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Reclaim Your Energy and Confidence Starting Today · Create The Best Me

• 0:02
  Have you ever felt like midlife is a balancing act between being everything to everyone and leaving nothing for yourself?
• 0:11
  Well, today, Courtney is here to flip that script.
• 0:15
  Spoiler alert! She's going to show you why setting boundaries Isn't about shutting people out.
• 0:22
  It's about inviting freedom and vitality into your life.
• 0:27
  By the end of this episode, you'll be redefining what it means to thrive in midlife.
• 0:34
  And it starts with you.
• 0:36
  Today, we're diving into a game changing conversation with health and self-leadership coach, Courtney Townley.
• 0:43
  From the importance of self-leadership to mastering your energy through setting boundaries, this episode is packed with insights you won't want to miss.
• 0:54
  So grab your favorite beverage, settle in, and let's get started.
• 1:02
  Courtney Townley, welcome to Create the Best Me, it is an honor and a privilege to have you on the show.
• 1:10
  Oh, I'm so happy to be here.
• 1:11
  Thank you for inviting me.
• 1:13
  Courtney, before we get into this, I'm the type of person that believes that when a compliment is earned, you need to say it.
• 1:22
  And let me just first start out by saying, I love the photos you sent me.
• 1:27
  They are absolutely stunning, fun.
• 1:30
  They show that being a woman in midlife doesn't mean you've hit the end of the road.
• 1:38
  It means that you can still express your playful and true personality.
• 1:45
  And you're very photogenic.
• 1:47
  I loved your photos.
• 1:48
  In fact, I felt if there's something that one of my phobias is, I don't like being on camera, believe it or not.
• 1:56
  I don't like taking pictures.
• 1:57
  I think I take horrible pictures, but your photos inspired me to want to go and take some pictures.
• 2:05
  The other thing is I went on your website and your copy is absolutely yes, yes, yes.
• 2:13
  That is me.
• 2:14
  That is me.
• 2:15
  So you're doing really good.
• 2:18
  I love I really appreciate that.
• 2:19
  I have, I have to tell you a funny story about the pictures because, I was in the middle of a huge transition in my business.
• 2:26
  I had come out of the health and wellness industry.
• 2:28
  I'm still in the health and wellness industry, but I was heavily rooted in it.
• 2:32
  And my old website was fitness photos and conversations about nutrition and just you know, standard fare for what you would expect to see on a wellness website.
• 2:43
  And I had been fighting against this messaging for a while, feeling like I was outgrowing a box, which was women didn't really, the women I was working was working with, really didn't need a lot more information about diet and exercise.
• 2:57
  And they just needed more help in applying what they already knew.
• 3:02
  And so I worked with a brand designer to help me shift my messaging because I was really just in a place where I felt like I can't keep having this conversation just about diet and exercise.
• 3:15
  There is so much more that needs to be talked about and I need that to be conveyed on my website.
• 3:19
  So it's a really awesome compliment that you just gave me about that because that's exactly what we are going for.
• 3:25
  Um, is just to really help women recognize that midlife is this incredible opportunity to step out and not fade out.
• 3:33
  And to stop making the body the problem.
• 3:36
  Because man, we have been conditioned to believe the body is a problem for way too long.
• 3:40
  And so hopefully that came across in the copy and the photos.
• 3:44
  It certainly did.
• 3:46
  I mean, I think that it just showed that it's not the end.
• 3:51
  It is the beginning to a brand new phase and you just nailed it in the copy and you nailed it in the photos.
• 3:57
  Fun, fun, fun.
• 3:59
  Loved it.
• 4:00
  So, before we go into what I invited you on the show to discuss, can you tell the listeners and viewers a little bit about who you are and what you do?
• 4:10
  Sure.
• 4:11
  So my name is Courtney Townley and the only industry I've ever worked in for 30 plus years is the wellness industry.
• 4:19
  And that's looked like a lot of different things.
• 4:21
  I came in the door through as a dancer.
• 4:23
  I was a professional dancer in my youth.
• 4:26
  And, that is how I was introduced to the fitness industry.
• 4:29
  Because obviously as dancers, we take pilates classes and we do things to keep our instrument, in the best possible shape.
• 4:36
  And I knew I loved movement.
• 4:37
  I love obviously moving my own body, but I also found by teaching fitness classes, I also loved teaching people how to move their bodies better.
• 4:47
  But what was really interesting is a large majority of my clients were midlife women.
• 4:54
  And while yes, they wanted to learn how to move their bodies better, they had a lot of questions about nutrition and stress and a lot of hormones.
• 5:03
  So many things that I really just had no clue about.
• 5:07
  So that kind of led me down a pathway of getting a lot more education because clearly there were a lot of gaps in my education.
• 5:15
  And as I started to learn more about nutrition, about lifestyle changes, about hormones, and really about behavior change.
• 5:23
  There was just a much bigger conversation that I wanted to be having outside the scope of exercise and even nutrition.
• 5:32
  So for about 10 years of my career, I worked in the realm of fat loss specifically, and I helped a lot of women lose a lot of weight.
• 5:40
  But what's interesting is a lot of those women didn't maintain their weight loss.
• 5:45
  So they got, you know, they worked really hard for a year to get these incredible physiques and, you know, build muscle and lose strip fat off their bodies and, It was wonderful until it wasn't.
• 5:55
  Until I started seeing this consistent pattern that people were not maintaining their results.
