February 3, 2023 • 29 mins
Scientists and neuroscientists have found that happiness hits rock bottom at age 47, but fear not! It goes back up as we get closer to 50. Midlife is often associated with having a crisis, but it's more like a midlife evaluation.
- People's constructs and belief systems change as they get older, as do their perceptions of themselves and how others see them.
- Midlife is a time when people have had many experiences, jobs, and relationships, which shape them and offer different perspectives.
- It can be easy to lose oneself in the demands of life, but it is important to reclaim oneself to know where to go and how to show up for the next 40 years.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:00):
I have this damn adulting voice in my head
chiming in on why I should, whyI shouldn't, don't make waves,
you should be grateful.
It literally sounds like theCharlie Brown teacher voice.
It's like wah wah wah.
One of my goals is to turn thatvoice down, like way down.
Realizing that by living thatway, by listening to that voice,
(00:23):
it was costing me so much.
Only thing that I was doing wassubscribing to what I should be.
This is the 40 as fuck podcast,where we have worthwhile, real
as fuck conversations aboutmidlife.
What you're gonna hear on thispodcast is not the fluff you see
scrolling Instagram, it's themessy parts of midlife.
(00:46):
Because midlife feels a littledifferent.
I wouldn't say midlife isnecessarily a crisis, but it's
worth paying attention to.
(02:01):
So if you are in the thick of itlike I am, it does actually go
up as we get closer to 50.
I think we often associatemidlife with having a crisis,
and that's the term that'sthrown around when we hit this
stage of life.
But to me, that in some wayimplies that I'm gonna go buy a
red Corvette or something likethat, and that's gonna make my
(02:21):
life better.
As I've gone through this partof my life, I think a better
term instead of crisis is to sayit's more of a midlife
evaluation.
Because when you think about it,the same constructs and belief
systems that you had when youwere 20 or even 30, those have
probably changed.
And really, even how we seeourselves now or looking and
(02:44):
evaluating how others see us hasprobably changed in a pretty
significant way as well.
What's so great is that at thisstage, we have had so many
experiences and jobs, and we'vehad relationships that have
flourished and some have failed.
We've made a lot of decisions tothis point.
We've faced some challenges,we've probably made a lot of
(03:07):
mistakes.
Honestly, the list could go onand on and on.
All of these aspects have reallyshaped us, and it's these
aspects that have offereddifferent perspectives of
ourselves.
And what I have found is they'veprobably very innocently molded
us into this current version ofourselves.
And if you're like me, you maynot even be fully aware of who
(03:31):
you are anymore because of allof that stuff that has gone on
in the first 40 years.
Because the demands that we'vefaced at this point, I think
it's really easy to loseyourself in all that.
But what's really hard isactually reclaiming yourself.
That feels overwhelming andchallenging.
And I'm sure you've had thatthought before, like, I don't
(03:52):
even know who I am anymore.
And that's really uncomfortable.
But it's really impossible toknow where you want to go or how
you want to start showing up forthe next 40 years of your life
if you don't actually know whereyou are right now.
And this is the realization thatI actually had a couple years
(04:12):
ago.
I had this experience thatreally woke me up from a life
that I was living that reallydidn't feel like me anymore.
And it forced me to really sitin a lot of uncomfortableness
and had to go through thisperiod of realizing how much of
(04:33):
what I was, I guess, holding onto wasn't serving me anymore.
And these included beliefs aboutmyself, reevaluating dreams and
ambitions that I thought Ireally wanted, my health.
And the most important thingthat it forced me to do was look
at how I treated myself, how Ishowed up and really gave myself
(04:55):
to be seen in my life.
If you're like me, growing up, Iwas always taught that if I
worked really hard, which iswhat I've done, life would turn
out great.
And really, for the most part, Ihave had a really great life.
And my work ethic of workingreally hard has served me really
(05:16):
well.
Of course, I am not exempt fromhaving challenges and I've had
ups and downs, but I am reallylucky because I am surrounded by
people that love me and I have alot of people that I love.
I have a roof over my head, Ihave a car, you name it.
Like I really have kind of thequote unquote American dream
life.
(05:36):
And I'm really fully aware of myprivilege and of this privilege.
And so I don't take any of thatfor granted for a second.
But it was in 2021 that I washit really hard.
And it's in that year that itjust about crushed me.
I was basically going along anddoing the things that I had
(05:57):
always done.
We were just starting to comeout of the pandemic.
So the intensity of COVID haddefinitely started to ramp down.
And I think collectively, wewere all starting to breathe
this kind of sigh of relief.
I had just come off of thissuper stressful period where my
business partner and I had justfinished working with some
(06:18):
incredible formulators anddermatologists as we created our
own line of skincare products.
And I was still working incopywriting and marketing, and I
had a couple dream clients thatI just absolutely love working
for.
And I was also on top of all ofthat, taking care of my family
and really doing what parentsalways do.
(06:39):
You know, we're always trying toabsorb the stress and absorb the
stress of our family and helpmeet their needs.
And on top of all of that, likeeverybody else, you know, you
just have regular life, you justhave regular life.
You've got bills and doctors andyour house, just the normal
stuff.
Like that's what I've alwaysdone because that's what you're
(07:02):
supposed to do.
That's what I've been taught.
I watched my parents do theexact same thing.
It all felt really normal.
But it wasn't until I had thisreally pivotal moment that I was
really forced to stop and lookaround.
So I'm gonna tell you whathappened.
And I know that I'm gonna makethis sound really dramatic, but
(07:23):
actually, it was reallydramatic.
