you know wanted like the your dream car. After several years, those things need maintenance, right? They need a new like their house needs a new roof. Maybe the car needs a new paint job. That’s the part of taking care of things that we appreciate. Why not you? Right? Why not?
Why not allow yourself some maintenance, some renovation. So you can live out the rest of your years, making them the your best years. And I do want you to hear this, you know, what needs to change to improve your health. And I’m pretty sure you know it’s not just food and exercise that’s going to remedy that. But it’s way easier to just hyper focus on food and exercise. Right then really look at the the root of what’s causing a lot of your challenges. And I’m not saying don’t focus on food and exercise. I think it’s a great starting place for a lot of people and here’s why. It’s really difficult to tackle the challenges and other areas of your life if you’re chemically dis erupted, right? So if you if you’re not getting sleep, and you’re eating really crappy foods, and you know, you’re not moving your body at all, you’re not really in the best position to make difficult decisions, because you’re gonna make difficult decisions out of reactivity, which is never good.
So I do believe that improving diet, improving exercise, improve improving your sleep cycle, all of those things can be a really awesome starting place. But recognize it’s a starting place, it doesn’t mean that you don’t need to address the bigger issues in your life that are really depleting you. And as you grant yourself permission to renovate as you remove things that are depleting you, and you add more of the things that light you up, as you develop more willingness to stand in your truth, right, and be okay with letting everything fall away that doesn’t support that truth. You will build a level of confidence that you have never experienced before. Because self confidence isn’t about knowing that you can do something easily. Self Confidence comes from knowing it’s going to be hard, knowing it’s going to be uncomfortable, and leaning into those things on your heart any way and proving to yourself on the other side, that you absolutely can, that you’re absolutely worthy. That when challenges and obstacles show up, you can absolutely navigate them. That’s where self confidence comes from. You aren’t born confident. Right?
You weren’t born with a certain amount of self confidence. You can you kind of earn your self confidence as you are willing to move through life and make hard choices. And lean into the things that really feel true and authentic to you. And I know this, this whole conversation may seem so off kilter for those of you coming into a Podcast, talking about health, right. But I am such a firm believer that this is the stuff that really matters. food and exercise is a part of it. Right? Getting enough sleep good look, good lord. I’ve done a lot of podcasts on the power of sleep, being hydrated. But really acknowledging what is serving us in our life, and what needs to be let go, or what needs to be renovated. Because it’s not always a matter of letting it go. It’s just reworking it, recalibrating it. And I feel like this age and stage of life between 40 and 60 is really such an opportunistic time to do that, partly because of your hormones, partly because of all the responsibilities you carry at that age and stage of life. But you can look at it as a curse, or you can look at it as a blessing. And I strongly encourage you to embrace the latter, it is a blessing.
Thank you so much for listening to today’s episode of the Grace and Grit Podcast. I hope there was something in here that allows you to travel forward with a little bit more ease and grace. And again, if you’re looking for a higher level of support, I would really encourage you to check out our Rumble & Rise membership community once again, you can check out that community and all that it entails by heading on over to graceandgrit.com/readytorumble. Have a wonderful week and I hope I’ll see you again next time take care.
Thank you for listening to the grace and grit Podcast. It is time to mend the fabric of the female health story. And it starts with you taking radical responsibility for your own self care. You are worth the effort and with a little grace and grit. Anything is possible.
