What I'd say to my 40 year self
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[00:00:00] I was recently having a conversation with a friend that was going to turn 40, and she asked me if you could go back to talk to your 40-year-old self, what would you say? I said, that's a great question.
Let's talk about it here on the Creative Life in Motion Podcast, episode number 61. My name is Karen, and here on the Creative Life in Motion Show, we don't wait until we reach our goals to be happy. We fall in love with who we are, being on the way.
We don't just arrive at 40 with a clean slate. We arrive at 40 with all the things in the collections of experiences and beliefs that we've brought with us. On that birthday. Right?
And that usually helps us decide where we're going to go in the next decade. Am I right? That's why if you landed here or if someone else sent you this podcast to listen to. Or YouTube video. Depending on where you're listening and you're in [00:01:00] your twenties and thirties and forties, you are gonna find some real gold nuggets in here as well.
Because in order to do this properly, when I sit with my friend, there are things that we need to fill in before she knows why. I would say what I'm going to say to my 40-year-old These days we can just open up the internet or chat. GPT. Google used to be like Google is so like last year now, okay, we can open up anything. The tv, the internet, you can look at magazine stands and everybody has the best way, the right way, the fastest way to get you to X, Y, Z.
We can get whatever we want, what kind of information we want, anywhere, anytime. But the problem is that might not be the right information for us.
And what's worse now in this day and age, is that everybody is like. Competing to get attention and sales [00:02:00] psychology is at a peak high. Meaning there's a lot of fear being thrown in our faces that we're not good enough or we, we have to like get something really fast or time's gonna run out. If we're not doing something this way, then we're wasting our time.
Making it feel like if we don't listen, we're doing something wrong. It never used to be this noisy, and honestly, I'm not complaining because it is kind of nice to have the information that we want at our fingertips. All the time, whenever we need it. And such a, a vast majority of different opinions and different ways and different philosophies, and you have experts and you have regular folk just like me.
You, and you have regular folk just like you. And we're all claiming to know what to do, but do we really.
When it comes to trying to figure out how to live in our ultimate health and alignment, you know, really embrace what does healthy mean [00:03:00] as a full e ecosystem of the being of you. And then once you get into the category of after 35, it gets pretty chaotic.
It's overwhelming to most and triggering to many, right?
And in the end, really what's it all for? It'd be nice to just enjoy your life, your process, your trust, your intuition. Wouldn't it? Wouldn't that be nice? To shut off the need for validation to feel happy and energetic every dang day, and to not give a crap about what other peoples think. You know, like there's this whole movement happening like the we do not Care club, right?
And then there's this other camp where we care about everything clubs. So, you know, give me all the hacks you can about staying young and, and keeping this envelope that I have, like looking like it's 20, even though it's 60, you know? And I'm not [00:04:00] saying either way is wrong, I'm just saying that there's a lot of information out there.
So if we go back to like the We Do Not Care Club, is this really like, how do we get that beautiful acceptance of life, let's call it the full body acceptance that shows up much later in life? Why does it show up so late in life? Is it because it actually takes us that long to actually realize our superpowers
and that we were all made different and, and we're supposed to find what we need from within. Right? So what I tell my friend, okay, the first thing we talked about is that your body does not define who you are. And if you're elated right now with how you look, know that it's going to change, it's gonna keep fluctuating, and that is normal.
Just keep moving, keep strengthening and training. For what you want to do and be and not for what you want to look [00:05:00] like.
This is me. Right after I had my son, that was the day that I discovered what unconditional love really was.
This is me eight years later. At my very leanest, I didn't even know that that was possible for me. Nobody was more surprised than me. I was trying on this bathing suit. And you know, in the fitting room you have these like aisles of mirrors. I must have stood there for about half an hour, and a couple of different sales lady were coming in and out, and other women were coming in and out.
I think I probably asked about five or six different people in a matter of about half an hour. Are you sure? I'm not too fat to wear this.
