How to Trust Yourself Again in Midlife: Updating the Old Sat-Nav Inside Your Head

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.

Welcome and Week One

Jody Brooks 0:27

Welcome back to Messy Midlife. I'm Jodie, and here we are at the end of our very first week together in understanding. If this is your first time here, a warm hello, and don't worry for a second that you've walked in halfway through. Everything comes back to one gentle idea on this podcast that the mess you might be feeling in the middle of your life isn't a breakdown or a crisis, it's a call to connect, to reconnect with who you actually are underneath all of it. So you're right on time, you always are.

Noticing Without Judgment

Jody Brooks 1:03

On Monday, I asked you to do something quietly brave. I asked you to start noticing the moments when you think, why did I just do that? Not to answer them, not to fix them, just to collect them, just to turn a light on in the room and have a first look around. And I know for some of you even that was a big ask, because noticing means paying attention to yourself, and a lot of us have spent decades doing the exact opposite. We've kept busy, we've kept moving, we've kept the tell on and the diary full and the wine poured precisely so we never have to sit quietly with ourselves and notice what's actually going on in there. So if you've managed even a moment of honest noticing this week in amongst all the noise of ordinary life, I want you to know that's not nothing at all. That's a genuine act of courage. Turning toward turning towards yourself even for a second when you spent years turning away is one of the bravest things you can do. So before we go anywhere today, I want to ask you gently, how did that go? Some of you will have caught loads of them. A snap here, a withdrawal there, that funny little people pleasing yes that comes out of your mouth before your brain had time to be consulted, and some of you will be sitting there thinking, honestly Jodie, I didn't notice a single one. I think I'm doing it wrong. If that's you, I want to put my hand on your shoulder and tell you that you are not doing it wrong. There is no wrong here, remember. No wrong answer, not this month. In fact, if you notice nothing, that tells me something quietly lovely about you. It usually means the noticing muscle is brand new, and you've spent a lifetime being brilliant at not looking. That's not a fault, that's a survival skill, and we will come to that. And some of you will be in the third camp entirely. You noticed things and then you did the very thing I begged you not to do on Monday, you judged yourself for it. You caught the snap or the little white lie or the over apologising, and instead of gently noting it, you gave yourself a good old telling off. If that's you, please be kind. Noticing that you judged yourself is itself just another thing to notice, but with kindness. We don't judge the judging either. We just keep softening. Keep softening until curiosity has more room than criticism. That softening is the actual work.

Attention Changes What You See

Jody Brooks 3:58

What actually happens when you start this work? The very act of deciding to notice changes what there is to notice. It's a bit like when you buy a particular car and suddenly you see that exact car everywhere on every road, in every car park. Now they were always there, you just weren't looking. Your attention had been told this thing matters now, so it started pointing them out to you. Psychologists have a rather grand name for it, but I prefer the car version because we've all lived it. You buy the blue estate and the whole world turns out to be driving a blue estate. It was always driving a blue estate, you just now gave your brain permission to notice it. And that's the quiet magic of this week. You gave your brain permission. You said these moments matter now, start showing them to me. And it will, and it already has started. Whether you caught one or a hundred, the instruction has been given, and your mind is a very obedient thing once it knows what you're looking for. Noticing your responses works exactly the same way. The moment you decide they matter, your mind quietly starts flagging them up for you, and that's not going to stop at the end of this week. That's a muscle now. You've started building it, it only gets stronger from here. So wherever you landed, whether you filled a notebook or noticed nothing at all, you did the work by simply being willing. That willingness is the whole thing. Hold on

