July 8, 2025 • 29 mins
Midlife hits different—and so does confidence. It’s not some magic switch you flip. It’s more like fumbling in the dark, trying not to trip over all the crap life threw your way.
In this episode, Morgan and Chris drop the polite nonsense and get honest about:
– Why your body feels like an enemy some days (and how that wrecks your confidence)
– The end of “fake it till you make it” and the start of “just being me”
– Why needing everyone’s approval is exhausting—and how to give yourself a break
– How to handle uncertainty without losing your cool (or pretending you don’t have it)
This is confidence stripped down—no filters, no perfection, just raw, messy, real life. If you’ve ever felt like you’re winging it, good news: you’re not alone.
Showing up imperfectly is the new confident.
Wanna hang with us in the mud? themidlifemud.com/join
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Morgan (00:00):
All right, welcome to the mud. We are going to jump
(00:02):
right in to our topic today. AndI want to start a little bit
differently. I want to ask you aquestion. Chris, ask me a
question on a scale of one to10. How confident are you as a
person?
Chris (00:16):
Jesus, that's a loaded question today sitting in the
chair that I'm sitting in, Iwould give myself like a 7.5
that's pretty good. But youknow, confidence is one of those
things that undulates up anddown and up and down. One of the
first things that I think aboutwhen you ask me that question is
(00:38):
I think about that process, andI can remember, like seven years
ago, I was like 15 years into mycareer, and I had worked really
hard to get into a position ofleadership that really had not
much to do with the technicallike educational training that I
had, and I had to work really,really hard, and one might say,
(01:00):
Fake it to get to that level.
And I was wearing the suits andthe shirts and the ties and, you
know, going to board meetingsand dinners and flying around
the country and presenting indifferent presentations. And
finally, the day came where avice president invited me to a
one on one meeting and presentedme with this formal offer of the
(01:21):
job that I had been working forfor so long. And in that moment,
I felt like this satisfaction,like, oh my god, I finally did
it. Yeah, the finish line. Howlong did that feeling last? It
lasted for about a month. Andthen I realized, basically it
was the finish line on April 1,and by April 30, it felt like I
(01:45):
had been put behind the startingline again, because now I was
learning this whole other thing.
So my confidence went fromreally high, like maybe it was a
nine, and then all of a suddenit was like, it won. So
confidence really is a funnything.
Morgan (02:04):
It is, and the reason I wanted to talk about it is that
we're in what we call the messymiddle of life, right? And I
know for me, you just mentionedsomething about faking it. I
think in my early adulthoodthere was a lot of fake it till
you make it. I knew I wasn't,quote, supposed to know
everything, but I would justpretend like I knew enough to
get by. And I think that worksto an extent. The problem is now
(02:27):
you get to the middle of yourlife and you really are, like,
generally pretty competent,right? Like you can do a lot of
things, you do know a lot ofthings, and yet, I don't know.
Maybe this ties into the sort ofmidlife crisis thing, which is
like, what am I doing, and whoam I really and do I feel like
(02:48):
that person? Yeah,
Chris (02:49):
it's interesting, because you bring up this word
competent, and I know that thereare lots of things that I am
really competent in, and thereare things that I've practiced
for a long time in my life, I ama good clinician and physical
therapist. I'm good at relatingwith people. I'm good at having
an intuition or a sense of whereto go next with mainly like
(03:14):
situations with people,interpersonal type of things.
However, even though I'm reallycompetent, that doesn't mean
that I always am confident. Sothere's not always like this
direct correlation between mebeing competent with something.
Sometimes in those areas that Iknow I'm competent in, I don't
feel confident. And I
Morgan (03:32):
think that's what the distinction that we want to make
right now is that the kind ofconfidence we're really talking
about here is confidence with acapital C, confidence in
yourself, not just yourabilities, your competence,
because you're right. You can bepretty competent at something
and still feel like a totalimposter, right? I want to kind
(03:52):
of lead with a story of my own.
It really did rock my confidenceas a person, and I think a lot
of women can identify with this.
This was probably about nineyears ago. We were done having
our four children. Our youngestwas probably, I don't, I can't
do math. She was like a toddler.
And I went to my gynecologistfor just a regular annual
(04:13):
appointment, and he wasbasically like, you know, you
really have some major pelvicfloor weakness. And, you know,
after four children, that makessense, there's been a lot of
strain, all this kind of stuff.
And he's like, I'm surprisedthat you don't have any any
like, symptoms of that. And Iwas like, Well, what kind of
symptoms would I have? He'slike, Oh, you know, basically
(04:36):
like, peeing and pooping allover yourself. He's like, I'm
gonna recommend that you go to aphysical therapist. And I left
that appointment thinking, holyshit, my body is done. I don't
know why. I don't know why Iequated that with I am now like
(04:56):
a worthless person, but somehow,that's where my brain went. I.
Was devastated, devastated. AndI remember calling a friend,
crying to her, and she said,Well, Morgan, do you like, do
you even have any symptoms ofanything? He's no, I didn't, but
I could, like, it was there. Itwas, like, I was on the verge of
that, and now I had to go tothis humiliating physical
(05:18):
therapy where we were gonna talkabout it all the time and like,
do all these weird exercises.
And truly, this led into Okay,I'm going to physical therapy.
I'm gonna restore my body. And Idid that. I don't know if it
really helped or not. And thenit became okay, I have my
abdominal muscles are sostretched apart, I'm gonna put
'em back together. I'm gonnahave cosmetic surgery to fix
(05:39):
that. So I did that. And then itbecame, I gained all this weight
because I was healing from thesurgery, and I didn't, I still
didn't know how to take care ofso then it became, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna get cut. Then I wentinto this major, you know,
health and nutrition program,which has been great, but I was
tying so much of my worth to mybody, my physical body, and it's
(06:02):
only been recently that I'vestarted to step back and say I
am not my body, and I don't haveto put so much stock into that.
