Stress-Free Success in Midlife: Is It Possible? (Ep. 12)

0:00 By this point, you've been successful. It may have been in your work or business. It may have been in a relationship or raising kids or participating in a charity or a local organization or maybe running that organization. If you look, you'll find success in your life. And at the same time, a common theme I hear from midlife women, clients, and friends is that they want to leave a mark. I want to leave a mark. right? They want that business success or charitable position to mean something. They want people to remember them and know them and recognize them and it matter.

0:41 And they're getting stressed because they're torn about whether they want to go through all the stress required to get to that point. So should they just give up? Is it too late? Does success have to be stressful and hard? Let's talk about it. Welcome to Mind Your Midlife, your go-to resource for confidence and success, one thought at a time. Unlike most advice out there, we believe that simply telling you to believe in yourself or change your habits isn't enough to wake up excited about life or feel truly confident in your body. Each week, you'll gain actionable strategies and, oh my goodness, us powerful insights to stop feeling stuck and start loving your midlife.

1:28 This is the Mind Your Midlife Podcast. A number of years ago, I'm not sure exactly how many, but we're just going to go with a number of years ago. I was working with a mindset coach named Karen, and she changed my life. And I say that without any shred of exaggeration. I met her through a friend, and I was just absolutely fascinated by what she told me about our thoughts and emotions affecting our success. I had never thought about it that way before, believe it or not, because now I talk about it all the time. I thought that success came pretty much entirely from gaining skills and doing the hard work.

2:15 I thought I had to work as often as I could, and the more I could do that, the more success I would have. At the time, I was teaching high school, which in and of itself involves a lot of work and a lot of time. Kudos to the teachers out there. And I was also starting a direct selling business alongside that. And the decision to start that business is what brought this wake-up call to me. Because before that, and I don't know about you, you may feel the same, I always had a job that I knew my skills would allow me to do well. And sometimes it was in the corporate world, Sometimes it was teaching. I always had a boss to listen to. I had a list of things I needed to do.

2:59 Now, with this business of my own, I had no boss. I had no idea whether I'd be good at it. And I had no formal to-do list where it would say, do X, Y, and Z, and then you will achieve this amount of success. I had none of that. And if you're an entrepreneur, you had none of that when you started. I had to make goals and I had to decide what I wanted to achieve. And wow, wow, what a wake up call. Shout out, then, to every single listener who has ever created something new on your own. A business, a book, a movie, a show, an organization, a team, anything.

3:42 Starting on your own from scratch and deciding what you want is not something we typically learn how to do. So, let me pull back to the topic here. My coach, I think, I'm putting words into her mouth, but I think, was sometimes amused at me back then because she would encourage me to make a big goal, an exciting goal, not a smart goal. I'm not a huge fan of smart goals. In the right situation, they're fine. But for this, I needed something that would really change my life that I could get excited about. And my first reaction would be to say, well, that's too much. That's too hard. I'll have to work 10 times more.

4:23 I'll be stressed all the time. I can't make that goal. I don't want to do that. So the game changer, she said, well, what if it could be easy to do that? And the first time she said that to me, I'm guessing I probably laughed or at least chuckled. Yeah, right. What if it could be easy? I mean, obviously, it's not going to be easy. Come on. Just as I told you, success in my view, what I had learned, what I had seen, what I had interpreted about what I had seen is really how we should say it, came from hard work, extra work, arrive early, stay late. And for a business that was working around my job, I should be working on it during all periods of downtime, right?

5:06 Anytime that I wasn't with my family or working my main job, I should be working on that. Anything less, it was not going to be enough. It was not going to give me the success I wanted. I did a lot of talking to myself about that. Did you catch the shoulds in there? On the surface, a strong work ethic is absolutely a good thing. I will never tell you not to focus, apply yourself, do the work, do those things. But what's going along with that work on the inside? As a society we have some really ingrained beliefs about success stress and hard work they go together we believe you can't have success without the hard work and hard work is hard because of the stress involved.