• 6:02
  So that got me wildly curious.
• 6:04
  Like, again, what am I missing?
• 6:07
  And that really took me down a path of learning a lot more about mindset and thought management, and self-image and self-narrative.
• 6:18
  And that got me super excited because when I started having those conversations with my clients, things started to really shift in sustainable ways.
• 6:29
  And keep in mind, like, I definitely stepped out of the fat loss arena.
• 6:33
  Like, my focus now is not getting a woman as lean as possible.
• 6:37
  I mean, if that is really important to her, that is something that we can talk about.
• 6:41
  But I really help women more than anything, to lead themselves powerfully in the health arena.
• 6:47
  So I, I say that I teach self-leadership in the health arena.
• 6:52
  And self-leadership skills are different from diet and exercise skills.
• 6:57
  And in my opinion they are everything.
• 7:01
  Because self-leadership is really parenting yourself to do the things that you say are important to you not just for a season.
• 7:12
  Not just when you have a beach vacation coming up, but on the regular.
• 7:17
  And so, honestly, I've so lit up.
• 7:20
  I mean, again, I've been in my career for 30 years, but I feel like the last 10 years have just been so exciting because I feel like I have finally entered a conversation that feels, it feels honest and true and important.
• 7:36
  And it also feels like it's not being had enough.
• 7:39
  I'm starting to hear it happen a little bit more out there in the world.
• 7:43
  But it really feels like such a privilege and honor to be able to sort of have this conversation with my clients and help them with their health story, but in a very different way than they've been conditioned to believe they have to go That is very true.
• 7:58
  And I think that leads us right into the reason why I invited you on to the show.
• 8:04
  It is, boundaries, what are boundaries and who are they for, especially for women in midlife?
• 8:13
  Yeah.
• 8:14
  So the way that I like to think of boundaries is that they are limits and parameters, that we establish within relationships in dedication to the health of the relationship.
• 8:27
  Now, that relationship could be a relationship with food.
• 8:31
  It could be a relationship with another person.
• 8:34
  It could be the relationship that we have with ourselves.
• 8:38
  Boundaries have a place in all of those scenarios and really any relationship that you are in your life.
• 8:46
  And so who they're for?
• 8:47
  Everybody.
• 8:48
  I think it is literally impossible to be the healthiest and most expressed version of yourself if you are boundaryless.
• 8:58
  If you are unwilling to set boundaries.
• 9:00
  If you're boundary adverse, you are going to really struggle to amplify your life in the ways that you want it to be amplified.
• 9:10
  Because time, energy, mental bandwidth, they're all limited resources.
• 9:15
  We only get so much and while they're renewable, right?
• 9:19
  We get more energy the next day if we have a goodnight's sleep.
• 9:22
  We have more time to spend assuming we wake up tomorrow.
• 9:26
  We, our mental clarity comes back online after we've had a goodnight's rest.
• 9:30
  These things are renewable, but they are limited.
• 9:34
  And I have found especially over the past 10 to 15 years of coaching, that one of the biggest barriers to a woman amplifying her health, especially at midlife, is her unwillingness, or maybe it's a lack of understanding of how to set boundaries in a way that works for her.
• 9:56
  And so she ends up being burnt out and resentful.
• 10:00
  Her hormones are all over the place because she's committing to way too much.
• 10:05
  And it doesn't end well.
• 10:07
  It's not a great way to go into the second chapter of your life.
• 10:11
  So, boundaries really are for everyone and I think they are applicable in every single relationship.
• 10:18
  So would you say that boundaries are kind of like your roadmap to meeting whatever your goals are, or whatever you want to achieve.
• 10:27
  Yeah, I always call it without boundaries, we get what I call lost in the woods, right?
• 10:32
  So you might be headed down this path that feels super exciting and it's the path you want to be on.
• 10:38
  It's headed towards a destination you really want to see or you really want to experience.
• 10:43
  But life clearly has so many opportunities to get distracted and sort of again, lost in the woods.
• 10:51
  And if we don't have ways of recognizing when we're getting misaligned, or we don't have ways of keeping ourselves on that path, I'll share just a funny story.
• 11:03
  Cause my dog, I have a 200 pound Great Dane and he's blind.
• 11:07
  He doesn't have eyes.
• 11:08
  And so in the winter, we live in Montana and it's really incredible to watch this dog walk along the trails.
• 11:17
  And he stays on the trail because he has bumpers.
• 11:20
  The snowbanks are his bumpers.
• 11:22
  So anytime he kind of starts to veer off the track, the bumper just pushes him back in.
• 11:28
  And I think of boundaries that way.
• 11:30
  That they are bumpers to keep us aligned with a life that feels like it keeps us out of integrity pain.
• 11:39
  And integrity pain, if no one's ever heard that phrase, it's a phrase I use a lot.
• 11:43
  And it's just living a life that doesn't match up with what we really want.
• 11:46
  That's integrity pain.
• 11:48
  It's a very real physical and emotional pain.
• 11:51
  All of us have experienced it.
• 11:53
  All of us right now in this very moment have areas of our life where we have integrity pain.
• 11:59
  And I believe the more that we heal our integrity pain, the healthier we get.
• 12:05
  And so boundaries are a really crucial part of that.
• 12:09
  So where in your life right now are you spending resources unnecessarily?
• 12:18
  Are you giving too much to work?
• 12:21
  Are you overspending on negative self-narrative?
