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From Complaints to Confidence: Keys to Positive Mindset · No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women

• 0:05
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violets.
• 0:07
  Mary: I'm your host, Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner.
• 0:13
  Mary: I've created a space where we celebrate the intuition and power of women who want to break free from limiting narratives.
• 0:20
  Mary: We'll explore all realms of wellness, what it means to take up space unapologetically, and how your essential nature is key to living life on your terms.
• 0:30
  Mary: It's time to own your space, trust your nature, and flourish.
• 0:34
  Mary: Let's dive in.
• 0:35
  Mary: Hey Violets, welcome to the show.
• 0:39
  Mary: When I started my career, I was a school counselor in a building with 450 high school freshmen.
• 0:45
  Mary: I was 24 years old.
• 0:47
  Mary: I had a wonderfully supportive principal, and I work with some of my favorite teacher co-workers ever.
• 0:52
  Mary: However, there was one person, let's just say that if cartoons were real, she would have had a raining black cloud over her head everywhere she went.
• 1:02
  Mary: From the minute she walked into the faculty room, we all needed umbrellas.
• 1:06
  Mary: Negative.
• 1:07
  Mary: I timed my breaks so that I wouldn't be there when she was, and sometimes I even ate lunch elsewhere.
• 1:13
  Mary: Even students commented that they were afraid to ask questions because she was so sarcastic.
• 1:18
  Mary: That was a couple decades ago, and I can still remember what it was like and how much I went out of my way to avoid it at the time.
• 1:26
  Mary: Well, recently I started to recognize that I was in a negative mindset loop.
• 1:30
  Mary: Minor annoyances started to feel like personal affronts.
• 1:34
  Mary: I was acting like I believed the world had it in for me specifically.
• 1:38
  Mary: Well, that was just my inner gremlin.
• 1:41
  Mary: In fact, my life is pretty great.
• 1:43
  Mary: In light of what I read in the headlines every day, my inner gremlin needs to go pound sand.
• 1:49
  Mary: And really, there's always something to be grateful for, even though sometimes it's very hard to find.
• 1:55
  Mary: And you feel like socking someone in the nose for suggesting it.
• 1:58
  Mary: And there's also the other end of the spectrum, toxic positivity.
• 2:02
  Mary: Although that's a bit overblown.
• 2:05
  Mary: I have thoughts, but I'll save those for another day.
• 2:08
  Mary: Suffice it to say, there's a difference between positive vibes only and realistically focusing on what's the best that can happen.
• 2:16
  Mary: So I'm going to explore the idea of mindset shifts, including how complaining might be holding you back, with my guest today, Cheryl Fisher.
• 2:24
  Mary: Cheryl is the host of Mind Your Midlife Podcast, ranking in the top 2% of podcasts globally, which she created to help midlife women feel confident in their body, their decisions, and their goals to create a midlife they love.
• 2:39
  Mary: As a certified life and mindset coach, Cheryl works with clients one-on-one and in group masterclass sessions to shift the narrative that tells us that we're stuck or not enough to one that allows us to move forward towards self-belief and success.
• 2:54
  Mary: She's a speaker and trainer, presenting and moderating at industry events and providing corporate training classes around the world.
• 3:00
  Mary: Cheryl is a wife, a mom, and a grandmom and enjoys reading, golf, happy hours, yes, and travel.
• 3:07
  Mary: Welcome to No Shrinking Violet, Cheryl.
• 3:10
  Mary: Thank you so much, Mary.
• 3:12
  Mary: I'm excited to be here.
• 3:13
  Mary: Well, I'm looking forward to this discussion because, like I said, I recently had to grab myself and pull myself out of a negative, negative mindset.
• 3:23
  Mary: But I always like to start off with having my guests talk a little bit about, I'll say sharing the highlights of your story and how that got you to what you do today.
• 3:34
  Cheryl: Absolutely.
• 3:35
  Cheryl: And and I'm so glad you're asking that because as you were telling the story of this particular teacher, I used to be a teacher.
• 3:43
  Cheryl: I taught high school for 12 years.
• 3:45
  Cheryl: And I feel like I want to clarify that that was not me that you were talking about.
• 3:49
  Cheryl: No, it was not Cheryl.
• 3:51
  Cheryl: But I know exactly what you are talking about.
• 3:55
  Cheryl: So I have worked in the corporate world.
• 3:59
  Cheryl: And when I had kids, I realized that I loved the training aspect of my job.
• 4:07
  Cheryl: And I made the switch to teaching.
• 4:10
  Cheryl: And that was a great way for me to be around in the summer when they were growing up and it was working well.
• 4:15
  Cheryl: And all of that matters because I started to hit burnout while I was teaching.
• 4:22
  Cheryl: And having been in that world, you know, that's kind of an easy thing to happen.
• 4:28
  Cheryl: It's a rough job and rewarding.
• 4:30
  Cheryl: And so I started a little business on the side.