6:02 You get the picture. Now, I'm not saying that you're going to have success without doing any work. I don't think that's really ever the case, except if you really got lucky in some strange turn of events, you have to do the work. What I'm saying is, we believe as a society, typically, that the stress, the hard work together is what creates the success. So this sort of definition comes from, I would say, two, maybe three possible places for us. So number one, your core beliefs. Whatever example you saw growing up or learned about in school or just see in society is giving you some core beliefs about how to create success.

6:54 Maybe your dad or mom, I suppose, was very successful in their career, and they had to work long hours. And it wasn't the case when we were growing up that they would have been on Zoom calls at all hours or anything, because crazy to think about, isn't that none of that existed? But maybe they were at the office long hours, or you didn't go on a lot of vacations, they were always working. Maybe you remember times in school where you learned about successful people and your brain sort of took in, they had to give up a lot of other things. When I think about society's definition of this, two movies come to mind.

7:36 And because this is sort of a societal thing, there's a million, there's a million books and movies, but two came to mind. And one, and again, midlife women, you'll remember this one, I think, nine to five. Do you remember this movie with Dolly Parton? My sister and I spent one summer in, I think, the mid 80s. We had it recorded on a VHS tape and we watched it like constantly. But anyway, in nine to five, the boss is rude, is really tough, is always at the office and is not having any fun at all and is asking a lot of the secretary and the other people.

8:19 And it creates this feeling that in order to be the boss, we have to be rude. We have to not care about anything else. We have to be mean. And then you have another movie that I love, The Devil Wears Prada. Well, that one... Sort of a caricature of a boss, right? Because that's the meaning of the whole title. The boss is a workaholic. She has sacrificed two marriages to become this success. It's cool that she's a woman. We love that. But then we see, oh, my gosh, she's getting divorced from the second husband. She believes that everyone else needs to do that as well. She's telling Andy that she needs to give up everything else in her life.

9:01 That's the way it is. She needs to trample on other people. That's the way you're successful. So that's an extreme example. But the thing is, when we see things like that, we are not surprised. That's the key. We're not surprised that that's what it took to be successful. We believe that successful people must do those things. Now, are there some real life successful people out there who do trample on other people, who do work all the time, who do sacrifice other things in their life? Of course there are. But does it have to be that way? That's the question. Okay, so this definition of hard work and stress going along together to create success also comes from the second place, potentially, and that is our upper limit.

9:47 And gosh, a long while back in the previous version of this podcast, I did an episode about the upper limit. So I'll put that in the show notes. And maybe I'll do another one. This is something that just permeates our lives. So it's kind of entwined with the first one, our core beliefs about what we think success takes. But we all have an upper limit. We have a lower limit as well, but we struggle more with the upper limit. And I want you to think about this as a thermostat setting. So if you think about how your heat works, I'm recording this in the winter, so let's talk about heat, you set your thermostat to a temperature.

10:27 And that's the temperature that you want your house to be. So the heat kicks on, and it raises the level in the house up to that temperature. And then it turns off. And my thermostat is a little bit wonky. And so sometimes, and I can tell, I can tell when this happens immediately, sometimes it heats the house up too much. I don't know if this has happened to you. And right away, I'm annoyed because it feels too hot. But I also go look at the thermostat and it's higher than what I've set it for. What? No, that's not supposed to happen. So it has kicked itself off. And now we got to let the house cool down a little bit. I don't know why it overheated, but I'm not happy about it, right?

11:12 That's what I mean by your thermostat setting. So there is in all of us, a level of success we believe we deserve. And this applies to everything in life. It applies to relationships. It applies to your health, your weight, your anything. There is a level at which you've hit your thermostat setting, and your body, your brain, is not comfortable going above that. Your self-belief doesn't compute that you could go above that. So if you are considering some sort of professional goal that is above your upper limit, your first instinct may be to talk yourself out of it or to justify to yourself why it's too hard. It's too many sacrifices.

12:05 All of that stuff will be going in your head because you're not comfortable. And I say you, this applies to me as well, because you're not comfortable going above that upper limit. And then the third thing, I think we just need to honor for a second. That midlife is midlife. Sometimes there's some stuff. Let me give you a little laundry list of what we midlife women could be doing to ourselves on the inside. There's all kinds of little stories that creep around in our brains, in our subconscious brains, but we pause and notice it's these thoughts running around in our heads, or maybe it's kind of the same interpretation of a situation all the time.