• 12:24
  Are you overspending on watching Netflix in the evening to the point that you're actually not getting up at a time that you can take care of yourself in the morning before you head off to work?
• 12:37
  Like where are you spending resources right now that is misaligned with how you want to be living your life?
• 12:45
  And we understand this so well with money, right?
• 12:48
  Like a lot of my clients are, I think it's the holidays, so a lot of people have financial stress.
• 12:52
  And I was talking to a client yesterday about the fact that her and her husband just got out of debt.
• 12:58
  And they're really proud, but now she has all of this anxiety about getting back into debt.
• 13:05
  And I said, one of the main things that maybe you want to keep spinning back to is making sure that you're spending money in alignment with what's truly important to you.
• 13:17
  And that's how I feel about any resource, time, energy, mental bandwidth.
• 13:22
  Your personal resources should be spent in alignment with what truly matters to you because you don't get an endless amount of them.
• 13:30
  Yeah, and I think that some people might be a little reluctant to establish boundaries or set boundaries because they might have this feeling that boundaries are going to turn me into a boring, dull person.
• 13:42
  And no one's going to want to hang out with me because I have all these rules that everyone has to abide to.
• 13:49
  So I think that there's two primary reasons that we struggle to set boundaries.
• 13:54
  The first is we have to lean into discomfort.
• 13:59
  We have to open ourselves to the judgment of other people.
• 14:03
  We have to open ourselves up to the possibility of making other people uncomfortable.
• 14:07
  Cause people benefit from you not having boundaries.
• 14:11
  So when we establish boundaries, it can definitely create some friction in relationships or disappointment in expectations.
• 14:20
  Even when we set boundaries with ourselves there's a little bit of discomfort there because we want what we want when we want it.
• 14:28
  And when we parent ourselves, there is a limitation.
• 14:32
  And we have to remember that a healthy boundary is always an extension of love.
• 14:37
  It's because you have so much love and respect for a relationship that you are willing to set a boundary.
• 14:44
  I care about this relationship enough to have a difficult conversation or set a difficult limit so the relationship can improve.
• 14:54
  So that may be having a conversation with myself or with my husband about, how we talk to each other when we're upset with each other.
• 15:02
  I love you, and if you talk to me in a disrespectful way, I'm going to leave the room and I will not engage, re-engage with the conversation until you can talk to me, like, I'm the woman that you fell in love with so many years ago.
• 15:18
  That's a boundary, it's just saying, hey, I love you, but right now, this is what I need from you in order to continue this in a healthy way.
• 15:25
  And with myself, again, the holiday season, there's so much opportunity for alcohol and sugar and just overspending energy and money and all the things.
• 15:36
  And it is out of respect for myself and my life that I set boundaries.
• 15:43
  I don't want to roll into 2025 feeling like I have a holiday hangover.
• 15:49
  Because there's so much I want to do next year and so much I'm excited about.
• 15:54
  So in contribution to that, in devotion to that, I practice constraint.
• 16:00
  I'm not going to drink or eat or spend as much as I want because the consequence of that is that I will be living out of alignment with how I want to feel in a few days or weeks from now.
• 16:15
  In the moment, it feels awesome.
• 16:17
  In the moment, it feels like freedom.
• 16:19
  But on the other side, like, how often have you really felt free when you eat as much as you want?
• 16:25
  Like, in the aftermath, do you feel free?
• 16:28
  No, I feel guilty.
• 16:30
  Totally.
• 16:31
  And we also feel physically ill, like we can't move and we don't feel motivated to do anything because our chemistry is so jacked.
• 16:38
  And when I drink as much as I want, the aftermath of that is not freedom.
• 16:43
  I feel caged.
• 16:44
  I feel like I literally can't show up for my life.
• 16:48
  And I mention this because the second reason I think we struggle to set boundaries is because we have a lot of thoughts about boundaries.
• 16:58
  Like you said, it means I'm not going to be fun.
• 17:00
  It means no one's going to want to hang out with me.
• 17:03
  It means people are going to think I'm a jerk.
• 17:06
  Boundaries might mean, I've had a lot of clients say this to me over the year, boundaries to them mean lack of freedom.
• 17:13
  I should be able to do whatever I want, whenever I want.
• 17:16
  Well, you can, but is that truly how you define freedom?
• 17:21
  Because I would argue that when you set healthy boundaries, out of respect for yourself and your other relationships, you get to experience more freedom than you know what to do with because life gets so good and you are so fully expressed and you feel amazing.
• 17:39
  To me, that's freedom.
• 17:41
  Doing what I want all the time in the moment is not freedom.
• 17:46
  It's temporary freedom, which comes with massive consequences.
• 17:49
  So again, leaning into discomfort, the willingness to lean into discomfort, and also the willingness and the practice of changing the way that we think about boundaries can really help us to set them and help us to follow through with them.
• 18:06
  And when we do it, the reward is more self-respect, more confidence, more energy.
• 18:13
  Life just, again, it gets better.
• 18:15
  So what can a woman in midlife start to practice right now so that she can begin 2025 on the right foot with healthy boundaries that are going to help her feel that freedom, feel lively, and possibly encourage others to do the same.
• 18:41
  Well, I'll start by saying this some listeners may not like my answer, because I won't sugarcoat it, right?
• 18:48
  I think such a big part of being a healthy and vibrant human is getting radically honest with yourself.
• 18:55
  So that's where we start.