• 4:34
  Cheryl: And that is when I learned about mindset, because I used to kind of poo-poo all the touchy-feely personal development stuff.
• 4:46
  Cheryl: I thought it was silly.
• 4:48
  Cheryl: I thought it wasn't necessary.
• 4:50
  Cheryl: And I was wrong.
• 4:51
  Cheryl: And I learned that if I wanted to have my own business, even if I was going to do it on the side and it was not going to be huge, I had to be able to make goals and I had to be able to think bigger and uh be my own boss.
• 5:03
  Cheryl: And all of that was about how I thought about it.
• 5:06
  Cheryl: And I'm thankful for all of that because that's how I ended up getting into coaching because I realized I wanted to share this with other people as well.
• 5:16
  Cheryl: And that's where the podcast came from, also.
• 5:19
  Mary: Yeah.
• 5:20
  Mary: Well, when I read some of your information and you talked about exactly what you're saying, like you go from working for someone else and you're good at it.
• 5:28
  Mary: You know, that was very much echoes where I came from.
• 5:32
  Mary: And then you decide, okay, I'm going to do this thing.
• 5:35
  Mary: And you know you have the skills, but there is this insidious voice sometimes that you're trying to, I think you think you have the same benchmarks and you don't, because success is very hard to measure.
• 5:51
  Mary: And I think part of that is identity.
• 5:54
  Mary: Like we have this identity, and I want to also segue eventually into this idea of midlife because I think as women, especially, we have all of these identities.
• 6:03
  Mary: We are a mom, we are a worker, we're a wife, we're, you know, all of these things.
• 6:08
  Mary: And then we get to midlife and a lot of things shift, or we we do what you're talking about.
• 6:12
  Mary: We'll change careers or work, especially working for ourselves, and all that shifts.
• 6:19
  Cheryl: Yeah, absolutely.
• 6:20
  Cheryl: And it, I guess the way I would have described it for me is I was a really good employee.
• 6:27
  Cheryl: I knew how to do the project well and do what my boss wanted, and I knew how to prioritize and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 6:35
  Cheryl: And then nobody was telling me what to do.
• 6:38
  Cheryl: And nobody was telling me what success was, and nobody was telling me what the next step was or how to do something differently because it wasn't quite working.
• 6:49
  Cheryl: I had to figure it all out myself.
• 6:52
  Cheryl: And it's really easy to fall into the trap of either just thinking that you can't do it or kind of just berating yourself every time you have a problem.
• 7:02
  Cheryl: And that just makes it worse.
• 7:05
  Mary: Yeah.
• 7:06
  Mary: And I think too, when you go from you know how to earn a paycheck, you know, like there's especially, I'm gonna say, especially as a teacher, you know, you you know these are the objectives, even if you can't always affect the change on everyone that you want to, you know what you need to do to hit your mark.
• 7:26
  Mary: And I think when you wade into something different, whatever it is, and I'll just use the business idea because we both have experienced it.
• 7:35
  Mary: I know for me, I felt like I had to do it exactly like somebody else did.
• 7:40
  Mary: Or, and that didn't fit because, you know, that, and I think there we can do that comparison.
• 7:47
  Mary: And well, look at this person, she's so successful.
• 7:50
  Mary: Why can't I do that?
• 7:53
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 7:53
  Cheryl: At one point I worked with a coach to help me kind of move forward in that.
• 7:59
  Cheryl: And I said to her, I don't see anyone who looks like, not looks like physically, but just anyone who's like me doing this in a in a big way, like I want to.
• 8:13
  Cheryl: And so I don't see how I can do it.
• 8:15
  Cheryl: And she said, That's why you can do it.
• 8:17
  Cheryl: You need to be there.
• 8:19
  Cheryl: Why do you have to be just like anybody else?
• 8:21
  Cheryl: You need to do it yourself.
• 8:23
  Cheryl: And that was a big aha moment for me.
• 8:27
  Cheryl: And again, something that is not the case really in a structured school or corporate world where you all have a boss.
• 8:35
  Cheryl: It doesn't matter if your boss is like you or not.
• 8:37
  Cheryl: They're your boss.
• 8:38
  Cheryl: You do what they say.
• 8:40
  Mary: Yeah.
• 8:41
  Mary: You know, and I want to backtrack a second because I make the assumption that when we say mindset, everyone knows what we mean.
• 8:48
  Mary: How do you explain that to someone?
• 8:51
  Cheryl: It's a tough word, isn't it?
• 8:52
  Cheryl: It it encompasses so many things.
• 8:54
  Cheryl: I explain it as the way we look at the world and the way we speak to ourselves.
• 9:04
  Cheryl: Because it's kind of both.
• 9:07
  Cheryl: There's a there's a running wow, I don't know why I'm losing my words.
• 9:13
  Cheryl: There's a running conversation in our heads going all the time with ourselves.
