“Let everything that needs to go, go. Let everything that needs to come, come,” Tosha Silver.

Welcome to Midlife Woman Redefined, a podcast for women near retirement who are ready to step into a new chapter of freedom, travel, and fulfillment. If you’re ready to focus on figuring out who you are and what you really want, this is the place for you. Here’s your host, master certified life coach, travel addict, and midlife maven, René Washington.

Hello, midlife mavens. I am C. René Washington, your master certified life coach and midlife maven. And we are here for episode 13 of Midlife Woman Redefined.

Oh my goodness, I am so excited that today we are officially kicking off the seven-week series, End Like You Want to Begin. I set it up for you in episode 11, talking about the shoulds. Episode 11 was the should show; all of those assumptions and presumptions and judgments and who saids about how you think you have to live your life, to really examine those and to question yourself on why am I doing it this way, why does it have to be this way, does this work for me?

And then, in episode 12, it was the shit show, about tapping into why it’s so important for us to release what does not serve us. There are biological reasons to do that and there are life reasons to do that, life-altering reasons to let the crap go that’s holding you back.

And today is the question show; the question show. I have some questions for you to connect you to your big why. Why do you want change in your life? And knowing that is going to help you move into that change that you are seeking.

Before we dig into that, as we always do, we take a moment to pause and celebrate. What are you celebrating? Something that is specific to you, something that you’ve done, accomplished, achieved that is coming from you. It’s not about what somebody else did. It’s about what you did and take a moment to celebrate that.

And I really want you to connect to celebrating wherever you are right now. If you’re 40, 50, 60, 70, all of the years up to this moment right now, celebrate that you are here. You may not be living the life that you want to live. You may be deep in some crap right now. Still, take a moment to celebrate the fact that you’ve survived to this day, that you are listening to this podcast because you want to do more than survive, you want to thrive.

So if you can just see a little light, just a little sliver of light for how life can be better for you, celebrate that. That’s vision. Celebrate that. So connect to something that you can celebrate.

I am celebrating. This week, I did another TV appearance on a local talk show here, Talk of Alabama. And I am celebrating that I have let go of so much crap. You know, we look at people and we see people doing things and we think that’s because she’s blah, blah, blah or he’s this or they have this advantage.

No, I can’t tell you how terrified I was to do that TV appearance. And a year ago, I did not see myself doing it. It’s something that I wanted to do but I didn’t think it would actually happen. And the only reason that it did happen is because I let some shit go. I worked through my own crap.

I also started writing a book this week, and that is absolutely something I didn’t really see myself doing. You know, we have these desires, but then they don’t seem realistic, but they are. We really can do the things that we want to do. And I’m just so excited about this series because it’s End Like You Want to Begin, so we are going to work through all of your crap, all of the shit that you need to let go. We’re going to leave it in 2019. We’re going to leave your crap in 2019 so that you can blow out 2020. So let’s get started.

As I said, this is the question show. And the big question I have for you is who do you want to be? Who do you want to be? You know, I coach around the framework that I created, who am I, what do I want, how do I get it? And so I want you to really start tapping into who you want to be in 2020.  And I have some questions that will help you connect to that because you need to have a why. What is your big why for wanting change in your life?

If you just go about it willy-nilly – oh that sounds good, that sounds like a good idea, maybe I’ll do that – it’s okay to try things and explore.  I certainly do. I do it though from a place of knowing why. I know my big why and I coach my clients around connecting to why you want this so-called change in your life.

If you say that you want a new house, why do you want a new house? What does that house represent for you? Does it represent status, security, peace? Why do you want the thing? Because connecting to the why you want it gives you a whole lot of information. And it may not even be a house that will actually bring that to you. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.

But it’s the why on the other side of the thing that you want to connect to. So what’s your big why for who you want to be at this time in your life? And I want you to sit with yourself and answer these questions.

As we go through these next several weeks, get you a special journal, a notebook, if you use your phone, whatever you do to capture information. And then sit with yourself in a hopefully beautiful space, a space that supports introspection and reflection. Have your favorite beverage with you. Just really make this an experience that you look forward to doing and participating in.

And here are the questions. The first question is, how do you want to feel in 2020? And you know, we are taught to discount feelings. We’re taught to live in our heads. And as I have been saying on previous shows, we want to merge our thoughts with our feelings because feelings generate actions and behaviors. And that gets us consequences. So we can’t discount our feelings.

We really want to tap into our feelings. So how do you want to feel, you know, what feelings states do you want to live in for 2020? For me, I want to feel grateful. I want to feel excited about possibility in my life. I want to feel generous and giving. I want to feel calm because even though we’re letting shit go, shit keeps coming back. So I want to feel calm and confident in knowing that come what may, I can get through it. I know how to work myself through it and come out on the other side even better than before. That’s thriving. I don’t want to just survive. I want to thrive.  I want to feel confident in my yeses and my nos.

One of my coaches talks about how he makes decisions, it either has to be a hell no or a hell yes. I want to feel that confident about my decisions. I want to feel light, a lightness of being so that when I have to make a decision, I can check into my body compass and does this light me up or does this feel like a drag?

I want to feel amazed because life is even better than I could envision, life is better than what I expected. And that comes from staying open to the possibility of your life, being tuned in enough to acknowledge and recognize that things are working for your good. Things are working for your good and that we are the ones who get in the way of life being what we want it to be.

