00:00 

Hey there. Welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 315, "Midlife Crisis? Yes, Please!" Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

00:22 

Alright, hello there, my friends and welcome to the podcast. Super glad to have you here today as always. And I'm super glad to be here. I love the content that I get to prepare for you and that I get to share with you. It always causes me to think a little bit more about how I am applying this content in my own life and it keeps me on track. Let's just say that I'm on track in the first place, right? There are probably people in my life who would say, "you're not so sure that you're on track," but I'm trying to be and I'm working really hard at this, and this podcast really helps me to continue to explore what I'm doing in my own life. 

01:03 

So before we start today, I want to let you know that starting in September I'm going to have some group classes coming up. So if you want to make sure that you know about those when they come up, you will need to go to my website tanyahale.com. You can scroll down to the very bottom, I think, or go to the "contact me" page and scroll down a little bit. And there's a place where you can sign up for my "weekend win." This is something that I send to you almost every weekend that just has some good thoughts about life coaching. If you like the podcast, you would love the email. It's meant to be read in one or two minutes max. They're not meant to be long, but meant to be a little bit of a "that's interesting to think about" kind of thing. So check that out and get that if you don't have it, especially if you want to make sure that you are up on the classes that happen in September. So I will be be talking about those here as well although I'm up quite a bit on these podcasts so I'm not sure by the time I record for August podcasts how specific of information I'm going to have on those classes. So make sure that you're getting the email if you want that. Okay, I think that's gonna about do it. 

02:18 

So I was gonna tell you that I just got back from a trip to Alaska. I have a son who is spending his second summer up there working and we went to Mount Denali to visit him where he works at a hotel and, boy, it's the first time I have gone to Alaska and it is so gorgeous up there. I've seen beautiful mountains before but usually they're just, like, in one direction, and this is 360 degree monumental, gorgeous mountains. You get past that mountain, you know, you go in any direction past that mountain range, and it's still 360 degrees. And past that mountain range it's still 360 degrees. Every direction, for it seems as far as you can drive, is 360 degree incredible mountain ranges. It was just spectacular. 

03:04 

We got to go up and spend some time on a glacier. We got to take an airplane flight around Mount Denali, which was spectacular. We got to see humpback whales and oquirrh, I was gonna say oquirrh, I just, oquirrhs. Boy, this 56 year old, the brain is playing games on me these days. Got to see some orcas breaching as well, and it was just such a spectacular trip. We just enjoyed every minute, and of course, getting to see my son there. We went with two of my daughters. It was really, really great. 

03:46 

Okay, so let's jump into today's podcast. I'm calling it "Midlife Crisis? Yes, please!"So the so-called "midlife crisis" really gets a bad rap. Google translates a "midlife crisis," just the word "crisis" alone, right? Just says, "whoa, that's a big scary thing," right? But here we go, it translates it in, or the definition gives it as "an emotional crisis of identity and self-confidence that can occur in early middle age." Most places that I found said anywhere between 40 to 65 is considered middle age. So as it is often portrayed in movies, people act out during this crisis time by buying a super expensive vehicle that they can't afford, maybe rushing into a change of relationship, maybe through a divorce or by having an affair. They might start getting all sorts of plastic surgery or other physical altering things done to their body or acting in all number of really strange ways. And often these things that they do don't turn out so well, and the person going through the crisis flounders for quite a bit of time before they get their head on straight and start acting in a way that others and even themselves might consider normal. Although at the time they are just trying to find some semblance of what is going to feel like normal for them because they're going through a time that doesn't feel normal. 

05:16 

But my concern with this approach of just kind of waiting it out is that the problem that caused the crisis in the first place often isn't addressed. It's just kind of shoved aside with buffering in the form of a new vehicle or a body part or a person or a life circumstance until the hankering settles down and the person finds himself settling back into a similar situation with no actual relief for their itch. So if you remember the definition I shared, it says it's "an emotional crisis of identity and self confidence." There is something emotional going on and often that emotional thing is not addressed. We just do things to distract us from the emotional discomfort, things coaches such as myself will often refer to as buffering. 

