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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.
Courtney Townley 0:28
Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Grace & Grit Podcast. This is your host, Courtney Townley. As always, I know there’s a lot of spaces in places you could be. So the fact that you’re here is awesome. And I’m incredibly grateful that you chose to spend a little time with me today. Before we get into today’s episode, those of you who are listening to this episode around the time that it is first published, which is around what November 4 2023, I want to let you know that we are just a couple of days away from the free Consistency Code Crash Course.
Courtney Townley 1:01
So November 6, through November 10, I am hosting a free Consistency Code Crash Course it’s a five day course that teaches participants the framework that all of my work is based on. I teach this framework to every client and every student as really a pathway for helping them to ultimately coach themselves.
Courtney Townley 1:25
So if you listen to this Podcast, you enjoy the contents, you are looking for more information on how to take what you learn here and really apply it to your own life, this would be an awesome course for you to take. Or if you are someone who is just spinning out in a space of overwhelm, knowing the things that you could be doing to take better care of yourself, but really struggling to actually do those things, this would be a great course for you to participate in.
Courtney Townley 1:54
Again, it’s totally free, you have nothing to lose, you can register by going to graceandgrit.com/crashcourse.
Courtney Townley 2:04
And I hear a lot of people and I get a lot of emails from people saying, Oh, but I can’t come for the live lessons. It’s okay, we have created an online classroom for you, where I will drop each day’s lesson after I teach it. And you will have access to that classroom for as long as we keep these materials online. So it is worth registering for even if you cannot participate in the live part of the event. But I will say if you can participate live, you are opening yourself up to the opportunity to win prizes and sort of get more help than just by doing it as a self paced course. So however you need to participate, I would encourage you to sign up because again, it’s totally free. And it just might help you to keep the promises that you’re making to yourself in the rest of this year and into 2024 and well beyond hopefully for the rest of your life.
Courtney Townley 3:04
If you’re not convinced, maybe today’s episode will help to convince you that this is a great course to take. Because the conversation that I want to have today on the show is navigating the ecosystem of midlife wellness. Because ultimately at the end of the day, that’s really what I feel like I help women do is to navigate this multi layered life that we live and the multi dimensional parts that make us us.
Courtney Townley 3:36
So a few years ago, I watched a documentary. It’s probably one of my favorite documentaries ever. It is so good. I highly recommend it. It is called biggest little farm. And it is essentially a documentary that tracks the struggles and the triumphs of a couple named John and Molly Chester, who purchase this 200 acre desolate dying farm and when I say desolate and dying, I mean, this farm has seen way better days. I mean, the soil is barren. Everything on this farm is dead. They bought it at a time when California was entering one of the longest droughts it’s ever experienced. So it did not have a lot going for it. And the documentary tracks this seven year journey of them restoring this farm to a thriving ecosystem.
Courtney Townley 4:41
And there’s lots of reasons I love this documentary. But one of the main reasons I love it is because it is such a powerful reminder that nature does not do its best work in isolation. It does did not heal. By focusing on one thing, like the birds or the bugs or the microbiome of the soil. It has to focus on all the things. So rather than tending to one thing, nature tends to the wellness of many things in order to heal, and in order to create a thriving ecosystem, and midlife life in general, but I speak to midlife because that is what a large swath of my, my clientele and Podcast listeners make up that part of life. They are in that part of their life. So they’re no longer a young woman, and they’re no longer and they’re not yet an old woman. And there are so many complex layers to midlife. And they’re ever changing. They’re never stagnant. They’re always evolving, they’re always changing.
Courtney Townley 6:06
We are going through physical shifts, and midlife, we are going through career shifts, maybe careers ending, we are dealing with family dynamics, we are dealing with financial challenges, we are still trying to discover who we are and make the most out of our life, there are so many layers. And it’s not enough to just nurture one piece of your own ecosystem. To feel like a wholly healthy human, you have to give attention to all the layers, which can feel so incredibly daunting, right? And, frankly, who’s got the time for that? So where does one begin? And how does one enter a practice of nurturing their own ecosystem without getting overwhelmed. And that’s really what I want to explore today’s Podcast. And really, quite honestly, that is exactly what we will tackle in next week’s consistency code Crash Course. It is basically this framework that I’m going to talk about today. I’m using different language today. But it’s essentially the same thing.