I just think this is a reallycommon thing, especially for
women, and again, us being inmiddle age, then we launch into
perimenopause and menopause. Andyou know, even for men, our
(06:26):
joints and our body, like wedoesn't function the way that it
always used to, we don't feel asas confident, maybe. So that's
kind of an example of the arcthat I went through in terms of
confidence,
Chris (06:41):
yeah, and it's funny because you bring up physical
confidence, and I think that'ssomething that for a lot of us,
creeps in the background. Sowe're in the pinnacle of beach
season, at least in our climate,in the US. So every year, this
haunts me. In my mind, the dadbod I go to the beach, I take my
(07:02):
shirt off, and I'm like, God, Ilook like a walrus. What? I'm
just working on growing mytusks. And to some degree, I'm
just working on really trying toaccept that. And I went through
this period a few years agowhere I had that feeling like,
Oh my God, my body's gettingolder. I am not as attractive,
(07:24):
I'm not as strong, and I startedto do this insanity workout
program obsessively to the pointwhere I really caused myself an
ankle injury that I still flareson me sometimes. And my impetus
and drive for that was again, toreach this finish line of
feeling confident about my body.
And I did make a lot ofprogress. I lost weight, I got a
(07:46):
lot stronger. But the thing is,my driver was a little bit
hollow. I was looking for thisfinish line like, oh yeah, then
I'm gonna be done with this. Andmy carrot to myself was to feel
and look more attractive. Andthere's nothing wrong with that,
but I don't know, for me, itwasn't quite enough, yeah, and
so I reached a level ofimprovement, and then sort of
(08:10):
slipped backwards.
Morgan (08:13):
There's something there about going from the outside in.
I think because our bodies aresomething that are. They're
either right there, there.
Everybody can see it. You can'tfake that. So there's something
about getting that in, into theshape that you want, if you can
that then somehow gives you thisshield of confidence. So that's
what we think, and maybe that'strue to an extent. The issue is
(08:36):
that it's not the confidencewith a capital C, right? It's a
hollow confidence, and there'snothing coming from the inside
out.
Chris (08:46):
It's like paper mache.
You sculpt the outside, but theinside is hollow, yeah? So one
of the differences now is, I wasat a patient's house the other
day, and this sweet woman, she'slike, Oh, honey, do you want
some lemonade? Like people tryto give me stuff all the time,
and it's great, but I'm on thisthing and I'm trying to cut out
sugar. But I said, No, thankyou. And she just would not
(09:08):
stop. She gave me a big bag ofHershey Kisses, which is on my
counter now, but one of thethings that I said to the
patient is, because they werelike, What are you doing? Like,
you're not gonna just have alittle treat. And I said, No,
no, I do have treats, but I'mbeing intentional because I want
to be able to climb mountainsfor as long as I can in my life.
(09:29):
And that is making a choicebased on an internal value that
I have. Yeah, it's notnecessarily because I'm looking
to get rid of the dad bod. It
Morgan (09:41):
has nothing to do with what other people think, right?
And to my point about thephysical therapy thing, for me,
that wasn't even as much. Imean, nobody, nobody's gonna
know that I have a pelvic floorissue. Well, now they will, but,
you know, nobody's gonna knowthat. But somehow, as a woman,
when you start to think about,okay. My My job here is to have
(10:04):
children look amazing, juggleall the balls like in our
society, that's what we'resupposed to do at all, right?
And I had this, like, immediate,oh, this is one area where I'm
starting to fail. And so now myworth as a person is tanked. You
know? I eventually grew out ofthat, and there's something
about not, not allowing whateveryone else is thinking to
(10:27):
influence how I feel aboutmyself, right? You familiar with
internal family systems? Oh,yeah. So internal family systems
is sort of this something in thetherapy world, a tool that sort
of breaks everybody down intothis system of sort of have
multiple parts to yourself, butyou also have this core self.
And there are these, what theycall the 8c of the core self,
(10:50):
which are confidence, calm,compassion, courage, creativity,
clarity, curiosity andconnectedness. So when you are
able to access all of thosethings, that's when you're
really in touch with your coreself and the way that they
define confidence, they havethree different sort of factors.
(11:10):
One is to maintain the abilityto stay fully present in a
situation and effectively handleor repair anything that happens.
The second one is to haveinternalized the growth that
comes from healing previoustraumas and failures, and then
to understand that life andlearning includes making
mistakes. That's realconfidence. That's the
(11:32):
confidence with a capital C,where you can tell yourself, you
know what, this isn't going theway that I thought it was gonna
go, or expect it to go, orwanted it to go, but it's gonna
be okay somehow. I'll figure itout that I'll figure it out sort
of mentality that's realconfidence. Do you have an
example of something that alignswith that?
Chris (11:51):
Going back to my initial story about work and oftentimes
being in these really bigmeetings, and feeling, even
though in many of those cases, Iwas actually the one either
running the meeting or taking alead role in the meeting, and I
was working really hard to comeacross as confident I would
(12:12):
literally be on the verge of apanic attack, shortness of
breath, tightness in the chest,difficulty focusing and
maintaining like, clear thoughtin a space where I wasn't really
like receiving, I was just inprojecting mode. You're not
really listening because you'reworking so hard on how you're
presenting yourself. And I hadthis moment the other day where
(12:35):
I was on a big call with like 30people at work, and I wasn't in
a particular, like role ofleadership in that meeting or
anything, but everybody's ontheir little Brady Bunch screen,
you know, on a zoom call. So Iwas just kind of scrolling
through and looking at peopleand their non verbal and kind of
where they were at and and thenalso listening to the
(12:57):
conversation. And I had thismoment where I kind of smiled
and I felt like, oh, I kind offeel like I have a superpower
right now, because I felt verycalm. I wasn't there trying to
be anything or do anythingexcept for just show up, and it
was more about how I felt. Ijust felt very centered and very
(13:20):
present, and I was able toprocess what was happening in
the meeting and really becurious about that without being
stuck in what do people think ofme? What do I want out of this?
