The Real Reason You Want More

Welcome to This Daring Adventure podcast where we work on bridging the gap between where we are and where we want to be in order to live a bigger and bolder life. In this podcast, we will provide inspiration, tips, and skills you need to make your life the adventure you want it to be. Here's your host, mindset mentor, and life coach, Trista Guertin

Hey everybody. Welcome back to This Daring Adventure. So today we have the third episode of the reinvention series. If you missed the first two last week and the week before, I highly recommend you go back and you listen to those. So, this series is really for those moments in midlife when something inside of you starts whispering. There has to be more than this, and it's not because your life is terrible or necessarily that anything is falling apart, but there is. An involvement obviously in your life that whether you are separated, divorced, you feel settled in your career, or your children have grown and left the house, and it can be a combination of all of these things, and suddenly you have more space, more time to think about these things. And maybe they're getting a little bit louder after you have been so busy over the past several years, decades, and now you're having that space and that time for these things to start to come back. Your desires, your ideas, all of these things that you pushed away and didn't pay too much attention to. Probably you've built a good life, you have a career. You've raised the children, you've supported other people, and you've done all of the responsible things that life has asked you to. But now what about you? What about the part of you that still wants to grow? When we look at our lives in our forties and fifties, we still have a lot of runway left ahead of us. A lot of living. And so it's, it makes sense to take this time to reflect and to really think about that because it is a change. It is a shift and it is an opportunity to do things differently. So there is a part of you that still wants adventure, meaning creativity, expansion, that is a part of our human experience, and it makes sense that there is this desire and this is the moment. Right here where reinvention can begin. And the purpose of this series has been to help you understand why so many women feel stuck at this stage of life and what's actually going on beneath the surface, so that you can start to do this exploration and do this work and get curious and start to try and learn new things. A lot of us tend to think that the problem, the. Can be solved simply sometimes that it's just a need for more motivation or discipline or clarity, which isn't that simple. But what we've been talking about here in this series is that. Something deeper is usually going on. it's more than that. It's not just about motivation or discipline or clarity. Because if those were the answers, then you know this would've been solved by now. So in the first episode of this series, we talked about the real reason why women start to feel stuck in midlife. Most women assume that they're stuck because there's something wrong with them. They're not doing things right. They don't follow through, they don't have the discipline. But what's actually happening most of the time is something called buffering or numbing, right? We are buffering or numbing when we have. Uncomfortable emotions that we don't want to feel. So we have these behaviors that we utilize, that we use, that we employ instead of feeling our emotions. And you will see it everywhere, scrolling when you feel uncertain, Staying busy so you don't have to think about the bigger questions. Overworking, overthinking over drinking, overeating, overshopping, telling yourself that you just need more time or more clarity. Indulging in these unhelpful emotions. That are doubt and fear and frustration, but if this is you, and this is everybody in some respect, it doesn't mean that you're broken. It doesn't mean that there's anything wrong with you. It doesn't mean that anything has gone wrong. These are just coping mechanisms, right? They haven't negative effect. They're not helpful. They just do really keep us stuck. But once you have this awareness and you can see these patterns clearly, then something powerful happens. You can stop beating yourself up and you start understanding what's really happening in your life. And I think I mentioned this. For myself, I was using cheese as entertainment, cheese and chips and burgers and wine as rewards and all of these things that I was incorporating in my life to make me feel better and to. Avoid doing some of the work and the work. It could be thinking, it could be planning, it could be just sitting down and doing some of these things in my business that needed to be done and it's very normal. It cleaning some of that up can be really helpful and it's not easy, and I say that because With some of these things, it took me a few years, and I'm not saying that's everybody's experience, but to really let go, to move past some of these things, to really clean that up, it's, it's a process and there's no set timeframe. There's no guidance about how long any of this should take. It's going to be individual, but. I think doing that work has been some of the best work that I've ever done, and I highly recommend it. Just looking at your life, like where are you buffering and numbing and not feeling your emotions and not facing what's going on, and sometimes you're gonna want that. Like there's nothing wrong with a glass of wine or a burger, but. I know for myself, I just had too great of an importance in my life. It was way out of whack, and so bringing that back into perspective and into scale and into something that feels really real is important. I truly believe that unless someone's pointing this out to you and you are actively reflecting and doing this work, this can go on for years. Forever. I could, I'm pretty sure I could have just kept going and doing the same thing and living the same day over and over again, and. And just continuing those same patterns. It was only through the work of my coach that she was talking about this and made me realize, oh yeah, cheese is my entertainment, wine is my reward, and do I really want that? they were just too important in my life. All right, so then last week in episode two we talked about something that comes right after that awareness that we realize we are numbing and buffering and not feeling our emotions. We start to try and fix things in our lives and we think that the solution must be on the surface and it, we look at some of the most obvious things. The job, the losing weight, the getting organized, or being more productive, the relationship, whatever it is, and there's nothing wrong with changing those things. But those surface changes almost never solve the deeper satisfaction. You can enter a new relationship, you can start a new job, you can move house, you can move cities, all the things, but you're going to be taking the same brain with you. If you don't clean up the thought patterns that the beliefs and the habits, then you're just gonna land up eventually back in the same loops. When we start something new, even when we start the process of looking for something new, our brain gets excited. There's a lot of expectations. There's a lot of hope. There's a novelty. So it's fun and it's exciting, but that eventually will wear off and you'll be left with your brain. So doing this foundational work, cleaning up some of these patterns, gaining that awareness, and then creating exactly