Courtney Townley 7:20
So let’s start with what an ecosystem is an ecosystem is a complex network or interconnected system. And what I hear in that is I hear integration. An ecosystem is integration, it is a lot of different parts, working together to create a wholeness. And when we look at nature, more specifically, since I mentioned this documentary about this farm, to create a healthy farm, you’ve got to have a healthy, harmonious ecosystem. And humans really need the same thing. We need a healthy ecosystem, to feel well. And that really comes down to some kind of balance.
Courtney Townley 8:18
Now, I don’t believe there’s ever like a perfect balance. And even if we ever experienced perfect balance in our life, it doesn’t last for very long. But when we think of sort of physical and mental health, right, they’re both are important. Our personal and professional lives, both are important. But there is kind of a sweet spot in the center where I’m not putting all of my energy just on one thing. But I’m able to actually be present to all of it. Now it doesn’t mean I don’t have to make hard choices. And I don’t have to like trim the fat of the things that aren’t important to me, I do. But I am able as a human to have many layers to my life simultaneously.
Courtney Townley 9:06
But where things go wrong, especially in the health ecosystem, is when I start putting too much attention on one area to the detriment of other areas. For example, we’re living in a time where I feel like workaholism is almost promoted. We should just be working all the time and make as much money as we possibly can. Well, you certainly can’t do that. But there’s a cost to it. You’re not going to be able to get as much time and attention to family or other passions and pursuits. You may not have time to take care of yourself and all of that of course is going to have a consequence. So it is possible to have many areas of your life running simultaneously. Without giving one area all of your attention.
Courtney Townley 10:01
And you may have to give one area a lot of attention for short periods of time. But when you start giving all of your attention to one area all of the time, you have to ask yourself the question Is it promoting well being, and so rarely is it. Even if it seems like a really great thing, like you’re giving all this time and attention to helping someone in need, that can be taken to a point of your own dis ease, you start breaking down mentally and physically because of that. So no system works in isolation.
Courtney Townley 10:44
My physical health impacts every other area of my life. It affects my relationship health, it affects my mental health. It affects my spiritual health, it affects everything. And my relationship health affects other dimensions of my life as well. It affects my mental and physical well being, it can affect the way that I show up at my job. So one area of my life has implications across every area of my life. And yet, if you look at how Western medicine, or a lot of Western healing modalities are delivered, they are in isolation. So if you want to improve your health, we are often sold this idea of hyper focusing on physical health. Meaning diet and exercise.
Courtney Townley 11:52
And diet and exercise, of course, are important. But why aren’t we also addressing mental health and sleep cycles and environmental factors like mold or allergens, things of that nature, because those things can be just as impactful to our well being as diet and exercise. Or if we’re having challenges with our mental health, we are often recommended to go to a mental health professional, maybe do some kind of talk therapy, something of that nature. But there are a lot of other things that can impact mental well being our gut health, right, the state of our gut health, our diet choices, our exercise profile, or movement, profile, how much we’re moving or not moving in the day, all of that can impact our mental health.
Courtney Townley 12:48
So my point here is that we often try to address problems by isolating parts of our humanity, rather than nurturing the whole human. And what where your gaps are right now. between where you are and where your wholeness is, are different than my gaps. Right. So the things that need nurturing in my ecosystem are probably different than the things that need nurturing in your ecosystem. But we are often sold these protocols and sort of measures that are one size fits all approaches. So that is not how I work as a coach at all. I work from the place that to build a really thriving ecosystem, we really have to develop powerful self-leadership skills. And I’m going to teach you a framework here today or talk about a few things today that are a real part of that process of powerful self-leadership.
Courtney Townley 14:00
So again, referring back to this documentary that I started talking about biggest little farm, I was telling you that the when they when they got to the farm that they purchased this couple the Chester’s realized very quickly how bad the soil actually was. Nothing could grow in it. In fact, I read an article and the quote from the gentleman John Chester was, the soil is dead, and we have no idea how to bring it back to life. And don’t we often feel that way in our life. I mean, I know I’ve been there so many moments in my life where I just feel like maybe I haven’t said those words. My soil is dead. But I feel like I just don’t feel whole. I feel flat. Sometimes I feel indifferent, which is always scary because I don’t think indifference leads to wonderful things. I don’t feel inspired I feel like my life isn’t a thriving. And so it is my work as it is your work to really start investigating? Why is that? Why am I not feeling fully alive?