Is just a completely differentshift
Morgan (13:34):
well, and it's so funny, because when you think about
we're all sort of in the sameboat. We've all been there where
we've struggled with confidence,and we've thought, Oh, God, am I
sitting the right way? Am Ilike, should I cross my legs
this way? Or should I like, situp straighter? Or do I need to
say something differently or andthe funny thing is that when
we're doing that, we're not atall. We're not there, right? And
(13:55):
if everybody else is doing that,we're all just in our own heads.
Oh, I know. And so what are wereally doing
Chris (14:01):
well? And I think that was the superpower, quote,
unquote moment for me, was torealize it was almost like I was
seeing the code underneath.
Yeah, it's
Morgan (14:10):
like viewing the matrix.
Yeah, exactly. And the irony isthat nobody when everybody's so
it's like teenagers, how theyall think the whole world is
looking at them all the time,like nobody gives a shit.
Nobody's looking at you, becausewe're all thinking about
ourselves. I
Chris (14:28):
actually tell myself that sometimes, like Chris, nobody
really fucking cares.
Morgan (14:32):
No, they're not paying attention. They're not right.
And so you go on with your badself, right? Do your thing. So
that's the question, when we'rein this messy middle of
adulthood, how do we reach apoint like I feel like I
personally am sort of emerginginto a new space in terms of
confidence? Yeah, and it's beena process. It's not something
(14:56):
that happens overnight, andthere are still plenty of things
I don't feel confident about.
But I think that that capital Ckind of confidence is really
growing in me. Is there anythingthat you feel like you're doing
that's gotten you there, or thatyou have done
Chris (15:11):
well, you know, in the internal family systems model,
there's also this concept thatone of the parts of people is
something called the managers.
And the managers are very wellmeaning, but they end up being
sort of a buffer or a layerbetween your core self and the
outside world, and sometimesthey get a little bit
overbearing, and the managersare the ones that tell me fake
(15:34):
it till I make it put on thesuit. Think about what you need
to say to make people feel likeyou're who you want them to
think you are. Yeah, exactly, sothat you can get to whatever you
want, versus taking that layeroff and just showing up as more
of the core self. I love theword calm and confidence with
(15:54):
the big C, because that is whatit is for me a lot when I feel
true confidence, there is acalmness associated with that.
And one of the like, very simplepractices, is when I start to
feel freaked out, the firstthing I do is just try to calm
down. And sometimes, sometimesI'm just sitting there
(16:15):
breathing, I, you know, I try tojust calm down, slow down and
realize there's usually not acrisis going on.
Morgan (16:23):
Do you feel like there was a moment though, or a time
in your life where the switchstarted to happen?
Chris (16:30):
Yeah, I think it's just when the wheels came off the bus
for me, and I had to literallyhit pause. My relationships with
my children fell apart. My worklife fell apart, my home life
kind of fell apart. And the coretheme of all of that was I was
just basically running scared,just compensating, compensating,
(16:54):
compensating. And really indoing that, I was denying who I
was. So that moment where I hadto basically hit pause for a
period in my life and then startto rebuild. There was a
symbolism in that for me,because every time I took a step
forward in that life, I've triedto be very intentional about
(17:19):
okay, I'm laying a foundationhere. What do I want it to be
like
Morgan (17:23):
that was all rooted in your core self, instead of going
outside in, you are going insideout, right with my coaching
clients. This is a common themethat comes up, this idea of,
well, I just don't feelconfident. And I have been there
too, and it's so interesting tome, because again, back to the
midlife crisis kind of thing. Idon't like that. I feel like
(17:43):
that's a misnomer. What if wereframe that and think of it as
this opportunity? I think it isa normal time for us to start
evaluating, am I living from theinside out, or am I living from
the outside in? And I thinkoften we spend all this time
faking it till we make it inyoung adulthood, and we never
switch gears. And then all of asudden we go, Wait a minute,
(18:06):
what do I want? Who am I? What'sthe life that I really want to
have here? And how do I want toshow up? I'm tired of thinking
about every little thing that Ido or say or micromanaging
myself so that I come off acertain way. It's a lot of
Chris (18:23):
work, it's a lot of energy. Sometimes it's less
comfortable. I'm finding it getsmore comfortable with time and
practice. But to just show up aswho you are, instead of trying
to always manage this veneer ontop,
Morgan (18:37):
I like that veneer.
That's exactly what it is. A lotof people don't even know what's
under it. They're not even
Chris (18:42):
aware. I remember one afternoon I was in this
workshop, and the leader of theworkshop handed me a deck of
three by five index cards withbig black Sharpie single words,
love, understanding, trust,compassion, all of these
different words, and not all ofthem were positive, there was a
whole range. And said, Okay,pick through those 60 cards and
(19:06):
pick the top six that representwho you are at your core self.
And I didn't know how to do it.
It was a really hard exercise.
And I felt like, Oh my I didn'tfeel calm. I felt like, oh my
god, I'm in my 40s, and I can'tpick out six flash cards. What's
wrong with me? And it was a veryshaking activity for me. The
(19:26):
next step of that story that waslike a really big light bulb
moment for me, was that thecards that I picked were not
consistent with how I wasshowing up. Yeah, I was like,
Well, wait, I know I'm thisperson, but I'm not doing
Morgan (19:45):
that. Amen. That's where the crisis comes in, quote,
unquote, there is so muchdissonance that comes with that,
even if you're not even aware ofit, it is humming in the
background.
Chris (19:58):
And you mentioned this thing. About opportunity, and I
think that's what it is. Andit's not as if there's one
opportunity. If you miss it,you're fucked
Morgan (20:07):
No. Trust me, it'll show up plenty of times.
