Latest / Your Utmost Life / The Hidden Price of "I'm Fine" (And Why It's Higher Than You Think)
Transcript
- 0:00Misty Celli: Two words, that's all it takes.
- 0:03Misty Celli: Two words that have become so automatic, so reflexive, so completely woven into the fabric of your daily life that you say them before you've even checked whether they're true.
- 0:15Misty Celli: I'm fine.
- 0:16Misty Celli: You say it to your husband when he asks how you're doing and you don't have the energy to get into it.
- 0:21Misty Celli: You say it to your kids when they look at you with that worried expression they've started wearing lately.
- 0:27Misty Celli: You say it to your friends, your mother, your coworker, the women at school pickup who ask how you're holding up.
- 0:34Misty Celli: And sometimes, honestly, you even say it to yourself.
- 0:38Misty Celli: In the quiet moments when something rises up that needs attention and you press it back down and tell it to wait.
- 0:46Misty Celli: Because right now is not a good time, because everyone needs something, because you'll deal with it later.
- 0:54Misty Celli: However, here's the question I want you to sit with today.
- 0:57Misty Celli: And I need you to hear it not as an accusation, but as an honest inquiry from someone who has lived inside this answer for longer than she'd like to admit.
- 1:07Misty Celli: What if I'm fine is not a statement of truth, but a warning sign you've been driving past for years.
- 1:17Misty Celli: If you are tired of feeling like you don't know who you are anymore, and when you look in the mirror, you catch yourself thinking, is this all there is?
- 1:25Misty Celli: Even though you know you are made for more, you're in the right place.
- 1:28Misty Celli: I'm Misty Celli, and I help women step into their highest potential and design a life that feels true, rich, and deeply satisfying.
- 1:36Misty Celli: A life built by design, not by default.
- 1:39Misty Celli: On this podcast, you will learn the principles and strategic tools that create real lasting transformation in your health, your relationships, your confidence, goals, and deeper parts of you like purpose, growth, love, and parenting.
- 1:51Misty Celli: This is where you begin the process of becoming your utmost self and reclaiming a life that feels like yours again.
- 1:57Misty Celli: Welcome to the Your Utmost Life podcast.
- 2:00Misty Celli: I want to acknowledge something before we go any further because I think it needs to be said clearly before anything else.
- 2:07Misty Celli: Saying I'm fine doesn't make you weak.
- 2:10Misty Celli: It doesn't make you dishonest, and it certainly doesn't make you someone who doesn't care about her own well-being.
- 2:16Misty Celli: For a lot of women, myself included, I'm fine comes from a place of genuine love and genuine strength, from wanting to protect the people around you from worry, from being the steady one, the strong one, the one who holds the center so everything else doesn't fly apart.
- 2:33Misty Celli: That impulse to be the one who holds it together is not a flaw.
- 2:37Misty Celli: It comes from love.
- 2:39Misty Celli: It comes from the kind of deep, committed devotion to your family that would make you absorb almost anything rather than add to their burden.
- 2:47Misty Celli: However, here's what I want you to know about holding it together for everyone else while quietly coming apart at the seams.
- 2:55Misty Celli: The weight of it doesn't stay manageable forever.
- 2:59Misty Celli: And the longer you carry it in silence, the longer you press the warning back down and tell them to wait, the further you drive without looking up at the road.
- 3:09Misty Celli: You feel it, don't you?
- 3:10Misty Celli: That low-grade sense that something is accumulating, that the fine is getting heavier, that you're managing, yes, but managing is not the same as living.
- 3:22Misty Celli: And somewhere underneath the managing, there is a woman who is running out of road.
- 3:27Misty Celli: I see her, and I'm not going to let this episode go by without telling her what I wish someone had told me before I drove off the edge.
- 3:36Misty Celli: Here is what I think your inner world sounds like right now.
- 3:40Misty Celli: And I want you to tell me how close this is.
- 3:42Misty Celli: You know something is off.
- 3:44Misty Celli: You've known for a while.
- 3:46Misty Celli: There are moments, usually quiet ones, usually where everyone else is taken care of, and you finally have a second to actually feel something where the weight of it becomes undeniable, where fine doesn't even feel convincing to yourself anymore.
- 4:02Misty Celli: However, you look at your life and you think, but nothing is catastrophically wrong.