William’s Reinvention Story

Jody Brooks 5:35

to it. Now, in the middle of this week on Wednesday, I had the enormous joy of sitting down with Dr. William Thomas. And if you haven't listened yet, please go back and have a listen. Because it's one of those conversations that just keeps opening up. And I want to pick up on a thread from it and weave it into where we are today. Because here's a thing I love about this podcast about how a week like this fits together. Monday is me telling you about my messy middle, Wednesday is a guest showing you theirs and how they came through it, and Friday today is when I get to hold the two up to the light together and show you the shape they make. My story on its own is just my story. But my story next to William's, that's where the lesson lives. That's where you might just catch a glimpse of your own story in the middle between the two. Here's the headline on William in case you missed it. This is a man who has run a marathon on all seven continents. He's run one at the North Pole even. He didn't lace up a pair of running shoes with any seriousness until he was forty-two years old. Now the bit that stopped me in my tracks wasn't the marathons, it was what sat underneath them. Because for 21 years William's whole identity was wrapped up in one thing, military life. He was an officer in the Air Force. That was who he was. That was the answer to what do you do? And if we're honest, for a lot of us that question is really asking, who are you? 21 years of a self locked in. And then that chapter began to close, and he found himself standing at the edge of a question that I think is one of the most frightening questions a human being can face. Not what will I do now, something much deeper than that. Who am I now? I asked him about it on the show, and what he said has stayed with me. He talked about how when something that has been your direction and your purpose for decades suddenly disappears, you can become completely directionless unless you've got something else pulling you forward. And the thing that pulled William forward was that first marathon, a goal, a finish line to run towards, something to organise the mess around. And here's a detail from his story I can't stop thinking about, because it's so ordinary and yet so profound at the same time. William didn't start running because he had some grand epiphany on a mountain top. He started because he'd been posted somewhere, surrounded by people who took their fitness seriously, and there was in his words nothing else to do, so he might as well join them. That's it. That's the great beginning. He surrounded himself almost by accident with people moving in a direction and he started moving too. And there is a whole lesson in that on its own. What you surround yourself with is quietly what you may become. The company you keep is a kind of sat nav in its own right, but we'll save that thought for another day because I don't want to lose the main thread of this episode. And that is William found himself at the edge of an ending, and instead of freezing, he found a finish line and started running towards it. Quite literally. And in running, in moving towards something, the new identity slowly assembled itself. He didn't sit down and design who he'd become, he moved and in moving the moving made

Runaway Bus vs Marathon

Jody Brooks 9:35

him. Now hold that up next to where we are this month because it's beautiful and it's a little bit different from my story and the difference really is the point. Let me put the two side by side for a moment. On Monday I told you about the runaway bus, about the twelve year old in the pub, and the sentence that got handed to me in front of a room full of strangers, and the decision I made without knowing I was making it. And I told you how that decision, made below the water line, was still driving a grown man's behaviour in meetings decades later. That's one kind of why did I just do that? That's the kind that runs an autopilot. The kind you didn't choose, the kind written by a frightened child a long time ago and never updated since. Then there's William. He looked at his life, saw the old identity dissolving, and instead of letting the autopilot fly him straight into the ground, he did something extraordinary. He took the wheel, he chose a direction on purpose before the old one had even finished. He asked himself, Who am I now? And then he went out and built an answer. One marathon at a time. There's a lovely little detail in how he did it, and I want you to hold on to that because it's so human. When his friend suggested that first marathon, William said yes and then did something very clever. He told everyone he was going to do it. He put it out into the world publicly that he was going to do this thing precisely so he couldn't quietly back out when it got hard. He built himself in a bit of accountability on purpose because he knew himself well enough to know he'd wiggle out otherwise. Now look at the self-knowledge in that. He wasn't pretending to be a disciplined superhuman who never gets distracted. He knew exactly which of his own patterns would try to sabotage him, and he set things up so they couldn't. That right there is understanding in action, knowing yourself well enough to work with yourself instead of against yourself. And that's where all of this is heading. Now, here's why I'm putting them side by side, because you might hear those two stories and think, well, William, the impressive one, and Jodie, yours, the cautionary tale, but that's not it at all. Those are two different types of people. That two ends of the same journey. That's before and after. That's what happens when you can't yet see the old programming, and what becomes possible once you can. William didn't skip the messy middle. He'd have told you himself he had a messy career, a messy life in his own words, but a good kind of messy. He just reached the point where he could see the map he was following, and he decided to update the