Chris (20:11):
There's opportunities all the time, and it seems to me,
just observationally, thatpeople either stop and think
about, like, taking theopportunity in a different
direction, or double
Morgan (20:24):
down. Yeah, when you double down, you got to work
even harder, because now you'resort of semi aware, and you're
like, oh shit, I got to ignorethat, right? So now you've got
to put the energy into ignoringit also, yep, which is a recipe
for total fucking burnout. Likewe wonder why we're all so
stressed out? Well, guess what?
This is why? Yes, there's a tonof bullshit going on in the
(20:46):
world also that contributes tothat. But you know what, if you
are really, if you have thatsort of inner capital C
confidence, truly, it'll changeyour whole experience of the
Chris (20:59):
world. I was having a conversation recently with a man
in his 80s who has been drivenhis whole life and owned this
successful company and has allof these material things and
assets. And he looked at me andsaid, Don't do that. He
(21:20):
basically said, I'm I'm 81 now,and I don't really care about
any of that stuff with work, itjust isn't important. And now
I'm trying to figure out how tospend my last few years in
meaningful ways, and it's aboutspending time with people. And I
just thought, damn it, that'sit.
Morgan (21:40):
Why don't we know that?
Why don't we just come outknowing that? Another thing I
wanted to talk about is sort ofthis relationship, if there is
one, and I'm curious what youthink between confidence and
uncertainty.
Chris (21:56):
I think that confidence involves being okay with
uncertainty. And it's funny,because I didn't believe that
for a long time. I thoughtconfidence was being certain.
Morgan (22:06):
I know that's what, that's what's so funny Well, and
that's what I think, the fake ittill you make it, kind of the
paper mache confidence is allabout.
Chris (22:14):
I know it's true. It's it's really interesting. If I
think about the definition ofconfidence that you shared
confidence with a big C. There'sa lot there about fluidity and
just being able to meet thingswhere they are, just accept what
comes and not try to control it,yeah, and not try to predict it.
(22:34):
And there's a lot of uncertaintyin doing,
Morgan (22:36):
yeah. Real confidence is not this big, loud, showy thing,
right? I think of it as like anability to sort of just self
nurture and self soothe, yeah,that whole idea of it's gonna be
okay, yeah, and believingyourself. So, you know, how do
we, how do we tap into thatmore? How do we shift into that
(22:59):
place more? And I think a lot ofit has to do with being willing
to explore underneath thatveneer.
Chris (23:06):
There was a moment a few weeks ago, and basically some
software at work changed, and Ihad no idea how to do the
workflow right, and I didn'ttake the training that I was
supposed to take. And so whathappened was, for about two
weeks, I was doing it wrong, andI generated all these notes that
were wrong, and the qualitypeople came to me, they copied,
(23:30):
like my boss and everything, andyou're not doing this right, and
so on and so forth. And Iremember sitting in my car
reading the email, and I feltthe old familiar flood starting
to come. Oh, my god, how am Igonna fix this? Quote, unquote.
And then I was aware of that,and I took some deep breaths and
(23:51):
just sat there for a minute andthen accessed a calmer spot and
just sent an email and said Itook accountability for not
looking at the training closeenough, and said, Yep, I did all
these wrong. And by the way, theone that you sent me is not the
only one. There's going to belike, 25 more because I didn't
understand the workflow or do itright. And so I'll work with so
(24:14):
and so to fix it. That's itdone. I would have let that ruin
a month of my life 10 years ago.
Seriously? Yeah. And not onlythat, though, one of the things
that was really interesting iseven my supervisor made a
comment like that. Was amazing,how you dealt with
Morgan (24:32):
that. Yeah, you don't see that every day. And I like
what you're pointing out there,which is that a confident person
doesn't always get it right, anda confident person takes
accountability right out of thegate. Everybody knows like has
that that one person in theirlife that they're like, Damn why
they're so confident? What is itabout that person? You know?
(24:53):
Maybe that's one way to exploreconfidence. A little bit more is
to really pay. Pay attentionthat person that you're like,
there's just that something thatthey've got. Why is it that they
walk into a room and everybody'slike, God, pay attention to what
they're doing and how they'rebeing and I'm not saying emulate
(25:14):
that necessarily, but if you canstart to connect the dots of I
noticed that they don't like,sit around and go, damn it, I
fucked up. You know, that's notwhat they do. So I don't know
that's it's not that they get itright. It's not that they're
certain. It's not that they haveanything that you don't know.
All right. What's the bottomline here? What are the
micronutrients?
Chris (25:34):
I'm okay with my dad bod, okay. But the reason that I'm
working on changing my body isin line with the fact that I
want to be active on this earthfor as long as I can in my life.
And to do that, I need to keepit in shape. That's my driver
now. And if I can do all thosethings and I still have a dad
(25:56):
bod, okay,
Morgan (25:57):
yeah, there's something about living from who I really
am, outward and being okay whenI don't know being okay with
uncertainty that is everywhereright now,
Chris (26:07):
I'm gonna go a step further and say that more times
than not, I'm coming to believethat uncertainty is a good thing
because it allows opportunity.
And for a long time in life, Ithought of that as, Oh my God,
if I'm uncertain, bad things canhappen. Well, that's true, but
good things can happen too.
Morgan (26:26):
Yeah, I think uncertainty can really, if you
allow it to, it can really sparkthat curiosity, like, I wonder
what's gonna happen, instead of,oh my God, what's gonna happen.
You know, it's a reframe. It's areframe. I also think it's
important that a lot of us sitaround and wait for confidence
to show up before we start doingsomething that we want to do.