what it is you want. Is a more sustainable change practice that we want to adopt. So you can change your schedule, you can change your routine, you can change your job, you can change your environment And you can land up still feeling stuck if the relationship that you have with yourself doesn't change. Real reinvention happens at the level of identity. It's the shift from the version of you that has been living on autopilot and repeating those same patterns. The same thoughts, the same beliefs to the version of you that is consciously creating her life. And now we're gonna dive into episode three as we finish this series with a question that I think is really powerful. It's a simple question, but it has the potential to change how you see your life. And the question is, what are you really hungry for? what is it that you really want? Because most of us will completely misdiagnose this part of our lives, and we assume that we're hungry for something very practical, like a better routine, more discipline, a new job, a smaller body, maybe just less stress. But when you really start paying attention, you realize that what you're craving is usually something much deeper than that. and one of the reasons this question becomes so important in midlife is because this is the stage. Where many of the roles that used to define us begin to change when we're younger. Life has a very clear structure. You're getting an education. You get married, you build a career. You raise children, you support partners, and you're parents. You're meeting responsibilities. There's always something that needs your attention. But then things start to change and children will grow up Career stabilize. You become more experienced, things become more repetitive, less interesting. Life becomes a little less urgent, and there's suddenly space. Space to think, space to notice things you may have been ignoring for years. And sometimes what you notice is this quiet dissatisfaction. Not because life is terrible, but because you've just outgrown the version of you that created it. And this is natural. I think this is normal. I think probably we all go through this. Now, here's where things get tricky. Most of us feel that the restlessness, this is a problem and we immediately judge it. We will judge ourselves thinking that we should be more grateful that we have enough, that many other people would love to have the life that we have. We will tell ourselves that we're being dramatic or unrealistic. And so instead of exploring that feeling, we suppress it. We push it down, we dismiss it. Then this is where we start to distract ourselves, stay busy, scroll over work, keep life manageable. But underneath all of that, the hunger doesn't go away. The desire that nudge does not go away, but it's not the problem. It's just information and is telling you that you are meant for more. There is more out there for you to do if that's what you want. you can continue to grow and evolve. Go to the next level, see what you are capable of and what you can create with your life. When I talk to women who are experiencing this, what they want is actually, and it's rarely something small. It's not just a better routine. It's about expansion. It's about creativity, it's about creation. It's about having something meaningful again, to be challenged, to evolve, to discover, to feel alive. And this is incredibly normal. This is what we are designed as human beings to do. We are designed to grow and evolve, but somewhere along the way we got this message that wanting more is selfish, or unrealistic or irresponsible. Not possible. It's too late. And so instead of listening to that nudge, honoring that desire and trying to figure out what it is they wanna create, they just shut it down. So reinvention begins the moment you stop dismissing that feeling and start getting curious about it. And you can start really small, but instead of asking yourself what you should do next. Or what would make sense or what other people would approve of, or what's reasonable or realistic. Ask yourself what you really want right now. What you're really hungry for. Is it more creativity? Freedom, challenge, adventure, contribution. Those are the things you really want to explore, and that question alone can change the direction of your life because the moment you start answering it, honestly, and you don't have to tell anybody, you don't have to make any announcements. You don't have to act on it right away. You don't have to do anything. Just be honest with yourself, and then you'll stop living on autopilot. Stop living the same day over and over and over again. And you start paying attention to what actually matters to you. Again, out of practice doing that. So if we zoom out and look at this entire reinvention series, here's what we've been building together. First awareness, and this is so important because you have to have that understanding that many of the behaviors that keep us stuck are simply ways of buffering uncomfortable emotions. Boredom, frustration, doubt, fear. Second is your identity. Recognizing that surface changes don't last. If the relationship that you have with yourself stays the same and your identity doesn't change. And then third is desire. Getting back in touch with what you want, being honest about what you truly want for this next chapter of your life, for the rest of your life. And you don't have to answer all of those questions. You don't have to decide now what you're going to do for the rest of your life. This is a practice that's evolution, but we start here and we start small, and then you can figure it all out as you go. There's not. It's not one and done. And then when those three pieces come together, awareness, identity, and desire, reinvention stops feeling dramatic or too huge or vague or impossible, it becomes something simpler. It becomes a conscious evolution. So that's the end of the reinvention series. If this has resonated with you, if you've been listening to these episodes and thinking, yes, this is exactly where I am right now. Then I wanna invite you to the webinar that I'm doing on March 26th called The Three Secrets. Going from my best years are behind me to, I'm just getting started. I'm gonna teach you how to do this work, why we stay stuck even though we know we want more. And the process that I use with my clients to help them move from doubt and confusion and hesitation into clarity and momentum. this webinar is a great next step, $7. I will put the link in the bio. Listen, awareness is powerful. It's the first step. It's always important, but when you combine awareness with strategy and support, that's when the rubber hits the road. That's when we're pouring gasoline on the fire, and that's when real change starts happening. So you can reserve your spot. Use the link in the show notes and I would absolutely love to see you there. That's March 26th, 7:00 PM Eastern Daylight time. A replay will be available if you can't join us live. Thank you so much for joining me in this reinvention series. If you know someone who maybe is feeling the same restlessness. Please share these episodes with her and you have, if you have a moment to rate, review, and subscribe, I would really appreciate that reinvention is for all of us. It's something that becomes possible the moment you stop ignoring that voice inside of you, that nudge inside of you that says, there is more for me, because there absolutely is. If you feel like you're meant for more, it's because you are. All right. Thank you. I'll talk to you next time. Bye.