• 9:18
  Cheryl: And if you don't think that's the case, if you pause and and kind of just listen, you'll know.
• 9:24
  Cheryl: And so that affects our mood, it affects our emotions, and it affects how we look at the world.
• 9:32
  Cheryl: And then you can interact with the world in two very different ways, depending on kind of what you're expecting and how you're thinking about things.
• 9:40
  Cheryl: And so it's it's inside and outside.
• 9:44
  Mary: And I would contend that most women have very different outsides versus their insides.
• 9:49
  Mary: We come across, we have to be pleasing, and we smile.
• 9:52
  Mary: And I think a lot of times on the inside, it's totally opposite.
• 9:57
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 9:57
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 9:58
  Cheryl: We are usually very tough on ourselves.
• 10:02
  Cheryl: And I suppose if it's a situation like you're describing where we feel like we have to be pleasant and we have to smile, we could be maybe legitimately thinking in our heads, oh, this person is so annoying or whatever.
• 10:15
  Cheryl: I mean, that's okay.
• 10:16
  Cheryl: You're allowed to have an opinion.
• 10:18
  Cheryl: But the problem that a lot of us deal with is the way we're speaking to ourselves.
• 10:25
  Cheryl: Not that we're thinking somebody's annoying, but that constantly, constantly inside our heads is why did you do that?
• 10:33
  Cheryl: Why did you wear that?
• 10:34
  Cheryl: You don't look very nice today.
• 10:35
  Cheryl: Why are you gaining weight?
• 10:37
  Cheryl: Like, why are you so tired?
• 10:39
  Cheryl: I don't understand why you never go to bed on time.
• 10:41
  Cheryl: Like, what?
• 10:42
  Cheryl: You know, and it's you know, why do you always look like ugly in pictures?
• 10:46
  Cheryl: You look horrible in that picture.
• 10:48
  Cheryl: Things that you would never say to anyone else.
• 10:50
  Mary: No, correct.
• 10:51
  Mary: And I do find that my clients have trouble hearing that.
• 10:55
  Mary: It's so part of our fabric that we have trouble hearing it.
• 11:00
  Mary: How do you help people kind of isolate that and recognize it?
• 11:06
  Cheryl: It takes practice because the key is to recognize it and also not berate ourselves for doing it.
• 11:17
  Cheryl: So it can't be like a double whammy.
• 11:20
  Cheryl: If I realize I'm speaking mean things to myself all day, then I'm mad at myself for doing that, which is the problem.
• 11:27
  Cheryl: So the first thing is I try to have my clients get in the habit of just doing a little pause once or twice a day.
• 11:38
  Cheryl: They might give themselves a reminder to do it.
• 11:41
  Cheryl: To just kind of pause and ask, okay, how am I feeling right now?
• 11:45
  Cheryl: And that is surprisingly challenging to figure out because we're not used to thinking about feelings besides like happy, sad, mad.
• 11:58
  Mary: Yeah.
• 11:59
  Cheryl: But maybe you're frustrated or you're feeling kind of dejected, or you, you know, there's more words.
• 12:06
  Cheryl: And then if we can get in the habit of figuring that out, then we can say, well, huh, why am I feeling like that right at this moment?
• 12:15
  Cheryl: And we can tune in to whatever's going on in here.
• 12:19
  Cheryl: And the reason I try to help clients learn how to do this is this was a big deal for me.
• 12:26
  Cheryl: I I can, in fact, remember a situation where I was walking up the stairs in my house and I was just kind of oh, like, what everything's bad.
• 12:36
  Cheryl: And I just paused and I thought, wait, why is it?
• 12:40
  Cheryl: Why do I feel like that?
• 12:42
  Cheryl: And I realized that in my head, I was just running and worrying over this situation with some people in my family, and whatever I was telling myself wasn't even happening.
• 12:54
  Cheryl: It was a worry, you know, maybe.
• 12:56
  Cheryl: Yep.
• 12:57
  Cheryl: And I thought, wait, is that why I'm feeling like this?
• 13:02
  Cheryl: So just starting to even recognize it is good.
• 13:07
  Cheryl: And and just with the caveat that we don't want to tell ourselves, I'm such an idiot.
• 13:13
  Cheryl: Why would I speak to myself that way?
• 13:15
  Cheryl: It's how our brains work.
• 13:16
  Cheryl: It's not, it's not a thing that you're doing wrong.
• 13:20
  Mary: Yeah, we just I think get used to doing it and not recognizing it.
• 13:24
  Mary: But I know one of the other things that you talk about is being negative in conversation.
• 13:29
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 13:30
  Cheryl: The complaining.
• 13:32
  Mary: Yeah, the complaining in conversation.
• 13:34
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 13:35
  Cheryl: So this is also something that I learned myself.
• 13:39
  Cheryl: And it had to do with my years as a teacher.
• 13:42
  Cheryl: And I don't tell this story to well, actually, I have two different situations, I guess, where I realized this.