(26:49):
And I'm going to just put outthere that confidence is not a
prerequisite for takingmeaningful action towards
something that you want do itanyway. Yeah. And then this
messy middle midlife crisisthing. I'm going to think of it
as more of an opportunity, anopportunity to just sort of
reevaluate who am I, what do Iwant, and then really work on
(27:12):
embracing that confidence with acapital C. That's good, all
right, that's going to wrap itup for us. But don't be shy. If
you want to be a part of themuddy community and continue the
conversation, then you can do soat the midlife mud.com/join
Chris (27:27):
that's the midlife mud.com/join
Morgan (27:30):
See you on the flip side in the mud.
All right, welcome to the mud. We are going to jump
(00:02):
right in to our topic today. AndI want to start a little bit
differently. I want to ask you aquestion. Chris, ask me a
question on a scale of one to10. How confident are you as a
person?
Chris (00:16):
Jesus, that's a loaded question today sitting in the
chair that I'm sitting in, Iwould give myself like a 7.5
that's pretty good. But youknow, confidence is one of those
things that undulates up anddown and up and down. One of the
first things that I think aboutwhen you ask me that question is
(00:38):
I think about that process, andI can remember, like seven years
ago, I was like 15 years into mycareer, and I had worked really
hard to get into a position ofleadership that really had not
much to do with the technicallike educational training that I
had, and I had to work really,really hard, and one might say,
(01:00):
Fake it to get to that level.
And I was wearing the suits andthe shirts and the ties and, you
know, going to board meetingsand dinners and flying around
the country and presenting indifferent presentations. And
finally, the day came where avice president invited me to a
one on one meeting and presentedme with this formal offer of the
(01:21):
job that I had been working forfor so long. And in that moment,
I felt like this satisfaction,like, oh my god, I finally did
it. Yeah, the finish line. Howlong did that feeling last? It
lasted for about a month. Andthen I realized, basically it
was the finish line on April 1,and by April 30, it felt like I
(01:45):
had been put behind the startingline again, because now I was
learning this whole other thing.
So my confidence went fromreally high, like maybe it was a
nine, and then all of a suddenit was like, it won. So
confidence really is a funnything.
Morgan (02:04):
It is, and the reason I wanted to talk about it is that
we're in what we call the messymiddle of life, right? And I
know for me, you just mentionedsomething about faking it. I
think in my early adulthoodthere was a lot of fake it till
you make it. I knew I wasn't,quote, supposed to know
everything, but I would justpretend like I knew enough to
get by. And I think that worksto an extent. The problem is now
(02:27):
you get to the middle of yourlife and you really are, like,
generally pretty competent,right? Like you can do a lot of
things, you do know a lot ofthings, and yet, I don't know.
Maybe this ties into the sort ofmidlife crisis thing, which is
like, what am I doing, and whoam I really and do I feel like
(02:48):
that person? Yeah,
Chris (02:49):
it's interesting, because you bring up this word
competent, and I know that thereare lots of things that I am
really competent in, and thereare things that I've practiced
for a long time in my life, I ama good clinician and physical
therapist. I'm good at relatingwith people. I'm good at having
an intuition or a sense of whereto go next with mainly like
(03:14):
situations with people,interpersonal type of things.
However, even though I'm reallycompetent, that doesn't mean
that I always am confident. Sothere's not always like this
direct correlation between mebeing competent with something.
Sometimes in those areas that Iknow I'm competent in, I don't
feel confident. And I
Morgan (03:32):
think that's what the distinction that we want to make
right now is that the kind ofconfidence we're really talking
about here is confidence with acapital C, confidence in
yourself, not just yourabilities, your competence,
because you're right. You can bepretty competent at something
and still feel like a totalimposter, right? I want to kind
(03:52):
of lead with a story of my own.
It really did rock my confidenceas a person, and I think a lot
of women can identify with this.
This was probably about nineyears ago. We were done having
our four children. Our youngestwas probably, I don't, I can't
do math. She was like a toddler.
And I went to my gynecologistfor just a regular annual
(04:13):
appointment, and he wasbasically like, you know, you
really have some major pelvicfloor weakness. And, you know,
after four children, that makessense, there's been a lot of
strain, all this kind of stuff.
And he's like, I'm surprisedthat you don't have any any
like, symptoms of that. And Iwas like, Well, what kind of
symptoms would I have? He'slike, Oh, you know, basically
(04:36):
like, peeing and pooping allover yourself. He's like, I'm
gonna recommend that you go to aphysical therapist. And I left
that appointment thinking, holyshit, my body is done. I don't
know why. I don't know why Iequated that with I am now like
(04:56):
a worthless person, but somehow,that's where my brain went. I.
Was devastated, devastated. AndI remember calling a friend,
crying to her, and she said,Well, Morgan, do you like, do
you even have any symptoms ofanything? He's no, I didn't, but
I could, like, it was there. Itwas, like, I was on the verge of
that, and now I had to go tothis humiliating physical
(05:18):
therapy where we were gonna talkabout it all the time and like,
do all these weird exercises.
And truly, this led into Okay,I'm going to physical therapy.
I'm gonna restore my body. And Idid that. I don't know if it
really helped or not. And thenit became okay, I have my
abdominal muscles are sostretched apart, I'm gonna put
'em back together. I'm gonnahave cosmetic surgery to fix
(05:39):
that. So I did that. And then itbecame, I gained all this weight
because I was healing from thesurgery, and I didn't, I still
didn't know how to take care ofso then it became, I'm gonna,
I'm gonna get cut. Then I wentinto this major, you know,
health and nutrition program,which has been great, but I was
tying so much of my worth to mybody, my physical body, and it's
(06:02):
only been recently that I'vestarted to step back and say I
am not my body, and I don't haveto put so much stock into that.
