Welcome to a new week!
This week has been full of subtle, but mind-blowing shifts in my little world. Midlife brings so many life transformations - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It all feels very important, pressing and relentless. But also, so deep, vulnerable and freeing.
All the feels. All the time. In all the ways.
Some moments feel so full of promise and excitement. Others feel so elusive and slippery. It’s a wild ride.
What do YOU think?
Welcome to The LIFT
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WHERE
Where to start? When I sat down to write today, I knew I had a lot to share, but it’s too much to put in one post. These things take time to break down, metabolize and share. So, stick around in the weeks ahead. We’ve got a lot to talk about.
WHAT
For now, as we start the week, just a small reminder that it’s okay to slow it down a bit. Give yourself some time to digest.
There’s a lot going on around us. Always. And, it’s important to give ourselves the time to chew on things, savor the flavors and think.
I recently heard Brendon Burchard speak. He shared a story of a client he was working with years ago - someone incredibly successful - a high performer in every way. They were reviewing his tightly booked calendar together and Brendon noticed a repeating time block that was unexplained. So Brendon asked him - What is this appointment here?
The client responded, ‘Oh, that’s my thinking time.’
Their conversation went on as he explained that this was a block of time he protected just to sit and think. To let his thoughts flow. To ponder.
What a luxury, right? Time to stop and think? … Regularly?
These days, time to think is hard to come by. Or rather - easy to lose.
We fill the blank spots in our day staring at our phones. Filling every moment with inputs. We don’t give ourselves the time to truly process what we are taking in or how to use that information to enhance our lives. We simply move from one thing to the next.
What would it look like to give ourselves more time to think?
A lot of us are afraid to be with our thoughts. We do everything we can to avoid them. And then, when we lay down at night, they ALL show up at once. To torment us.
Wouldn’t it be nice to spend time thinking at some other time besides the middle of the night?
WHEN
I love the time I spend here each week on Substack with a blank page and my own thoughts. Thinking about the ah-ha moments from my week. The little sparks of joy or awe. The lessons. The observations. The feelings. The things that pop up. How things change from week to week. Day to day. And what remains the same.
I hope it gives you permission to do the same. To stop and think for a minute.
I was listening to an interview with Chip Conley this week - which I’ll share below. He was talking about a conversation he had with Brene Brown about how midlife is not a crisis, but a chrysalis. Brene calls it ‘midlife unraveling’.
Unraveling sounds pretty daunting, doesn’t it? But she went on to explain to him that it’s not an unraveling as in ‘falling apart’, but unraveling as in ‘untangling’.
Imagine a ball of yarn, rolled up tight.
Midlife is where we start to loosen the tightly wound ball we have gathered, unwind the pieces, examine them and weave meaning into our creation. We start looking at what are we doing with all of this yarn. What are we making? And little by little loosening the ball so we can start our crafting.
That’s a whole new way to look at unraveling.
HOW
We don’t go from a wound-up ball of yarn to a work of art or from chrysalis to butterfly without some messiness. And, we certainly don’t get much say in the transformation without taking some time to think. To ponder. To envision.
YOUR MISSION:
This week, I challenge you to give yourself time to think. Maybe that sounds scary. Maybe that sounds like a luxury you can’t afford. But, I’m inviting you to give it a try.
I was going to leave you with something specific to think about, but I decided - no. You choose. Schedule a time. Set a timer. Or just claim that random moment when you have an unexpected opportunity to do nothing.
And just think.
RESOURCES:
READ: The Midlife Unraveling | Brene Brown
WATCH: The Aging Mindset Shift | Rich Roll & Chip Conley
LISTEN: Midlife is a Chrysalis, not a Crisis | Rich Roll Podcast
READ: Learning to Love Midlife: 12 Reasons Why Life Gets Better with Age | Chip Conley
IN SUMMARY:
Hopefully, just the idea of thinking will get you thinking this week. And, I would LOVE for you to reach out and share what you’re thinking about with me. Or leave a comment and share with all of us.
And, if you’re someone like me who has a tendency to ‘overthink’ - maybe you can replace the word ‘think’ with ‘feel’. Pull the thinking from your head down into your gut and just feel. A lot of wisdom and ideas live right there just waiting for permission to emerge.
If not now, when?
See you next week?
Meanwhile, reach out to me anytime!
Karen Friend Smith
Certified Health Coach & Environmental Health Specialist
Specializing in Perimenopause & Menopause
karen@itmaybemenopause.com
www.itMayBeMenopause.com
Instagram: @itmaybemenopause
Amazing….simplicity at its very best. Thank you for every word….. So many times I switch the roles of my brain and my gut. My gut thinks all night long and my brain feels it the next day. Love the reading resources you share. Thank you!!
A great reminder! Especially important to start making this kind of space in the winter months when the schedule naturally allows for pauses.
There is an exercise that I did back in the Fall. It was part of the Artist's Way coursebook. It was a "no reading anything week". What?! How is this possible? Of course her students at that time, in the '90s, responded the same way. But I'm thinking, 'that was before the tech boom of computer screens and smart phones that incessantly crave our attention and responses. That was before mass addiction to social media and emails and text notifications.'
But, I decided to go for it anyway. No reading. Got it. I was on a vacation at the time that this exercise popped up and so the new fiction book sat unopened throughout the travels.
The idea of "no reading week" is to stop brining in stimuli day in and day out requiring us to respond whether we want to or not, externally or internally. This process of info in and response out keeps us from creating from our own resources within us.
This makes sense to me. I quiet quite all social media 1 1/2 years ago and was amazed at how it freed up my brain bandwidth.
So, I did it to the best of my ability. No reading. No reading emails, no checking texts messages. No reading anything as much as possible. Instead I focused on writing, journalling, coloring, conversation, instead of texting back I used the microphone on text and recorded my responses and asked my closest friends and family to record and send their messages. Just for 1 week! I thought I would be met with sideways glances but they all supported this and agreed.
It was very hard and also very liberating. In fact I plan to do this from time to time. My 2nd week of no reading starts tomorrow! Wish me luck! 🙃
All that to say, I encourage everyone to try a "no reading week" and let the journal take you on an adventure!
Karen- Thanks for sharing your thoughts on thinking!