• 13:49
  Cheryl: But one of them was when I was teaching.
• 13:50
  Cheryl: And I don't tell this story to make it sound like all schools are negative environments or anything like that.
• 13:56
  Cheryl: Teaching is hard and teachers need to vent sometimes.
• 14:00
  Cheryl: And I realized that when I would go into the workroom, all of our conversations would be about how the copier was broken, or the traffic was bad, or the kids wouldn't pay attention, or I have more papers to grade.
• 14:15
  Cheryl: Oh my gosh, so many papers to grade, or the weather is terrible, blah, all of it, every bit of it.
• 14:21
  Cheryl: And that's just how we talked to each other.
• 14:24
  Cheryl: And I'm not sure that it made me feel bad.
• 14:29
  Cheryl: That was just how we talked, but it did make me focus on that all the time.
• 14:35
  Cheryl: And as I was kind of realizing that, it was around the same time I had started this business, and I was having a conversation with my husband one day.
• 14:45
  Cheryl: We were just standing in the kitchen having a conversation.
• 14:48
  Cheryl: I was telling him about how the business was going.
• 14:50
  Cheryl: And he said to me, You know, if you don't like it, you could just stop.
• 14:54
  Cheryl: And I went, Why would I do that?
• 14:59
  Cheryl: I do like it.
• 15:00
  Cheryl: And he said, All you ever do is complain about it.
• 15:04
  Cheryl: And I didn't even know that.
• 15:07
  Cheryl: I did not realize.
• 15:09
  Cheryl: And that was really a wake-up call to start paying attention to what is actually coming out of my mouth.
• 15:19
  Cheryl: Because if all I'm doing is saying negative stuff, it is going to affect what's going on in my head, and it's going to affect all the actions I'm taking.
• 15:32
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 15:32
  Cheryl: And the reason I think this is so powerful is it also affects what we, how would I, how will I say it?
• 15:40
  Cheryl: What we sort of look for in the world.
• 15:43
  Cheryl: Um, so it's easy to have a conversation where you're talking about the weather.
• 15:49
  Cheryl: Oh, it's raining.
• 15:50
  Cheryl: Yeah, it's raining.
• 15:51
  Cheryl: Oh, the traffic was bad.
• 15:52
  Cheryl: Yeah, the traffic was bad.
• 15:53
  Cheryl: Oh, we feel good, we agree, we have this in common.
• 15:57
  Cheryl: But now we're sort of bringing all of together, we're going down and now we're focusing on the bad.
• 16:04
  Cheryl: You know what I mean?
• 16:05
  Cheryl: And it's just a habit.
• 16:06
  Mary: Yeah.
• 16:07
  Mary: It's so funny you took you mention your husband because I realize that he's the safe place for me to really, like when I'm texting him during the day, my texts can be much more negative.
• 16:19
  Mary: I use a lot of um, we'll say adjectives that maybe I don't need to put in there.
• 16:24
  Mary: And I realize, like, first of all, I don't need to hand him all that crap.
• 16:28
  Mary: Like, that's my crap.
• 16:30
  Mary: And I started to intentionally like hit the backspace button and take out some of maybe they were swear words, take out some of that and just present the fact instead of how I feel about the fact.
• 16:43
  Mary: And I realized, I think that made me feel less angry or frustrated or whatever was happening.
• 16:51
  Mary: And I'm sure that he also appreciated receiving perhaps an emoji instead of a swear word.
• 16:59
  Mary: So I think that idea of being careful, who are your safe people to vent to?
• 17:05
  Mary: Because that's not really helping both of you.
• 17:10
  Mary: And I think, again, I want to bring up we don't always have to be positive.
• 17:14
  Mary: It's not like, oh, just, you know, good vibes only.
• 17:17
  Mary: Yeah, I think try to focus on the things that aren't the crappy parts, but we do need space to be able to legitimately, especially as women, complain or present something.
• 17:30
  Mary: But I think we need to be careful how often that just creeps into our everyday stuff.
• 17:36
  Cheryl: I couldn't agree more.
• 17:37
  Cheryl: And I think you're right about family.
• 17:41
  Cheryl: And we're talking about our husbands, but it could be, you know, sibling or best friend or whatever.
• 17:46
  Cheryl: There's there's probably somebody that we know they love us no matter what happens and no matter what we say, and they are the safe space.
• 17:54
  Cheryl: And at the same time, number one, that's not always great for them to have to deal with that, as you said.
• 18:00
  Cheryl: But number two, I think we need some fences around the venting.
• 18:04
  Cheryl: And this is something that people ask me a lot.
• 18:06
  Cheryl: Like, do you think nobody could ever vent?
• 18:09
  Cheryl: You should never say anything negative.
• 18:11
  Cheryl: Well, no, I don't think that.
• 18:13
  Cheryl: We do need to vent.