So here is what happened.
My family and I had just builtthis bonfire on our back patio,
and we had roasted somemarshmallows and just a typical
afternoon, and one of my kidssnapped a picture of me
unknowingly.
And I know that that doesn'tsound really dramatic, but
really stick with me because itwas like if I could describe it,
(07:46):
it was like that moment inForrest Gump where he is
running, running, running,running, and then all of a
sudden he just stops.
He stops running.
And it was really kind of likethat moment.
It was really actually thatdramatic.
So here I am, I'm sitting on thepatio, like, you know, it's a
Sunday afternoon, and I get thispicture airdropped to me from
(08:07):
one of my kids, and I look atthis picture, and it was me.
I mean, it was me in thatpicture, but in that instance
that I saw that picture, Iwanted to look away because the
woman that I was looking at, sheshe wasn't me.
She was like this version ofmyself, but I didn't know her.
Like I didn't know that versionof myself.
(08:29):
And it was honestly, it wasreally scary.
It felt almost like thisout-of-body experience because I
realized in that split secondthat I had lost so much of
myself, that I had beensacrificing for a life that I
was quote unquote supposed tolive.
And I remember thinking in thatmoment, I thought to myself in
(08:52):
that split second, and itliterally was a split second,
but I thought to myself, like,where is my light?
Where's my light?
Like, I used to be thisfree-spirited girl.
And all I could see in thispicture was this this kind of
empty woman.
She had like that girl had beenreplaced with to-do lists and
(09:16):
tasks and goals andresponsibilities and obligations
and running around making sureeverybody's needs were met.
And I could see in that picture,I could see in that version of
myself, I could see in her facethat she'd stopped being
vulnerable and she had pushedall of her own happiness down
(09:36):
for everybody else's.
And that realization for me inthat split second is I
understood that I didn't evenfeel seen anymore.
I didn't feel known, even by me,not even by myself.
And I know I'm talking in thirdperson, which must be kind of
confusing, but I'm talking thatway because it really was this
(09:59):
out-of-body experience.
Because the person that I waslooking at, she actually wasn't
me.
She was like this robotic, emptyversion of myself, this lost
version of myself.
And to be honest, I probablycould have at that moment kept
going.
I think I could have probablystuffed down what I was feeling
(10:21):
and ignored what I saw.
I could have done that.
All I could have pushed down theemptiness and the loneliness I
felt.
And when I say emptiness andloneliness, it wasn't
necessarily for another person.
It was the loneliness that Ifelt for myself.
But for some reason, in thatmoment, I couldn't unsee what I
(10:42):
saw.
And I knew as if in this place,if I didn't make some changes, I
was going to regret it.
I had this all-encompassing,like full body knowing that I
had to wake up and payattention.
It's like that voice in my headwas like, girl, you are going to
be 80 years old and you're goingto say, damn, why didn't I not
(11:04):
make these changes?
It was that clear.
I don't know if any of you arefamiliar with Daniel Pink, who
wrote the book Power of Regret.
I highly recommend it.
But he found in some of hisstudies that our percentage of
regrets of what we didn't do ismore than double the regrets of
what we actually do in ourlives.
(11:26):
So he found that basically fromage 40 on, our regrets of
inaction way outnumber ourregrets of action.
And that's kind of where I feltI was at that moment.
Because before I had thatrealization from this photo, I
was living a life that I hadbasically become totally numb
(11:46):
to.
I was 100% avoiding that feelingof being uncomfortable.
I was just really going throughthe motions day after day.
I won't say that I was totallymiserable, but I don't think
that I was really happy either.
I was just in this place ofinaction, staying comfortable.
(12:07):
Exactly what Daniel Pink talksabout.
And I could see in that momentthat my future did not include
any more happiness if I didn'tchange something, if I didn't
start moving the needle.
There's this other really greatidea, and I'm not actually sure
who came up with it, but there'sthis idea called the region beta
(12:29):
paradox, which is basically thisidea, and I think that it's
based on a study where theylooked at people that had
experienced horrificexperiences.
And they also looked at peoplethat just experienced something,
you know, kind of bad, not a bigdeal experience.
And what they found is that thepeople that experienced
(12:51):
something more horrific couldmore easily make positive
changes to their life andeffectively change the outcome
than those of us that hadexperienced something that was
just like moderately, if if eventhat, bad.
We'll call it passable,something that was passable.
I believe this is because we canstay numb to something that is
(13:15):
just passable, because it's notactually horrific, but it isn't
good either.
But because it's passable, wecan stay in this chasm of like
comfortable complacency.
You guys, life is so short.
And in that moment, I realized Iam at a place where I don't have
(13:36):
time for that meteocracy, forthat complacency anymore.
I think we get so caught up, andI am so guilty of this, of
getting caught up in theachievements and the status quo
and really the hustle and thechase of our life.
And it's all of that that reallyallows us to stay, keep coming
to the soul-sucking jobs that wedon't love, but we don't hate it
(13:59):
either.
We are able to attribute ouranxiety and our depression, our
general malaise to all of theseexternal factors that we have
going on.
But when we do that, what we'rereally doing is we're not
acknowledging what's reallygoing on in our lives.
We're not really feeling orbeing present to that.
(14:23):
And by doing that, at least forme, we're shutting off our own
emotions and our desires to stayin this comfortable place.
That's what allows us to stay inthose comfortable places because
we can't feel what we're reallyfeeling.
Because if we really felt whatwe were feeling, we would be
inspired to make change.