• 18:57
  Knowing that we are in the throes of the holiday season.
• 19:00
  And by the time this airs, it'll be the end of 2024.
• 19:04
  So most people at that time of the year do not have a tremendous amount of resources on board.
• 19:11
  In fact, the opposite.
• 19:12
  They're feeling tired.
• 19:14
  They're feeling a little depleted because of all the entertaining and shopping and holiday events.
• 19:19
  And while it was all lovely and good, it has a cost.
• 19:24
  So the first thing I would invite any woman listening to this to consider is how many resources do you actually have on board right now?
• 19:35
  To commit to new things going into the new year.
• 19:39
  How much time do you actually have to spend on the things that you want to be amplifying or improving?
• 19:46
  How much energy do you feel like you have right now?
• 19:49
  And if people are hearing this and saying, well, how do I gauge that?
• 19:52
  Use a scale from one to 10.
• 19:54
  10 being the most energy you've ever experienced.
• 19:57
  And one being like the least.
• 20:01
  I kind of think about it as like the battery, like just imagine like the bar on your phone.
• 20:06
  What level is that battery right now?
• 20:09
  And if it's only at like 25 percent capacity, you probably want to seriously consider how much you commit to going into the new year.
• 20:20
  I'm not saying don't commit, like commit, dream big, definitely commit to being your best self and be very strategic and smart about what that looks like so you can stay the course and that you don't burn out.
• 20:34
  So that would be like 101 is just really checking in with what is my current resource availability.
• 20:43
  And where might I have to say no or change some expectations to reclaim some of those resources.
• 20:52
  Women love to overcommit.
• 20:56
  We overcommit for lots of reasons, partly conditioning.
• 20:59
  We feel like we should be doing all things for all people all the time.
• 21:03
  But I also think we overcommit to hide from the actual work of our lives.
• 21:08
  Going after the things that really light us up terrifies us.
• 21:12
  So it's easier to stay busy, than it is to actually do those things.
• 21:17
  And so just really questioning yourself on that front of : what might I need to say no to in order to reclaim some energy.
• 21:27
  I might need to say no to hanging out with that person that I always leave their presence and I feel terrible about myself.
• 21:34
  I may need to say no to drinking in January.
• 21:39
  Maybe I say no to drinking all of 2025.
• 21:42
  Because again, saying no to things, we often think of it's like a sacrifice and it is, I'm not saying it isn't, but the no makes way for the yes.
• 21:51
  When you say no to whatever it is that you need to set a boundary around, what are you actually saying yes to?
• 22:00
  Because that makes it exciting.
• 22:01
  That feels awesome.
• 22:03
  When I know that I'm saying yes to something, I want to go all in.
• 22:08
  But if I'm only focused on the no, that feels hard and that feels too uncomfortable, and so I'll just negotiate my way out of it.
• 22:17
  Those would be two starting points in terms of, especially this time of year, like just the considerations around boundaries.
• 22:24
  But I truly, truly believe from the bottom of my heart, having helped thousands of women to improve their health and happiness over the years, that it is an impossible mission without setting boundaries.
• 22:36
  And here's the other thing, this is really important.
• 22:39
  Everything in life is a practice.
• 22:41
  Setting boundaries is a practice.
• 22:44
  So if you're someone listening to this and you're getting really uncomfortable because you know that you need to set some boundaries in your life in order to reclaim some resources for the things that are really important to you, and you are feeling like, man, I just can't do that work.
• 23:00
  That's just not who I am.
• 23:01
  I'm not someone who says no.
• 23:03
  I'm not someone who lets other people down.
• 23:07
  I just want to offer that your self-image is a practice.
• 23:10
  You've created that belief about yourself because of how you have shown up in your life all these years.
• 23:16
  And if you are rumbling with setting boundaries, it's merely a practice.
• 23:21
  Like learning how to play volleyball or learning how to ice skate.
• 23:25
  The more you do it, the more confident you will become.
• 23:29
  And I would highly encourage you to start with easier things.
• 23:33
  So rather than telling, going in tomorrow to tell your boss, look, I'm not, I'm only working like part-time next year.
• 23:39
  I mean, that's a big boundary set, right?
• 23:43
  Maybe when you go to the coffee shop tomorrow and they give you the wrong order, instead of just accepting it you practice going up and saying, hey, I love this shop and I know it's a little bit more work for you, but this isn't actually what I ordered.
• 23:58
  That's, like asking for what you need and asking for what you paid for.
• 24:04
  And that doesn't seem maybe for some people like an outright boundary, but it's a gateway to asking for more of what you need.
• 24:11
  And the number of women that I have spent time with, and I know there was a huge phase of my life where I was very much this way too, where people wouldn't necessarily deliver what they promised; whether that was in a relationship, professionally or personally.
• 24:26
  And I would just talk myself into it.
• 24:28
  Like, oh, it's the best they could do.
• 24:31
  Or I can work with this, it's fine.
• 24:33
  But deep down I was disappointed and I expected more.
• 24:38
  And now, at this phase of my life, I ask for more.
• 24:42
  And I think it's an amazing opportunity for not just me to be happier and more fulfilled, but for other people to rise to the occasion.
• 24:50
  And people don't know how to be in a relationship with you unless you show them and ask them and tell them.
• 24:57
  It's not an ultimatum, it's just saying, hey, this is what you told me.
• 25:02
  This is what I expected.
• 25:04
  I feel a little bit disappointed, let's talk about that.
