Welcome to Messy Midlife

Jody Brooks 0:01

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open, the identity you built no longer fits, and the future feels terrifying, nobody around you seems to get it. Welcome, I'm Jodie Brooks, and this is Messy Midlife. Because this isn't a crisis, it's a calling to connect. Hello

Honoring the Courage to Pause

Jody Brooks 0:29

and welcome back. I'm Jodie and I'm glad you're here in this space, this moment of awareness. If you've been with me since episode seven, if you've been trying the morning practice, even a little, maybe just once, I want to say before we go anywhere well done. I mean that genuinely. Not in a pat on the head way, but in I know what it costs to actually do this way. Because stopping is not easy. Turning inward before the world tells us what to think is not easy. In a life that's full and often relentless, choosing to pause even for three breaths is an act of quiet courage. Now it might seem dramatic to use the word courage to describe stopping and breathing, but for many this act can raise feelings of fear, and in that moment we think it is the breathing that frightens us. But it's not that. The truth is that the fear is generated by the space it creates, because what is in that space is unknown, and the unknown is scary, especially when what we are sensing is that something is wrong. Like a scary movie, you cover your eyes, best not to look if you cannot see it, then it's not true. Now sometimes awareness comes crashing in, as it did for me in that toilet cubicle, and we're forced to acknowledge it. But that was just the beginning of my journey, to grow my awareness muscle. That journey was not linear, and in the beginning it felt pretty scary. I most definitely did not think a happy ending was guaranteed. I love an old classic film, one from my childhood. There's something comforting in that return to the innocence of being young. What always amazes me is how different those films look when you watch them as an adult, and how often the metaphor completely passes you by the first time round.

The Wizard of Oz and the Fear of Awareness

Jody Brooks 2:34

Now, The Wizard of Oz is exactly that kind of film. Starts with a huge crash, quite literally back down to earth, and that line, we're not in Kansas anymore. The realization hits that nothing is familiar, this is unknown territory, there's no way back, and the only way out is to go on a journey and seek the wisdom of the wizard. This journey is not easy and is often scary. There are helpers along the way and there are those who want to make sure she fails. The wizard himself is pretty terrifying, but if Dorothy is going to get home, she has no choice but to face him. I remember as a child being so scared for her, standing there in front of that great and terrible wizard, and then the curtain is pulled back. Nothing to be scared of after all. And if it were not for that fearless little dog Toto, who was not too scared to look behind the curtain to face the unknown, Dorothy would never have found her way home. Awareness is just like that. It's a journey, and the wizard behind the curtain, that is awareness itself. It's not the breath that makes you want to stop, it's the fear of what might be behind the curtain. And like so many things in life, what is actually there is rarely as terrifying as we imagined. The fear is the unknown. The reality almost always is something you can work with. And you, by showing up to this, by choosing to look even just a little bit, that matters more than you know. Whatever version of the morning practice you managed, it was enough. Perhaps you just stood in front of that curtain and didn't go through. Perhaps you just took a single breath. Whatever your journey this week, the breaths before you reached for the phone, the cup of tea held without the telly on, the two minutes in the kitchen noticing a tight chest before you knew why, three breaths at a red light instead of gripping the steering wheel in frustration. All of it counts. All of it is intention, all of it is practice. And here is what I want you to hold on to. Fear is normal. In fact, fear is necessary. Dorothy would never have made that journey without it, but fear took her forwards, not back, because staying in that crash site would have been just as frightening and far less alive. She chose courage, and courage, it turns out, was exactly what one of her fellow travellers was quietly seeking.

