Closing the Midlife Identity Gap
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[00:00:00] Do you ever look in the mirror and have a moment of disconnect? I, I'm not talking about like a new wrinkle or a change in body shape. You see this person staring back at you and you say, I know who I was, but who am I now?
[00:00:16] The question of who am I now? It can be terrifying, can't it?
[00:00:19] For years, maybe even decades, our roles and our identity was clearly defined. Maybe it's rising to the top of your career. Maybe it's being a mom or maybe it's a go-to expert for the one thing, and that one thing feels like it's changing.
[00:00:34] Our roles became our resume, our entire NA narrative. You walk into a room and the first thing is people ask you, what do you do? And our identity was locked in with whatever answer falls outta the mouth. Am I right?
[00:00:51] And now we're in this new chapter, this midlife, and if you're a woman, sorry guys. It's, you know, perimenopause and menopause is a huge conversation. It's not a crisis.
[00:01:04] The world loves to label this as a crisis.
[00:01:07] It tells us we should be winding down. Maybe quieten a little bit, you know, mellow out. Maybe be a little invisible.
[00:01:18] This is the most outdated advice out there.
[00:01:22] This is not a moment of crisis. This is actually the moment that you get to shed the identities. This is a celebration of actually standing in your wisdom and being the person that you know you are. Welcome back to the Creative Life in Motion podcast. I'm your host, Karen, and on this channel, we don't wait until we reach our goals to be happy.
[00:01:46] We fall in love with who we are being along the way.
[00:01:49] I want you to leave this episode with the excitement. The excitement of being able to create your life every day in the design that you get to create
[00:02:01] So let's talk about the labels of who you believe. You were maybe or are, and we could go like really deep on this topic because there's all kinds of labels that we call ourselves. And if you think about, uh, like if you just take a moment and think at the top of the head. When you think about yourself in a label, what are the first things that come to mind?
[00:02:25] Are they kind. Are they not so kind? I'm not having this conversation with you to feel like guilty about what you're thinking. It's just awareness. Uh, we cannot acknowledge what we do, not decide that we're going to acknowledge. Right? And it's just awareness of having those thoughts make us more empowered to reframe those types of thoughts.
[00:02:52] So I have not recorded a podcast of the Creative Life in Motion Show in, in a while because I really wanted to get this train on the right track of what felt right for me. So I'm turning 53 this year and I have a YouTube channel, as you know. I have, um, I've been writing, books.
[00:03:18] Maybe you don't know that that's what I've been doing, because I have a tendency on this show to talk about everything that is kind of like in the buckets of interest, wanting to give you, uh, like value. You know, you wanna sit down and maybe you wanna learn a framework. Maybe I teach you some time management that I, you know, some of the tools that I use myself and I share with you what's helpful.
[00:03:46] But every time I sit down to record a podcast, there's a lot of things that come into play with doing it. So you have to, you know, do some research. You have to think about what you're going to share, and you have to obviously record it. Maybe there's a little bit of light editing, and then you post it and then you share it.
[00:04:10] All of it requires it's work, right?
[00:04:13] For for the production. And previously I was always kind of looking for things that would be of interest and. I had to just stop because of the amount of time that it takes to do all of this. It was keeping me from doing the project that I need to do the most, which is write and author my next books. So I decided that I'm going to just stop being two identities.
[00:04:46] The identities being content creator and author. And I made the choice to make the podcast very, very similar to what's happening on my YouTube channel, whereas I'm bringing you in, I'm opening the curtain, uh, and we're talking about writing our stories.
[00:05:07] We're talking about authoring books. We're talking about writing and getting our knowledge out there into the world, and it's more focused and driven. On that because then I can actually show up as who I am. I started to ask myself the hard questions. Uh, and that is like, where, where am I wanting to take this?
[00:05:30] Yes, I do mentor people in story. I do mentor new writers. I do have workshops and I do mainly work one-to-one with people. Because I find that we, we get, you know, further faster when it's, it's like really one-to-one. But when I am 75 years old, which isn't very long from now, like it's two decades later, what do I imagine myself doing in my free time?