I just think this is a reallycommon thing, especially for
women, and again, us being inmiddle age, then we launch into
perimenopause and menopause. Andyou know, even for men, our
(06:26):
joints and our body, like wedoesn't function the way that it
always used to, we don't feel asas confident, maybe. So that's
kind of an example of the arcthat I went through in terms of
confidence,
Chris (06:41):
yeah, and it's funny because you bring up physical
confidence, and I think that'ssomething that for a lot of us,
creeps in the background. Sowe're in the pinnacle of beach
season, at least in our climate,in the US. So every year, this
haunts me. In my mind, the dadbod I go to the beach, I take my
(07:02):
shirt off, and I'm like, God, Ilook like a walrus. What? I'm
just working on growing mytusks. And to some degree, I'm
just working on really trying toaccept that. And I went through
this period a few years agowhere I had that feeling like,
Oh my God, my body's gettingolder. I am not as attractive,
(07:24):
I'm not as strong, and I startedto do this insanity workout
program obsessively to the pointwhere I really caused myself an
ankle injury that I still flareson me sometimes. And my impetus
and drive for that was again, toreach this finish line of
feeling confident about my body.
And I did make a lot ofprogress. I lost weight, I got a
(07:46):
lot stronger. But the thing is,my driver was a little bit
hollow. I was looking for thisfinish line like, oh yeah, then
I'm gonna be done with this. Andmy carrot to myself was to feel
and look more attractive. Andthere's nothing wrong with that,
but I don't know, for me, itwasn't quite enough, yeah, and
so I reached a level ofimprovement, and then sort of
(08:10):
slipped backwards.
Morgan (08:13):
There's something there about going from the outside in.
I think because our bodies aresomething that are. They're
either right there, there.
Everybody can see it. You can'tfake that. So there's something
about getting that in, into theshape that you want, if you can
that then somehow gives you thisshield of confidence. So that's
what we think, and maybe that'strue to an extent. The issue is
(08:36):
that it's not the confidencewith a capital C, right? It's a
hollow confidence, and there'snothing coming from the inside
out.
Chris (08:46):
It's like paper mache.
You sculpt the outside, but theinside is hollow, yeah? So one
of the differences now is, I wasat a patient's house the other
day, and this sweet woman, she'slike, Oh, honey, do you want
some lemonade? Like people tryto give me stuff all the time,
and it's great, but I'm on thisthing and I'm trying to cut out
sugar. But I said, No, thankyou. And she just would not
(09:08):
stop. She gave me a big bag ofHershey Kisses, which is on my
counter now, but one of thethings that I said to the
patient is, because they werelike, What are you doing? Like,
you're not gonna just have alittle treat. And I said, No,
no, I do have treats, but I'mbeing intentional because I want
to be able to climb mountainsfor as long as I can in my life.
(09:29):
And that is making a choicebased on an internal value that
I have. Yeah, it's notnecessarily because I'm looking
to get rid of the dad bod. It
Morgan (09:41):
has nothing to do with what other people think, right?
And to my point about thephysical therapy thing, for me,
that wasn't even as much. Imean, nobody, nobody's gonna
know that I have a pelvic floorissue. Well, now they will, but,
you know, nobody's gonna knowthat. But somehow, as a woman,
when you start to think about,okay. My My job here is to have
(10:04):
children look amazing, juggleall the balls like in our
society, that's what we'resupposed to do at all, right?
And I had this, like, immediate,oh, this is one area where I'm
starting to fail. And so now myworth as a person is tanked. You
know? I eventually grew out ofthat, and there's something
about not, not allowing whateveryone else is thinking to
(10:27):
influence how I feel aboutmyself, right? You familiar with
internal family systems? Oh,yeah. So internal family systems
is sort of this something in thetherapy world, a tool that sort
of breaks everybody down intothis system of sort of have
multiple parts to yourself, butyou also have this core self.
And there are these, what theycall the 8c of the core self,
(10:50):
which are confidence, calm,compassion, courage, creativity,
clarity, curiosity andconnectedness. So when you are
able to access all of thosethings, that's when you're
really in touch with your coreself and the way that they
define confidence, they havethree different sort of factors.
(11:10):
One is to maintain the abilityto stay fully present in a
situation and effectively handleor repair anything that happens.
The second one is to haveinternalized the growth that
comes from healing previoustraumas and failures, and then
to understand that life andlearning includes making
mistakes. That's realconfidence. That's the
(11:32):
confidence with a capital C,where you can tell yourself, you
know what, this isn't going theway that I thought it was gonna
go, or expect it to go, orwanted it to go, but it's gonna
be okay somehow. I'll figure itout that I'll figure it out sort
of mentality that's realconfidence. Do you have an
example of something that alignswith that?
Chris (11:51):
Going back to my initial story about work and oftentimes
being in these really bigmeetings, and feeling, even
though in many of those cases, Iwas actually the one either
running the meeting or taking alead role in the meeting, and I
was working really hard to comeacross as confident I would
(12:12):
literally be on the verge of apanic attack, shortness of
breath, tightness in the chest,difficulty focusing and
maintaining like, clear thoughtin a space where I wasn't really
like receiving, I was just inprojecting mode. You're not
really listening because you'reworking so hard on how you're
presenting yourself. And I hadthis moment the other day where
(12:35):
I was on a big call with like 30people at work, and I wasn't in
a particular, like role ofleadership in that meeting or
anything, but everybody's ontheir little Brady Bunch screen,
you know, on a zoom call. So Iwas just kind of scrolling
through and looking at peopleand their non verbal and kind of
where they were at and and thenalso listening to the
(12:57):
conversation. And I had thismoment where I kind of smiled
and I felt like, oh, I kind offeel like I have a superpower
right now, because I felt verycalm. I wasn't there trying to
be anything or do anythingexcept for just show up, and it
was more about how I felt. Ijust felt very centered and very
(13:20):
present, and I was able toprocess what was happening in
the meeting and really becurious about that without being
stuck in what do people think ofme? What do I want out of this?