This is me 20 pounds heavier after running my first marathon. And scolding myself for being so slow. Maybe if I hadn't gained 20 pounds, I [00:06:00] would've actually hit my goal time.
This is me three years later after giving my body restorative care and a lot of food,
but I ate that food at the right time in the round right Everything was tracked. I was leading fitness classes almost every day and walking my dog and training myself. So the amount of exercise I was doing in about a day was about three, three and a half hours.
To take this picture, it took about 32 tries, and then before I decided that it was good enough of a photo and that I looked lean and really pretty enough to make this photo public, I slapped a black and white filter on it because everything looks a little bit more defined with a black and white filter, doesn't it?
And at this time in my life, I was doing all the things. I was feeling good. I was feeling energetic, but there was this quiet voice that would just not stop talking to me that it's not [00:07:00] enough. It's never enough.
This is me running through my second marathon. I was 45. Noticeably. My body is quite different, isn't it? I fought hard to get there. I ignored every single thing that my body was trying to tell me, thought it was in my mind. I thought I maybe was eating wrong or. Not training hard enough or it was definitely something that was wrong with me. Turns out I was anemic. I didn't find out until about six or seven months later until my body said, enough is enough and you need to make take a break. And that's when my group fitness instructor career closed down.
It was time to take care of me. Do I have any regrets? No, because if I hadn't been through the hard, I would've never discovered the difference. I [00:08:00] learned so much about myself by falling down and just getting back up and searching for answers. Being curious about getting deeper into myself, my own self-awareness about what makes me tick, what makes me happiest, what I'm doing right, what I'm doing wrong, what feels better, what feels different, and failing hard until I got it right.
Which leads me to the second thing that we talked about. Fail hard and fail often. Get back up. The world wants to give you a fast way to do things. Thanks.
But in the event of trying to give you fast success, they are robbing you from your own hero's journey.
In the end, it will probably take just as much time,
but your satisfaction will be richer. When you fall so hard at times, it hurts. Hurting gives you the sense of being alive. Hurting, gives you the sense of hunger to make things better,
but the key [00:09:00] is to never stay down for too long. Look for the answers first within you. Seek inside you first, then collect the right team to come around you. So that your intuition is clear and your support system is informed, right? Sometimes we do need help to get us outta the hurt and know that that's okay.
You not broken, you are, uh, not, you know, weak, you're human, and that's what we are supposed to do. Connect.
The next thing I said to her is, stop searching for a purpose. Stop searching for a label in a purpose. You are not your occupation. Your purpose has been with you all along. From the moment you were born, every occupation that you've had, your [00:10:00] purpose has been with you. It's the thing that you do when no one else is looking.
It's the thing that you do that you cannot put your finger on, but it's the reason why people love you and are mag like. You are a magnet for them. They are drawn to you and your energy because of your purpose. When you are living in your purpose, every day has a purpose and you are not in charge all the time of saying what that purpose is.
It is not a label. It is the essence of you.
It's the thing that sparks a light inside of you. And in someone else, you have that. And it's no one else's. And it's no one else's to label. And it's not an occupation, it's a being. It's not a label, and it's definitely not a box.
Stop gaslighting yourself. You would never. Talk the [00:11:00] way you talk to yourself, to your best friend, to a five-year-old, to your five-year-old self. You know when you're going down that track and you know that you're the only person in the room that can hear that voice. A lot of times we tell ourselves things that we think other people are saying or thinking, and they're actually thinking the opposite.
Have you ever run into somebody and they look you up and down and they ask you, are you still running? And in your head it's like, oh, they're sizing me up. They see that I've gained 20 pounds. They're asking me if I'm still running because they think I'm gaining weight. They think I'm getting fat. Well, maybe they think, damn.
Do you ever look good? You look so healthy and young and vibrant. I wanna know what you're doing and the only way I can know is if I start asking [00:12:00] you questions. Think about that for a minute.