06:07 

So buffering is any activity that we engage in with the purpose to distract us from the difficult emotions that we are feeling. Often we will associate more dysfunctional behaviors with buffering, such as overeating or overspending, over social media ing, or getting involved with another person outside of our marriage, or even if you're single, getting involved with someone who is very, very different than what you would usually get involved with. However, buffering can also include doing what might be termed healthy behaviors with the purpose being, again, to distract us from the difficult emotions. Rather than allowing ourselves to just feel and process the difficult emotions, we go into doing other behaviors, and some of these more healthy ones might be over-exercising. Maybe getting so involved in church service that our own family suffers, or doing family history to the point that we aren't doing what needs to be done in our lives and in our relationships. Those things we might consider all good, but if they are distracting us, if they are pulling us away from actually feeling the emotions we need to feel, then it would be termed a "buffer." 

07:17 

So buffering generally takes us out of a healthy space and into a very unbalanced life, or as I prefer to refer to it, we become uncentered. A centered person has a solid core that is founded in their values, and they are able to maneuver from that centered place to care for their lives, regardless of how much time something may need at a certain stage in their life. And so, for example, a mother with young kids is going to be spending an extra amount of time taking care of those young kids and less time maybe doing hobbies or maybe doing church service or something like that, right? So some people call that unbalanced. I like to talk about it as being centered, right? Like I can stay centered and focused on my values and then reach out and take care of things that they need to be taken care of. That was a bit of a digression. 

08:13 

But here's what I see happening with a midlife crisis. Many of us get married when we're younger. We aren't even sure who we are yet and what we really want. And then before we know it, we're raising children and we are up to our eyeballs and just trying to survive financially and emotionally and physically, right? With laundry and chores and all this stuff to be done. We're stressed, we're messed, and we are distressed. We feel societal pressure to be perfect, to do all the things, to have this gorgeous decorated home like we're seeing all over TikTok, to take our family to Disney every year, even if we can't afford it, to have a newer and a bigger and a more beautiful home, to prove to all the people out there that we are worthy of their respect and admiration. And we feel overwhelmed by too many things going on in our to-do list, by more bills than we have money, by pressure to love the life we are living, even when we are often just sleep walking through it. 

09:19 

And guess what? We do much of the stuff that we have to do. And sometimes we actually even do it really well. We serve people at church, we keep our lawns cut, and we smile as we unconsciously set our own goals and dreams and desires aside to keep things running and to keep the peace in our immediate families or in our extended families, in our communities and at church. We learn to not voice too strong of an opinion. We learn to walk on eggshells and not create waves. All the while, we are losing ourselves a bit at a time until one day we wake up and don't really know who we are, what we really want and where we want to go. I talk to so many women who, once the kids start leaving and they start getting a little bit more free time, they're just like, "I don't even know what I like to do. I don't know what my favorite color is because I've not been able to ask myself that forever. I don't even know what food I like to eat." We've been so used to being adaptable to being what everybody needs us to be that we forget to be what we need to be. We've spent so much time existing in the days of doing that we get really hazy when we are asked what we want or what we dream of. 

10:41 

And this isn't a problem I see just with women. So many men are doing the same thing, but often with a different focus to keep them from being in touch with themselves. I feel that so much of our society, both within and without a church community, keeps all of us, men and women alike, living far below our capacity. And that makes me sad. Women are told that their greatest value is in raising children. I will say that I love the fact that I got to spend 15 years being a stay-at-home mom. But if my greatest value is in raising children, no wonder so many women feel an emotional crisis of identity when their children are grown up and moved out and they still have 30 years of life. Then what's up with those 30 years of life? What am I supposed to do with those? It's no wonder that so many of us start meddling in our adult children's lives and go into depression as we struggle to figure out who we are if we aren't a mom. 

11:48 

So let me tell you, you will always be a parent and a mom, but we will do so in a noun capacity and no longer in a verb capacity. You will be a noun mom, a mom by name only, and not a verb mom. You don't need to do momming anymore. When your kids grow up, we stop being in charge of teaching them and training them and being involved in the day-to-day decisions of their lives. We no longer have to be responsible to parent. It's time to let our children be adults, to be their own people without us having opinions about those lived lives unless they ask us for our opinions. 

