“You’ve always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.” Glinda the Good Witch

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, hello, hello, this is C. René Washington. I’m back for episode five of the Midlife Woman Redefined.  And I am so over the top excited to be here for episode five, which is the how do you get what you want episode, because it’s being recorded on July 31^st, which is podcast launch day for me.

This is the day that the first three episodes actually go out into podcast land. I’m so excited, so excited about that. So, as happens in the serendipity of my life, I am recording the how to get what you want episode on the day that I’m getting a big want come true in my life, launching this podcast.

As we do, let’s start with a moment of celebration.  I want you to pause and think about something that you’ve accomplished in your life in the past week, the past month, whenever, something that you’ve done, not something that somebody else in your life has done; something that you’ve done. And take a moment to acknowledge that with yourself.

Bonus points for actually doing a real celebration, taking yourself out to the movies, buying yourself something new. Whatever it is, celebrate your accomplishments. I’m celebrating launching this podcast and before I delve into how to get what you want, I just want you to understand that I am not somebody special. I am not somebody who thought they would be here on this day telling you that my podcast has launched and that it’s on iTunes.

No. When I woke up this morning and I lay there for a few minutes thinking about how all of this came to be and how grateful I am, how grateful I am that people believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, that I never gave up on myself, that I was self-aware enough to know that I had more to give, more to do, and that it wasn’t too late. I will be 60 years old in August, 60, and I’m launching a podcast. It is not too late for you to do what you want to do. So let’s break that down.

And as I was thinking about, okay so how did I get to this day, why am I loving and living this life in a way that I knew I wanted but I wasn’t quite sure was possible? Because I pretty much do get what I want in life.  I had to think about it, I was like, “Wow,” you know. And believe me, I’ve been on the floor crying, under the covers crying, not wanting to leave the house, depressed, all of that. So don’t think this has just been some big bowl of life cherries for me. No, absolutely not.

But when I get out of my own way, I see the way. I clear the path to what is waiting on me on the other side. And that’s why I love coaching women to get out of their own way and start moving down the path that’s waiting on them.

And what came to me was cooking, of all things. I do love to cook. I’m not an everyday cook. My husband will tell you, “Sometimes she ain’t even an every week cook.” And he is correct. However, when I do get in that kitchen, I put my foot in it.

Now, those of you in the south will know what I’m saying. I’ll never forget when I was in my corporate life, we would bring food all the time. And somebody brought something – I don’t even remember what the dish was – and I told her, I was like, “Oh, girl, you put your foot in that.” She’s like, “What, my foot? That’s nasty.” But that’s what we say down here when something’s really good, “You put your foot in it.”

And that’s what I do. When I get in that kitchen and put my mind to it, oh, it’s going to be good. But I didn’t start out that way. I didn’t start out as being some great cook. I started out being a recipe cook. And a recipe cook is somebody, yes, that has to have the recipe.

I collect cookbooks, I collect recipes. And when I first started cooking many years ago, I followed the recipe to the letter and would get very anxious about not following it to the letter. So I had to have the exact ingredients. I had to follow every step as written. If I couldn’t get the exact ingredient, that would freak me out.

What happened over time though is the more that I cooked, the more that I followed the recipe, the more confident I became in the result, and then I started taking chances. If I didn’t have the exact recipe, I started thinking, “Well, what would be a good substitute for that?” Or, “I don’t even like that ingredient, so why am I putting it in this dish?” So I would start improvising. I would start making the recipe my own. And that’s when I became a great cook.

And so when it came that me this me this morning, I thought, “You know what? Yes, this is it. This is it. This is a life metaphor.” And so I wrote down a recipe for living well. You ready? Get a pen and paper, write this down. Step one of the recipe is for you to breathe, to center yourself because the ingredients for the recipe for what you want can be very different depending on who you are. And that’s why I do the who-am-I work. That’s how I coach my clients to the who-am-I.

So that can be very different. What you require in a life lived well can be many different things. So you can go back and do the who-am-I work to get your ingredients. And once you have those ingredients, you want to rest in yourself, rest in that knowledge, breathe yourself into it.

Number two, trust yourself. Trust yourself. This has probably been the biggest epiphany of the year for me because even though I’ve accomplished a lot of things, I’ve realized this year that what gets me off track is when I don’t trust myself, when I get too caught up in the needing to follow the exact recipe that’s been given to me.

And there are some basics. There are some basic ingredients, there’s a basic recipe for baking a cake. But when I think that I have to bake the cake, there’s only one way to bake the cake, that’s when I mess up. That’s when I stop listening to myself, to my inner compass.

Remember, I took you through the body compass process, and if you missed that, go back to episode three for that.  You would just go to crenecoach.com/3 to go through the Body Compass process. And so not trusting myself gets me confused, gets me scattered, gets my anxious, gets me overwhelmed. And so you want to trust yourself.

