352: Rising Strong: The Power of Reorienting at Midlife

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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’m thrilled that of all the podcasts you could be listening to right now you found your way here. And today I want to talk about reorienting yourself at midlife, what that means and why it is so important to putting your healthiest and happiest years ahead of you.

Courtney Townley 0:50
You know I’m sure if you are a midlife woman listening to the show, you are well aware that the midlife years can be wildly disorienting, because not only are midlife women dealing with a changing hormonal landscape, but the landscape of life is pretty dramatically changing in these years.

Courtney Townley 1:11
So in essence, there’s a lot of stress, big stressors, little stressors. And all these stressors can really add up to creating some serious breakdown mentally, physically, emotionally, if someone does not take radical responsibility for learning skills that actually help them to unpack unnecessary stress.

Courtney Townley 1:33
And look, this is not a new topic on this show. We have talked about this so many times. And I will continue to talk about it. Because it is so paramount to really reclaiming our power, and restoring our health and well being. So in this episode of The Grace & Grit Podcast today, I’m going to invite you to consider the kind of the load of your current stress bucket. And we’re going to talk a little bit about this concept of microstressors, because microstressors are something that we tend to really overlook. And under appreciate the power of and if we can start taking back some of our power, their life starts to get a whole lot better. So I’m going to introduce a few critical skill sets by the end of the show that can go a really long way in helping you to convert micro stress into macro resilience.

Courtney Townley 2:28
But before we go there, I want to just give you a quick reminder that if this episode lands for you today, and you want to take the skills I mentioned in this episode to the next level. This is just a friendly reminder that we have made the master classes that I teach every month inside of Rumble & Rise, which is my private community, we have made those master classes now available to the public for a small fee. And so in these masterclasses, I really dive deep into how to apply the skill sets that I often bring up on this show. And really give you tangible ways of leaning into application.

Courtney Townley 3:14
Furthermore, you’re getting a pretty robust companion guide that goes along with these master classes to help you remember what you’ve learned, and also work through your relationship with these topics. So if that’s something you find you might be interested in, you can head on over to graceandgrit.com/masterclass. And you will find the master classes that are currently available for purchase.

Courtney Townley 3:43
So the problem that many of us are facing at midlife isn’t actually stress. Although I’ll admit, there’s a tremendous amount of that coming at us at midlife. But the real problem is the lack of skill sets to manage the stress that you’re contending with in your life. And more specifically, the real problem is the inability to unpack unnecessary stressors. That really starts to take a toll on our well being on every front mentally, physically and emotionally.

Courtney Townley 4:15
I just got back from traveling to Texas, which is a whole story in and of itself. I’ll tell you a little bit more about that later in the show today. But on my way to Texas to see my dad, I watched Everest, which I think is a pretty old movie. I’m not sure what year it was made. I think I saw that it was made in 2015. But it was actually a remake of the movie that was made in 1998. But regardless, Everest is the true story of the really tragic climb. In I think it was 1996 where eight climbers lost their lives. And it was the subject of Jon Krakauer his book into thin air. Now, if you know anything about that story, you know While there were a lot of stressors at play, that ultimately led to the death of eight people. So there was physical exertion that comes from an incredible physical feat, like climbing Everest, there was altitude sickness, there was the lack of oxygen that people were contending with the year that that happened. And I would imagine it’s even worse. Now.

Courtney Townley 5:26
The mountain was very crowded, because climbing Everest was becoming a very popular thing to do. There was a lack of resources. Specifically, there were there was a lack of oxygen at certain places along the mountain where it should have been, there were ropes missing from really dangerous traverses, that the climbers needed to make. There were poor choices that were made, the weather was not super helpful to the the entire condition of the climb. And all of this lead up to the climb that year being horrifically tragic.

Courtney Townley 6:08
And this may seem like a really dramatic comparison. But I feel like midlife for a lot of women can feel the same way. There are obvious stressors that we’re dealing with, like the shifting hormonal landscape, complex relationship dynamics, even health challenges that show up out of nowhere, seemingly. But there’s also a lot of less obvious stressors, little tiny stressors, that compounded over time, really take a toll on our health and well being things like always talking down to yourself worrying and self doubt, not doing enough of the things that actually make you feel alive.