- 4:07Misty Celli: My kids are okay, my marriage is still standing, I'm getting through the days.
- 4:12Misty Celli: Other people have real problems.
- 4:14Misty Celli: Who am I to say I'm not fine when everything is technically still functioning?
- 4:20Misty Celli: And so you recalibrate, you remind yourself to be grateful, you tell yourself this is just a season.
- 4:28Misty Celli: You manage the feeling back down into something smaller and more acceptable, and you keep going.
- 4:33Misty Celli: And the going keeps going, and the days keep moving, and you keep being fine until one day, and this is the part I need you to really hear.
- 4:44Misty Celli: You look up and realize that the life you've been managing your way through has been happening without you fully in it.
- 4:52Misty Celli: That you have been present in the room and absent from living, that the people you love most have been growing and changing and moving through their days while you were so focused on holding everything together that you forgot to actually be there for any of it.
- 5:10Misty Celli: That is not a dramatic crisis.
- 5:12Misty Celli: It is a quiet one.
- 5:14Misty Celli: A quiet crisis are the most dangerous kind because the time that you feel the full weight of them, a lot of road is already behind you.
- 5:25Misty Celli: I need to tell you something I don't talk about easily, because it requires me to be honest about a time when I'm fine became something much more than a reflex.
- 5:35Misty Celli: It became the thing I was driving toward, a cliff.
- 5:39Misty Celli: My husband and I were on the brink of divorce.
- 5:42Misty Celli: Not dramatically, there was no single explosion or a moment where everything fell apart at once.
- 5:48Misty Celli: It was quieter than that.
- 5:50Misty Celli: It was the accumulated weight of a woman who had been silencing herself for so long that she had nothing real left to bring to her marriage, who had been so focused on fixing everything for everyone, on being the strong one, the steady one, the one who held it all together, that she had stopped being honest with him, with her family, and most importantly with herself.
- 6:15Misty Celli: I'm fine came out of my mouth constantly in that season.
- 6:20Misty Celli: Looking back now, I can see it for what it really was: a warning sign that I was driving past at full speed.
- 6:28Misty Celli: Something needed to be addressed, not just between my husband and me, but inside me.
- 6:33Misty Celli: The feelings I was pressing down, the needs I was silencing, the warning signals I was ignoring because I didn't want to be a bother.
- 6:41Misty Celli: Didn't want to cause more stress when everything was already stressful.
- 6:46Misty Celli: I didn't want to disturb the fragile equilibrium I was working so hard to maintain.
- 6:51Misty Celli: So I kept my eyes on everyone else.
- 6:54Misty Celli: I watched them, I managed them, I focused so completely on their edges, their needs, their stability, that I stopped watching the road in front of me.
- 7:04Misty Celli: And I didn't see the turns it was taking.
- 7:06Misty Celli: I didn't see how close we were getting to the edge.
- 7:10Misty Celli: I was so busy looking at them that I didn't notice we were running out of road until we were already going over it.
- 7:17Misty Celli: The crash that followed didn't have to happen.
- 7:20Misty Celli: Not all of it.
- 7:21Misty Celli: The damage to my marriage, to myself, to the life I'd been working so hard to protect, some of that was avoidable.
- 7:28Misty Celli: However, you cannot avoid what you refuse to see.
- 7:32Misty Celli: And I'm fine had become the thing I hid behind so I wouldn't have to look.
- 7:37Misty Celli: Here is what I want you to understand about that story.
- 7:41Misty Celli: I'm not sharing it to frighten you.
- 7:43Misty Celli: I'm sharing it because I know you are on a road right now.
- 7:47Misty Celli: And I know that you have been telling yourself you're fine, and I know because I lived it, that fine is not always a destination.
- 7:57Misty Celli: Sometimes it's a direction.
- 7:59Misty Celli: And sometimes that direction has an edge you cannot see until you're very close to it.
- 8:05Misty Celli: I don't want you to get that close.
- 8:07Misty Celli: That is why we're having this conversation today.
- 8:11Misty Celli: Let me tell you what I'm fine is actually costing you, not theoretically, specifically, because I think you've been so focused on managing the present that you haven't let yourself fully calculate the cost.
- 8:26Misty Celli: The first cost is your children.
- 8:29Misty Celli: Your kids are growing up right now, not later, now.