• 18:15
  Cheryl: We do need to sometimes processing verbally is a real thing.
• 18:20
  Cheryl: And I think we need to give ourselves a little bit of time and say, I need to vent with whoever we're talking about, and we do it, and then we stop.
• 18:32
  Cheryl: And that's, you know, it's it takes some practice to learn how to do that and then turn it off.
• 18:39
  Cheryl: But it's okay as long as it's not all the time.
• 18:42
  Mary: Yeah.
• 18:43
  Mary: And I know there are people that will actually say to someone, do you have space for this right now?
• 18:49
  Mary: Because, you know, and I think being aware, we I think as you know, we have a friend that probably is the kind of the receiver of that for us.
• 18:58
  Mary: It's the extra safe person.
• 18:59
  Mary: And I think sometimes, especially if we're going through some stuff, that seesaw isn't even.
• 19:06
  Mary: It really can tip one way.
• 19:07
  Mary: And I think again, being aware of what is that energy?
• 19:11
  Mary: How am I approaching that relationship?
• 19:14
  Mary: What is the energy?
• 19:15
  Mary: And I can tell you where this works for me.
• 19:17
  Mary: And this is, I still think it sounds crazy, but when I'm going into a parking situation, my first thought is, oh, there's probably not gonna be a space.
• 19:26
  Mary: And I started to just be like, I'm gonna find a space.
• 19:29
  Mary: Yeah.
• 19:29
  Mary: And almost always there is a parking space in a very short amount of time.
• 19:35
  Mary: Now, some people would call this manifesting, and I've had guests that talk about that.
• 19:40
  Mary: What you put out into the world is what you're gonna get back.
• 19:44
  Mary: What are your thoughts on that?
• 19:46
  Cheryl: So I agree that what you put out into the world is gonna affect what comes back.
• 19:51
  Cheryl: I don't know.
• 19:53
  Cheryl: I've always struggled.
• 19:55
  Cheryl: I've struggled with the I'm gonna say I'm gonna get a good parking space, so there it's gonna appear.
• 20:02
  Cheryl: If I'm being honest, I struggle with that a little bit.
• 20:05
  Cheryl: The way I interpret that is more brain science-based, probably, in that I think because I've tried the same experiment and it does work a lot.
• 20:15
  Cheryl: I think if you are basically giving your brain an instruction to go find a parking space because I believe there's going to be one there, then it's gonna see it.
• 20:26
  Cheryl: You're gonna see what you might not otherwise see because you didn't believe it was gonna happen.
• 20:33
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 20:34
  Cheryl: That's how I would interpret it.
• 20:36
  Mary: Yeah.
• 20:36
  Mary: And I think it is when we use the word manifest, it can sound very woo-woo.
• 20:41
  Mary: But you mentioned this a little bit ago.
• 20:44
  Mary: We're going to feel a certain way based on what we pay attention to.
• 20:50
  Mary: So when I have clients that seem especially caught in that negative loop, I say to them, like, you're seeing the one pile of dust in the corner.
• 20:58
  Mary: What about the rest of the room?
• 21:01
  Mary: It's sort of like when you actually are when I know for me, I entertain sometimes just to make me clean the house better.
• 21:08
  Mary: And I'll look at it and be and see things I never noticed because I'm thoroughly cleaning it.
• 21:14
  Mary: But I think sometimes because our brains are wired to keep us safe.
• 21:17
  Mary: So we we do legitimately come by the negativity, we can too often then have so many good things happen, or especially people will say a compliment or or you'll hear lots of compliments.
• 21:30
  Mary: But the one thing that wasn't the compliment, there's your dust in the corner, and you are almost shining your flashlight right on it.
• 21:37
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 21:38
  Cheryl: Yeah, absolutely.
• 21:39
  Cheryl: And our our brains have something called a reticular activating system, which means that we're taking in, I mean, I couldn't even give a number, so much different input.
• 21:51
  Cheryl: All these little pieces of information around us, your eye, all your senses are taking in this information.
• 21:56
  Cheryl: You can't possibly be paying attention to everything at the same time.
• 22:01
  Cheryl: So the reticular activating system is picking what you're gonna notice the dust in the corner or the sun in the sky, or the, you know, whatever.
• 22:10
  Cheryl: And it chooses because the brain likes to be right.
• 22:15
  Cheryl: So it picks to focus on the things that match with how you're feeling, what your subconscious brain believes is possible or true, what you're expecting.
• 22:26
  Cheryl: That's what we notice.
• 22:27
  Cheryl: And so that's where that comes from.
• 22:31
  Cheryl: That I only see the pile of dust, or I see everything looks so nice.
• 22:36
  Cheryl: It's it's from what we expect.
• 22:39
  Mary: Yeah.
• 22:39
  Mary: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Mary: Yeah.
• 22:40
  Mary: So I think rewiring that, yeah.
• 22:43
  Mary: That when especially when we start the negative, because some of us, again, we come by the negative legitimately.