Courtney Townley 15:19
Maybe it has to do with your chemistry, maybe it has to do with the fact that you’re not taking any measures to bring yourself alive. Maybe you have a lot of stories in your head, about why becoming fully alive or going after the things that make you fully alive just aren’t appropriate for you, or why it won’t work for you. And so you just never do it. So again, that circles us back to self-leadership. When we are armed with powerful self-leadership tools, we always have within our grasp the ability to bring ourselves back to life. And so what are some of the specific skill sets that are a part of self-leadership? Well, number one, I would say observation. Observation is probably one of the most powerful skill sets you could ever develop. I often call this just the practice of awareness. But observation is your ally. Because when you know yourself better, of course, you can lead yourself better.
Courtney Townley 16:38
So I often work with women who are feeling really flat. They’re definitely not feeling fully alive. And when I asked them, what brings them joy, what they enjoy doing, they often say I have no idea, no clue. And largely that is because they have filled up their time. With so many responsibilities and obligations, that they don’t have time to observe themselves. They don’t have time to take note of what’s going well or what makes them feel anything.
Courtney Townley 17:17
So starting to build a practice of observation. Moments of aliveness, where are they? What are they caused by? Notice what foods you like eating what makes you feel good, what foods don’t make you feel so good. Notice what kind of people you love being around. Notice the kind of people you don’t really like being around. And here’s the thing that sounds so simple, because it is. Observation is simple. It is opening your eyes and paying attention to what’s truly going on in the moment in front of you, but also within you. But simple is not necessarily easy. And therein lies the problem. Right.
Courtney Townley 18:11
Our life is again, so busy, so full, our brains are thinking about so much all the time that the simple practice of observation feels heart. We also are able to revitalize our ecosystem by having a vision and planning accordingly. So again, this couple the Chester’s who built this farm, this incredible farm in California brought it back to life. They were able to do so because they had a vision for what they wanted to create. And then they had to create a plan for how they were going to do it.
Courtney Townley 18:57
And I think I mentioned at the start of this Podcast, but for them to revitalize this farm took seven years. And the reason I’m sharing that with you is because growth takes time developing a healthy ecosystem, when you’ve been living in a land that’s kind of void of nutrients and life. It takes time. You are not going to revolutionize your life in a few weeks with a little bit of effort. So what is your vision for your life for your ecosystem? And what is your plan for actually making that a reality? And I always find it fascinating when I’m coaching somebody who’s clearly in the throes of just not getting traction, they’re frustrated. They’re feeling like they know all the things they have all the good intentions but they’re just not taking action and Almost every time we land on the problem, which is they just have no, they have no plan, they have no strategy for bringing that vision to life. That’s why they’re not taking action. They’ve committed to nothing. And that’s a that’s great to know. Because when we can see that that’s the gap, we can fix that problem. And we can start nurturing the ecosystem.
Courtney Townley 20:33
The other piece of this nurturing your own ecosystem at midlife at really any stage of life is recognizing and owning that there are solutions to every problem. But if we do not parent our brains, if we do not take control over the sentences that are running through our brain, we can convince ourselves really quite easily that some problems are just insurmountable that there is no solution. And look, the solution isn’t always what you want the solution to be. I mean, that’s the other thing we have to face. Sometimes it requires us doing things or asking for help or re working our expectations of what a solution is supposed to look like, in order to find it.
Courtney Townley 21:32
And again, in this documentary, biggest little farm, holy cow, did they come up against every possible problem? I mean, we’re talking about crop failures, pest infestation, animal predators, water management problems, soil health problems, financial problems, community opposition, lack of information, lack of education. These were all issues that showed up. And this is probably just a small sampling of issues that showed up over the span of the seven years with revitalizing this ecosystem at this farm. And yet, when we apply the practice of observation to those problems, and we stay solution oriented, rather than problem oriented, we start to find solutions. And, again, watch the watch the documentary, because I think you will really appreciate the things that I’m talking about here.
Courtney Townley 22:37
But a couple of things that came up in this show were that number one, the fruit trees started to get a lot of slugs on them. And through the process of observation, this couple realized that the ducks actually liked slugs. And so the ducks started eating the slugs off the trees once they were allowed into the orchard. Another problem that came up, of course, was that there were predators coming in to eat the chickens at night. And through talking to the community and getting some education, the Chester’s realized that they could probably get an animal that was trained specifically for that purpose to protect their chickens. And then that’s what they did. But had they only looked for solutions based on past evidence? Had they not been open to solutions at all? Of course, there’s no way their farm would have become or would it became what it became. So we have to stay open minded.