- 8:33Misty Celli: Every ordinary Tuesday, every unremarkable Wednesday morning, every dinner time conversation and bedtime routine, that is their childhood happening in real time.
- 8:44Misty Celli: And you are there, physically present, reliably there, doing everything that needs doing.
- 8:51Misty Celli: However, are you actually there?
- 8:54Misty Celli: Are you present in the way that children feel, not just in the room, but in the moment, eyes soft, attention full, actually receiving them?
- 9:05Misty Celli: Or are you there the way of a woman on autopilot is, going through the motions of presence while the real part of you is somewhere else entirely, managing the list, holding the worry, running the calculations of everything that still needs to get done.
- 9:23Misty Celli: Because here is what children feel even when they can't name it.
- 9:27Misty Celli: They feel the distance between a mother who is in the room and a mother who is actually with them.
- 9:32Misty Celli: And the version of you that is running unemptive, pressing down I'm fine, managing everything from behind a wall of fine, that version cannot give them what they need.
- 9:45Misty Celli: Which is not your management, which is not your sacrifice, it is you, fully, actually presently, you.
- 9:54Misty Celli: The years do not slow down, and the moments that you are too far away to fully witness do not come back.
- 10:01Misty Celli: The second cost is your marriage.
- 10:04Misty Celli: I want to say this gently because I know how much your marriage matters to you.
- 10:10Misty Celli: However, I also know it from the inside, so I'm going to say it directly.
- 10:16Misty Celli: A marriage cannot survive on logistics alone.
- 10:20Misty Celli: It cannot be sustained by two people who are functioning well together without actually being together.
- 10:27Misty Celli: And when one person in a marriage has been silencing herself, pressing down her feelings, her needs, her warning signs, in order to keep the peace and hold everything together, what develops over time is not a partnership.
- 10:43Misty Celli: It is a performance, a very loving, very functional, very hollow performance.
- 10:49Misty Celli: Your husband does not have full access to you right now.
- 10:53Misty Celli: He has access to the version of you that is managing.
- 10:56Misty Celli: And that version, however capable, however devoted, is not the woman he fell in love with, not fully.
- 11:04Misty Celli: And the distance between who you actually are and who you are presenting yourself to be grows a little wider every time you say I'm fine and mean something else entirely.
- 11:17Misty Celli: Intimacy requires honesty, and honesty requires a woman who believes her inner world is worth sharing.
- 11:24Misty Celli: Therefore, I'm fine that covers something real is not just a small deflection.
- 11:31Misty Celli: It is a brick and a wall that eventually becomes too thick to see through.
- 11:36Misty Celli: The third cost, and this is the one that I need you to sit with the longest, is you.
- 11:43Misty Celli: Not your role, not your function, not your value to the people around you, but you, the woman underneath all of the managing.
- 11:53Misty Celli: She has been on autopilot for a long time.
- 11:56Misty Celli: And autopilot is efficient, it keeps everything moving, and it keeps all plates spinning, and it keeps the household functioning and the calendar managed and the needs of everyone around you attended to.
- 12:09Misty Celli: However, autopilot is not living, it is existing in the shape of living.
- 12:16Misty Celli: And the woman who exists on autopilot long enough stopped being able to feel the difference.
- 12:22Misty Celli: The woman living on autopilot stops noticing what she wants because wanting feels irrelevant to the operation.
- 12:30Misty Celli: She stops listening to her own signals because her signals have been rerouted to serve everyone else's needs for so long that they barely register anymore.
- 12:40Misty Celli: She stops being curious about her own life because her life has become a series of tasks rather than an experience worth being present for.
- 12:49Misty Celli: And one day she looks up and she cannot remember the last time that she felt genuinely, fully, undeniably alive.
- 12:59Misty Celli: Not managing, not coping, not fine, but alive.
- 13:05Misty Celli: That is the highest price of I am fine.
- 13:09Misty Celli: Not the marriage, not the missed moments with the kids, that those are real and they matter enormously, but the highest price is the woman herself.
- 13:19Misty Celli: The slow, quiet, entirely preventable disappearance of the person who was supposed to be living this life.
- 13:28Misty Celli: Now, I want to be careful here because I'm not telling you this to break you open.
- 13:34Misty Celli: I am telling you this to wake something up.