(14:45):
There's an anonymous quote, andit goes like this The definition
of hell is that your last day onearth, the person you are will
meet the person that you couldhave become.
For me, that is super powerful.
And in that moment of seeing thephoto, I realized that entire
quote in its entirety, like Ifelt it.
(15:07):
When I really saw myself and Ifelt the emotions, that's
honestly when my world startedto open up.
I'm not gonna say it wascomfortable.
I'm not gonna say that it didn'tfeel overwhelming, but it is
where my world started to openup.
As I've gone through thisprocess over the last couple of
years, what I find isinteresting is that the emotions
(15:28):
that we are experiencing andwe're experiencing them as that
are they're bad.
I think that thought, like, oh,I'm experiencing this emotion,
oh, I'm having depression, oh,I'm having anxiety, that's where
we get stuck in thisoveranalysis of the emotion
itself.
I think we we say to ourselves,and we've been taught this
(15:51):
somewhere along the line, like,I shouldn't feel this way.
That's our way of thinking.
As I have experienced it, forme, a more productive way to
approach this midlife period isreally looking at what behaviors
am I choosing in response tothose feelings?
Am I numbing out with substanceor food or TV or social?
(16:13):
Or am I running from a difficultconversation?
Or am I using people pleasing tokeep the peace in my life?
But most importantly for me inthis midlife stage is I think
that we have to be able to lookat the catalyst.
What's causing these emotions?
Why are we feeling that urge tonumb out to escape our life?
(16:33):
That becomes the biggestquestion.
And for us in our mid-40s, Idon't feel like enough people
are actually talking about this,especially on social.
What I find is when I talk to myfriends, it is really clear that
we're all experiencing variousawarenesses and even awakenings.
But if you are going throughthis journey, it does feel very
(16:55):
lonely, especially as you startto look in the mirror at
yourself.
One reason that I don't thinkthat we're talking a lot about
this in more of a public way isbecause as a Gen Xer, one of the
things that I have noticed isthat we are pretty quiet when it
comes to sharing on social orother platforms like podcasts.
We are not so inclined to sharewhat we're going through
(17:18):
publicly.
I heard somebody reference ourgeneration and they called us
the skeptical slackers becausewe do buck the system in many
ways.
And I don't think that webelieve what we've been told.
But to be honest, I'm actuallyjealous of generations like the
Millennials in Gen Z because Iwould really like to see Gen X
more represented because I feelthat for me at least, there's
(17:44):
this huge disconnect in ourgeneration.
As I've been going through thisperiod of like deep evaluation
in my mid-40s, there have beenso many times that I wish there
were accounts that I couldfollow and relate to.
And it's a large reason why I amdoing this podcast now.
And I think that a large degreeof why we are so reluctant to
share really comes from how wewere raised, because our parents
(18:07):
generally taught us to be moreunderstated publicly about our
struggles.
We were taught to present to theworld as we wanted to be seen,
not necessarily as we were.
And that, I believe, really camefrom our parents' parents
teaching them that anything outof sorts, anything that didn't
look like the nuclear family,you're just supposed to sweep
(18:28):
that under the rug.
Sometimes when I talk aboutthis, I actually reference it as
the metaphorical Joneses.
You know that saying, keeping upwith the Joneses.
In my mind, having gone through40 years of various experiences,
in my mind, I think that wecould probably all agree that
the Joneses are pretty fuckingmiserable at this point because
(18:49):
portraying something that youwant the world to see, but
behind closed doors, you'retotally different.
That takes a lot of energy.
And part of that Jones archetypeis that we've all been told that
we're supposed to sacrifice.
Like this is what adulting issupposed to look like.
But I think that is probably themost terrible advice.
(19:14):
Why are we meant to basicallysettle at some point in our
adult life?
If you have kids, they arewatching you.
If you are living this lifewhere you literally don't matter
because you're not puttingyourself first, or you're always
putting their needs ahead ofyours, or you're not making your
(19:34):
health a priority, or yourhappiness isn't a priority, or
your kids don't actually see youliving and smiling and laughing
and being playful.
Like what message are weactually sending to them?
When they see us abandonourselves, we in turn are
teaching them the same thing.
(19:54):
Let me ask you this questionthat somebody else asked me.
If you were a child watchingyourself as an adult, would you
want to grow up to be you?
That's an important question toreally think about.
And I'm not sure how we got sostuck there.
But one thing that I havenoticed about myself is that I
(20:16):
have this damn adulting voice inmy head constantly, always
chiming in on why I should, whyI shouldn't, don't make waves,
you should be grateful.
It literally sounds like theCharlie Brown teacher voice.
It's like wah, wah, wah.
And in my midlife evaluation,one of my goals is to turn that
(20:36):
voice down, like way down.
I don't know if I can turn itoff, but I'm gonna try.
Because I'm realizing that byliving that way, by listening to
that adult voice, it was costingme so much.
I wasn't loving myself.
Only thing that I was doing wassubscribing to what I should be,
(20:57):
but not who I truly am.
And the problem was, is I was solost, I didn't even know who
that was anymore.
Because in all of that shuffleand grind of the first 40 years
of my life and all theachievements and the blah, blah,
blahs, I had really trulystopped loving myself.
And loving yourself is hard.
(21:18):
Loving yourself takes a lot ofcourage.
I actually used to think thatloving yourself took confidence,
but it's not.
Loving yourself actually takesbeing vulnerable, and
vulnerability requires courage.
And somewhere along the lines,loving ourselves took on the
connotation of some sort ofdestination that we are supposed
(21:42):
to get to.
Loving yourself is often thrownaround with working on
ourselves.