Three, the basic ingredients in process, as I said, for you will be different for everybody, and the way you get to those basic ingredients is to stay open and aware. Click into your body compass.  Pay attention to yourself.  And then whatever the thing is that bubbles up for you – so there is a way to create a podcast, there is a basic recipe for creating a podcast.

I’m working with people who are walking me through that process. But Pavel, the man that runs the company I’m working with, he told me, “Be yourself, say what you know in the way you know it.” So even though I’m following his process, I am the one doing this podcast and I need to bring me into it.

So if you want to learn how to fly a plane, which one of my friends and a woman I’ve coached is doing, she’s becoming a pilot, there’s a process for doing that. So you research that, you find out what that is and then you bring yourself into it so you do it in the way that works for you.

So, step one is to breathe. Step two is to trust yourself. Step three is to get the basic ingredients and process for what you want. Stand open and aware, clicking into your inner compass. And then number four is a direct quote from Mr. Washington, “Calm the fuck down.” Calm the fuck down. This is what he tells me when I go off on my little scatterbrain tangents sometimes when I do allow myself to get overwhelmed.

And I’m telling you because, as you know if you do cook, or even if you don’t cook you may have been in the restaurant and smelled something burning, because sometimes the recipe goes awry, right? Sometimes, things don’t work out exactly like we want them to. That’s okay.  It’s all information. It’s all information.

That word failure, yes, some things don’t work out always the way we want them to. We call that failure. I think of it as information. Now I know that doesn’t work, don’t do that again. That’s all it is, course-correct. So, calm the fuck down, reassess, course-correct, keep it moving.

Which leads to number five, let your shit go. Don’t wallow in your shit. Let it go. And that’s my favorite mantra, let that shit go, because we have a biological necessity to let shit go. If we don’t what happens? Shit backs up. That messes up our bodies. We may even end up in the hospital behind that. Who wants that? Let it go.

Same thing happens in life. When we get all caught up in our mind shit, “Oh I’m not good enough, it’s too late, she’s doing it better than me, let me research one more thing, let me find out one more thing,” we just keep ourselves in a spiral; oh woe is me.

As I told you in the first episode, I am here for the women who are ready to move, the women who are ready to take action, the women who may not have it all figured out but they are about getting to know how to figure it out and how to do the thing. So let that shit go. Get out of your own way and get going.

And finally, the cake is baked.  Enjoy the deliciousness you’ve created for yourself. This is your recipe for living well. This is what midlife mavens do. And a maven is simply an expert, and we are experts in living well and rocking these midlife years. We are midlife mavens.

So again, the recipe for getting what you want, breathe out your crap, breathe out the stress, breathe in your yes. Two, trust yourself. Three, find out the basic things that are needed for the path that you’re considering, get the process, but stay open and aware. Click into your body compass so that you don’t lose yourself in the process.

Four, calm the fuck down when things go awry. Re-center, course-correct, breathe.  Five, let your shit go. When you change your mind, you change your life. That’s’ why mindset work is the foundation of every coaching I do. Because if you don’t get your mind right, your life ain’t going to be right. That’s just a fact.

And then, enjoy. Enjoy the fruits of your labor. Enjoy that deliciousness that you have created in your life. I’m just doing so much processing and thinking about my life and I realized that, for me, it just boils down to I do want to live, laugh, and love. That’s not just a cliché.

I want to enjoy all the love that I can. I want to do it from a place of wellness, from a place of feeling good in my body, a place of feeling good about myself. And I want to stay open to all the wonderful adventures that life has in store for me. And I want that for you.

So yes, I can give you some specific things that I can say that I want, but I don’t get caught up in the specificity. I stay open enough so that something that I may have never even considered will find me. And that happens all the time.

So, I thank you. I am grateful that you are on this journey with me. I am grateful for you taking the time to listen.  I’m grateful for you taking the time to rate this podcast and leave a review. I am grateful for living my best life and being able to help other women live their best life.

I want to hear about the recipes that you’re cooking up for your life, so please share. Send me a message. Leave a review. And when you do take a few minutes to rate and review the Midlife Woman Redefined, it helps the show, it helps other people be able to find the show. It helps me to continue to show up here every week.

And to do that, if you are an iPhone user, go to your Apple Podcast app, and if you’re an Android user, you will go to the iTunes app on your computer. And remember, ask for help if you’re not sure how to do that. And don’t forget, you want to hit the subscribe button so that I’ll pop up in your feed every week.

I love podcasts. There are so many great podcasts out there. I hope that you will find this one to be on your, “Yes, this is a great podcast too,” lists. And remember that I am providing a little kickoff incentive. The Amazon gift cards are waiting on you, so leave that rating. Put your name in that drawing.

And to get the directions for rating, reviewing, and entering the drawing, go to crenecoach.com/podcastlaunch. And the link is also provided in the show notes. We’re here for your dreams.  I’m here for the plans that you want to see come to fruition. I’ll be sharing ways to make that happen every week, so keep coming back.  And remember, living well is the 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.