109. Stuck in Old Patterns? How to Build Confidence in Midlife

Rethinking The Midlife Story

Cheryl Fischer 0:00

I am fifty-five years old. And it seems to me that at this age or at whatever age you are, 50, 45, 40, that's a lot of life experience. We know what we're doing. We still make mistakes because you don't do anything interesting in life without making mistakes as you learn it. But we know what we're doing, right? Somehow, however, these old things from experiences I had when I was growing up and this stuff that's saved deep inside my subconscious brain still affect me. I still get intimidated. I still look at a situation from a perspective that, in hindsight, I think, what in the world? So we need to talk about this. If midlife was only about hot flashes, 3 a.m. wakeups, silly injuries, and worrying about everyone from aging parents to adult kids, we'd all be unhappy and isolated. And that's just not true. Whether you're frustrated at work, stressed about retirement, or just looking for the phone that's already in your hand, you're in the right place. Let's change the story around midlife and start loving this chapter. This is the Mind Your Midlife Podcast.

Podcast Growth Promo And Affiliate Link

Cheryl Fischer 1:21

Growing a podcast is hard, and the listeners most likely to love your show are already out there listening to other podcasts. Lucid helps podcasters reach them. Lucid writes and produces a short audio promo for you. You approve it. Then they place it on podcasts whose topics, audience, and tone are a good fit for yours. You can track where your promo is running from your own dashboard. You can choose an ongoing subscription or a single one-time campaign. If you've been looking for a hands-off way to introduce your show to new listeners, use the link CherylPFischer.com/lucid to get $25 off your first month. That's my affiliate link, and using it supports the show. Now back to the episode. I have

Why Polished People Intidimidate Me

Cheryl Fischer 2:07

a habit and I am aware of it. Here I am talking about it. But I still do it occasionally. I'm getting better. Awareness is always the first step. I have a habit of being very intimidated by people I look at and they appear very polished, very put together. And how do I describe that? It might be a style thing, it might be, you know, hair, cute outfits all the time. And I try to do that myself too, right? But when I, it's not about me, it's not about ourselves. When I look at other people, I get intimidated when I see someone who seems very polished. And I feel like I'm not going to measure up or something. And I get shy. I am in my mid-50s. What the heck? I will tell you a story. When

The Nordstrom Lady Friendship Story

Cheryl Fischer 3:00

I was first married a long time ago, we lived in a townhouse, still in the same area we live now. We've moved twice since then. We lived in a townhouse, and there was a parking lot in the townhouse community. We had a one-car garage, and then we had one parking space right behind our little yard behind our townhouse. Hopefully, this is making sense. And there were assigned spaces. So a few of the other houses had assigned spaces there. There was also a row of townhouses that faced the parking lot. And then another row, like opposite ours. So the the parking lot was kind of right in the middle of three rows of townhouses. And so it became a place where our two-year-old rode his little, I don't even want to say tricycle. I guess at one point a tricycle or just this these little cars that you can do without pedals and things that a two-year-old would ride around, right? We did that in the parking lot because there weren't that many people coming and going. Well, I would look out my kitchen window and I would see a family in the townhouse that was almost directly across the parking lot from us. And there was a little boy who, in the end, was a couple years older than our son, but you know, we could tell a little bit older, we weren't sure exactly. And the mom just intimidated me so much. I mean, truly, she was adorable. Maybe she's still adorable. We have lost touch, but I'm sure she still is. Her hair always looked perfect. She always had such stylish clothes on, truly, like put together more than I think I could achieve for sure, or at least more than I could at that time. And I knew that she worked at Nordstrom. And so, not meaning anything negative about it at all, maybe more the opposite, we referred to her, my husband and I, as the Nordstrom lady. And we would say to each other, Oh, we need to meet the Nordstrom lady. Maybe the kids would like to play. I don't know if the age difference is too much. And oh, the Nordstrom lady was outside. And I'm sure she would hate it if we, if she ever knew that we were calling her the Nordstrom lady, but that's how I thought of her as like really put together. Why would she want to know and be friends with me? I'm so intimidated. I'm have an attack of the shyness. It took me, I kid you not, months before eventually I saw her out there and we went outside and we introduced ourselves. And do you want to know what happened? We ended up becoming friends. And she was not intimidating at all. She was lovely. We lost touch after we moved and they moved. And, you know, these things happen. We lost touch. But they were lovely. And our kids played for, I mean, goodness, almost every day after work. Sometimes we would all have a glass of wine together. Sometimes we would just stand and chat. She was lovely. What in the world was my problem before I knew her? Truly. I'm a smart person. I had a job. I have a good education. I know how to put my clothes together. But something about her before I knew her made me very nervous and made me feel less than. And it was not anything that she did. And maybe you have a story like that. Maybe it's not about being intimidated by someone necessarily, or it's not about this polished thing that always is what gets me. I could give you more examples, in fact, of meeting people who I just thought were so put together and came across just so savvy. It intimidates me every time. I I had to ask myself, where is it coming from? And and if you have a similar thing, there's there's a certain type of person that you find intimidating, or there's a certain situation where you kind of get nervous or you or you struggle and you don't understand why. Let's see if we can figure it out. Because a lot of these things come from when we were younger. And if we can figure it out now, maybe we can switch it. We're we deserve to be able to switch it at this point in our lives. So that is what I want to help you with.