It's like we say to ourselves,when I find that relationship or
I hit that income milestone, youknow, you get the picture, those
kinds of things.
And I actually believed that fora really long time.
I think that was my constantpush for all of the achievements
(22:03):
and kind of that hustlementality.
But I don't think that you everget to that destination of
loving yourself if that's yourapproach.
Because what you're basicallydoing is you're dangling in a
you're dangling a carrot ofimpossible perfectionism in
order to reach that kind ofmecca.
But for me, what I've learnedthis year is that loving
(22:26):
yourself means small acts ofkindness towards yourself,
making commitments to yourselfthat you actually keep, making
changes where you need to, andhonestly doing some really hard
things and then repeating thatprocess over and over and over
again.
Without the willingness to showcourage and be vulnerable,
(22:47):
that's where we end upsacrificing ourselves and we fit
ourselves to be in thiscomplacent, mediocre life.
But when we flip that and wemake our heart and our dreams
and we show up in our lives in ahealthy way, that actually
becomes our North Star.
That becomes our guiding light.
And honestly, through thatprocess, that's what teaches
(23:10):
those around us and also teachesour kids and even ourselves that
we are worth being seen, we'reworth being known, and we're
valued.
We don't actually have to listento that adult voice the way that
we think we do.
In my life, there were so manyunsaid truths that I had been
(23:30):
avoiding in order to staycomfortable in that complacent
life.
And it's actually not even thatI was avoiding them.
I had been like numbing myselfout to them and flat out
pretending that they weren'teven there, even though that I
knew that they were.
And I kept having these repeatedthoughts where I would think, if
I just try a little bit harder,or if I just put in more effort
(23:51):
in some way, those things that Ihad been avoiding, they were
just gonna some way magicallyget better or disappear.
And I kept going through themotions of that and working
harder and doing more and beingwho other people needed me to
be.
But it's in that moment that Isaw that picture of myself that
(24:14):
I thought to myself, Sydney, youare just as responsible for the
happiness that you'reexperiencing right now, which
was very little, as well as themisery that you are continuing
to choose to live in.
And I do realize that miserysounds like it was really dire,
but it was because there wasthis complete absence of myself
(24:38):
in my own life.
And I had let that happen.
Like innocently, it hadhappened, but I couldn't allow
it to continue that way.
And I knew in that moment when Isaw that picture of myself, I
knew that to get back to myselfor to really find myself again,
(24:59):
the road wasn't going to be thesame road that I had traveled to
get to this point.
If you're avoiding what's reallygoing on in your life, like if
you are really avoiding themisalignment of your life and
you're not honoring in healthyways, like really actually
loving yourself because youmatter, which kind of sounds
like a 90s after school movie.
But if you're not seeingyourself as worth it today, not
(25:24):
six months from now, not 10years from now, not when the
kids are grown, but likeactually today.
Because we all know that sixmonths will come and 10 years
will come and nothing willchange.
Your kids will move out andnothing will change.
It doesn't get better by workingharder or sacrificing more or
showing up more.
(25:44):
It just doesn't, we have tostart with where we're at right
now.
And that process is really hard.
But I think an importantquestion is how do you start
this process?
And I can only share what's beenmy process in all of this.
For me, I'll be honest, therewas a lot of shit in my life
that was not working for meanymore.
(26:05):
And a lot of it was external andthere were many internal
factors.
But to make the changes, Ireally had to be willing to set
some boundaries.
What I realized about myself isthat I was giving other people a
lot of myself in order toprotect their happiness rather
than see my own worth.
(26:25):
And we can talk more about thislater, but I really had to
evaluate where I was dumping myenergy into others and then
recognizing what was Iprotecting about myself by doing
that.
Let me ask you guys thisquestion.
If a family member or a friendwas struggling, you would
(26:46):
probably move heaven and earthfor them.
If they're going throughsomething, it will motivate you
to do incredible things forthem.
But for some reason, in thismidlife stage, and I think that
this happens at all stages oflife, but I happen to be talking
about midlife, we are subscribedto this idea that we should
(27:07):
personally suffer.
Because by stuffing our ownneeds or our happiness or our
joy, in some way, that makes usa good person to our family.
But we're not treating ourselvesthe same way that we would treat
somebody else.
And this was me to a core.
I kind of saw my pain and mysuffering as something that I
just needed to overcome orignore because I don't actually
(27:31):
even know.
I was a grown-up and this is howit was supposed to be.
But I hear this repeated so muchwhen I talk to other people.
So many people are believingthis exact lie.
They believe that by nothonoring their own needs, their
own wants, their desires, that'sactually part of adulting.
(27:52):
That's settling.
That's what we're supposed to dobecause we have families all of
a sudden, because we haveresponsibilities, because, oh
no, we have these obligations,but that's not true.
And yet it was my excuse.
And it's the worst lie that Ithink that I could have told
myself.
Now, I don't want to come off asI'm really enlightened and like
(28:14):
I have all this stuff figuredout and it's fantastic because I
still have a ton of days where Ifeel really overwhelmed.
And I also have a lot of placesin my life where I feel like I'm
not truly aligned.
But I can tell you, having gonethrough this process to the
point that I'm at right now, I'mexperiencing more moments where
(28:36):
I'm starting to see a biggerpicture, where I'm starting to
experience those moments whereI'm actually feeling more
connected to myself and I'mmoving towards a life that
actually feels like me again.
And so this is the place that westart.
These are the conversations thatwe have about midlife.
(28:57):
Because now I think it's reallyour turn.