[00:06:03] And I can't not imagine writing in my free time. So. It doesn't make sense to me to be showing up online doing something that's separate from who I want to be or who I am for that matter. So that's why it's taken me so long to just hit record because this season in this podcast. Is Creative life in motion, and I'm taking you with me, so if you've ever thought about writing a book or, um, finding yourself, like finding your own story and your self-awareness, whether you're gonna publish it or not, whether it's something that you're gonna just like pass along for future generations so they know.
[00:06:54] Who you were as a person or are as a person, it, that's, that's your choice. But if you have a heartbeat, you have so many stories and, and I feel like we're on this real edge of so much change, and it's our responsibility. In, in this day and age, like, oh, I'm from Generation X. Maybe you are, maybe you're a millennial, maybe you're, you know, um, a boomer.
[00:07:27] But here's the thing is if you're a millennial or a Gen X or a Boomer, you know, you've been through all the adaptation of all the change of technology and where we're going now. Wow. Things are gonna be so different in just a decade, and it's our responsibility. I feel like it's our duty to be able to capture our stories for the next generation.
[00:08:02] Like I was just thinking about how. My, I, when I go to visit my mom, she's got stacks and stacks of photo albums and even myself, like in the last two decades, right? Most of my photos are digital because of, you know, Facebook put 'em all up on there, or Instagram or they stay on my phone and they never get uploaded, and I, I think it's time to change that.
[00:08:29] Let's. Let's make these memories a reality. Or what, what are we gonna leave as a story and I, and an identity of what this generation was like? We'll lose it, and if we don't share our stories and then let that trickle and butterfly out into the next generation. Where they're gonna know, they're gonna learn from us how to dictate and how to write their stories.
[00:09:05] It'll continue on, like I'm talking about with your hand, I'm, I'm not talking about like with ai, I'm talking like old school, like, get your journal out and use your handwriting. This will be a lost art. Do we wanna be the generation that loses the art? No, we don't. So. I think I had to get that all out. I, I wanna know what you think about that.
[00:09:32] So if you are on YouTube, drop me a comment on that.
[00:09:36] I've had many identities in my life and I think one of the biggest things that I'm learning how to do is, is to change those identity tags. You know, I would call myself a mom. I call myself a beauty advisor. People ask what it is that you do, I get it. It's a conversation starter. I just wanna answer in a way that I know I'll be answering 20 years from now. I think the problem is when we're looking in the mirror and we're, we're not really identifying with ourselves anymore because maybe the role has changed.
[00:10:20] You are the writer, you are the director, and you're the star of that show. You have a chance you can write, rewrite that story arc, and bring you into where you want to go. You are in the power seat of who you are being every single day.
[00:10:37] Let's tackle the elephant in the room. Okay. This whole menopause conversation is really getting a little bit loud, and I'm gonna bring back the Gen X thing where it's like, I feel like our generation has been a target, and maybe you as a boomer or you argue as a millennial, you might feel kind of targeted too.
[00:10:58] Like we were targeted through the dieting, through the fashion, through the changes, through technology, and now we're, we're the big bubble of all these women that are going through hormonal changes. And the media is, is, is consistently telling us that we need this, that, or this to, to, to help us with this torture that our bodies are taking us through.
[00:11:23] It is just a change. It's a phase. There's some symptoms. We've done it before when we were young. All we're doing is that we're having that second life change. We had a first life change. I think it's really interesting. I was thinking about this the other day as I was going for a walk, I was thinking about the fact that my mom was going through her, um, midlife change.
[00:11:51] At the same time that I was 13 and I thought, wow, no wonder we never got along. That whole story tells so many stories, doesn't it?
[00:12:03] The best years are not behind us. I call that bs.
[00:12:08] We're not losing our youth. We're gaining our wisdom, and we're shedding the fact that we have to explain everything that we do.
[00:12:16] You've earned your expertise. You've lived through things, and you've accomplished things that you couldn't even possibly dream of at 25,
[00:12:25] and you are not invisible.
[00:12:26] I'm not discounting the physical changes. There are some physical changes and I don't, I do know that some people do suffer, and I'm not taking that lightly, but what I am saying is like. Shifting that perspective of what can I do to be kinder to myself in this moment, in this era?
[00:12:48] Because all that's happening is my body is just shifting and changing and it's carried me through all of this life with grace and gratitude, and it's just a phase. So reframe your physical changes. I'm not happy about the fact that my body just will not shed a few pounds, like no matter what I do, but it's okay.