Old Reactions Stored In The Subconscious

Cheryl Fischer 7:18

Some reactions that we have as adults are really old reactions. They made sense when we were young. They probably were a situation that we were in, or maybe a situation we were in over and over. And the software, meaning our brains, never got updated. So your brain stores in what we call the subconscious brain, the subconscious mind, there's a lot of words for it. There is a part of your brain that kind of stores the auto processes to run your life and your emotions and your thoughts so that you don't have to think and consider about every action you take. How do I brush my teeth again? And which shoelace do I put over which one? And how do I drive a car? And what do I think about this? And what do I think about that? We don't have to think about all that stuff. It's stored in there as automatic processing. And those automatic processes get stored mostly before age seven, still can always be updated. And that is something that uh researchers didn't even think was true, in fact, until maybe I don't, I don't know the timeline, 10 or 20 years ago. It's called neuroplasticity. We can always make new connections in our brains. We can always make changes to this, but a lot of it does get stored when we're young. So then we have to actively make the changes. The good news is we can. So these responses, these reactions made sense when we were seven or 10 or 5 or 13, but not necessarily now.

Childhood Roots Of Feeling Less Than

Cheryl Fischer 9:02

It's old software. For me, if I really sit down and try to think about this, I was kind of, I shouldn't even say kind of, I was a bit of a nerdy kid. I can't say it all the way, right? I have to add a modifier. I was a bit of a nerdy kid. I have always loved to read, and I do not apologize for that, and I still love to read. I don't think that makes me nerdy. I was a very good student. I was always sort of in the group that was doing the advanced stuff, and the rest of the class could always see that, right? And it wasn't just me, but when you go through school like that, it creates some self-belief things in a lot of cases. I didn't see myself as anyone in the popular crowd. I did not have coordination or reaction time that allowed me to enjoy sports, and I still really don't. And I I probably could have worked on it, but I didn't want to. I took ballet in elementary school, but I was already getting a little bit kind of tall for that. And so that didn't really last. I felt like kind of gangly. I was the same height I am now by the time I was 14. So I grew quickly and then I just kind of leveled off. So there was a lot of stuff for me related to not feeling like the cool kid. That's where for me this is coming from. That's not necessarily where it's coming from for you, but I'm hoping that hearing the story, and then I'm going to give you some exercises to do to try to figure yours out. I'm hoping that hearing the story will help you see what I'm talking about. So I understand that when I meet someone, there is a part of my subconscious brain that might categorize them based on psh, I mean, it could be charisma or that that day's outfit, whatever. The way they speak, the way their hair looks, it could be so many things. I mean, if you have curly hair, listen up because curly hair does not always look sophisticated. I love my curly hair. However, I didn't always. So sometimes it seemed like the people with the cute straight hair and the little, you know, Jennifer Aniston cut or whatever, they were definitely more sophisticated than I was, of course. Anyway, I know that that programming is in there. And I recognize that sometimes there is a snap where my brain goes, scary, intimidating, scary, intimidating, too savvy for me. I also know that is silly. I know I'm well educated. I know I'm a fun person. I know I'm a successful speaker and podcast host. I am aware that I shouldn't necessarily be intimidated by any of these people, but that snap definition that comes from this old software in my brain is very normal. And we all have things like this that hang around from when we were kids. So now that I understand that, I can recognize it and I can talk to myself about the fact that maybe that's not true. I can ask myself, is there a real reason why I should be intimidated meeting this person? Usually there's not. And we go from there. So what I want to help you to do with today's episode is to do a little evaluation of instances in your life now, in your 40s and 50s, when you are a savvy, smart, incredible, wise person where you're still applying the old software, where you're allowing yourself to get intimidated or to feel upset or to feel not ready or to feel like a failure or whatever the issue might be. Just give yourself some time to think about it. Is there some type of quick reaction that I'm still having now that I wish I wasn't, or that I kind of realize doesn't make sense? And I want you to hold on to that. Think of a situation like I've shared with you. Hold on to that in your mind. And I'm gonna help you. Let's kind of walk through some questions. Now,