No Shame Just Awareness

Jody Brooks 12:46

map. I want to be really clear about something because it matters enormously, especially in midlife when so many of us are quietly keeping score against everyone else. There is no shame in being where I was. None. There is no shame in being driven by an old program you couldn't see. How could there be? You cannot be blamed for following directions you didn't know you were being given. The twelve year old didn't do anything wrong. The grown man in the meeting didn't do anything wrong. He was doing exactly what he'd been trained to do faithfully, and that was to stay safe. The only difference between the runaway bus and the marathon between me in that meeting and William at the start line is awareness. Is seeing that's it. That's the only difference, and seeing is available to every single one of us. It's the most democratic thing there is. You don't need to be special or clever or ready sorted, you just need to be willing to look, which if you've been noticing your wise all week, you already are. So if there's a part of you comparing your messy insides to everyone else's tidy outsides this week, let me gently remind you, you are only ever seeing other people's tip of the iceberg. They're above the waterline. You have no idea what is steering them underneath. The most put together person you know is running from something to. That's not cynical, it's the opposite. It's the great leveller. It's the thing that means none of us has to feel alone in this. That is the whole of understanding in one breath. You cannot choose a new direction while you're still being driven by an old one you can't even see. First you see it, then you understand it, then one day you get to choose. William is what the far side of this work can look like, and every single one of you is closer to it than you

Body Felt Sense Signals

Jody Brooks 15:00

think. I want to go back to the pub gently because I promised you on Monday that this story would deepen every week, and I don't want to break my promise to you. I'm not going to take it apart today. We're still in week one, we're still at the feeling stage, and I meant it when I said we go gently, but I do want to sit beside it with you for a moment longer because there's something I left in the room on Monday that I want to go back to for now. When my stepfather turned to that group of customers and called me the fat son who couldn't tell one screwdriver from another, and they all laughed, I told you what I decided. I decided I was never going to let that happen again. But I didn't tell you what I felt in my body. And this week, that's what I want us to notice also. Not the meaning, not the why underneath, just the feeling, the felt sense. Because if I close my eyes now, all these decades later, I can still find it, a hot flush up in the face, cheeks burning, a tightness in the chest like something clenching, a strange sick drop in the stomach, the kind you get when the floor moves under you or when a plane hits an air pocket, and tears beginning to well in my eyes, and underneath all of it this desperate childish urge to disappear, to become smaller, to fold myself up and slip out of the room, to not be seen at all. It's remarkable honestly that the body can hold a feeling that faithfully for that long. I couldn't tell you what I had for lunch last Tuesday, but my body has kept the exact bundle of sensations from a pub in Oxfordshire, pristine, filed away and ready for use. That's how important the body decided it was, not the words. The words are mostly gone. The feeling is perfectly preserved because to a small child that feeling was information, it said danger, it said this is what it feels like just before you get hurt. Remember this so you can see it coming next time. And the body said, Yes, boss, filed, and it kept its promise for the next forty odd years. So here's the thing I want you to understand, and it's why I'm lingering here. That feeling, that exact bundle of sensations is what my body reached for every single time it decided a meeting room looked a little bit like that pub even decades later. Grown man, good job, capable, respected, and still the second room felt even slightly like a room where I might be judged, my body would fire off that same hot, flushed, tight chested, sick, stomachache alarm, and the runaway bus would start rolling before my conscious mind had even noticed the engine was running. That's the thing about the 90% below the water. It doesn't speak in words, it speaks in sensations, it speaks in the body long before you have a thought, you have a feeling, and that feeling is the old programming running its checks, deciding whether this is a safe room or a dangerous one, using a map drawn when you were very small. So this week's noticing, the why did I just do that? I want to add one gentle layer to it now that we're at the end of the week. When you catch one of those moments before you go anywhere near the why, just notice the feeling in your body. Where do you feel it? Is it your chest, your throat, your stomach, your shoulders? Is it heat or tightness or that sick drop? Or something you don't even have a word for yet. You don't need the word, you just need to notice it's there. Because your body remembers things your mind filed away years ago, and it will hand them to you if you learn to listen. It's actually the most honest part of you that you can find because it can't lie. Your mind will spin you all sorts of clever stories about why you're fine, why that didn't bother you, why you're completely over it, but your chest will tighten anyway, your stomach will drop away, the body doesn't do spin, it just tells you the truth in the only language it has. This took me years to learn because I was a champion at living from the neck up, all thinking, all analysing, all cleverness, and completely cut off from what was happening below my neck. A lot of us are, especially those of us who learned young that our feelings weren't safe or weren't welcome. So if reconnecting with the body feels strange or even a bit frightening, that's alright. Go slowly, you're not being asked to feel everything at once. You're just being asked to notice that there's a whole conversation going on down there that you might have been talking over for most of your life. We're not excavating, we're just learning the language your body's been speaking to you all along.