12:52 We might be telling ourselves, I should be further along by now. I can't rest. That's lazy. I can't rest. I'm not actually committed to this goal if I do. A day off? Are you kidding? I don't have time for a day off. I don't have enough time to even get there. How could I take a day off? Why does she have such an easy time doing whatever it is I'm trying to do? I don't know if I'm up for the struggle it would take to get there. I don't know if I have enough time. Maybe it's too late. It's just not worth it. So all that junk is in our heads, potentially, maybe. So what do you think is going to happen in your work life, your day-to-day tasks and projects and creative ideas, when you're telling yourself all the time these messages about it being too hard and too much sacrifice, or you're too old or whatever.

13:42 Your brain is trying to protect you by holding you back. Good job, brain. But maybe that's not what we really want to do. So let's take an example of a promotion. Let's say that you're in your mid 40s, and you want a promotion to director in your job making this up, but hopefully it will speak to you in a similar way. So what do some of the concerns look like that's coming from these core beliefs and upper limit and just midlife? Your core beliefs might be telling you that you can't go for this director position. You have to focus on your family right now. There's too much going on. This would take you away from that.

14:23 Maybe it's you can't have both. You can't have a happy family and this director position, this successful career. You'd have to work all the time. Maybe you believe somewhere deep in there that you're too old for this promotion. Who would choose me at this age? They want the 30-somethings or the 20-somethings that have a long career ahead of them. Now, let me tell you what, I almost fell victim to this. I left teaching in my mid-40s, I think it was, and I was doing a couple different things for a little bit of time, but I decided I wanted to go into corporate training and I wanted to go back into the airline industry that I'd been in previously.

15:05 And I think I was 48 when I was hired to do that completely new job. Now, same skills that I needed from other jobs I had done, so it wasn't as if I didn't know anything, but I didn't let it be an issue. And I had to talk to myself a lot about that, believe me. It wasn't super simple, but I didn't let it be an issue. Now, maybe it's upper limits. you're going for this director position, or you want it, you're thinking about it, maybe fear is just hitting you hard about, ooh, I want that position, but you just get slammed with this fear. Or maybe it's uncertainty. If you try to envision yourself in that role, you just have this, ah, oh.

15:50 Maybe you look at others that have a similar role, kind of similar level and you judge them. And I'm not saying you mean to judge them because I don't think most of us mean to judge anyone. But maybe you look at them and you think, oh, well, I don't want to be like her. I don't want to be like him. They really have their priorities out of whack. What we judge, we're not going to get. And then my third thing, midlife, maybe you're just freaking tired. And maybe it's just hard to think about going for something in terms of more success. And that comes from maybe being in this stress state too often with the sympathetic nervous system running things. So keep in mind, this is a general example, right?

16:33 That job you were wishing for or that project or business you wanted to start might actually be hard, and it might be stressful, and maybe now might not actually be the time. So I just want to keep in mind that we're not all, I don't know, skipping through tulips licking lollipops all the time. There might be hard things. But in the majority of cases we're making the concerns up that are running around in our heads we don't really know them to be true byron katie talks about this and this feels like an episode as well ask yourself when you notice a thought some of these things i'm describing ask yourself is that true is that really true could i prove it's true because a lot of times the answer is no.

17:22 The answer is I kind of projected. I'm just worried. Maybe it could be. Well, we're not doing ourselves any good with those. So I'm going to suggest to all of us that we try to what if more in a positive way. Here's what I want you to remember about this episode. I want you to what if regarding success. You can use this in anything. What if I can? What if it's exactly right for me? What if I'm who they're looking for? What if it's easier than I think? What if I can always figure it out? What if I'll be able to figure it out? What if I get amazing ideas when I'm calm and rested?