Courtney Townley 6:54
It kind of makes me think of that saying the straw that broke the camel’s back, which I actually wanted to look up right before I recorded this episode to know like, where did that saying originate? And what Wikipedia told me is that the straw that broke the camel’s back is from an Arabic proverb about how a camel is loaded beyond its capacity to move or stand. And so often, this is a really great analogy for the breakdown that I see happening at midlife, because a lot of women are dealing with major life stressors. And on top of it, they have all these little micro stressors that are also at play. And then something really small, like one more ounce of stress is what implodes a person. And we start to this is where we get diagnosed with like autoimmune challenges, we start to have mental health challenges, we start to be incredibly reactive to the point of imploding relationships unnecessarily, there’s a lot of catastrophic byproduct of loading on too much stress.

Courtney Townley 8:10
So once again, I just want to say for the record that stress isn’t the problem, stress is always going to be a part of life. But too much stress at any given time really is the problem. And then the lack of skill sets to unpack that stress makes the problem even far worse. Which is why it’s so incredibly important that we learn how to do two things simultaneously. We need to learn how to expand our capacity to tolerate stress at midlife, while also taking radical responsibility for reducing unnecessary stress from our life. Because ladies, there is an awful lot of stress in your life that does not need to be there. In fact, I would argue that a lot of it is even self induced.

Courtney Townley 9:01
So let’s talk about that first piece, what does it mean to expand your capacity to tolerate stress? Well, physically, this means that you take initiative consistently, to honor the needs of your body to promote resilience. I know I’ve mentioned this a million times on the show. But as we enter our 40s we start to lose estrogen and progesterone, which are two of the hormones that help us to tolerate stress. And as those two hormones start to lessen in our system, we become so much more sensitive to a high stress load, which means we break down a lot more easily. From a stress load that 10 or 20 years ago, we could have carried more easily I didn’t say easy, I just said more easily. And so the things physically, of course, that help us to promote resilience in the human body are things like honoring your need for rest, honoring your need for nourishment. So eating nourishing food on the regular, not just, you know, one time in the day or when you remember to, it’s building capacity in the physical body.

Courtney Townley 10:33
So utilizing things like strength training and cardiovascular exercise, to enable your cells to do their job more efficiently, produce energy, get rid of toxins move around nutrients. That’s what those practices can help us to do repair. But when we don’t make time for those things, our body becomes less resilient. Hydration, something as simple as hydrating or limiting alcohol and things that really dehydrate us can go a long way in helping to promote physical resilience. Mentally expanding our capacity to tolerate stress means that we don’t add stress to already stressful situations.

Courtney Townley 11:26
For example, I told you, I just came home from this Texas, this Texas trip. And on my way home, I flew into Salt Lake City, and was told that my flight initially was delayed, and then was canceled because the fog in Missoula was so bad. And we just had such a strange winter here. You know, fog is not usually something that we have to deal with on a regular basis. But it was here this week. And I was stuck in the Salt Lake City Airport, not for one night, but two nights and ultimately three days, and finally decided to fly to a town about two hours away Butte, Montana, rent a car and drive home. Because I was at the point where I just really needed to get home.

Courtney Townley 12:12
That is a stressful situation that I honestly really didn’t have much control over, right. I mean, I can’t control the fog, I can’t demand that delta fly their plane in dangerous conditions. But what I did have control over was the mindset that was governing me in the midst of that circumstance. And you could see it all around you at the airport, like there were people that were just going crazy, with not being able to get out. And I could have easily told myself that this was a disaster, that delta should do better that this shouldn’t happen. That is an example of me adding unnecessary stress to an already stressful situation.