Sat Nav Old Map Metaphor

Jody Brooks 20:44

I promised you on Monday that we'd open up sat nav properly on Friday, so here we go. Let me make good on it, because this is the picture I want you carrying with you into next week. And honestly, throughout the whole season. Imagine you're driving somewhere that really matters to you. Somewhere you genuinely want to arrive and you've got the sat nav on, that calm, confident voice telling you exactly what to do. Turn left, straight on at the roundabout, take the next right, and you trust it. Of course you do. You've trusted it for years, it got you places once. But slowly something starts to feel off. The voice says turn left and there's no left turn, just a wall where a road used to be. The voice says carry straight on, but the road's been closed and there are cones and a diversion sign. The voice knows nothing about, and then worst of all the voice says brightly, you've arrived at your destination, and you look up and you're in the middle of nowhere, a lay by an empty field, nowhere near where you wanted to be. Now most of us when this happens in a car get frustrated with the road. Stupid road. Why have they closed it? Why is nothing where it's meant to be? We rarely stop and think the obvious thing, which is that map is out of date. The roads changed, somebody built new ones, closed old ones, moved things around, and nobody updated the software. The SAT nav isn't lying to you, it's not broken, it's just faithfully reading you directions off a map that stopped being true a long time ago. Here's why I love this picture so much. Because your true self, your real values, the deepest you, that's the destination, that's the place you actually put it. And it never changed. It's still exactly where you want to go, home to yourself, but the directions you've been following, the turn left, straight on, take the next right, of your daily reactions, those are being read off of an old map. A map drawn by a frightened child maybe, or a hurt teenager, or an exhausted younger version of you, who was just trying to get through. The map made perfect sense when it was drawn, the roads really were like that once, but you're not driving those roads anymore. You just never updated the voice. So when the Saturn Avenue says take control of this meeting or you'll be humiliated, that's an old road. When it says Say yes or they'll stop loving you, that's an old road. When it says go quiet, make yourself small, don't take up space, that's an old road. When it says don't get your hopes up, that way you can't be disappointed, that's an old road. And when it says do it all yourself, you can't rely on anyone, that's an old road. All of them read out with total confidence by a voice you've never once thought to question. Because why would you? It's been talking to you your whole life. It sounds like you. It practically is you, or at least it's a very old version of you. Still up there in the driver's cab, still calling out turns from a map that yellowed and curled up at the edges a long time ago. That sat nav is not your enemy in this. I said it on Monday about the subconscious. I'm going to say it again because it's the kindest and most important reframe I know. That voice was trying to help. Every single one of those old roads was laid down to keep you safe or loved or accepted at a time when you genuinely needed it. The map isn't malicious, it's just old. And you don't shout at the satnav for being out of date, you don't rip it off the windscreen and hurl it out the window. You just gently one day realise it needs updating, and you thank it for getting you this far. Because it did. It got you here, it got you all the way to this exact moment, listening to this, ready to finally read the road for yourself. That's not a small thing you have done. And the question that midlife eventually focuses on every single one of us is this. Are you going to keep following the shouting voice from the old map or are you finally going to start listening to that deeper knowing inside? That one that's been quietly saying for miles now, this isn't the way home. That deeper knowing, by the way, that quiet voice under the loud one, that's your true self. It's been there all along, it never went anywhere. Understanding is simply the work of turning the loud voice down enough that you can finally hear the quiet one. We're not updating the map yet, not this month. This month we're just learning to notice that the voice and the road don't match anymore, and that's enough. It's huge actually because you cannot redraw a map that you don't yet know is wrong.