18:03 What if taking a minute to relax helps me do a better job? This is what I mean by what if. What if yourself a little bit? Do any of those feel different to you? So, Earl Nightingale said that the strangest secret is that we become what we think about. And... There's many levels to this. The thoughts, of course, that's what we just talked about. It's also the emotions they create. So remember in episode 11, we talked about the drawbacks to allowing our bodies to stay in a chronic stress state. There's a book called Everything I Wish I Could Tell You About Midlife. I'll put it on my read page on CherylPFisher.com that says that chronic stress is different than acute stress.

18:51 Acute stress is like in the moment you get stressed to get away from a danger. Chronic stress is all the time because it keeps us locked into this heightened state of fight or flight or freeze or fawn. We're irritable. We're frustrated. We're worrying. Our hormone levels are going crazy. We're tired because of that. We aren't able to concentrate. We don't finish what we're doing. We can't pay attention. There's always danger, risk, stress. We may end up with high blood pressure. Our immune system is a mess. I mean, I could go on. Go listen to episode 11. It's going to affect our perimenopause symptoms too. I would argue that a very large percentage of either enjoying your path to success and believing that it can be easy.

19:36 Finding the great ideas, having the energy to undertake them, or struggling, worrying, working yourself to exhaustion, believing it has to be hard is what you're thinking about. That's the difference. Because yeah, it can be easy. You can figure it out. You are on the right path. And when I say that, it can be easy. You can figure it out. You are on the right path. Is there a voice in your head going, no, I'm not. How does she know? What does she know? She's just saying that. Is that in your head right now? That's okay if it is. Recognize it. Thank it for keeping you safe. And then tell that voice it doesn't have any proof. Is there a way to prove that I'm right or that voice is right? No.

20:20 You get to choose what you want to believe. And I think it would be cool if we could choose to believe that we're going to get the creative ideas. And we do have time to rest. And a balance is good. And we can figure it out. And we're on the right path. And success doesn't have to be hard and stressful. One of the most powerful variables is whether you believe you can achieve what you want and, okay, two, and whether you believe you deserve it. I say you can and you do. But what do you say about you? There was a Forbes article in November of 2023 that talked about exactly this and said that beliefs are the invisible architects of success.

21:07 You can work all the hours and you can talk a good game and you can do the tasks, but if you don't believe you deserve success, then you will sabotage yourself. And maybe it's just as simple as you just won't like what you think you have to do. So this is not an overnight change. And some days are stressful. And I'm not saying that the path to success for you is going to be without any bumps. I don't know if you've ever seen the graphic where it shows what we think growing a business is like, and it shows this kind of straight line curving up or going up, and then what it's really like.

21:49 And it shows that crazy swirly line up, down, backwards, forwards, all over the place. Yeah, that's true. It's like that. And it can feel like, yeah, I can figure this out. I've got this and I get to rest and I get to have balance and it maybe even can be fun. It's not an overnight change. I don't expect you to be able to saunter because of course you would saunter into your office tomorrow fully believing that success is now easy and you should be the VP and you have it in the bag. You just have to start. Recognize what you're believing now. Ask yourself if that's what you want to believe. Notice how you feel. And this is where life coaching is powerful.

22:32 So you can do two things. Grab the free StoryCycle resource that will help you start identifying these thoughts and emotions for yourself. That's CherylPFisher.com slash StoryCycle. And then let's get on a free call and see whether coaching can help you. CherylPFisher.com slash coaching. Success can feel easy. It does not have to mean an awful lifestyle of stress constantly, and you deserve it. Thank you so much for listening to Mind Your Midlife. If you are listening on your phone right now, grab a screenshot right now. Share it on your social media. Tell your friends what you enjoyed about this episode because maybe they will too.

23:18 Okay, listeners, thank you for some of these amazing reviews lately. So Lyrical70 said, your episode on how much we say I'm sorry really made me think, and I'm going to try to take it out of my vocabulary unless I really screw up. Love that. Midlife Mama number one says, in these podcasts, Cheryl offers relevant topics and impactful information with practical tips. Her passion shines through, and I highly recommend these podcast. I am humbled and grateful listeners. Thank you so much. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, go leave a review and make sure you've hit the follow button because the next episode is going to dive into the money beliefs.

23:59 You heard me mention it real quick today that we all have and how to recognize them. You might be surprised. And oh my goodness, let's keep creating confidence and success. Music.