Is just a completely differentshift
Morgan (13:34):
well, and it's so funny, because when you think about
we're all sort of in the sameboat. We've all been there where
we've struggled with confidence,and we've thought, Oh, God, am I
sitting the right way? Am Ilike, should I cross my legs
this way? Or should I like, situp straighter? Or do I need to
say something differently or andthe funny thing is that when
we're doing that, we're not atall. We're not there, right? And
(13:55):
if everybody else is doing that,we're all just in our own heads.
Oh, I know. And so what are wereally doing
Chris (14:01):
well? And I think that was the superpower, quote,
unquote moment for me, was torealize it was almost like I was
seeing the code underneath.
Yeah, it's
Morgan (14:10):
like viewing the matrix.
Yeah, exactly. And the irony isthat nobody when everybody's so
it's like teenagers, how theyall think the whole world is
looking at them all the time,like nobody gives a shit.
Nobody's looking at you, becausewe're all thinking about
ourselves. I
Chris (14:28):
actually tell myself that sometimes, like Chris, nobody
really fucking cares.
Morgan (14:32):
No, they're not paying attention. They're not right.
And so you go on with your badself, right? Do your thing. So
that's the question, when we'rein this messy middle of
adulthood, how do we reach apoint like I feel like I
personally am sort of emerginginto a new space in terms of
confidence? Yeah, and it's beena process. It's not something
(14:56):
that happens overnight, andthere are still plenty of things
I don't feel confident about.
But I think that that capital Ckind of confidence is really
growing in me. Is there anythingthat you feel like you're doing
that's gotten you there, or thatyou have done
Chris (15:11):
well, you know, in the internal family systems model,
there's also this concept thatone of the parts of people is
something called the managers.
And the managers are very wellmeaning, but they end up being
sort of a buffer or a layerbetween your core self and the
outside world, and sometimesthey get a little bit
overbearing, and the managersare the ones that tell me fake
(15:34):
it till I make it put on thesuit. Think about what you need
to say to make people feel likeyou're who you want them to
think you are. Yeah, exactly, sothat you can get to whatever you
want, versus taking that layeroff and just showing up as more
of the core self. I love theword calm and confidence with
(15:54):
the big C, because that is whatit is for me a lot when I feel
true confidence, there is acalmness associated with that.
And one of the like, very simplepractices, is when I start to
feel freaked out, the firstthing I do is just try to calm
down. And sometimes, sometimesI'm just sitting there
(16:15):
breathing, I, you know, I try tojust calm down, slow down and
realize there's usually not acrisis going on.
Morgan (16:23):
Do you feel like there was a moment though, or a time
in your life where the switchstarted to happen?
Chris (16:30):
Yeah, I think it's just when the wheels came off the bus
for me, and I had to literallyhit pause. My relationships with
my children fell apart. My worklife fell apart, my home life
kind of fell apart. And the coretheme of all of that was I was
just basically running scared,just compensating, compensating,
(16:54):
compensating. And really indoing that, I was denying who I
was. So that moment where I hadto basically hit pause for a
period in my life and then startto rebuild. There was a
symbolism in that for me,because every time I took a step
forward in that life, I've triedto be very intentional about
(17:19):
okay, I'm laying a foundationhere. What do I want it to be
like
Morgan (17:23):
that was all rooted in your core self, instead of going
outside in, you are going insideout, right with my coaching
clients. This is a common themethat comes up, this idea of,
well, I just don't feelconfident. And I have been there
too, and it's so interesting tome, because again, back to the
midlife crisis kind of thing. Idon't like that. I feel like
(17:43):
that's a misnomer. What if wereframe that and think of it as
this opportunity? I think it isa normal time for us to start
evaluating, am I living from theinside out, or am I living from
the outside in? And I thinkoften we spend all this time
faking it till we make it inyoung adulthood, and we never
switch gears. And then all of asudden we go, Wait a minute,
(18:06):
what do I want? Who am I? What'sthe life that I really want to
have here? And how do I want toshow up? I'm tired of thinking
about every little thing that Ido or say or micromanaging
myself so that I come off acertain way. It's a lot of
Chris (18:23):
work, it's a lot of energy. Sometimes it's less
comfortable. I'm finding it getsmore comfortable with time and
practice. But to just show up aswho you are, instead of trying
to always manage this veneer ontop,
Morgan (18:37):
I like that veneer.
That's exactly what it is. A lotof people don't even know what's
under it. They're not even
Chris (18:42):
aware. I remember one afternoon I was in this
workshop, and the leader of theworkshop handed me a deck of
three by five index cards withbig black Sharpie single words,
love, understanding, trust,compassion, all of these
different words, and not all ofthem were positive, there was a
whole range. And said, Okay,pick through those 60 cards and
(19:06):
pick the top six that representwho you are at your core self.
And I didn't know how to do it.
It was a really hard exercise.
And I felt like, Oh my I didn'tfeel calm. I felt like, oh my
god, I'm in my 40s, and I can'tpick out six flash cards. What's
wrong with me? And it was a veryshaking activity for me. The
(19:26):
next step of that story that waslike a really big light bulb
moment for me, was that thecards that I picked were not
consistent with how I wasshowing up. Yeah, I was like,
Well, wait, I know I'm thisperson, but I'm not doing
Morgan (19:45):
that. Amen. That's where the crisis comes in, quote,
unquote, there is so muchdissonance that comes with that,
even if you're not even aware ofit, it is humming in the
background.
Chris (19:58):
And you mentioned this thing. About opportunity, and I
think that's what it is. Andit's not as if there's one
opportunity. If you miss it,you're fucked
Morgan (20:07):
No. Trust me, it'll show up plenty of times.
Chris (20:11):
There's opportunities all the time, and it seems to me,
just observationally, thatpeople either stop and think
about, like, taking theopportunity in a different
direction, or double
Morgan (20:24):
down. Yeah, when you double down, you got to work
even harder, because now you'resort of semi aware, and you're
like, oh shit, I got to ignorethat, right? So now you've got
to put the energy into ignoringit also, yep, which is a recipe
for total fucking burnout. Likewe wonder why we're all so
stressed out? Well, guess what?