Courtney Townley 12:55
So really, I had the opportunity to parent my brain in a way that served me in what was absolutely a very inconvenient situation. Expanding capacity to tolerate stress emotionally, means that you’re willing to feel your emotions, rather than always doing things that numb your emotions that ultimately cause more stress down the road. For example, if every time you’re feeling stressed out, you pour yourself a glass of wine, well, you’re doing two things, you’re numbing the stress, you’re not taking care of stress, you’re just numbing it. And then ultimately, when that alcohol wears off, you now have more stress to contend with. Because you feel like how and the alcohol didn’t really address the problem in the first place. So when we start learning how to feel our emotions, and process emotions in healthy ways, that actually expands our capacity to tolerate stress.

Courtney Townley 14:05
So let’s talk about the second part of that equation. So I said there were two things that we needed to learn how to do in order to improve our relationship with stress. Number one was expand our capacity to tolerate stress, while simultaneously taking radical responsibility for reducing stress in our life. So this is where this concept of micro stressors I think, is really interesting. So micro stressors are basically seemingly insignificant things. They can actually add up to a tremendous amount of stress that causes you to break down. And I actually recently read a book called The micro stress affect how little things pile up and create big problems and what to do about it. It’s by Rob, cross and care are in Dillon. And I’m just going to read you the just the inner flap of the book just the first couple paragraphs because it may be something that you want to read.

Courtney Townley 15:07
But I also just think it gives you a really quick grasp on what micro stressors are. So it says this, there is a force we encounter every day that we aren’t aware of, and it threatens to derail otherwise promising careers and lives. Micro stress. This hidden epidemic of small moments of stress has insidiously infiltrated both our work and our personal lives with invisible but devastating effects. Micro stress doesn’t trigger the normal stress response in our brains to help us deal with it. Instead, it embeds itself in our minds, and accumulates daily, one micro stress on top of the other, the long term impact can be debilitating. Unregistered, micro stress weighs us down, damages our physical and emotional health, and contributes to a decline in our health and well being. So when I read the book, first of all, the book is very much geared towards micro stress in the workplace. So for that reason, I wouldn’t say that it was one of my favorite reads. But I do think the premise of the book is super valuable. And there were definitely some great nuggets. And the concept of a whole I thought was really valid.

Courtney Townley 16:40
The micro stressors that I see in the work that I do that really were on my clients are things that just don’t seem like a big problem in the scheme of everything that’s going on in their life. And truth be told, they aren’t the most important things necessarily. But all of these things compounded together, create a massive amount of unnecessary stress. And I want to emphasize that word unnecessary, because nothing that I’m going to mention here, these micro stressors are necessary. It is possible to dramatically minimize all of these things in your life. And in some cases, even eliminate these things. Things like people pleasing, always running around trying to make everyone around you happy at all times. I say this all the time, you do not have that kind of power, my friends. You don’t get to make people are happy. That’s on people, right?

Courtney Townley 17:47
That’s everyone’s responsibility to make themselves happy. You could do the kindest thing in the world for somebody, and they could think about it in a way that makes them miserable. But man, do I see a lot of women wearing themselves down by trying to make everybody happy? Or trying not to ripple the water or make anybody uncomfortable? Those are micro stressors. doing that for years, decades, a lifetime will absolutely break you down. Perfectionism always aspiring to the beat to do the best job possible. Always a plus work all the time. Exhausting. That’s a micro stressor. And yes, absolutely. There are spaces and places in your life where you probably should strive for not perfectionism, but your best work. But there’s other parts of your life, where you don’t need to be putting in that kind of effort just getting the job done. is enough.

Courtney Townley 18:53
Another micro stressor is definitely focusing on the past, either trying to chase a past version of yourself, or trying to care for yourself and operate your life run your life, like you did 10 or 20 years ago. So your happiest and healthiest self is never going to be found in the past. And running your life on your past got you to where you are. In some ways. That’s great. In some ways, that’s not so great. But here’s what I know for sure. If you keep operating based on a past, like self image, self identity, it’s not going to take you further than it’s already gotten you. You’ve got to start thinking new things and believing new things. Reconsidering who you want to be moving forward. And man, do we waste a lot of time, energy and mental bandwidth on focusing on mistakes or regrets from the past that So micro stressor in and of itself. Busyness is a micro stressor. Always keeping yourself busy. Because it sounds good because you think you should always be busy. But you’re not actually busy doing things that really matter to you. Lack of self trust is a micro stressor. We, we marinate and self doubt, we talk to ourselves in a way that robs us of our confidence.