- 13:37Misty Celli: Because here is what I know about you, and I know it because it is the same thing that was true about me.
- 13:44Misty Celli: Sitting in my car after the crash, looking back at a road that I had driven so silently.
- 13:50Misty Celli: You are not someone who chose to disappear.
- 13:53Misty Celli: You are someone who loved so completely, so unselfishly, so consistently that you forgot to keep yourself in the equation.
- 14:03Misty Celli: And that is not a character flaw.
- 14:06Misty Celli: That is a woman who cares deeply and has never been given the full picture of what that caring is actually costing.
- 14:13Misty Celli: However, now you have that picture.
- 14:15Misty Celli: And the picture changes things.
- 14:18Misty Celli: Because here is the truth about the edge of the road.
- 14:20Misty Celli: You are not on it yet.
- 14:22Misty Celli: You can feel it getting closer, perhaps.
- 14:25Misty Celli: However, you have not gone over.
- 14:28Misty Celli: And the fact that something in you responded to this episode today, the fact that you were still listening, still awake enough to feel the urgency of this, that is not the behavior of a woman who is too far gone.
- 14:40Misty Celli: That is the behavior of a woman who is ready to look up from the managing and put her hands back on the wheel.
- 14:47Misty Celli: The damage that happened in my crash, not all of it was unavoidable.
- 14:53Misty Celli: However, the damage that didn't have to happen, the wounds that didn't have to be inflicted, the distance that didn't have to grow, and the years that did not have to pass in the shape of fine, those could have been prevented if someone had sat me down and said what I am saying to you right now.
- 15:12Misty Celli: You are not fine.
- 15:14Misty Celli: And fine is not the goal.
- 15:17Misty Celli: Alive is the goal, and alive is still completely, entirely available to you.
- 15:24Misty Celli: I want you to imagine the moment you look up.
- 15:27Misty Celli: Not a dramatic moment, a quiet one, an ordinary Tuesday where something shifts, where you are in the middle of your day, and instead of pressing down what you feel and returning to the managing, you pause.
- 15:40Misty Celli: You actually feel it.
- 15:42Misty Celli: You let it be real for a moment instead of filing under the fine and moving on.
- 15:48Misty Celli: And in that pause, something loosens.
- 15:52Misty Celli: Not everything, not all at once, just enough to breathe differently.
- 15:57Misty Celli: Just enough to feel for a moment like a woman who is actually inside her own life rather than running alongside it, trying to keep it on the road.
- 16:06Misty Celli: Your kids notice, not because you said anything, but because the quality of your presence is different, because you are actually with them rather than managing them from a distance.
- 16:17Misty Celli: And something in the room is lighter because of it.
- 16:20Misty Celli: Your husband looks at you across the dinner table and sees something he hasn't seen in a while.
- 16:26Misty Celli: Not a different woman, the same woman.
- 16:29Misty Celli: However, present in a way she hasn't been, alive in a way that reminds him of something he had started to miss without letting himself name it.
- 16:40Misty Celli: And you, sitting there in that ordinary Tuesday, feels something you have been pressing down for so long you forgot it was possible.
- 16:51Misty Celli: You feel like yourself, not fixed, not transformed, not at the destination, just yourself.
- 17:00Misty Celli: On the road, eyes open, hands on the wheel, actually here.
- 17:05Misty Celli: That moment is not far away.
- 17:08Misty Celli: However, it requires one thing first.
- 17:11Misty Celli: It requires you to stop saying I'm fine when you mean something else, to stop pressing down the warning signs, to look up from the managing long enough to see the road clearly and decide consciously, intentionally, with full awareness where you want it to take you.
- 17:29Misty Celli: Here is what I want you to do before this episode ends.
- 17:32Misty Celli: Think of one thing you have been pressing down with I am fine.
- 17:37Misty Celli: Just one.
- 17:37Misty Celli: You don't have to fix it today.
- 17:39Misty Celli: You just have to acknowledge it's there.
- 17:42Misty Celli: Because here's what I know: you are not fine, and fine is not the goal.
- 17:48Misty Celli: Alive is the goal, and alive starts with knowing what's actually in your way.
- 17:54Misty Celli: You are more than everyone's everything.
- 17:57Misty Celli: You are someone.
- 17:59Misty Celli: Subscribe to the podcast if you have not already, and I will see you Monday.