[00:13:15] It's okay to love your body and not really like what it's doing. At the same time, give yourself some grace and kindness.
[00:13:24] What have you thought about it this way? Okay, that hot flash, maybe it's like the inner fire being stoked. Sleepless nights. It's that great new idea that you have all the wisdom in the world to apply. So when you wake up the next morning, implement,
[00:13:42] . I think we need to kind of stop complaining about this and start celebrating it because the more we complain about it, the more we're gonna be targeted that something is wrong with us.
[00:13:52] I love the fact that more people are talking about it. It makes us all feel seen and heard and knowing that, you know, we're all going through it. Right. And. There's a lot of education out there so that men know a lot of more education about what we're going through too,
[00:14:12] and I think that's all a good thing because there's so much help and so many studies that are popping up now on things that can really help us. Let me. Set the record straight here. I'm not complaining about complaining. Okay. Um, some women do have it much harder than others. What I am complaining about is the fact that it's always used as a target, a media target.
[00:14:43] You're telling us how we feel instead of allowing us to feel what we feel, and you're telling us, I'm talking about you in in, in the media a lot of times is that we're broken, is that we're suffering and I think that. We have the power to rewrite that narrative. Yes, I'm going through a shift. Yes, there are things that could help me, but I am not suffering.
[00:15:09] I am not falling down. I am not weak. Right. I thought so.
[00:15:15] This is your power era. It is time to stop. Asking for a seat at the table and make your own dang table. I don't know. It's a silly quote, isn't it? I don't know.
[00:15:27] Let's talk about a few things that you can do. You can go and run and get a piece of paper and a pen, or you could do this by memory. Or if you're driving or doing your chores or whatever you're doing when you're listening to this, just think about this. Okay? I want you to stop focusing on the things that you lost.
[00:15:46] That's, that's the first thing. So we're gonna do like kinda like a wisdom audit,
[00:15:51] I want you to write down all the things that you didn't know when you were 30, and that might take you a while. You can put me on pause or you can come back to this. Take a note that that's what you're gonna do at your next journal entry.
[00:16:05] Some things that I have written down here is like, what lesson have you learned in your career if you had a career or. You know, in your label, in your identity that I just spent 20 minutes telling you not to hold, what lesson did you learn there in that area of your life?
[00:16:23] Let's rephrase that. I'll do the same.
[00:16:26] What skill have you mastered through sheer discipline and repetition?
[00:16:31] What about relationships? What kind of insight have you gained on relationships and love and lots of love?
[00:16:37] And what moment of failure taught you the most? Resilience. Oh, failure is such a tossed around word and so is fear. And you know what? Failure. Is the best present you could have, but it's no fun. Nobody likes to get it. But don't you learn so much from it? Like it's, it's like, I don't know, it's, it's kinda like the worst present ever that you're the most grateful for is wild.
[00:17:09] Failure is wild, teaches us so much.
[00:17:13] The next thing that you're gonna do is define your now values. So I was talking about this a little bit at the top of the show where, where I started having to ask myself the tough questions. Like what, what do I actually want my days to look like? And why am I doing what I'm doing? You know, who am I serving?
[00:17:32] Am I serving my now person or am I serving my 20 years from now person? Or am I serving both, or am I serving the person that I thought I still was but is no longer, you know, an interest of mine?
[00:17:48] The person you were at 28 might have valued like the hustle, the climbing, the ladder, saying yes to everything.
[00:17:56] But does that serve who you really are today? What truly matters to you today?
[00:18:01] That's gonna help you create a filter for your decisions.
[00:18:05] Sometimes it means cutting off like things that you were once really passionate about. But it becomes the filtering system into what am what am I going to do next?
[00:18:17] Every new project. That you start, ask yourself if it aligns with the freedom that you see yourself having in the future, the freedom of being yourself, your own identity. One of the ways I described it in my very first podcast ever was like, do you remember that show called Suit? And there was Donna on it and she didn't have a role.
[00:18:46] And I just, I love that. And I think there was even an episode they said, oh, what is Donna? Is she your secretary? Is she this? Is she that? And the guy just says, oh no, she's just Donna. Right? That's who you are. And you know, we could get like really, really detailed on this and we could go down the conversation of you are not your name.
[00:19:09] That's a big topic, but let's carry on and stay on topic for today.