12:29 

And here's the deal. Women are so smart. We are intelligent, and we see things from a perspective that the world needs. And when we don't tap into that part of us, when we don't contribute to the world with our strengths and understanding, our society loses. And I feel like for hundreds of years, our society has been losing because women are not involved in so many of the runnings of the world. We are being verb parents for only about a third of our lives, and so many women just neglect the other two thirds. We stand back. We play small. We neglect stepping into our strength and contributing to the world. We struggle with finding our footing. I don't believe God gave us brains as women so that we could just clean bathrooms. Because of society, unless you're like a cleaner for your job, right? Let's make that clear, right? But because of societal ideas, many of us forget that we are a person first and a mother second. 

13:45 

Now, I'm not negating the role of a great mom, or even just a good mom. Heaven knows that my mother impacted my life in immeasurable ways, and I'm so grateful for the role that she played and continues to play. I do believe that we were created and sent here to Earth to be more than mothers of children. That's a great part of what we get to do, but it's only a part. We were sent to learn to tap into our amazing capacity as women to contribute to the world in amazing ways. And some of that for many women is also learning how to be an equal partner with our spouse. 

14:29 

And that's a trip, sometimes, as we've talked about, when society has taught us not to be equals. But God didn't give us all of this amazingness and two-thirds of our lives without raising children for a reason. And I think part of the reason for women, the crisis comes when we only identify as a wife and/or a mother. And we forget that we are a person, first and foremost, a child of God with unlimited possibility to do incredible things and to make the world a better place. And there are many women who never have children. They have an amazing identity as well. Like, notice we don't have to be a mother to do incredible things in the world. Remember, the crisis is one of identity and self-confidence, not knowing who we are and not having the confidence in ourselves to reach and grow and to fail and to figure it out. That's when we start to flounder and question our self-worth and our purpose in life. 

15:37 

This is a way that I feel that we as women are living far below our capacity. We get so buried in our responsibilities as wives and mothers that we forget to come up and breathe. We forget that we are people who have amazing things to offer the world. And I think for many of us who are currently middle-aged, we were raised in a society that didn't teach us to nourish ourselves and our desires and our dreams, to be in touch with our wants and needs, and put them on the front burner. 

16:18 

And a similar struggle is handed to men, I believe. They have been told that their greatest value is in being a provider for their families, and so many of them take that very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they do so at the expense of their marriages and their families. And this is where men often, I feel, live far below their capacity. They begin to see themselves just as the moneymaker. They either step back from or get gently, or maybe not so gently, nudged from the place of  influential father and spouse. They, too, live far below their possibility of being an involved parent, of stepping into equal partnership with their spouse, of contributing in the family space in a way that pushes them and grows them and fulfills them. They may find fulfillment at work just as women find fulfillment in the home, but both are living far below their capacity to impact the world and their families when they put their wants and needs aside at the expense of themselves. 

17:22 

And this is when, as people, we start scraping the bottom of the barrel, when we are desperate for a bit of energy to make it through the day, when we don't connect with who we are or what our purpose is in life, when we feel like either a milk machine or a chauffeur or the moneymaker, and that feels like our whole identity, even sometimes our whole existence. This is when I believe the emotional crisis begins. We lose touch with who we are, really are, deep down inside, when we lose touch with who we feel called to be, beyond our calling to be a parent. This is when we start looking for something else to fulfill us, to fill the empty void that screams, "there must be something more to life than what we're living." 

18:15 

So we go and we get that middle-aged fat frozen off, or we buy a boat, or we start looking to other people to bring excitement into our lives. We start looking for outside sources to make us feel better. We start making decisions that on the surface seem like they will make us feel better, but ultimately they're just band-aids that cover up the real emotional crisis brewing beneath the surface: the loss of individual purpose and possibility that each one of us was born with. 