• 25:08
  It is hard, but it's a practice and everything gets easier with practice.
• 25:12
  Truly.
• 25:14
  Yeah, I think that as a woman, we might struggle with that because I think it's more acceptable for men to say what they want versus if a woman, especially a woman in midlife, says what she wants, she is labeled as a complicated person.
• 25:34
  Or she's going through menopause.
• 25:36
  But she's a B word, right?
• 25:37
  Exactly.
• 25:38
  A hundred percent.
• 25:40
  And it's, yeah.
• 25:41
  And then we get the jokes about menopause and everything else.
• 25:44
  And there's a great book, if anyone's interested, it's called "The Confidence Code." And it's exactly about that.
• 25:50
  How it's about the confidence in the workplace and how men are naturally so unafraid to ask for what they need.
• 26:00
  And they often get it because they're willing to ask.
• 26:03
  Women, we're conditioned very differently.
• 26:06
  We've grown up in a culture that's impressed upon us very differently.
• 26:10
  And so we aren't so willing to ask for what we need, but we're the ones who suffer.
• 26:16
  So we're the ones who take the hit for that.
• 26:18
  And so again, it's not necessarily easy work, but it is important work.
• 26:25
  And I have seen it time and time again change the lives of so many women I work with.
• 26:30
  And also I just did want to say this because you mentioned, hormones and it is such a relevant topic in midlife.
• 26:36
  One of the things I talk about with my clients is that we know that there's good stress, right?
• 26:43
  Stress that we lean into to sort of create awesome things in our life.
• 26:47
  And then there's the distress.
• 26:49
  Stress that just really depletes us and doesn't really have any benefit on the other side.
• 26:54
  And what really matters is your total stress load.
• 26:58
  Right, like how much stress are you carrying in any given day in your stress bucket?
• 27:04
  And when that bucket starts to overflow, you're going to start physiologically breaking down, psychologically breaking down, emotionally breaking down.
• 27:11
  It doesn't bode well for anything.
• 27:14
  And at midlife, we're losing hormones that help us to manage our stress load.
• 27:20
  Estrogen and progesterone we know help us to manage cortisol in the system.
• 27:25
  So when these two lovely hormones start to depart the party, we have to become more respectful than ever about our total stress load.
• 27:36
  Because we aren't able to carry stress in the way that we once did.
• 27:40
  I'm not saying you can't manage stress, you certainly can, but you no longer have the hormones on board that helped you to carry it in the way that you once did.
• 27:51
  And so income boundaries as even a more potent nutrient, right?
• 27:56
  Because when we start, experiencing the loss of those hormones and realizing that I don't maybe have as much to give as I had 10 years ago.
• 28:07
  I have to reset some expectations and I have to ask for things that maybe I haven't asked for before.
• 28:14
  And of course, with the advent of hormone replacement, like all of this is a very nuanced conversation because we can certainly get in some of those hormones back into our system to help us manage cortisol.
• 28:26
  But I think it's a really important thing to recognize at midlife that we don't have the chemistry that we once did that helped us to manage that load.
• 28:39
  And so if we are unwilling to change, if we are unwilling to start setting boundaries and taking better care of ourselves and amplifying our stress management; we really wrestle through that midlife transition.
• 28:53
  Because our chemistry is so jacked and that's really tough.
• 28:59
  Yeah.
• 28:59
  And I think It makes us become a person that we don't even recognize anymore.
• 29:04
  I had a prior guest who said this and when she said this, I'm like, oh my goodness, I can't believe I've never seen boundaries as this.
• 29:12
  She had said boundaries are not for others, boundaries are for you.
• 29:19
  They are for you to have balance in your life.
• 29:25
  And I always saw it the other way around.
• 29:27
  I'm building boundaries so people know my rules.
• 29:29
  Here's my fence.
• 29:30
  You know, you can't hop the fence.
• 29:32
  Here are my rules.
• 29:33
  I just felt like, oh my goodness, Here I am, in midlife and I'm learning a whole new concept of who boundaries are for.
• 29:44
  And there's the thought management piece, right?
• 29:46
  Because when I think about boundaries being a nutrient for myself, it becomes a lot easier to practice them than if I think of them as like an ultimatum for somebody else.
• 30:00
  That doesn't feel good.
• 30:01
  That doesn't inspire me into action.
• 30:03
  It makes me want to hide.
• 30:05
  It's such a true statement that boundaries are really what allow us to feel safe.
• 30:11
  And able to express ourselves and show up for the other people in our life in a way that feels congruent with how we want to be showing up.
• 30:20
  When we aren't setting boundaries, we don't feel safe in a lot of relationships.
• 30:26
  We are again overspending our resources, which costs us our confidence.
• 30:31
  And then we're not showing up in a way that actually helps the relationship for ourselves or the other person.
• 30:38
  A relationship is always about both people.
• 30:40
  But I think that we want to show up in a way that feels good to us.
• 30:47
  That helps us to feel like fully expressed humans.
• 30:50
  And that's what boundaries allow us to do.
• 30:53
  And when someone is consistently disregarding boundaries, that is a sign, like that is a red flag that you maybe want to reconsider that relationship.
• 31:05
  Because what that is reflecting is this relationship isn't important enough to me to do what you are asking of me.
• 31:17
  And I think that's important to recognize.
• 31:18
  Again, it's not an ultimatum saying, you know, if you don't buy me this purse, I'm gonna divorce you.