• 22:50
  Mary: We've had some stuff happen.
• 22:51
  Mary: Yeah.
• 22:52
  Mary: So it's a little bit of a defense mechanism.
• 22:54
  Mary: It's all, you know, we don't need to go psychobabble.
• 22:57
  Mary: But I think um trying to change that is difficult.
• 23:01
  Mary: So, first, positive affirmations, yes or no.
• 23:05
  Mary: And then what are some ways we can start to tweak and just soften some of that inner dialogue?
• 23:12
  Cheryl: So I'm gonna say yes on affirmations, but I'm gonna make it a yes and as if we're in an improv.
• 23:18
  Cheryl: Yes, and affirmations are valuable if they are attached to emotion.
• 23:26
  Cheryl: And so I think the frustration that we have with affirmations sometimes is that we just go, oh, today's a great day, and I'm so great, and that's not gonna help.
• 23:39
  Cheryl: But if we can come up with an affirmation or two that make us feel really good when we say or listen to them, that's how we take that information in.
• 23:50
  Cheryl: And the repetition does help to kind of save it in our brains.
• 23:56
  Cheryl: So, yes, and with emotion.
• 23:59
  unknown: Okay.
• 24:00
  Cheryl: And the other little tool that I love, um, are you familiar with glimmers?
• 24:06
  Mary: Yes.
• 24:06
  Cheryl: Yeah, tell us more about that.
• 24:08
  Cheryl: I love the concept of glimmers because especially when presenting the idea of some of these change your mindset type of tools to people for the first time, they sometimes are skeptical.
• 24:22
  Cheryl: If you're listening, maybe you're feeling a bit skeptical.
• 24:26
  Cheryl: And that's okay.
• 24:27
  Cheryl: So a glimmer is, I would call it a moment of joy or a moment of happiness.
• 24:33
  Cheryl: It's when you notice just a tiny little thing that makes you happy.
• 24:39
  Cheryl: And so it could be your coffee tastes great, or you walked out your door and oh, the air feels amazing, or just tiny things.
• 24:49
  Cheryl: The power in that is that if we start to look for them, then number one, I guess there's two things.
• 24:58
  Cheryl: Number one, we have all these tiny moments of joy throughout the day, but number two, we start training our brains to look for them.
• 25:05
  Cheryl: And so gradually over time, now we're looking for the good stuff as opposed to the bad stuff, or maybe in addition to, because as you said, our brains are trying to keep us safe.
• 25:16
  Cheryl: But if we can mix in the good stuff, it really can change the way we interact with the world over time.
• 25:23
  Mary: And I think we sometimes have an inaccurate idea of reality.
• 25:28
  Mary: And I what I mean by that is we think that if we take care of all of these things, we're just going to be happy all the time.
• 25:35
  Mary: And we we don't really arrive at happiness.
• 25:39
  Mary: You know, I think we it's a it's a back and forth.
• 25:44
  Mary: I mean, every day is an up and down.
• 25:45
  Mary: So if we can tease apart a joy versus happiness versus contentment, those are all really different goals.
• 25:53
  Mary: And joy, I think we think joy is like the big one, but how you describe it is how I think of it.
• 25:59
  Mary: It's that one moment you that the light will hit something perfectly.
• 26:03
  Mary: And you just feel it in your heart.
• 26:05
  Mary: It's like, this is just perfect, like right now.
• 26:09
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 26:09
  Mary: Yeah.
• 26:10
  Cheryl: And it's such, it feels good.
• 26:12
  Cheryl: And I think we all recognize that it feels good.
• 26:15
  Cheryl: Like I'm picturing I have a back deck and I'll I have lights out there and I'll go out and sit there with my book or a glass of wine or something in the evening.
• 26:23
  Cheryl: And it's just like, oh, this is so nice.
• 26:25
  Cheryl: It feels good.
• 26:27
  Cheryl: I don't think we always realize the power of always looking for that and really appreciating those moments.
• 26:33
  Cheryl: Because if we teach ourselves to do that, we find them even more.
• 26:38
  Mary: Yeah.
• 26:39
  Mary: So this is a little left field, but it's another idea that I saw like when I read some information about you.
• 26:45
  Mary: And I want to see if we can pull it in.
• 26:48
  Mary: The idea of people feeling like they always need to say they're sorry.
• 26:52
  Mary: Because I think it ties in in that with if we circle back to where where we started the conversation and feeling a lot of times as women that we're supposed to be pleasing.
• 27:02
  Mary: Or so I think sometimes it tends to be women that will lead with I'm sorry, but or they'll apologize for something that's not their responsibility.
• 27:14
  Cheryl: Absolutely.
• 27:14
  Cheryl: And and let me just say, apologizing is good when there's a real thing to apologize for.
• 27:21
  Cheryl: However, so often I have a friend, and she's been working on this so much to change her habit, but I have a friend whose habit always has been before she asks a question, she says, I'm sorry.