This is why? Yes, there's a tonof bullshit going on in the
(20:46):
world also that contributes tothat. But you know what, if you
are really, if you have thatsort of inner capital C
confidence, truly, it'll changeyour whole experience of the
Chris (20:59):
world. I was having a conversation recently with a man
in his 80s who has been drivenhis whole life and owned this
successful company and has allof these material things and
assets. And he looked at me andsaid, Don't do that. He
(21:20):
basically said, I'm I'm 81 now,and I don't really care about
any of that stuff with work, itjust isn't important. And now
I'm trying to figure out how tospend my last few years in
meaningful ways, and it's aboutspending time with people. And I
just thought, damn it, that'sit.
Morgan (21:40):
Why don't we know that?
Why don't we just come outknowing that? Another thing I
wanted to talk about is sort ofthis relationship, if there is
one, and I'm curious what youthink between confidence and
uncertainty.
Chris (21:56):
I think that confidence involves being okay with
uncertainty. And it's funny,because I didn't believe that
for a long time. I thoughtconfidence was being certain.
Morgan (22:06):
I know that's what, that's what's so funny Well, and
that's what I think, the fake ittill you make it, kind of the
paper mache confidence is allabout.
Chris (22:14):
I know it's true. It's it's really interesting. If I
think about the definition ofconfidence that you shared
confidence with a big C. There'sa lot there about fluidity and
just being able to meet thingswhere they are, just accept what
comes and not try to control it,yeah, and not try to predict it.
(22:34):
And there's a lot of uncertaintyin doing,
Morgan (22:36):
yeah. Real confidence is not this big, loud, showy thing,
right? I think of it as like anability to sort of just self
nurture and self soothe, yeah,that whole idea of it's gonna be
okay, yeah, and believingyourself. So, you know, how do
we, how do we tap into thatmore? How do we shift into that
(22:59):
place more? And I think a lot ofit has to do with being willing
to explore underneath thatveneer.
Chris (23:06):
There was a moment a few weeks ago, and basically some
software at work changed, and Ihad no idea how to do the
workflow right, and I didn'ttake the training that I was
supposed to take. And so whathappened was, for about two
weeks, I was doing it wrong, andI generated all these notes that
were wrong, and the qualitypeople came to me, they copied,
(23:30):
like my boss and everything, andyou're not doing this right, and
so on and so forth. And Iremember sitting in my car
reading the email, and I feltthe old familiar flood starting
to come. Oh, my god, how am Igonna fix this? Quote, unquote.
And then I was aware of that,and I took some deep breaths and
(23:51):
just sat there for a minute andthen accessed a calmer spot and
just sent an email and said Itook accountability for not
looking at the training closeenough, and said, Yep, I did all
these wrong. And by the way, theone that you sent me is not the
only one. There's going to belike, 25 more because I didn't
understand the workflow or do itright. And so I'll work with so
(24:14):
and so to fix it. That's itdone. I would have let that ruin
a month of my life 10 years ago.
Seriously? Yeah. And not onlythat, though, one of the things
that was really interesting iseven my supervisor made a
comment like that. Was amazing,how you dealt with
Morgan (24:32):
that. Yeah, you don't see that every day. And I like
what you're pointing out there,which is that a confident person
doesn't always get it right, anda confident person takes
accountability right out of thegate. Everybody knows like has
that that one person in theirlife that they're like, Damn why
they're so confident? What is itabout that person? You know?
(24:53):
Maybe that's one way to exploreconfidence. A little bit more is
to really pay. Pay attentionthat person that you're like,
there's just that something thatthey've got. Why is it that they
walk into a room and everybody'slike, God, pay attention to what
they're doing and how they'rebeing and I'm not saying emulate
(25:14):
that necessarily, but if you canstart to connect the dots of I
noticed that they don't like,sit around and go, damn it, I
fucked up. You know, that's notwhat they do. So I don't know
that's it's not that they get itright. It's not that they're
certain. It's not that they haveanything that you don't know.
All right. What's the bottomline here? What are the
micronutrients?
Chris (25:34):
I'm okay with my dad bod, okay. But the reason that I'm
working on changing my body isin line with the fact that I
want to be active on this earthfor as long as I can in my life.
And to do that, I need to keepit in shape. That's my driver
now. And if I can do all thosethings and I still have a dad
(25:56):
bod, okay,
Morgan (25:57):
yeah, there's something about living from who I really
am, outward and being okay whenI don't know being okay with
uncertainty that is everywhereright now,
Chris (26:07):
I'm gonna go a step further and say that more times
than not, I'm coming to believethat uncertainty is a good thing
because it allows opportunity.
And for a long time in life, Ithought of that as, Oh my God,
if I'm uncertain, bad things canhappen. Well, that's true, but
good things can happen too.
Morgan (26:26):
Yeah, I think uncertainty can really, if you
allow it to, it can really sparkthat curiosity, like, I wonder
what's gonna happen, instead of,oh my God, what's gonna happen.
You know, it's a reframe. It's areframe. I also think it's
important that a lot of us sitaround and wait for confidence
to show up before we start doingsomething that we want to do.
(26:49):
And I'm going to just put outthere that confidence is not a
prerequisite for takingmeaningful action towards
something that you want do itanyway. Yeah. And then this
messy middle midlife crisisthing. I'm going to think of it
as more of an opportunity, anopportunity to just sort of
reevaluate who am I, what do Iwant, and then really work on
(27:12):
embracing that confidence with acapital C. That's good, all
right, that's going to wrap itup for us. But don't be shy. If
you want to be a part of themuddy community and continue the
conversation, then you can do soat the midlife mud.com/join
Chris (27:27):
that's the midlife mud.com/join
Morgan (27:30):
See you on the flip side in the mud.
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