Building the Other Bookend: The Evening Practice

Jody Brooks 5:13

So let's continue our journey down this yellow brick road. It's time to build the other end of the day. I want you to hold an image as we work through this. Imagine a shelf of books, and on either end there are two bookends solid, holding everything in place. Without both of them, the books would lean and fall and get lost. The morning practice is one bookend and the evening practice is the other. Between them they hold your day, not control it, hold it. They're the moments that belong to you rather than to everything that needs you. A morning routine without an evening is a question without an answer. You set an intention, you go into the day and then the day just ends, and whatever shifted or cracked or accumulated in you just gets folded silently into tomorrow without ever being named. Remember that I said right back in episode three that it was not about answers, it was about asking the right questions. The morning is where we ask the questions of the day ahead. The evening, well, that's where you listen for the answers, where you name them, and naming things is one of the most quietly powerful things a human being can do. I need to tell you something I'm slightly embarrassed about. For years, years I was very good at describing my days in terms of what I'd done. Ask me at ten at night what the day had involved and I could give you a full account. The calls, the tasks ticked off, the problems handled, the favours done, the meetings that ran long, evidence of a busy, productive life right there in my diary, measuring my existence by performance, by output. What I couldn't tell you, not reliably, not with any real clarity, was how I'd felt. I remember one evening during the messy years when everything was starting to unravel, and I didn't have the language for it yet. Someone close to me asked very simply, How are you? And I said automatically without thinking, fine, busy, tired. They looked at me a moment longer than usual and said quietly, Are you though? And I didn't know what to say, because I genuinely didn't know. I could give a full account of everything I'd done that day, but I couldn't say a single true thing about how I'd been or how I actually felt. That moment stayed with me because it was the first time I understood that I wasn't living a felt life, I was living a managed one, and I hadn't even noticed the difference. That's what the evening practice slowly, messily but faithfully changes.

Question One: What Did My Day Actually Look Like

Jody Brooks 8:08

The evening check-in works in two layers. Two questions, two depths. Let's go through each one. The first question is what did my day actually look like? Before you think, well I know what I've been doing, running a visual checklist of the things accomplished. Let me reframe it slightly. We're not asking for a diary recap, we're asking how much of what I did today did I actually choose. Think about your day, how much of it was driven by your own intentions, the things that genuinely matter to you, and how much was driven by habit, by other people's agendas, and by the default pull of the routine you've always followed. Think of someone driving home from work and not really remembering the journey. They get in the car and forty-five minutes later they're in the driveway. But they were essentially absent. On autopilot, the car knew the way, and in much the same way our own autopilot, the subconscious, was busy doing exactly that, running things quietly below the surface. Most of us live a significant portion of our days like that. Not because we're careless, because the human brain conserves energy by automating the familiar. It runs on habit wherever it can. That is the subconscious doing what it does best, keeping things running so you don't have to think. The question, what did my day actually look like, is asking you to briefly step out of the automated version of your life and look at the actual day with conscious eyes. Not to judge, not to feel guilty, just to see it. Did you eat lunch standing up again? Did you say yes to something you wanted to say no to? Did you connect with anyone in a real way today? No shame, just noticing, the honest look, because in that gap between the day that happened and how you felt about it, this is where your awareness lives. Now here's the harder question, the one that matters. What am I feeling? Not how was your day in the social sense, not the automatic fine or a bit tired or a bit stressed, long, boring, the usual. Actually stopping and asking, what has today felt like for me?

Question Two: What Am I Actually Feeling

Jody Brooks 10:34

Here's something that I'd noticed in my own life and the lives of the people that I work with. We are extraordinarily good at misidentifying our feelings. We reach for the nearest comfortable word and stick it on it, whatever's happening inside us, without checking whether it's actually true. And sometimes tired really is tired. You've had a big week, your body needs rest, and that's all there is to say. But sometimes, often, tired is grief wearing a practical coat. Stressed is the fear of a to-do list, flat is loneliness sitting quietly in the corner hoping you won't notice it. And fine that one especially. Fine is sometimes the bravest and most dishonest word in the English language. We say I'm fine because we've learned, usually a long time ago, that naming the real feeling is risky. It might upset someone, it might mean having to do something about it, it might make it real, like looking behind the curtain. And for many of us in midlife, there's a layer of shame around certain feelings. Resentment I shouldn't feel that. What kind of person feels resentful about that? Scared? I'm too old to be scared of this. Lonely I have a family, I have no right to be lonely. But here's what I know to be true. A feeling that has not been named does not go away. It goes underground, below the surface, and those feelings run things. They steer the iceberg quietly, invisibly, powerfully, at the depths below the surface, steering the whole thing. The evening practice is your chance to name what's actually there. Not to perform it, not to fix it, not to share it if you don't want to. The evening practice is your chance to name what's actually there, not to perform it, not to fix it, not to share it if you don't want to, just to say, even in private, even just to yourself, today I was lonely. Today I was scared. Today, under all the busyness, I was grieving something I haven't fully named yet. And here's why this matters when you name something privately without judgment, it loses some of its grip. Research shows that when we put a name to an emotional experience, even internally, the brain's alarm centre becomes less active. The feeling is still there, but it's no longer running wild in the dark. You've turned a light on, you've looked behind the curtain, and what was unknown is no longer unknown. That is the quiet, enormous power of this practice. You're dissolving shame and confusion, one honest naming at a time. So here are your two questions for your evening practice. Question one What did I actually do today? And underneath that how much of it was truly chosen? Question two What was I actually feeling today? And underneath that what is the honest word, not the safe one? They don't need to be long answers a sentence is enough, a single word is enough. The practice is in the asking, not in the length of the response. And if you try to look and find only blankness, if you reach for your feelings and there's just a fog, that is information too. Blankness often means you've been running on empty for a while. It means the disconnection we talked about in episode four is still doing its thing. Write it down if you can. Today I couldn't reach my feelings. That's an honest answer. That is awareness. There's