And I hope that theseconversations are the beginning
of many.
And honestly, if you are feelinglike you've lost yourself, maybe
this can be a place of comfortas you dive into that
uncomfortableness.
So that's the start.
(29:18):
I hope you guys enjoyed this,and I look forward to many more
midlife conversations.
I have this damn adulting voice in my head
chiming in on why I should, whyI shouldn't, don't make waves,
you should be grateful.
It literally sounds like theCharlie Brown teacher voice.
It's like wah wah wah.
One of my goals is to turn thatvoice down, like way down.
Realizing that by living thatway, by listening to that voice,
(00:23):
it was costing me so much.
Only thing that I was doing wassubscribing to what I should be.
This is the 40 as fuck podcast,where we have worthwhile, real
as fuck conversations aboutmidlife.
What you're gonna hear on thispodcast is not the fluff you see
scrolling Instagram, it's themessy parts of midlife.
(00:46):
Because midlife feels a littledifferent.
I wouldn't say midlife isnecessarily a crisis, but it's
worth paying attention to.
(02:01):
So if you are in the thick of itlike I am, it does actually go
up as we get closer to 50.
I think we often associatemidlife with having a crisis,
and that's the term that'sthrown around when we hit this
stage of life.
But to me, that in some wayimplies that I'm gonna go buy a
red Corvette or something likethat, and that's gonna make my
(02:21):
life better.
As I've gone through this partof my life, I think a better
term instead of crisis is to sayit's more of a midlife
evaluation.
Because when you think about it,the same constructs and belief
systems that you had when youwere 20 or even 30, those have
probably changed.
And really, even how we seeourselves now or looking and
(02:44):
evaluating how others see us hasprobably changed in a pretty
significant way as well.
What's so great is that at thisstage, we have had so many
experiences and jobs, and we'vehad relationships that have
flourished and some have failed.
We've made a lot of decisions tothis point.
We've faced some challenges,we've probably made a lot of
(03:07):
mistakes.
Honestly, the list could go onand on and on.
All of these aspects have reallyshaped us, and it's these
aspects that have offereddifferent perspectives of
ourselves.
And what I have found is they'veprobably very innocently molded
us into this current version ofourselves.
And if you're like me, you maynot even be fully aware of who
(03:31):
you are anymore because of allof that stuff that has gone on
in the first 40 years.
Because the demands that we'vefaced at this point, I think
it's really easy to loseyourself in all that.
But what's really hard isactually reclaiming yourself.
That feels overwhelming andchallenging.
And I'm sure you've had thatthought before, like, I don't
(03:52):
even know who I am anymore.
And that's really uncomfortable.
But it's really impossible toknow where you want to go or how
you want to start showing up forthe next 40 years of your life
if you don't actually know whereyou are right now.
And this is the realization thatI actually had a couple years
(04:12):
ago.
I had this experience thatreally woke me up from a life
that I was living that reallydidn't feel like me anymore.
And it forced me to really sitin a lot of uncomfortableness
and had to go through thisperiod of realizing how much of
(04:33):
what I was, I guess, holding onto wasn't serving me anymore.
And these included beliefs aboutmyself, reevaluating dreams and
ambitions that I thought Ireally wanted, my health.
And the most important thingthat it forced me to do was look
at how I treated myself, how Ishowed up and really gave myself
(04:55):
to be seen in my life.
If you're like me, growing up, Iwas always taught that if I
worked really hard, which iswhat I've done, life would turn
out great.
And really, for the most part, Ihave had a really great life.
And my work ethic of workingreally hard has served me really
(05:16):
well.
Of course, I am not exempt fromhaving challenges and I've had
ups and downs, but I am reallylucky because I am surrounded by
people that love me and I have alot of people that I love.
I have a roof over my head, Ihave a car, you name it.
Like I really have kind of thequote unquote American dream
life.
(05:36):
And I'm really fully aware of myprivilege and of this privilege.
And so I don't take any of thatfor granted for a second.
But it was in 2021 that I washit really hard.
And it's in that year that itjust about crushed me.
I was basically going along anddoing the things that I had
(05:57):
always done.
We were just starting to comeout of the pandemic.
So the intensity of COVID haddefinitely started to ramp down.
And I think collectively, wewere all starting to breathe
this kind of sigh of relief.
I had just come off of thissuper stressful period where my
business partner and I had justfinished working with some
(06:18):
incredible formulators anddermatologists as we created our
own line of skincare products.
And I was still working incopywriting and marketing, and I
had a couple dream clients thatI just absolutely love working
for.
And I was also on top of all ofthat, taking care of my family
and really doing what parentsalways do.
(06:39):
You know, we're always trying toabsorb the stress and absorb the
stress of our family and helpmeet their needs.
And on top of all of that, likeeverybody else, you know, you
just have regular life, you justhave regular life.
You've got bills and doctors andyour house, just the normal
stuff.
Like that's what I've alwaysdone because that's what you're
(07:02):
supposed to do.
That's what I've been taught.
I watched my parents do theexact same thing.
It all felt really normal.
But it wasn't until I had thisreally pivotal moment that I was
really forced to stop and lookaround.
So I'm gonna tell you whathappened.
And I know that I'm gonna makethis sound really dramatic, but
(07:23):
actually, it was reallydramatic.
So here is what happened.
My family and I had just builtthis bonfire on our back patio,
and we had roasted somemarshmallows and just a typical
afternoon, and one of my kidssnapped a picture of me
unknowingly.