Questions To Spot Your Pattern

Cheryl Fischer 13:22

if you're listening in the car, please don't try to take notes while you're in the car and driving. But if you have the ability to safely do it, maybe grab a piece of paper or to open the notes app on your phone while you're listening. And I want you to see if anything comes up for these. And if you can't do it right now, save this episode and come back to it. Okay, questions for you to think about. Who or what? Meaning what situation, really? Who or what do you often find intimidating or nerve-wracking? Does anything come up for you about that? What do you catch yourself worrying about regularly? We all worry sometimes, but worrying about regularly or feeling anxious or fearful about regularly more often than seems reasonable. Are there times and make a note if the if there are, where you feel small or young, like a like a kid, a newbie, even though you're a capable adult, but can you think of times where that might happen? And for all of these questions, we're all gonna have times like this. We're gonna have an answer for every question. What we're looking for is not that you answer every question necessarily, but that you notice something that repeats a lot. This thing is happening to me a lot. That's what I'm noticing. Or here's another one do you is there a pattern of situations where you are over-preparing, over-explaining, over-apologizing? Again, we all do that sometimes. Is there a type of situation or a person or a group of people that that is always happening to you with? Is there some category of things, some type of thing that you avoid asking for? You avoid asking for help, you avoid asking for a raise, you avoid raising your prices, you avoid asking for the opportunity to rest, you avoid asking for attention. Is there something that is a pattern that you avoid asking for? Is there a certain type of compliment that you really have a hard time accepting? Because I can tell you, think about the story I've told you about the Nordstrom lady. I can tell you that it would be still hard for me to accept a compliment if someone said to me, Oh my gosh, you are always so put together and look so great. Because that old software is still in there. In my brain, my brain would be saying, Well, that may be true sometimes, but obviously not all the time. I mean, whatever, say thank you and move on, right? So it's the pattern we're looking for. Is there something that you just you would have a hard time being complimented about? And it would happen typically over and over. Is there some rule or requirement that you still follow, even though no one has told you you have to? And you'd maybe kind of rather not. That one might take a little bit of time to think about. But is there someone that you're still looking for approval from and you don't feel you've got it, and you're trying and trying and trying and trying and trying? Or is there some situation or some person or some group of people or some pattern where you're overreacting, reacting more strongly than the situation calls for? Flying off the handle, always about some particular thing or in some particular situation. We're looking for patterns. So my example was about being intimidated by a certain type of person that I judge to be more savvy and amazing than me. Your example may be totally different. So rewind back, listen to those questions again, and see what comes up for you and jot it down.

How Emotions Shape Daily Behaviour

Cheryl Fischer 17:43

So in the work I do with coaching clients with the Being Profile, we look at how does the emotion of fear, the emotion of vulnerability, the emotion of care, the emotion of anxiety, not anxiety disorder, but just worry, affect how we're being in our life, the actions we're taking on a day-to-day basis. And that underlies this. When you see this pattern, some combination of those moods or emotions is going to underlie this. And it affects then how we're being. It affects whether we're being assertive in a healthy or unhealthy way. It affects whether we're being responsible. It affects whether we are showing that trusting ourselves to lead. It affects whether we're providing our ideas or sitting back and not saying anything. And so there's lots of pieces within the being profile that we discover, which is really fascinating. And if things are coming up for you and you feel like that would be helpful for you, go find out more at Cherylpfischer.com /recharge. Okay.