18:48 

So with all of this going on and with all of us responding to the void in behaviors that will often dig our hole deeper and not solve the problem, why in the world would I say "yes, please" to a midlife crisis? Because I believe that if we choose to question the void, if we choose to really take a look at our strange behaviors and what we're feeling and what thoughts are behind those feelings, that we will start a different journey. A journey of rediscovery and tapping into the dreams and desires that have sometimes sat dormant for decades. And this can be the time that we actually find the energy shift we are looking for and we find a life that creates energy for us rather than just depletes energy. We start moving out of living from a place of shoulds and we start living from a place of "want to"s and a place of deep fulfillment. 

19:45 

This is why so often on this podcast I close with some sort of statement about growing up. This is our time to really start growing into the person we have always felt we've had the capacity to become but didn't have the time or the resources or the experience to become it. Feeling that nudge, that itch itch, that makes us feel we are missing out on something can be an incredible key to discovering our next steps. So some of these nudges may feel like not feeling satisfied or fulfilled in your work, feeling as though you've been left behind as your children have left home, feeling as though something in your life is lacking, thinking that we're not where we thought we would be at this age. Feeling as though your marriage relationship is boring and unfulfilling, and you just can't figure it out. Questioning your life choices, your work, your marriage, etc. Increased anxiety or impatience, a feeling of being unsettled. It could be becoming more antisocial, impulsive, or irrational. Maybe it's just a desire to get out, to walk away from the life you have, and to start over. Thoughts of, "why bother?" Thoughts of, "why not do this thing that is very off-brand for me?" Or thoughts of, "why me?" A strong desire for something to change, although what may not be known? And it can show up as feeling trapped in your circumstance, and wondering if your life has purpose or meaning. 

21:17 

Now, these may not sound like amazing thoughts and feelings, but when seen in the context of rediscovering ourselves, of getting back in touch with our wants, our desires, our dreams, they can be a great indicator that we have been neglecting ourselves for too long. The good news is that just because we have neglected ourselves, it doesn't mean we have to start over. We don't have to walk away from our families, or our jobs, or our religious convictions in order to find ourselves. That's not to say that those things aren't a valid choice at times, but they're definitely not necessary for everyone, and may not be your first option when feelings of dissatisfaction show up in middle age. 

22:03 

So, what are some ways that we can move forward from this space of all of these urges and nudges and itches into a healthy, positive response to what's going on in a way that's going to help us rediscover ourselves, the self we're trying to rediscover? Do you remember back in high school when you just felt like, "I have so much to do? I can change the world. I can do these things," and then we got buried with all this stuff? This is what we want to rediscover: that us that used to say "I can change the world. I know it." 

22:42 

Okay, so let's talk about four things. First, let's not keep it all inside. Consider talking to someone that you trust: a family member, a friend, maybe a coach or a counselor, to help you see things more clearly. Now, if you talk to a family or friend they might dismiss your thoughts and feelings, or even a counselor or a coach could I guess, as well, if they're not trained very well. But if that person dismisses your thoughts and feelings, they may not be your best option to continue to talk to. Dismissing could either be saying something like "oh, you'll get over it. It's just a phase. We all go through it," something like that that just dismisses your struggle. 

23:22 

Dismissing could also look like ignoring it, and sometimes a spouse can be afraid of the questions and the thoughts that you put out there, and so they pretend not to hear it as a way to manage their own discomfort. And often these dismissals aren't intentional in an effort to be hurtful, but rather as a way to protect themselves from you changing the dynamics of the relationship, because that can be scary. So if someone you love is approaching you with changing thoughts about their lives, their purpose, their job, their religious convictions, or their relationship with you or someone else, rather than dismissing, give them a safe space to put their concerns on the table, to explore them, and understand them better. 

24:03 

The good news is that you don't have to fix anything for them. You can just listen with acceptance rather than judgment, validate their feelings, and then get curious. That could sound something like, "wow, you're asking some pretty deep questions about your life's work, and it sounds like you're feeling pretty unsettled. What have you thought about doing about it?" Kind of intense, but it could also sound as simple as, "ooh, that sounds unnerving. What are you thinking?" People don't need us to fix things for them. They just need people to give them a safe place to explore and figure it out. 