The next thing I said is, you know,
our time on this life, on this planet is infinite. It doesn't matter how strong, energetic, or unstoppable you feel in this moment or in the other camp, worthless, unseen, our time on Earth is limited. No, no wasted days. You know, arc says that it's their tagline that outdoor company live every day, like it might be the last chance that you have for yourself 20 years from now to look back at you and say, ah, thank you for doing that. It's because you did that, that we're here now living strong, resilient, and completely in our flow state of being.
You want your 70-year-old self or 80-year-old self, or 90-year-old self depending on, you know, your age. When you're watching this [00:13:00] video or listening to this podcast 20 years from now, you're gonna say, ha, uh, thanks to you, I'm living my fullest life.
And here's the kicker. You don't have to wait until you get to your fullest life to be the person that lives that fullest life. If you are being the person that you know that you need to be to live the fullest life before you're in your fullest life, guess how much more fulfilling life is going to feel?
Wrap your head around that riddle for a minute.
This last one might hit you right there. Talk with your mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, as much as you can. Even if the stories and the conversations are exactly the same all the time. They hold a lot of information about things [00:14:00] that. You'll want to know about yourself in the future, a lot of times your parents and your grandparents hold so many clues of who you are.
When you start digging into your self-awareness. There will come a time, I promise you that you'll want to know every essence of your being.
So you wanna ask those questions while the people in your life that know the answers still can remember them.
My mom held a lot of things in her journal. She holds a lot of things in her journal. She's still here with us on Earth side, but there's a lot of things that I could never, ever ask my dad again. I can ask him, I can ask the sky and listen for his answer. I believe they're always here with us,
and the older I get, the more I begin to understand. What my mom was going through when she was my age, [00:15:00] and instead of holding anger the way I did when I was 13, 14, and we couldn't handle each other in a room, I now lead with compassion because I know that that was her time where she was uncovering the things that she was finding out about herself.
And there's a lot of emotional and physical change that we go through in our mid life that we're trying to navigate and be parents at the same time. Mom's a fricking warrior.
When I think about it,
it makes me feel humble now, and a lot of it starts to make sense.
One day you're gonna reach for your phone and you're gonna wanna. Call your mom or your dad or your grandma or grandpa and share something celebratory with them. Or maybe you've come down with the flu and all you want is your mom to tell you that it's gonna be [00:16:00] okay.
And it might feel like a one-sided answer because they're not answering you here on earth side. But if you go into the woods and you listen, you don't even really have to be in the woods. But that is a really nice place to listen. You're, you're gonna be able to hear what they say. Stay connected
So we concluded our conversation. And then I decided to come and talk with you about it. My friends here on the Creative Life and Motion Show YouTube channel through the waves of the podcast. Whenever you listen, if you are listening on a podcast player, come see me over on YouTube so that you can take part in these comments.
I'll make sure that I link the video below, but now that you've heard this, what do you have to add? You might like to say something to your younger self, or you might like to [00:17:00] say something to your future self. Share in the comments below the video and, and let's, let's, you know, create this collective awareness over how beautiful life is in all of its parts.
The goods, the bads, the uglies, the facing, the uglies.
Hold on. I said to my friend, before you go, there's so much more I'd love to share with you, and I put it all in this book. Be weightless like your body. Love yourself. I handed her a copy.
You can find the audio book linked below this episode, wherever you're. Listening to it, uh, it's completely free. I've put it as a pay what you want, so you can throw a tip in there or not. The idea is to be able to listen to the things that I'm going to [00:18:00] share with you and put your own take on it.
Put your own experimentation to it. Go for a walk and connect with your creative side. The Walk It Off program or the walk yourself to wow, whatever you wanna call it. It's also available on the same plan. There won't be a price increase. I want you to have these tools in your hands if you are wondering how to put together a simple walking plan that works for you.
And you'd like more guidance on that. I've queued up this video right here that you might wanna watch next, and I'll see you over there. Thank you for taking part in this very important episode of the Creative Life in Motion podcast. Remember to subscribe here or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Bye for now. See you next time.