Courtney Townley 23:47
We have to be looking be willing to look through a lot of different possibilities to find solutions to our problems. And the other thing that I just wanted to mention is that given the right ecosystem, I did say this at the beginning, but I just want to kind of circle back to it given the right ecosystem, nature does know how to heal. And so I think it’s really always a very critical question and a big part of self-leadership to be constantly asking yourself, what do I need to add or remove from my life in order to help my own healing process? And this is really an exercise in identifying stressors. What are the biggest stressors in your life right now? And what is an action you could take to help unpack a little bit of that stress? Might you need to ask for help? Might you need to learn a certain skill set take a supplement. Get it Get an exam of some kind, get more information What might you need to add or remove in order to support your own healing process.
Courtney Townley 25:10
And here’s the truth of that, you know, you’re going to try to convince yourself you don’t know, but you do know, you may not know the supplement you need, but you know, the phone calls you need to make. You may not know me, you may not know exactly the exercise protocol that you need to do to heal your rotator cuff. But you have a list of referrals from people in your community that have been passed on to you, and you simply haven’t taken action on them. So you know, enough to take the next step to unpack a little bit of stress today, make those decisions, what are those actions. And then one more thing I just want to say at the close of this Podcast today is that there is a reason that we can’t see the entire path to healing our ecosystem.
Courtney Townley 25:59
Because so often, you know, I’ll work with women. And they’re, they’re frustrated, because they’re like, Oh, I just want to see like how it’s all going to work out. I want to know every step I need to take in order to accomplish this thing. But life doesn’t work that way. And I have always said this on this show. And I deeply believe this. That’s very intentional, I think by nature. Because if we could see the path in front of us, we would never take the first step. Because it’s usually riddled with things that we have to overcome. And I was reading an article from an a magazine, I’d never heard of it. It’s called see magazine. But it was an article interviewing John and Molly Chester, so that basically the two people in this documentary, the two main characters, they’re not even characters, they’re real people.
Courtney Townley 26:56
But in this article, the interviewer asked John Chester, he said, if you knew what you know, now, would you do it all over again. And John said, if someone said, you are going to experience a plane crash, the wings are going to fall off, and you’ll be isolated on an island making decisions about life and death? You’d probably say no. And he said, but if I could have seen us now, then, then hell yes, I would do you know, I would do it again, I would say yes to this adventure. And this is this is so often the case that we don’t really get to see how it all works out until we get there. And then we look in the rearview mirror to see how we got there. And it becomes quickly apparent why we didn’t see the whole pathway. Because if I had seen the whole pathway, I never would have started. Because there are going to be challenges and obstacles and things I never could have seen coming that I’m going to have to overcome in order to create this thing.
Courtney Townley 28:15
So if you are someone right now, who is just kind of convincing yourself that I don’t know enough to get started, I need to see the whole staircase in front of me. No, you don’t. And it’s a gift that you can’t see the whole staircase in front of you. And I really have seen evidence of this in my own life. And certainly working with a lot of clients over the years, that as long as I’m willing to take the first step, the next breadcrumb, it gets revealed to me. I pick up that breadcrumb and then another one gets revealed to me. And that’s how I evolve. And you might have a bigger vision, which I encourage you to have like, what is the ecosystem you want to build? What is the life that you want to live. But don’t expect to know every step on how you’re going to going to get there until you start walking? is the only way you’ll ever know. All right. I know this was like a really kind of different way of approaching this conversation. But I can’t recall what I was reading. It was like two weeks ago, and I came across this documentary, again, the biggest little farm and I was like, Oh my gosh, I love that movie so much. And then I started thinking about some of the lessons from that documentary. And it just got me thinking of this whole ecosystem that we have in our own lives, and what it takes to really honor and nurture that ecosystem. Yeah, and I just wanted to give you a kind of a fun way in a different way to maybe consider that.
Courtney Townley 29:40
So hopefully you got something out of this. I would love you to partake in next week’s Consistency Code Crash Course again, you can check out all the registration details by just heading over to graceandgrit.com/crashcourse but it is totally free. And it’s worth it’s worth registering for even if you can’t attend the live sessions. So have a wonderful rest of your week and I’ll see you in another couple weeks take care.
Courtney Townley 30:10
Thank you for listening to the Grace & 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.