• 27:35
  Cheryl: I'm sorry.
• 27:36
  Cheryl: What time are we gonna be there?
• 27:38
  Cheryl: I'm sorry.
• 27:38
  Cheryl: How does that work?
• 27:39
  Cheryl: I'm and I'm like, stop, stop, why are you sorry?
• 27:43
  Cheryl: But she didn't know, she didn't notice it.
• 27:46
  Cheryl: It's back to the sort of the way we habitually speak.
• 27:50
  Cheryl: It might be complaining, it might be apologizing, but it's it's making ourselves smaller when we do things like that.
• 27:59
  Cheryl: And and I would argue that sometimes even the complaining is that because if someone else is having a bad day, we're gonna make our day worse so that they feel okay about their it's just we're making ourselves smaller.
• 28:13
  Cheryl: And it it kind of shows that maybe we'd need to work a bit on self-confidence.
• 28:21
  Cheryl: If I feel like in order to ask a question, I should say I'm sorry.
• 28:26
  Cheryl: Uh it's disempowering.
• 28:29
  Mary: Yeah.
• 28:30
  Cheryl: And I I mean, I think the good thing is just to recognize it, honestly.
• 28:34
  Cheryl: And interestingly, some of these things you can switch to gratitude.
• 28:39
  Cheryl: So instead of saying, I'm so sorry if you're a few minutes late, even though I guess maybe that's a real thing to apologize for, you could say, Thank you so much for waiting.
• 28:48
  Mary: Yeah.
• 28:48
  Mary: Totally different.
• 28:49
  Mary: Great reframe.
• 28:50
  Mary: Yeah.
• 28:51
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 28:52
  Cheryl: And the asking of a question, we can drop the I'm sorry completely.
• 28:56
  Cheryl: It doesn't need to be there.
• 28:58
  Cheryl: Ask the question.
• 28:59
  Cheryl: Say thank you for the answer.
• 29:01
  Cheryl: You know, it's it's it's recognizing it that really does kind of help speed us along to changing that habit.
• 29:09
  Mary: Yeah.
• 29:10
  unknown: Yeah.
• 29:10
  Mary: And I know your focus in your work is mostly women in midlife.
• 29:14
  Mary: And I wanted to find that.
• 29:16
  Mary: I've had actually women that are confused.
• 29:18
  Mary: What do you mean midlife?
• 29:19
  Mary: And for me, I feel like that's sort of early 40s to well into 60s.
• 29:25
  Mary: Is that how you think about that?
• 29:27
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 29:27
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 29:28
  Cheryl: I would say most of the women that I'm talking to on the podcast slash working with are 40s and 50s.
• 29:34
  Cheryl: So it's quite a that's a big range.
• 29:35
  Cheryl: Yeah.
• 29:36
  Cheryl: And definitely early 60s as well.
• 29:38
  Cheryl: It's the way uh besides age, the way I define it is if you have kids, they are getting older, teens, college, out of college.
• 29:51
  Cheryl: If you have parents living, they're getting older.
• 29:55
  Cheryl: So we're getting into that sandwich period a little bit in between.
• 29:59
  Cheryl: And And you're looking ahead to retirement and you're wondering about that, and probably the perimenopause, menopause stuff is happening.
• 30:08
  Cheryl: It's just this period of time where so much is changing that it can be overwhelming.
• 30:16
  Mary: Yeah.
• 30:17
  Mary: And I also love working with women at this time because I think, and this sort of ties in with the negativity, I think we've accumulated so much stuff.
• 30:27
  Mary: We may not have had time to process it.
• 30:29
  Mary: We just carry it around.
• 30:31
  Mary: We and so the world now starts to see us differently, you know, as our children grow and our bodies change and all of these things.
• 30:39
  Mary: And I think for a long time, the the journey through menopause was put out there as something very negative.
• 30:47
  Mary: And I don't believe it is.
• 30:48
  Mary: I think there are legitimate things, but you know, I have I'm certified in um functional nutrition.
• 30:56
  Mary: So I think when you know some of that stuff, you realize, okay, I have more control than I think.
• 31:01
  Mary: But don't you feel like it's such a much more hopeful time than sometimes we believe it's gonna be?
• 31:08
  Cheryl: Yes.
• 31:08
  Cheryl: And I'm gonna give us as women who are doing exactly what you and I are doing right now, at the age we're doing it, credit for changing that.
• 31:18
  Cheryl: Because I believe there's a lot more women out there now talking about this, whether it's from a medical perspective, podcast, just general mindset.
• 31:28
  Cheryl: How do you go through midlife?
• 31:30
  Cheryl: There's just so many more people talking about it.
• 31:32
  Cheryl: And I think it used to be like not a secret, but I don't know, like nobody ever spoke about it, you know?
• 31:39
  Cheryl: I think we've changed that.