24:42 

Now, if it's you going through your own midlife crisis or a struggle in this area, and you've tried to talk to people in your life who don't know how to create a safe space, it could be really helpful to hire someone. That's what coaches and counselors are trained to do, to create a safe space for you to explore. And at the very least, if talking to someone is not working for you for whatever reason, keep a journal, a safe place to put all of your thoughts and feelings, to get them out of your head and into a space that you can look at them more objectively. Now, this does not mean you need to be writing by hand. You can type it. You can even speak it all and have it translated. Transcribing happens at the drop of a hat for free all over the internet these days, right? Find a place to get it out so that you can see it. As long as it's bouncing around in our head, it keeps us confused. When we get it out where we can see it, either by sharing it with somebody else or in something like a journal, then it has a space to get out of our head to settle down. 

25:50 

Okay, second thing I want to suggest, what's your thoughts? It is so incredibly easy for our brains to go into worst case scenario thinking and jump right to divorce or to an affair or walking away from your job or your family or your religion or even thinking about some form of self-harm. So just a word: if your worst case scenario thoughts often and frequently include self-harm, let's get some help, please. Don't wait, get some help immediately. 

26:19 

If self-harm's not your thing, let's just start reframing your thoughts around your situation. For example, let's start by changing the word "crisis" to something like "remodel." It's much less dramatic and we don't need to fuel our midlife challenges with mind drama. Our brains really love to go to worst case scenario thinking. It's a protective mechanism. So don't beat yourself down when the brain does that. But also make sure to create an equal amount of time to play out the best case scenario. So when your brain says, "the only way out of this is to walk away and get divorced and start all over with somebody new," realize that that could be an option. But then I want you to counter that with best case scenario: "but what if we actually figured out how to connect again so we could laugh and talk and be friends and feel comfortable with each other again?" And play that out, what that would look like and sound like. Equal time for best case and worst case scenarios. 

27:20 

I want you to also notice phrases that you will tend to use that are pretty defeatist. "Those were the days when life was so easy." "Life will never be as great as it was then." "There is no way out of this." "What's the point?" "I just feel like I have no purpose." "Nobody needs me anymore." Or maybe, "who am I if I'm not needed by my children?" These types of phrases will  be super easy to fall into. And our brain loves a good victim story. So watch the victim mentality creeping in. Remember that a victim focuses on the problem while a hero focuses on the solution. And don't beat yourself down when you notice the victim phrases coming out. Your brain is programmed to go there. Just notice it. Think something like, "huh, of course my brain wants to be a victim." And then choose your thoughts intentionally to move in a more productive direction. Mind management here will do amazing things to get you unstuck and moving forward. 

28:27 

Okay, third suggestion: move into hero mode and choose to look at solutions. Take a good look at your life and also notice the things that are going well, because they are there. Really get self-reflective about why you feel disconnected to yourself, to your spouse, to your family, to your work, to your religion, to your spirituality, your purpose. This is tough work. To look at what our brains are thinking below the surface is tough work, but it's work worth doing. Now this is a place where journaling or working with a coach or a counselor can help because sometimes this gets difficult for the people closest to us, especially when we feel the need to go over it again and again and even again, which is very very normal. Sometimes working with someone who is more trained to do that will bring bigger dividends for you. 

29:27 

So this is a time to really connect with the values that you hold most dear and check to see that you are living in alignment with them. Sometimes this unsettled feeling comes when we aren't comfortable with the integrity of our lives. And sometimes it comes because we've lost touch with a deeper sense of who we are and what we feel called to do. I like to think about these types of nudges as my own spirit inside my body, letting me know that it's time to grow into my next best version, like this little nudge that says, "okay, girl, let's get up, let's get moving." My spirit knows what I'm really capable of. She knows what I need to grow in order to fulfill the measure of my creation here on earth. And when I can learn to listen to my spirit, to ask myself tough questions, to seek spiritual guidance as to what I may be missing, how I can contribute in more meaningful ways, I often receive some fairly significant counsel from my spirit and I think also from God's spirit. 