Courtney Townley 20:29
That adds up to a whole lot of stress when it’s done on repeat over a lot of years. reactivity that is a micro stressor, right, we react rather than pausing to think things through. And not only does that often cause us harm in the moment, but there’s a ripple effect. So when I lash out at my husband, because I’m not well fed, because I haven’t been putting myself to bed on time, because I’m not parenting my brain. Well, then it creates micro stress for him that now he has to deal with. And then that, of course, impacts our kid and impacts our household. So micro stress is not just affecting you, it’s affecting everyone around you. And you, my friends can be the cause of other people’s micro stress.

Courtney Townley 21:29
Indecision, this is a big one, not making decisions, creates a tremendous amount of stress in your life. And it seems really innocent, it seems really innocent to say, you know, I just don’t know what to do. So I’m just not going to make a decision right now. And then you do that 5, 10, 15, 20 times in a week. And you do that week after week after week. That lot adds up to a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of overwhelm, because you’re not making decisions. They’re just piling up. And that becomes really oppressive.

Courtney Townley 22:10
And that I think is closely tied with poor time management, because time management really is a process of decision making. And I have worked with many women over the years who are amazing at managing your time around work, managing their time around their kids schedules, managing their time around other people’s priorities, basically. But when it comes to themselves, and kind of protecting time on their own schedule for the things that helps them feel taken care of. They’re either not doing it, or they’re doing it once in a while, but then they always kind of compromise or negotiate their way out of doing spending time on themselves for other people’s priorities. So indecision, and lack of kind of time mastery are two big problems that create a tremendous amount of micro stress that is absolutely not necessary.

Courtney Townley 23:14
So I want to talk a little bit a little bit about what I’m calling the call to reoriented midlife. There is a gift and frustration that comes with midlife. For all the reasons I’ve talked about so far. We become less tolerant to stress and that is both a gift and a frustration. But if we don’t pause to consider who we are now, at this age and stage of our lives and how we want to travel moving forward into the future, we can actually create a lot of unnecessary pain along our journey. So I titled this Podcast today Rising Strong, and the power of reorienting at midlife. Here’s specifically what that means. reorienting at midlife means that you acknowledge that you are more sensitive to stress at this stage of your life than you have ever been. It doesn’t mean you can’t tolerate stress. It doesn’t mean that you can’t build your capacity to tolerate stress. But hormonally you are at a disadvantage when it comes to stress. And you can deny that fact. You can argue with that fact. But I always joke with my students. You can argue with reality but you’ll always lose. Reality always wins.

Courtney Townley 24:55
So simply acknowledging that you know I’m at a stage in my life where my Body is physically less tolerant to stress. That alone starts to open up your perspective on your life, because it starts to invites you to start looking for opportunities to unpack stress from your life.

Courtney Townley 25:26
So step one reorienting at midlife is that we acknowledge that we are more sensitive to stress than we’ve ever been. And that’s not a personality thing. It’s nothing that you’ve done wrong. It’s a chemical thing.

Courtney Townley 25:41
The second thing is we have to reconsider our standards for a well lived life. Based on who we are now, not based on who we were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. But what are your standards for living? Now? Not someone else’s standards, not the culture standards, not your parents standards. What are your standards? This sounds like such an easy or not easy, but like a really obvious question. But when I ask it to my students and clients, they are often taken aback because it’s like, wow, I I haven’t considered that in so long. And when you don’t make time to consider that guess what you’re gonna do, you’re gonna run your whole life based on other people’s standards. And that doesn’t feel good.