• 31:23
  Like, that is not what we're talking about here.
• 31:26
  But if you consistently cannot talk to me in a respectful way that helps me to feel safe so I can actually engage in this conversation in a constructive way, how are you ever going to be in a deeper relationship with that person?
• 31:41
  You're not, because you're never going to feel like you can be fully yourself.
• 31:47
  And so tell me, let's say you have a person in your life that either it's your husband, your child, your best friend, per se, that Is not respecting your boundaries.
• 32:00
  How would someone address that without drawing the line on the sand and saying, we're done, we're broken up.
• 32:09
  There's always two parts to a boundary.
• 32:11
  Like a boundary isn't just telling somebody, what you need to be in the relationship.
• 32:16
  It is also being clear about what you will do, if this boundary is consistently disrespected.
• 32:23
  I'll give you a great example.
• 32:24
  I have a 15 year old son.
• 32:26
  And he loves to just throw his laundry in the laundry room, even though there's like a gazillion laundry baskets right there.
• 32:35
  But the clothes never make it into the laundry basket.
• 32:37
  They're always on the floor.
• 32:39
  And so I, of course, like every parent, asked him 4,500 times to put the laundry in the laundry basket.
• 32:46
  But I realized my mistake was that I never let him know what I would do if this wasn't respected.
• 32:54
  So I finally told him, if your laundry this week does not end up in a laundry basket, I will not be doing your laundry.
• 33:05
  And here's the really hard part for us as women, we have to follow through with what we said we would do.
• 33:13
  Like I don't need to get caught up in the drama of being angry at my son or resentful or anything cause I made it very clear.
• 33:19
  If your laundry doesn't go in the laundry basket, I'm just not doing your laundry.
• 33:23
  And you know what?
• 33:23
  That gives me some resources back.
• 33:25
  I don't feel bad.
• 33:26
  Like, that's great.
• 33:27
  It's a win for me if I don't have to do your laundry, but it's not such a win for you.
• 33:33
  And lo and behold, I did have to follow through with that boundary more than once.
• 33:38
  But over time he realized if the clothes don't make it in the hamper, my mom is not going to do the laundry.
• 33:47
  And with enough times of that happening, he changed the way he was showing up.
• 33:52
  Because I was just very clear with what I was willing and not willing to do.
• 33:57
  So I don't know if that helps a little bit, but I think it's really the two parts, it's saying I love you and this is what I need in this relationship right now for me to feel like I'm in a healthy place in this relationship.
• 34:13
  And if you are unwilling to do that, I just want you to understand what that means for me.
• 34:20
  I'm not going to hurt you.
• 34:22
  I'm not going to yell at you.
• 34:23
  I'm not going to, none of that.
• 34:24
  Another example, because a lot of people will be able to relate to this.
• 34:27
  My husband, it happens probably maybe once a year, probably less now.
• 34:33
  But If someone cut him off in traffic or, there was like, like this road rage where he would, pull up next to the person and it would just be like this really threatening thing.
• 34:42
  And it made me so uncomfortable.
• 34:46
  And so I practiced saying to him, if you choose to behave this way with me in the car, I don't feel comfortable because people do crazy things.
• 35:01
  I don't know what these other people will do.
• 35:04
  I will ask you to pull over and I will find another way home.
• 35:09
  So again, I'm not yelling at you.
• 35:11
  I'm just telling you what I need to feel safe here.
• 35:14
  And he does it, you know, I mean, I don't remember the last time my husband did that.
• 35:19
  But it was a pattern for a while in our relationship and I would just get so angry.
• 35:23
  We wouldn't talk to each other for a couple of days and it wasn't getting us anywhere.
• 35:28
  But I told him what I needed to feel safe.
• 35:32
  What I would do if he continued to act like that.
• 35:37
  And I was 150 percent willing to follow through.
• 35:40
  I never had to.
• 35:42
  And that's a really good example because I know my husband used to do the exact same thing.
• 35:47
  And I used to tell him, you don't know who the other person is.
• 35:50
  You don't know what they are going through or what they're capable of doing.
• 35:54
  Do not create conflict.
• 35:59
  It's unsafe for everyone.
• 36:01
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 36:04
  I have a client, again, the holiday season, she was talking to me the other day about, just all the socializing that happens at the holidays.
• 36:12
  And her husband's a very social creature and she's really not.
• 36:15
  And she's like, you know, I don't want to create this tension between us because he doesn't think that I'm willing to spend time with him and his friends.
• 36:25
  And so we talked through it.
• 36:26
  And ultimately what she decided was number one, she was going to have a conversation with him that I have a limit with how much of this I can do in the season.
• 36:35
  And if I go past that limit, it hurts everybody because I don't feel like my best self and that I don't show up for you and all the things.
• 36:42
  So this is what I'm thinking for this year.
• 36:44
  This is how many parties I'm willing to go to.
• 36:47
  And when we go to these parties, I'm going to take my own car.
• 36:50
  We're going to drive in two separate cars because if you decide you want to stay, that's fine.
• 36:57
  But if I want to leave, I want to have the freedom to do that.
• 37:01
  And so it just kind of gave them both what they were looking for.
• 37:04
  You know, she's still showing up to these social occasions, but she's also putting a limit on the amount of time she's willing to be in these situations because she knows she has a limit.
• 37:14
  And I think that's just so respectful.
• 37:17
  And they found a really great solution to that.