30:30 

Another piece, I want you to check your comparative thoughts. Are your unsettled feelings coming from a place of comparing yourself to others and their accomplishments and where they are in life? Are you seeing your best friend from high school living a life very different than yours and you are feeling less than because of it? You're comparing where you're both at? Here's the deal: our brains are going to compare. That's what they were created to do. That is a safety feature. We can use that comparison, however, to beat ourselves down or we can use it as a way of seeing other options to consider. Be careful not to let the comparison with others drive you into being unhappy and unsettled. 

31:18 

Again, take an overview approach to looking at your life and see the good as well as the bad. Often, a midlife crisis is focused only on the negative. A midlife remodel will focus on a more holistic view of what's going on. And last, let's chart a course for moving in the direction you feel the need to move. And if you don't know what direction that is, just move in any direction and you'll soon find out if it's the right one or not. But movement creates clarity and gets us unstuck, even if it ends up not being the direction we want to ultimately go. If you're saying, "listen, I don't know what I like, I don't know what I enjoy," and so you decide to take a pottery class, right? You take the pottery class and you go, "uh, entertaining, but not what I loved." Okay, look, that's data, that's information. Now you know you don't want to become a potter. Is that what they call them? You know that, and I promise you, while you're doing these activities, your brain is gonna be going, "I'm not loving this, but what would I love?" It's going to spark your brain, it's gonna get your brain moving. 

32:28 

At our age, sometimes the goals and the ambitions that we had when we were younger no longer apply. Be willing to let go of what no longer fits in with your value system, which may have changed. And readjust where and how fast you're going. Our values change over time. Don't be afraid to adjust your life accordingly. What things feel meaningful and purposeful to you at this stage in your life that you weren't aware of when you were younger. 

32:58 

Doing the work we do here on the podcast with relationships and learning how to really be a clean communicator and a healthy partner will help you gain clarity for where you want to go. Courage up and do the hard work of getting your life in alignment with your values. Work to see your patterns of thinking and behavior that are keeping you from creating what you really want in your life. Sometimes a midlife crisis will create havoc in our lives because we act before we think about the  consequences. Slow down, reconnect with your values, reconnect with yourself and make intentional decisions in alignment with those values. It's easy to go buy an expensive car. It's hard work to create the inner awareness and to address our dysfunctional patterns of behavior. 

33:49 

Your midlife crisis can really just be a midlife remodeling, a renewed effort and focus on living the life and being the person you know that you are capable of. We all have that drive inside. Listen to the nudges, respond with love and compassion rather than with fear and anxiety and create a second half of your life that blows your first half out of the water. Growing up is amazing. I love growing up, don't you? Let's do it. 

34:26 

Okay. If you feel like you need some personal help, go to tanyahale.com. You can go to my "free consultation" tab and there you can sign up for a free 90 minute coaching and consultation. Now, I've heard some people say, "oh, that's just scary to meet with you for 90 minutes." I promise I'm not scary. I'm super kind. I'm super nice. And I'm so low stakes. You're not going to feel any pressure at all from me. I love to give you insight into who you are, into what you want to create, into what's going on inside your brain. And this is a great opportunity for me to get to coach you, a great opportunity for you to get some insight. And in the course, you get to see what coaching one-on-one is like. And you can see if it's a good fit for you. If it is, that's great. Let's talk about it and let's get it set up and let's get to work on figuring out what you need to figure out. If it's not a good fit, that's great too. You will walk away with some great information about yourself and about patterns of behavior and about what you're doing in your life that is keeping you stuck, okay? 

35:35 

This coaching gig is such a favorite thing of mine. Every day I finish my coaching and I'm just like, "oh, I love this so much." Sione would probably tell you that he can't count the number of times I've sent him text messages and just said, "I love coaching." I'm so glad I get to do it because it's just, this is what creates energy in my life, is doing this work. Find yours. What's going to create this kind of energy for you? What's going to help you close up your day and go, "oh, just love doing this so much." Let's find it. Let's find it because this is where you're going to be contributing to the world in the greatest way possible and where you are going to feel fulfilled and energetic and in love with your own life. Okay, that's gonna do it for me today. I will see you next time, bye. 

36:35 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "weekend win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.