And I know that that doesn'tsound really dramatic, but
really stick with me because itwas like if I could describe it,
(07:46):
it was like that moment inForrest Gump where he is
running, running, running,running, and then all of a
sudden he just stops.
He stops running.
And it was really kind of likethat moment.
It was really actually thatdramatic.
So here I am, I'm sitting on thepatio, like, you know, it's a
Sunday afternoon, and I get thispicture airdropped to me from
(08:07):
one of my kids, and I look atthis picture, and it was me.
I mean, it was me in thatpicture, but in that instance
that I saw that picture, Iwanted to look away because the
woman that I was looking at, sheshe wasn't me.
She was like this version ofmyself, but I didn't know her.
Like I didn't know that versionof myself.
(08:29):
And it was honestly, it wasreally scary.
It felt almost like thisout-of-body experience because I
realized in that split secondthat I had lost so much of
myself, that I had beensacrificing for a life that I
was quote unquote supposed tolive.
And I remember thinking in thatmoment, I thought to myself in
(08:52):
that split second, and itliterally was a split second,
but I thought to myself, like,where is my light?
Where's my light?
Like, I used to be thisfree-spirited girl.
And all I could see in thispicture was this this kind of
empty woman.
She had like that girl had beenreplaced with to-do lists and
(09:16):
tasks and goals andresponsibilities and obligations
and running around making sureeverybody's needs were met.
And I could see in that picture,I could see in that version of
myself, I could see in her facethat she'd stopped being
vulnerable and she had pushedall of her own happiness down
(09:36):
for everybody else's.
And that realization for me inthat split second is I
understood that I didn't evenfeel seen anymore.
I didn't feel known, even by me,not even by myself.
And I know I'm talking in thirdperson, which must be kind of
confusing, but I'm talking thatway because it really was this
(09:59):
out-of-body experience.
Because the person that I waslooking at, she actually wasn't
me.
She was like this robotic, emptyversion of myself, this lost
version of myself.
And to be honest, I probablycould have at that moment kept
going.
I think I could have probablystuffed down what I was feeling
(10:21):
and ignored what I saw.
I could have done that.
All I could have pushed down theemptiness and the loneliness I
felt.
And when I say emptiness andloneliness, it wasn't
necessarily for another person.
It was the loneliness that Ifelt for myself.
But for some reason, in thatmoment, I couldn't unsee what I
(10:42):
saw.
And I knew as if in this place,if I didn't make some changes, I
was going to regret it.
I had this all-encompassing,like full body knowing that I
had to wake up and payattention.
It's like that voice in my headwas like, girl, you are going to
be 80 years old and you're goingto say, damn, why didn't I not
(11:04):
make these changes?
It was that clear.
I don't know if any of you arefamiliar with Daniel Pink, who
wrote the book Power of Regret.
I highly recommend it.
But he found in some of hisstudies that our percentage of
regrets of what we didn't do ismore than double the regrets of
what we actually do in ourlives.
(11:26):
So he found that basically fromage 40 on, our regrets of
inaction way outnumber ourregrets of action.
And that's kind of where I feltI was at that moment.
Because before I had thatrealization from this photo, I
was living a life that I hadbasically become totally numb
(11:46):
to.
I was 100% avoiding that feelingof being uncomfortable.
I was just really going throughthe motions day after day.
I won't say that I was totallymiserable, but I don't think
that I was really happy either.
I was just in this place ofinaction, staying comfortable.
(12:07):
Exactly what Daniel Pink talksabout.
And I could see in that momentthat my future did not include
any more happiness if I didn'tchange something, if I didn't
start moving the needle.
There's this other really greatidea, and I'm not actually sure
who came up with it, but there'sthis idea called the region beta
(12:29):
paradox, which is basically thisidea, and I think that it's
based on a study where theylooked at people that had
experienced horrificexperiences.
And they also looked at peoplethat just experienced something,
you know, kind of bad, not a bigdeal experience.
And what they found is that thepeople that experienced
(12:51):
something more horrific couldmore easily make positive
changes to their life andeffectively change the outcome
than those of us that hadexperienced something that was
just like moderately, if if eventhat, bad.
We'll call it passable,something that was passable.
I believe this is because we canstay numb to something that is
(13:15):
just passable, because it's notactually horrific, but it isn't
good either.
But because it's passable, wecan stay in this chasm of like
comfortable complacency.
You guys, life is so short.
And in that moment, I realized Iam at a place where I don't have
(13:36):
time for that meteocracy, forthat complacency anymore.
I think we get so caught up, andI am so guilty of this, of
getting caught up in theachievements and the status quo
and really the hustle and thechase of our life.
And it's all of that that reallyallows us to stay, keep coming
to the soul-sucking jobs that wedon't love, but we don't hate it
(13:59):
either.
We are able to attribute ouranxiety and our depression, our
general malaise to all of theseexternal factors that we have
going on.
But when we do that, what we'rereally doing is we're not
acknowledging what's reallygoing on in our lives.
We're not really feeling orbeing present to that.
(14:23):
And by doing that, at least forme, we're shutting off our own
emotions and our desires to stayin this comfortable place.
That's what allows us to stay inthose comfortable places because
we can't feel what we're reallyfeeling.
Because if we really felt whatwe were feeling, we would be
inspired to make change.
(14:45):
There's an anonymous quote, andit goes like this The definition
of hell is that your last day onearth, the person you are will
meet the person that you couldhave become.
For me, that is super powerful.
And in that moment of seeing thephoto, I realized that entire
quote in its entirety, like Ifelt it.
(15:07):
When I really saw myself and Ifelt the emotions, that's
honestly when my world startedto open up.