Ways to Practice the Evening Check-In

Jody Brooks 14:34

a few different ways into this practice because sitting quietly with a journal doesn't fit every life or every evening. So option one, a few lines in a journal before bed, just the two questions, bullet points count. Option two a voice note, sixty seconds speaking out loud, hearing yourself say it can be even more powerful than writing. You can hear what your own voice carries. Option three lying in bed before you sleep, eyes closed, no phone, just run through the questions honestly in the dark. Some of my most important moments of awareness have happened exactly there, when the quietness finally made space. Option four standing at the window, looking outward while turning inward. There's something about having a view, even just a street, even just a garden that helps. I do this often. I stand there with the last of the day still in the air, and I ask myself, what did my day actually look like? What was I actually feeling? Any one of these is a full evening practice. Try different ones, see which one fits. I will say it again, it's about intention, not perfection, and it's called practice because that is exactly what it is. When both bookends are in place, the morning check-in and the evening reflection, something starts to happen

Patterns Beneath the Surface

Jody Brooks 16:04

slowly over time. You begin to see patterns, you notice I set an intention this morning for the day that included some joy, and by tonight I realized I'd spent the entire day managing other people's needs and there was no joy. Or I woke with tightness in my chest and by the evening I understood it was because there was an honest conversation I'd been avoiding. You begin to live your own life consciously, not perfectly, not without chaos, not without mess, but with more awareness than you have before. The gap between stimulus and response starts to widen just enough to make choices that are actually yours. The morning asks who do I want to be today? And the evening asks who was I actually? Held together in honesty, those two questions are the practice at the heart of authentic living, of answering the call to connect and come home to who you really are. I want to leave you with one image before we close. Remember the iceberg from episode three, the conscious tip above the waterline and the enormous depth below, the subconscious doing most of the steering. The evening practice, specifically that second question, what was I actually feeling? Is the beginning of diving below the waterline. You're starting to map the ice beneath the surface, and as you do that with consistency, you will start to notice something underneath the feelings, something older, patterns, patterns and beliefs and identities that have been running quietly below the surface for years, maybe decades. That is what we explore in episode 10. Because what I'm feeling naturally leads to a deeper question why do I always feel this? Where does it come from? Who decided this was true for me? But that's for next time. For this week, just the two questions What did my day actually look like? What was I actually feeling? Ask them honestly, ask them gently, and if you don't like what you find, that's okay. You've been finding it for years anyway. The only difference now is your choosing to look, and choosing to look is the beginning of

Recap and Closing Thoughts

Jody Brooks 18:30

everything. A quick reminder of what you have now, the four checking questions from episode six, the three breath morning routine practice, and now the two evening questions. That is a complete awareness practice for real life. Ten minutes a day total, no equipment, no special conditions, just willingness to pause and look. Faithful practice, not flawless practice, just intention. Before I go, one more thing and this one is personal. If anything in this episode has stirred something in you, if you've had a moment of recognition, a question, or you just want to share what your mornings and evenings look like right now, I would genuinely love to hear from you, not in a comment box, not in a like or a share, although those all help, your actual voice. At the top of the show notes you'll see Connect with Jody. Click it and you can send me a message or a voicemail directly from whatever app you're listening on right now without going anywhere else. Tell me what your mornings look like, tell me what your evenings look like, tell me what shifted or what hasn't yet. Tell me what you need. I listen to every single one, and they genuinely help shape where the next episode goes. Your voice matters here, this is a conversation, not a broadcast. So, until next time, stay curious, keep noticing, keep listening, and keep coming

Outro

Jody Brooks 20:06

back to you. Thank you for spending this time with me on Messy Midlife. If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. You can find the show notes below and more resources at authenticcoaching.me. And just a little gentle reminder, Messy Midlife is here for information, reflection and personal growth. It isn't a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, therapy or any other professional healthcare support. If you have concerns about your physical or mental health, please reach out to a qualified professional. Until next time, take good care of yourself. And remember, midlife might be messy, but it's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect to yourself.