Courtney Townley 26:42
So really pausing to consider what are my standards for living now? You know, standards that some for some people that’s like a, they’re not sure what that means? It just means what do you what are the what are the qualities that you want to govern your life? You some people will look at this as priorities. Some people will look at this as values. It’s really all one in the same. What is most important to you at this age and stage of life that you want to dedicate resources to with intention, understanding that resources are very limited, you only get so many of them each day.

Courtney Townley 27:30
So this goes into the third piece. reorienting at midlife, the third step is that we start to make decisions that align with our standards. I’m always saying that decisions are power. And most people I work with are not making enough decisions. Or they’re making decisions and then second guessing, and sort of asking everyone around them what they think about their decision and sort of talking themselves out of the decision they just made. So it’s not just about making decisions, but making strong decisions. Because a lack of decision making will lead to a tremendous amount of overwhelm and anxiety. And I am such a firm believer because I’ve seen this in action so many times that when a woman starts making decisions, she start you can literally start to see her taking her power back. So decision making is a skill set that can be improved with practice. With tools, which we have a lot of inside my community. This is a lot of the work that we do.

Courtney Townley 28:49
Alright, I want to tell you the fourth step of reorienting at midlife is that we plan to use our precious life resources, time, energy, mental bandwidth, even money in a way that aligns with our standards. And I said this before, but women tend to be awesome organizers. A lot of women tend to be awesome organizers for other people’s priorities. But when it comes to their own priorities, it’s like the it’s almost like they tell themselves that we’ll all just save whatever’s leftover for myself. But you know how that rolls nothing is ever left over. Because you can like give yourself to death. Right?

Courtney Townley 29:37
Empty your cup to the point that there is nothing left over. So we have to enter each day very intentional about where I am willing to dedicate my precious life resources and also prioritize that I am one of those things. I am only capable of showing up in a pack are filled way for all these things that I care about if I am also taken care of. And man, do we forget that last part? We just think that somehow magically we’re going to be able to show up in a power filled way to all the things that we care about, while simultaneously neglecting our own needs, doesn’t work that way.

Courtney Townley 30:21
So all of these things, acknowledging that you’re more sensitive to stress than you’ve ever been reorienting yourself to your own standards at this age and stage of life. Starting to make strong decisions on the regular and planning to use your resources in a way that honors those standards. These are the things that will help you both sides that will help you simultaneously expand your capacity to experience stress, but also deload stress, unnecessary stress from your life.

Courtney Townley 31:01
And this is what we’re exploring in this month’s masterclass the Grace & Grit masterclass it is called Strategic Decision Making and Effective Time Mastery. So, we’re gonna be talking about standards, we’re going to be talking about obviously, decision making, and really how to plan your days in a way that honors your standards for living. So if that is something that you feel like you could use a little or a lot of help with. Again, there’s two ways to get access to that masterclass. You can either just buy the masterclass which is $29 you so it’s a 60 minute masterclass. And you get a very robust companion guide that goes along with that it releases on February 8. And if you’re listening to this way later in the year, it’s available all year, so it’s available after February 8. But the other way to get access to this masterclass and all the master classes that I teach is to become a Rumble & Rise member. And you can either purchase the masterclass by just going to graceandgrit.com/masterclass. Or you can become a Rumble & Rise member by going to graceandgrit.com/readytorumble.

Courtney Townley 32:17
The value of becoming a member is that we you’re not just getting information and a companion guide, you are also getting a tremendous amount of support to help you apply what you’re learning. But I’m making both avenues available because I know everybody learns differently. And I also want people to really taste what we do inside of Rumble & Rise, because it’s so amazing. And I really feel that we talk about things that are not really normalized in the health and wellness space. And I wish they were which is part of the reason I started the Rumble & Rise community. So you can also always reach out to me at courtney@graceandgrit.com If you have any questions. Thank you for being here today. And I really do hope you will pause give yourself the grace of pausing and taking the time to consider some of the things that we talked about here today. All right, my friends. I will see you again in just a few weeks. Take care of yourself in the meantime.

Courtney Townley 33:24
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.