[00:19:14] That's a great segue into the third thing that I'm currently doing, and this might be helpful to you to make the actionable identity shift.
[00:19:24] An identity is built on evidence, which is why it's so easy to kind of look in the mirror and think, okay, well. I'm this different person and I feel disconnected from who I was because it's all based on your evidence files.
[00:19:43] So to shift into the identity of who you are being today and where you are going into the future, you need to start being that person today.
[00:19:54] You need to start creating that evidence today.
[00:19:58] It starts small.
[00:20:00] If your new identity is, say, a writer. I'll use me as an example. Then it's my job to show up and write something every day, even if I don't intend on sharing it.
[00:20:13] If your new identity as of today is fit over 50 or fit at 50, or fit over 40, or fit over 60, choose. Choose your decade. It is your job to go for a walk every day at a bare minimum, right? It's who you're being. It's not a to-do list. It's kind of like taking an inventory of this is the person that I aspire to be, and what does that person do in their day?
[00:20:49] Like how do they spend their time? And then start to emulate that. Now, in some cases, it might not be the right fit, and you're gonna start to feel that in your body right away. And that's okay. You have to experiment. You have to fail in order to course correct and go in the right direction. So, for example, the fitness one, if walking doesn't feel good or if it's boring, but you're, you're invited to a dance class and it lights you up on fire, go to the dance class, then you're a dancer.
[00:21:26] You see how that works? I am a dancer. What does a dancer do? How does a dancer fill her days? And the great thing about it is you get to write that story. So it's not gonna be exactly the same as your dancer friend. It's going to be your dancer experience. Just like my writing experience is not the same.
[00:21:50] As someone that's been writing like Stephen King, right? 55 books. It's the same but different, right? So I have to think about like if I wanna be an author like Stephen King, what does Stephen King do? Well, he starts his day with a two hour walk. I don't wanna do a two hour walk. I think a one hour walk or a 30 minute walk is fine.
[00:22:13] And I also don't wanna write for four hours because I have more in my life than I wanna do, than author books. But I could write for one or one and a half hour a day. It's not the time. It's not the length, it's not the exact template, but it's how it fits into your life and how you can be it. Do the activities that you need to do to be the identity that you desire to be.
[00:22:43] Okay, so let's bring it all home. The feeling of being disconnected
[00:22:48] from your own reflection is a sign that you are ready to evolve.
[00:22:52] Who you were is a beautiful part of your story, and you're gonna be able to write so many stories just from those collections of memories. But so is today. Today is a beautiful part of your story.
[00:23:06] Tomorrow is going to thank you for who you're choosing to be today.
[00:23:11] Stepping into this new identity that we're kind of morphing right now, like on the fly. It's gonna help help you show up with your wisdom. Powerfully
[00:23:22] and make a real impact.
[00:23:24] . I capture it right with me. Creative nonfiction is the best place to start. It's the place where you can marry together all of your beautiful personal stories and all the lessons that you would like, you know, future generations to know whether you know them or not.
[00:23:44] It's, it's about getting your message from your head onto something that. That is a thing. It's a thing. You have a thing, right? Nobody can be you,
[00:23:57] honestly. You don't have to publish it. But as I think about right now in the space that I'm in with my mom and all of the unanswered questions, you know. I, I have a lot of the answers and the clues in the big stack of photo albums and the big stack of journals that she's kept her entire life. Let's not let that end in my mom's generation because we have to carry this art on.
[00:24:30] It's our responsibility.
[00:24:32] Whether you publish it or not, creative nonfiction is also a way that you could gain so much self-awareness. That you'll be able to answer a lot of your, your own questions that you might have had about yourself for years. If you're not really sure where to start, I have created a seven day. Creative nonfiction outlining process, and that's going to set you up for full success.
[00:25:01] Then all you have to do is show up and write. It's gonna take away the blank page. I've linked it below this episode. You can grab a copy if you like.
[00:25:10] Thank you so much. For spending this time with me and go out there, live the story that you are writing right now. Have fun with it. I look forward to hearing more about in the comments about who you are being, what's the identity? What are you bringing into this new era of your life? And, um, I'll see you.
[00:25:34] I'll see you next time in the next episode. If you're watching on YouTube, I've queued up a video for here that YouTube says that you will like to listen to next. And, uh, otherwise, I will see you next time. Bye. I.