• 37:21
  Now, of course the work is in the practice.
• 37:23
  Yeah, but the other thing is that she knows that energy wise, this is as much as energy that she can give to his need.
• 37:32
  And then she needs to be able to go home or go to her place and be able to recharge herself so that she can show up in her best way.
• 37:41
  Absolutely.
• 37:43
  Absolutely.
• 37:44
  And at midlife there is so much opportunity to, again, be boundaryless.
• 37:50
  And then really suffer the consequences of that because we are working to, you know, get our children, if we have children, to, a place where they can parent themselves.
• 38:02
  There, there's a lot that goes into that.
• 38:04
  We're often parenting our parents at this age because they need us.
• 38:08
  And my father right now is going through a bunch of medical stuff and oh my gosh, it's been so hard.
• 38:14
  But even with that I have to set limits because if I don't, I will completely give up my entire self over to it and I will lose myself.
• 38:25
  And I will blow up my marriage and I will not be there for my son and I can't have a business.
• 38:29
  Like all of those things would be the consequence of that.
• 38:33
  And so it is how can I do both and rather than either or.
• 38:39
  It's not that I can show up for him or not, it's that I can show up but I have limits and I have to respect that.
• 38:47
  Yeah.
• 38:47
  And it still shows that you are there, you're there to provide the support, but you're also there for yourself to be the person you want to be, to perform at your best.
• 39:00
  Definitely.
• 39:02
  Yeah, and it's so hard to perform at our best when we are feeling resentful or we have no resources left because we've not only spent all our resources, we overspent.
• 39:10
  And so the body's depleted, our brain is depleted, we're emotionally all over the place.
• 39:16
  And then how does that bode well for anything in our life?
• 39:18
  It doesn't.
• 39:20
  Yeah, so, Courtney, based on the conversation that we had here today, what is the one thing that you would want a listener or a viewer to hold close to her heart and begin to implement in 2025?
• 39:41
  I would say to remember that boundaries are, I always say it's a love language, right?
• 39:48
  It's a way of expressing love to a relationship, whether that's with someone else or with yourself.
• 39:54
  And I just want to maybe give a caveat to that because I think a lot of women I have worked with over the years really struggle with self-love.
• 40:03
  So they'll do it for someone else, but they won't do it for themselves.
• 40:06
  So setting boundaries for themselves out of self-love can feel tricky.
• 40:11
  So we start with self-respect.
• 40:13
  Boundaries are an act of self-respect.
• 40:17
  And recognizing, again, that simply I only have so many resources in a day.
• 40:22
  And I have to be willing to practice constraint in certain areas in order to spend those resources in a way that keeps me in integrity with myself.
• 40:34
  So, when self-love feels too big, start with self-respect.
• 40:38
  And it's really hard to have self-respect when we aren't actually setting or abiding by boundaries.
• 40:45
  We can definitely declare boundaries, but if we aren't actually following through with boundaries, we lose self-respect.
• 40:52
  So it's really both, it's recognizing where I need to set boundaries.
• 40:56
  There's a very beautiful, compassionate, and loving way to implement boundaries.
• 41:03
  But also remembering that if I don't follow through with boundaries, I lose self-trust.
• 41:09
  It chips away at your self-trust because you're consistently breaking promises you've made to yourself.
• 41:15
  And that sucks because without self-trust, you're going to live a pretty small life.
• 41:21
  Because you're not going to feel comfortable doing the things that are on your heart.
• 41:25
  You're not going to feel comfortable being fully who you are.
• 41:30
  And I always say the world needs you to be fully you.
• 41:33
  Whatever that looks like, right?
• 41:35
  Like whatever your full expression is, we need that.
• 41:38
  So we need you to feel confident.
• 41:40
  We need you to have buckets of self-trust and that starts with self-respect and boundaries are a huge part of that.
• 41:48
  Courtney, what projects are you currently working on and when can we expect to see these projects?
• 41:55
  Oh, that's a great question.
• 41:57
  I would say the thing that I'm like most fired up about right now is I do have a book coming out next year in November of 2025.
• 42:04
  And it's called The Consistency Code.
• 42:06
  And it's really all about self-leadership in the health arena.
• 42:10
  So a lot of what we've talked about here.
• 42:12
  But that's something that I'm super I mean, it's been years in the making.
• 42:16
  I mean book writing is not for the faint of heart, I will tell you that.
• 42:20
  But yeah, I would say that's the biggest thing like my business is always humming along and I you know, I run a really incredible online community and all the things but the book feels like a real passion project and kind of like all this work that I've been doing for so many years finally being like summarized into, you know, 250 pages, which, which feels exciting.
• 42:44
  Yeah.
• 42:45
  And for the people that want to begin to work with you, how can people begin to work with you?
• 42:52
  Yeah, I have lots of entry points to my work because I think that, we need that, right?
• 42:57
  When we first hear, like, maybe this conversation sparked something in someone today.
• 43:02
  But they don't want to make a huge investment of time, energy, and money, but they want to find out more.
• 43:07
  I do have a podcast called Grace and Grit, that, it, we're almost at 400 episodes, so we've been around the block for a while.
• 43:13
  And we talk about all things women's health.
• 43:16
  From pelvic health to mental health to hormonal health and everything in between.
• 43:20
  And I also have a community called Rumble and Rise.
• 43:24
  It's a really easy entry point to start in with self-leadership work.
• 43:29
  I don't ever tell you what to do.