• 31:41
  Mary: Yeah.
• 31:42
  Mary: And I had a conversation not too long ago with a group of women talking about how their mothers didn't prepare them.
• 31:48
  Mary: And I, if my mom was alive, she would be 98.
• 31:52
  Mary: And I said, they didn't know.
• 31:54
  Mary: Like it was you sort of the suffering, the the idea of suffering was just, I think, accepted.
• 32:02
  Mary: And nobody compared notes because everybody thought, well, they look okay, so they must be okay, or I don't want to let my guard down and let somebody know I'm not okay.
• 32:12
  Mary: It was a very different time, and we are now just admitting here's what it's like for me.
• 32:18
  Mary: And I think what we're finding is exactly what you're doing right now.
• 32:21
  Mary: We're nodding like me too, me too.
• 32:25
  Mary: Like, I get it.
• 32:26
  Mary: It's the new me too movement.
• 32:29
  unknown: Yeah.
• 32:30
  Mary: Absolutely.
• 32:31
  Mary: It is.
• 32:32
  Mary: And I think it's very empowering.
• 32:34
  Mary: And I think it also is very hopeful because now a lot of things we've moved through it, and now we can make the next part of our life what we want to make it.
• 32:47
  Mary: Absolutely.
• 32:48
  Cheryl: Absolutely.
• 32:49
  Cheryl: And uh you're talking about nutrition, which is so powerful, it makes such a difference.
• 32:55
  Cheryl: I'm speaking about mindset.
• 32:57
  Cheryl: I've had uh various guests on my podcast who've talked about, you know, hormones and all these things that you can do.
• 33:06
  Cheryl: And there's just so much we can do to get to a point where we feel good about ourselves, we trust ourselves, we trust our gut instincts, and we look forward to the next, I don't know, 30 years.
• 33:20
  Cheryl: It's amazing.
• 33:22
  Mary: Yeah.
• 33:22
  Mary: So before I have you share more about what you do and let people know where they can find you, I want to ask a question that as a fellow podcast host, what are some of the biggest things that you've learned or been surprised about, or it in the ex because I think we started doing this sort of for the same reasons.
• 33:42
  Mary: And there have been benefits that I never imagined would happen.
• 33:47
  Mary: So I'm just curious about how you feel about that.
• 33:52
  Cheryl: That's a great question.
• 33:54
  Cheryl: So one of the things that really strikes me, I don't know if I would say this is shocking in any way, but I at the end of the episode, I always ask my guest, what's the one thing that somebody listening needs to remember?
• 34:07
  Cheryl: And what surprised me, but I love, is that at least 50% of the guests will say, be kind to yourself, give yourself grace.
• 34:19
  Cheryl: And it doesn't matter what topic we're talking about, just you just give yourself grace.
• 34:24
  Cheryl: You're amazing and be kind to yourself.
• 34:28
  Cheryl: And I love that concept.
• 34:30
  Cheryl: I mean, that's certainly a mindset powerful concept.
• 34:33
  Cheryl: And I'm fascinated how often people say that.
• 34:36
  Cheryl: And so, for so many topics, I remember the woman I had on the podcast talking about decluttering and a doctor I had on the podcast talking about menopause, both saying the same thing.
• 34:48
  Cheryl: It doesn't matter the topic.
• 34:49
  Cheryl: Just give yourself grace.
• 34:51
  Cheryl: And I think that's powerful.
• 34:53
  Mary: Yeah.
• 34:53
  Mary: Well, that's a great idea to end on.
• 34:56
  Mary: So now can you share a little bit more about what you do, what you offer, and where people can find you?
• 35:00
  Mary: And then, of course, I will link it in the show notes.
• 35:03
  Cheryl: Absolutely.
• 35:04
  Cheryl: Thank you so much for that.
• 35:06
  Cheryl: So, as you mentioned, Mind Your Midlife Podcast is on every major podcast app.
• 35:12
  Cheryl: And you can also find it at mindyourmidlifepodcast.com.
• 35:16
  Cheryl: So that's easy.
• 35:17
  Cheryl: And then my website is CherylPFisher.com, and you can have a look at coaching that I offer.
• 35:25
  Cheryl: And you can also have a look, I have a substack and a Patreon secret podcast series for subscribers.
• 35:33
  Cheryl: So I would love for people to have a look at that as well.
• 35:37
  Cheryl: And uh yeah, I guess that's me.
• 35:40
  unknown: All right.
• 35:41
  Mary: Well, thank you for the conversation.
• 35:43
  Mary: I'm so happy to have talked to you today.
• 35:46
  Mary: Thank you so much, Mary.
• 35:47
  Mary: It was fun.
• 35:48
  Mary: Sure.
• 35:49
  Mary: And thanks to everyone for listening.
• 35:51
  Mary: If you have any comments about this episode, please send me a text or there's an email in the link in the show notes.
• 35:57
  Mary: And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.