So those are some feelings that I want to have in 2020. How do you want to feel? Take a moment to jot that down.  Jot down those feeling states that you want to be in most of the time.

The next question is what would feel like a miracle for you right now? And when you answer that question, look at what you wrote, and is that an external response, something has to happen outside of your control, or did you give a response that’s internally focused, something that is within your control?

For example, if your response landed on somebody else, well, what would feel like a miracle for me is if my husband would stop leaving junk all around the house or if my husband would treat me with respect or if my boss would give me a raise or if my children would stop asking me for money. Those responses are external responses. They depend on somebody else doing something.

And that’s okay as a starting place, but you want to work back through that to a miracle that’s within your control. So take the adult children that are still in your wallet, if they would just stop asking me for money. What would feel like a miracle for me is if they would stop asking me for money.

Well, we could flip that to, what would feel like a miracle for me is my having the courage to say no, a loving no, to my children when they ask me for money, to have the confidence to tell them no, to be able to say no without feeling guilt. That would feel like a miracle for me.

See the difference?  You have agency over your life. Whatever is not going well, you have choices. You have options. I’m not saying they’re easy. It’s powerful though to always acknowledge that I have a choice. Even when we do nothing, we’re making a choice. So what would feel like a miracle for you right now?

And then go back to the list of feelings and if this miracle happened, how many of those feelings that you identified would you be able to check off that list. If this thing happened, does that align with the feelings that you identified.

So again, the questions are – the big question is who do you want to be? Who do you want to be at this time in your life? That’s going to connect you to your big why. And to get to that, responding to the question of how do you want to feel, what would feel like a miracle for you right now and how many of the feelings that you identify would that miracle check off your list?

We’re getting in alignment with who we want to be and what we’re actually doing in our lives. We want to bring those two focuses into alignment so that, as we move into the end of 2019, we are continuously releasing what’s been holding us back, continuously letting go of what’s been keeping us stuck, getting lighter and lighter.

So, over the next several weeks, I’m going to walk you through some small steps that you can take to end this year the way you want to and have the best year ever in 2020. And these steps are going to focus on helping you clean up your environment, and that’s the media you consume, the people you’re in relationship with, just what’s around you.

Adding more pleasure in your day, it is so important to not just save pleasure for special occasions like your birthday, your anniversary.  No, every day, you should incorporate pleasure into every day. We’re going to look at how we feed ourselves and how we can make that experience a much better experience for us from a physiological perspective and from a place of attentiveness to what’s going in our bodies, how we can move our bodies with love.

This is not about punishing yourself, oh I’ve got to exercise. It’s about how can I move my body, because movement opens up creativity. It opens up awareness. There are so many reasons that it is so important to move. How we can de-clutter our lives, our physical spaces, our mental spaces, because we’re going to talk about detoxing our minds and how we can show up in the world in the way we want to show up.

I have a button on my desk that I can see. It says, “Show the world what you stand for.” So this is what we’re going to be doing over the next several weeks. And most of those focuses come from the book BARE by Susan Hyatt.

You don’t have to buy the book. I highly recommend the book. And no, I don’t get anything for recommending it. It’s a great book and I am a BARE certified coach and BARE changes your life.  So I will be using this as the main resource and I will also be using the Ella Luna book, the Crossroads of Should and Must, and I’ll probably pull in some other things because I love to read.

And I love to coach, so I’m really excited about these next several weeks. And that ends the question hour. Do take the time. Gift yourself the time to respond to these questions. Remember, we are in the End Like You Want to Begin series and I want 2020 to be your best year yet, so let’s do this work.

And as I said earlier, today is the day to choose another giveaway winner. And remember, I’m all about messaging, so I am picking another winner from the beautiful piece of ceramic pottery that Leigh Barnes created and that I purchased from her. And so I’m just channeling all this creativity, this new life design, this redefining of your life, your reinvention in everything I do for this podcast.

So I am choosing a winner from the dish, closing my eyes, picking a winner. And the winner is Deal Queen. So, I will find out who that is. And remember, the giveaway prize now has been changed from an Amazon gift card to a free session, a free coaching session with moi – and I’m telling you, the value on that is priceless. You will get life change from a coaching session with me, I guarantee.

Or, if that’s not your choice, you have the option to choose a $100 gift certificate to your favorite spa. And the way you enter the giveaway is to leave a rating and a review and just tell me what you need to tell me, whether it’s good, bad, indifferent. I want to hear from you so I can make this the most meaningful podcast for you.

So, go to crenecoach.com/podcastlaunch to leave your rating and review and to get the directions for doing that you go to crenecoach.com/podcastlaunch. And the link for that is provided in the show notes. And you’ll need to email your contact information to be properly entered because your review tag doesn’t give me contact info.

So please, it’s very important, I’m very grateful and appreciative if you do leave a rating and a review and I’m even more excited about what we’re going to do through this podcast. You know, I call us midlife mavens, and a maven is simply and expert at whatever the thing is. And we are becoming experts at living our best lives.

We are midlife mavens. We are not just surviving. We are thriving because living well is our only option.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Midlife Woman Redefined. If you’re ready to learn more and reclaim your time, head over to crenecoach.com.