• 43:31
  I don't give you a list of rules and regulations.
• 43:34
  I'm not gonna tell you what diet to be on or what exercise program to do.
• 43:38
  I have a lot of education in those areas, so I can definitely.
• 43:41
  But really the space is about getting clear on the woman you want to be in the second half of your life and then starting to align every ounce of your life to be her.
• 43:54
  And so it's, it's not, it goes way beyond just what you're putting in your mouth and how much you're moving your body.
• 44:00
  It's how you think, it's how you respond to stress.
• 44:03
  It's how you deal with challenges.
• 44:04
  It's how you communicate with other people.
• 44:07
  It's all the things.
• 44:08
  So I would say those would probably be the best places.
• 44:11
  And so the Rumble and Rise, is that like a one-on-one or is that a community?
• 44:16
  It's a community.
• 44:17
  So we have group coaching calls.
• 44:19
  There's a master class on the first Monday of every month.
• 44:22
  And then there's opportunity to come to many coaching calls throughout the month to ask questions and dive deeper into the work and kind of normalize the concepts that we talk about.
• 44:32
  And then of course I do one-to-one work.
• 44:34
  A lot of my clients come from that community.
• 44:37
  But I partly started the community, because I've been coaching for so long and I had so many clients that were like, you know, I feel like I don't need as much one-to-one coaching anymore, but I still want to have an incubator.
• 44:52
  I still want to have a space.
• 44:54
  And so I heard that enough times that we finally launched this.
• 44:58
  I think we've been five years now.
• 44:59
  So Rumble and Rise has been around for five years.
• 45:04
  Yeah Grace and Grit, when can people listen to a brand new episode?
• 45:09
  Yeah, so I, launch brand new episodes biweekly.
• 45:12
  So we only do every other week.
• 45:14
  And this is a boundary I had to set with myself, by the way, because I was weekly for many, many years and realized that there's so many things I want to be dedicating energy to in my business, but I also have a family and I also have other things in my life that I care about and want to spend time on.
• 45:32
  So I had to look at how can I continue this but also, maybe pull back a little bit from the expectation of how often we're launching.
• 45:42
  So we do, biweekly, so the next episode will be out next week.
• 45:46
  But by the time you listen to this, I'm not sure where that lands.
• 45:49
  So, um, just know it's a biweekly show.
• 45:52
  And if you subscribe to it, you'll get notifications of when the newest one launches.
• 45:57
  Great.
• 45:58
  Where can people learn more about you?
• 46:01
  The website's probably the best place, just graceandgrit.com.
• 46:05
  We have lots of free resources on there.
• 46:07
  Certainly you can access the podcast through that page.
• 46:10
  And yeah, you can read my bio, you can see testimonials from clients.
• 46:14
  You can find out more about the community.
• 46:16
  All kinds of good stuff.
• 46:18
  Yeah, do you have a YouTube channel too?
• 46:19
  Wow, you know, it's funny you ask that.
• 46:21
  So this is one of my goals for 2025 is to definitely show up and actually utilize my YouTube page.
• 46:28
  The only thing I've ever done with YouTube is we take the video of all of our podcasts and we upload it, but we don't edit it.
• 46:36
  It's it's it's just literally you're watching a talking head or if I'm doing an interview you're watching two talking heads.
• 46:42
  I am definitely working on changing that and beefing it up and kind of using that honestly as my main social media channel going into next year.
• 46:52
  So great question.
• 46:54
  I'm on the pathway to get there.
• 46:55
  You can definitely go there now and see a lot of old podcast episodes but it will probably look radically different just a few months from now.
• 47:03
  That's great.
• 47:04
  Courtney.
• 47:05
  And a huge inspiration for that, by the way.
• 47:07
  I went to your YouTube channel and I was like, oh, she's got it down.
• 47:11
  Like is great.
• 47:11
  Like, really, the editing, the, the topics, the, you're doing a great job.
• 47:16
  Oh, thank you so much It's been a lot of work.
• 47:20
  Lots of doubt.
• 47:22
  No doubt.
• 47:23
  Courtney, thank you so much for coming on the show I will include all of your information in the show notes so that people will not miss a beat and most importantly they got to go to your website because the photos are fun.
• 47:36
  The language, because copy is you're wording on every page, it is for a woman in midlife as myself.
• 47:44
  It is a yes, yes, yes.
• 47:46
  You have nailed it.
• 47:47
  People have to read Thank you for that.
• 47:50
  Awesome.
• 47:51
  Thank you for having me.
• 47:52
  It was great to spend time with you.
• 47:53
  Great spending time with you you too.
• 47:55
  Thank you.
• 47:56
  Remember how we started today wondering if boundaries might make you feel like the fun police?
• 48:02
  Well, as Courtney shared, it's the exact opposite.
• 48:06
  Boundaries are your ticket to freedom, self-respect, and living a life that is alignment with what truly matters to you.
• 48:15
  If today's episode inspired you visit createthebestme.com/ep096 to learn more about Courtney Townley and explore links to her podcast, community, and upcoming projects.
• 48:31
  You'll find everything you need to start your journey toward self-leadership, vitality, and complete wellness.
• 48:39
  Until then, keep dreaming big, take care of yourself, and remember, you are beautiful, strong, and capable of creating the best version of yourself.
• 48:49
  Thank you for watching.
• 48:51
  Catch you next time.
• 48:52
  Bye for now.