Trace The Feeling Back In Time

Cheryl Fischer 18:53

So if you have noticed there's a pattern, the next thing we're going to do is we're going to take that pattern and we're going to say, you know what? This is not a failing on my part. We're going to be kind to ourselves about it once we've identified it. This is a very normal human nature thing to do. This is your brain keeping you safe from situations or people or types of situations or types of people that your brain was worried about, maybe potentially not being safe. And I mean that in a broad sense of safety, emotional safety, physical safety, whatever. So it's okay. It's not a bad thing about you that you've noticed this pattern. That's number one. But number two, when you think about these situations that you've identified, how do you feel? What is the emotion that comes up when you picture yourself in a situation like this? And if I think about that for my story, I felt silly. I felt a little bit embarrassed. I felt I think a little bit embarrassed is the word that's coming up for me. And it had no basis in reality. Why would I be a little bit embarrassed to meet someone who knew how to put an outfit together really well, right? It doesn't matter whether it has a basis in reality. We're telling ourselves this thing, it's bringing up old processing from another situation, and this is how we feel. And that emotion is real. And it also may help you figure out where it's coming from. What is this thing in your past where you felt like that as well? Because the next the next step is to see if you can figure that out. Do you remember a situation when you were a child or a teenager or maybe even college where you felt this same way? Figuring out where it's coming from is helping us to understand ourselves and helping us to understand why we might have the same reaction again and again and again and again. And sort of a part B to that question: is it someone else's voice that is creating that reaction for you? And by that I mean, is it a parent, a teacher, a sibling, a coach? Are you coming back to a situation where someone else was speaking to you, affecting you, in charge of you in a way that was hard? Because that's important to realize as well. And again, you're just kind of making notes to yourself as to what you recognize. And you might need some time to think about this. You might need to kind of ponder it in a relaxed and kind to yourself way, and that's okay. That's again totally normal. Something will come up when you ask your brain to think about it. Our brains are pretty cool. And I was actually talking to my sister-in-law about this recently. We find in both our businesses that sometimes when we kind of put something down or pause and come back to it later, we get good ideas. Yes. Do you? Because that's pretty cool. Your brain is working on that question or working on that puzzle, even while you're doing something else. It's working behind the scenes. Brains are pretty cool like that. So sometimes when you get stuck, there's a real science reason why you might want to pause and go do something else. But I digress. Okay. So you are starting to figure out where this is coming from. You are honoring that, knowing that that was a valid situation you were in. It was a valid response. It was your brain trying to keep you safe. The emotions made sense in that situation. And they may not make sense now. So the segue that we want to be able to get to once we've really understood ourselves and we've understood where this is coming from is to sort of grow up this understanding of ourselves and what we can and can't do and what's scary and not scary. In that situation in the past, maybe you were intimidated or you were scared or you were sad or whatever. That doesn't have to be true now in a situation that feels a tiny bit similar. Does that make sense? So you have a lot more life experience now, you have a lot more life evidence, you have a lot more knowledge. Hopefully, you have more self-esteem, more self-belief. And that means the old software, the old story doesn't apply anymore. So I want you to ask yourself when you get into a situation now that feels similar, is that really true? So let's say I meet someone new tomorrow, and man, she has this great hairstyle and the cute shoes and the bag, and I'm like with my scuffed shoes and my hair's a bit crazy, and again, I'm like, oh, I'm so intimidated. Wait, is it really true that she looks so much more put together than me? And that that means I should feel intimidated. Is that like true? Or is that me bringing old stuff to the situation? The feeling is valid, and yet we can change what we're telling ourselves about it. I can tell myself, maybe she's great, maybe she's super nice, and maybe I'm just not feeling sophisticated today, but that doesn't mean I can't do it either. So let's go meet her and see if she's super nice. Because that old stuff doesn't necessarily apply now.

Reframe The Moment With New Evidence

Cheryl Fischer 24:43

Now, one thing you can really do that may feel great is keep an I'm gonna call it an evidence journal or an evidence notebook or an evidence file. If you are able to recognize that some of this old processing is affecting you now, and you're able to say, wait a minute, I know that I'm feeling nervous or embarrassed, and I recognize it's coming from back when I was in school. And it doesn't have to be true now. When you're able to flip it like that, write it down. Wow, I met this new person and she was so stylish. And I was able to just be myself and I didn't get intimidated. That's what I'm saying. Write it down. Because giving yourself evidence that you proved the old story wrong and you were able to put that aside helps your brain to reinforce. Wow, I have this new story, and the old one actually is old, and I'm gonna be able to let it go. So, what I want you to remember, you know, I always ask the guests the one thing. We have programming in our bodies, in our brains, from things that happened to us, things that we misinterpreted, things that we did, things that we didn't do, people we knew when we were younger. And we have valid emotional reactions to those things, and we have thoughts that we tell ourselves about them. And the power is in the recognizing of that and interrupting the pattern now and understanding that I might react in a certain way when I'm in a certain situation, and I don't have to, because I know it's old programming. And I know that now I'm pretty freaking awesome and I could do it differently. And maybe there's a little affirmation for you. I know that I can do it differently because you can. Some days you might be more in the mood to than others, but you can.

Therapy Or Coaching Plus Next Week

Cheryl Fischer 26:38

And let me say, as we wrap this up, if you run into some really painful and traumatic things, then maybe talking to a professional is a good idea. Maybe that's a therapist. If you're running into some trauma when you're thinking these things through, a therapist is probably the right way to go. Maybe it's a coach who can help you. If you feel like I'm starting to recognize some stuff, but I'm getting stuck. Reach out to me. Let's see if a coaching relationship would be helpful for you. And maybe sometimes you're able to recognize it and you're able to catch yourself and move forward. And what a gift to be able to catch yourself now and not allow that old programming to keep going and going and going. Now make sure that you have hit the follow button because on next week's episode, we're talking about something really cool. You may have been told that genetic testing would be a good thing to do, but it seems kind of scary. We're gonna figure out whether that's true. So I will see you then. And keep remembering, in the meantime, midlife is your time to take just a little bit better care of yourself on the outside and on the inside, meaning your mind, what we've been talking about today, just a little bit more care makes a huge difference.