I'm not gonna say it wascomfortable.
I'm not gonna say that it didn'tfeel overwhelming, but it is
where my world started to openup.
As I've gone through thisprocess over the last couple of
years, what I find isinteresting is that the emotions
(15:28):
that we are experiencing andwe're experiencing them as that
are they're bad.
I think that thought, like, oh,I'm experiencing this emotion,
oh, I'm having depression, oh,I'm having anxiety, that's where
we get stuck in thisoveranalysis of the emotion
itself.
I think we we say to ourselves,and we've been taught this
(15:51):
somewhere along the line, like,I shouldn't feel this way.
That's our way of thinking.
As I have experienced it, forme, a more productive way to
approach this midlife period isreally looking at what behaviors
am I choosing in response tothose feelings?
Am I numbing out with substanceor food or TV or social?
(16:13):
Or am I running from a difficultconversation?
Or am I using people pleasing tokeep the peace in my life?
But most importantly for me inthis midlife stage is I think
that we have to be able to lookat the catalyst.
What's causing these emotions?
Why are we feeling that urge tonumb out to escape our life?
(16:33):
That becomes the biggestquestion.
And for us in our mid-40s, Idon't feel like enough people
are actually talking about this,especially on social.
What I find is when I talk to myfriends, it is really clear that
we're all experiencing variousawarenesses and even awakenings.
But if you are going throughthis journey, it does feel very
(16:55):
lonely, especially as you startto look in the mirror at
yourself.
One reason that I don't thinkthat we're talking a lot about
this in more of a public way isbecause as a Gen Xer, one of the
things that I have noticed isthat we are pretty quiet when it
comes to sharing on social orother platforms like podcasts.
We are not so inclined to sharewhat we're going through
(17:18):
publicly.
I heard somebody reference ourgeneration and they called us
the skeptical slackers becausewe do buck the system in many
ways.
And I don't think that webelieve what we've been told.
But to be honest, I'm actuallyjealous of generations like the
Millennials in Gen Z because Iwould really like to see Gen X
more represented because I feelthat for me at least, there's
(17:44):
this huge disconnect in ourgeneration.
As I've been going through thisperiod of like deep evaluation
in my mid-40s, there have beenso many times that I wish there
were accounts that I couldfollow and relate to.
And it's a large reason why I amdoing this podcast now.
And I think that a large degreeof why we are so reluctant to
share really comes from how wewere raised, because our parents
(18:07):
generally taught us to be moreunderstated publicly about our
struggles.
We were taught to present to theworld as we wanted to be seen,
not necessarily as we were.
And that, I believe, really camefrom our parents' parents
teaching them that anything outof sorts, anything that didn't
look like the nuclear family,you're just supposed to sweep
(18:28):
that under the rug.
Sometimes when I talk aboutthis, I actually reference it as
the metaphorical Joneses.
You know that saying, keeping upwith the Joneses.
In my mind, having gone through40 years of various experiences,
in my mind, I think that wecould probably all agree that
the Joneses are pretty fuckingmiserable at this point because
(18:49):
portraying something that youwant the world to see, but
behind closed doors, you'retotally different.
That takes a lot of energy.
And part of that Jones archetypeis that we've all been told that
we're supposed to sacrifice.
Like this is what adulting issupposed to look like.
But I think that is probably themost terrible advice.
(19:14):
Why are we meant to basicallysettle at some point in our
adult life?
If you have kids, they arewatching you.
If you are living this lifewhere you literally don't matter
because you're not puttingyourself first, or you're always
putting their needs ahead ofyours, or you're not making your
(19:34):
health a priority, or yourhappiness isn't a priority, or
your kids don't actually see youliving and smiling and laughing
and being playful.
Like what message are weactually sending to them?
When they see us abandonourselves, we in turn are
teaching them the same thing.
(19:54):
Let me ask you this questionthat somebody else asked me.
If you were a child watchingyourself as an adult, would you
want to grow up to be you?
That's an important question toreally think about.
And I'm not sure how we got sostuck there.
But one thing that I havenoticed about myself is that I
(20:16):
have this damn adulting voice inmy head constantly, always
chiming in on why I should, whyI shouldn't, don't make waves,
you should be grateful.
It literally sounds like theCharlie Brown teacher voice.
It's like wah, wah, wah.
And in my midlife evaluation,one of my goals is to turn that
(20:36):
voice down, like way down.
I don't know if I can turn itoff, but I'm gonna try.
Because I'm realizing that byliving that way, by listening to
that adult voice, it was costingme so much.
I wasn't loving myself.
Only thing that I was doing wassubscribing to what I should be,
(20:57):
but not who I truly am.
And the problem was, is I was solost, I didn't even know who
that was anymore.
Because in all of that shuffleand grind of the first 40 years
of my life and all theachievements and the blah, blah,
blahs, I had really trulystopped loving myself.
And loving yourself is hard.
(21:18):
Loving yourself takes a lot ofcourage.
I actually used to think thatloving yourself took confidence,
but it's not.
Loving yourself actually takesbeing vulnerable, and
vulnerability requires courage.
And somewhere along the lines,loving ourselves took on the
connotation of some sort ofdestination that we are supposed
(21:42):
to get to.
Loving yourself is often thrownaround with working on
ourselves.
It's like we say to ourselves,when I find that relationship or
I hit that income milestone, youknow, you get the picture, those
kinds of things.
And I actually believed that fora really long time.
I think that was my constantpush for all of the achievements
(22:03):
and kind of that hustlementality.
But I don't think that you everget to that destination of
loving yourself if that's yourapproach.
Because what you're basicallydoing is you're dangling in a
you're dangling a carrot ofimpossible perfectionism in
order to reach that kind ofmecca.
But for me, what I've learnedthis year is that loving
(22:26):
yourself means small acts ofkindness towards yourself,
making commitments to yourselfthat you actually keep, making
changes where you need to, andhonestly doing some really hard
things and then repeating thatprocess over and over and over
again.
Without the willingness to showcourage and be vulnerable,
(22:47):
that's where we end upsacrificing ourselves and we fit
ourselves to be in thiscomplacent, mediocre life.
But when we flip that and wemake our heart and our dreams
and we show up in our lives in ahealthy way, that actually
becomes our North Star.
That becomes our guiding light.
And honestly, through thatprocess, that's what teaches
(23:10):
those around us and also teachesour kids and even ourselves that
we are worth being seen, we'reworth being known, and we're
valued.
We don't actually have to listento that adult voice the way that
we think we do.
In my life, there were so manyunsaid truths that I had been
(23:30):
avoiding in order to staycomfortable in that complacent
life.
And it's actually not even thatI was avoiding them.
I had been like numbing myselfout to them and flat out
pretending that they weren'teven there, even though that I
knew that they were.
And I kept having these repeatedthoughts where I would think, if
I just try a little bit harder,or if I just put in more effort
(23:51):
in some way, those things that Ihad been avoiding, they were
just gonna some way magicallyget better or disappear.
And I kept going through themotions of that and working
harder and doing more and beingwho other people needed me to
be.
But it's in that moment that Isaw that picture of myself that
(24:14):
I thought to myself, Sydney, youare just as responsible for the
happiness that you'reexperiencing right now, which
was very little, as well as themisery that you are continuing
to choose to live in.
And I do realize that miserysounds like it was really dire,
but it was because there wasthis complete absence of myself
(24:38):
in my own life.
And I had let that happen.
Like innocently, it hadhappened, but I couldn't allow
it to continue that way.
And I knew in that moment when Isaw that picture of myself, I
knew that to get back to myselfor to really find myself again,
(24:59):
the road wasn't going to be thesame road that I had traveled to
get to this point.
If you're avoiding what's reallygoing on in your life, like if
you are really avoiding themisalignment of your life and
you're not honoring in healthyways, like really actually
loving yourself because youmatter, which kind of sounds
like a 90s after school movie.
But if you're not seeingyourself as worth it today, not
(25:24):
six months from now, not 10years from now, not when the
kids are grown, but likeactually today.
Because we all know that sixmonths will come and 10 years
will come and nothing willchange.
Your kids will move out andnothing will change.
It doesn't get better by workingharder or sacrificing more or
showing up more.
(25:44):
It just doesn't, we have tostart with where we're at right
now.
And that process is really hard.
But I think an importantquestion is how do you start
this process?
And I can only share what's beenmy process in all of this.
For me, I'll be honest, therewas a lot of shit in my life
that was not working for meanymore.
(26:05):
And a lot of it was external andthere were many internal
factors.
But to make the changes, Ireally had to be willing to set
some boundaries.
What I realized about myself isthat I was giving other people a
lot of myself in order toprotect their happiness rather
than see my own worth.
(26:25):
And we can talk more about thislater, but I really had to
evaluate where I was dumping myenergy into others and then
recognizing what was Iprotecting about myself by doing
that.
Let me ask you guys thisquestion.
If a family member or a friendwas struggling, you would
(26:46):
probably move heaven and earthfor them.
If they're going throughsomething, it will motivate you
to do incredible things forthem.
But for some reason, in thismidlife stage, and I think that
this happens at all stages oflife, but I happen to be talking
about midlife, we are subscribedto this idea that we should
(27:07):
personally suffer.
Because by stuffing our ownneeds or our happiness or our
joy, in some way, that makes usa good person to our family.
But we're not treating ourselvesthe same way that we would treat
somebody else.
And this was me to a core.
I kind of saw my pain and mysuffering as something that I
just needed to overcome orignore because I don't actually
(27:31):
even know.
I was a grown-up and this is howit was supposed to be.
But I hear this repeated so muchwhen I talk to other people.
So many people are believingthis exact lie.
They believe that by nothonoring their own needs, their
own wants, their desires, that'sactually part of adulting.
(27:52):
That's settling.
That's what we're supposed to dobecause we have families all of
a sudden, because we haveresponsibilities, because, oh
no, we have these obligations,but that's not true.
And yet it was my excuse.
And it's the worst lie that Ithink that I could have told
myself.
Now, I don't want to come off asI'm really enlightened and like
(28:14):
I have all this stuff figuredout and it's fantastic because I
still have a ton of days where Ifeel really overwhelmed.
And I also have a lot of placesin my life where I feel like I'm
not truly aligned.
But I can tell you, having gonethrough this process to the
point that I'm at right now, I'mexperiencing more moments where
(28:36):
I'm starting to see a biggerpicture, where I'm starting to
experience those moments whereI'm actually feeling more
connected to myself and I'mmoving towards a life that
actually feels like me again.
And so this is the place that westart.
These are the conversations thatwe have about midlife.
(28:57):
Because now I think it's reallyour turn.
And I hope that theseconversations are the beginning
of many.
And honestly, if you are feelinglike you've lost yourself, maybe
this can be a place of comfortas you dive into that
uncomfortableness.
So that's the start.
(29:18):
I hope you guys enjoyed this,and I look forward to many more
midlife conversations.
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