Motion Creates Clarity

Jody Brooks 26:29

Come back to William with me for a second, because the two pictures fit together now, and I love it when that happens. William's old identity, twenty-one years of it, was a bit like a satnav voice that had guided him brilliantly for a very long time. Officer in the Air Force, that's who you are, that's where you're going, straight on, straight on, straight on. And then the road ran out, and the voice kept talking, but the road was gone. Now a lot of people in that moment just sit in the lay by, directionless, he called it, engine running, no idea which way to turn, waiting for a voice that's got nothing true left to tell you, and that I think is a huge part of what a midlife crisis actually is. It's sitting in the lay by with an out of date sat nav feeling like you failed when actually the map has just expired. But William did something else. He didn't argue with the old voice, he didn't sit and wait for it to sort itself out. He put in a new destination, a marathon, a finish line, something real to run towards. And notice he didn't magically already know who he was going to become. He built it one marathon at a time by moving towards something. The clarity came from the motion, not before it. And I think that's one of the most freeing things I can offer you this weekend. So let me say it plainly. You do not have to have the whole answer before you're allowed to begin. You do not need to know exactly who you're going to become before you take a single step towards becoming it. That's a trap so many of us fall into in midlife. We sit in the lay by engine running, waiting to feel certain, waiting for the fog to clear, waiting to be sure before we move, and certainty never comes. Because it was never going to come from sitting still, it comes from moving. William didn't wait to feel like a marathon runner before he ran. He ran and slowly, mile by mile, the runner appeared. The identity followed the action. It almost always does. I'm not saying you need to go and run a marathon. What I'm saying is this, the reason William could choose a new direction was he saw that the old one had ended. He could see the map was out of date, and that seeing, that clear-eyed, kind, honest seeing is exactly what we are building with understanding. It's the thing that has to come first. William is living proof of where this road

Week Recap Sunrise Not Lightning

Jody Brooks 29:19

goes. So let me gather up the week for you because I want you to feel how much ground you've actually covered. On Monday we opened the door to understanding. We learned that the question why did I just do that isn't a stick to beat yourself with, it's a doorway. We met the runaway bus, we went to the pub, and we learned the most important instruction for the whole month. No judging, no fixing, no criticizing, just noticing with kindness. On Wednesday, William showed us what it looks like on the far side that an identity can end and a new one can be built on purpose by someone brave enough to see the old map for what it was. And today we've deepened it. We've learned that the body speaks before the mind does. That's the felt sense in an old programming saying hello. We've opened up the sat nav and we've seen that our real destination never changed, only the directions got old, and we've understood. I hope that seeing the out of date map is not a failure, it's the beginning of everything. That's a very full week. That's a proper week's work, and all you had to do was be willing to press play and notice. I don't want you to underestimate what you've actually started here because it's easy to when the work is this quiet. There were no fireworks this week, nobody handed you a certificate, and you didn't have a breakthrough moment where music swelled and everything suddenly made sense. That's not how it works. Remember it's not a lightning bolt, it's a sunrise, and a sunrise doesn't announce itself, it just imperceptibly, at a pace you can barely track, turns the dark into light until one morning you look up and you can see the whole room. You've had your first sunrise this week, just the very first pale light of it on the horizon. But it's begun and it does not go backwards. Light doesn't unhappen. Once you've seen you can't unsee, and that is the single most hopeful sentence in

Weekend Practice and Rest

Jody Brooks 31:39

this work. Here's what I'd love for you to carry into the weekend. Nothing heavy, this is a resting kind of invitation. Keep collecting your whys gently the way you've been doing, but add the body layer we talked about. When you catch one of those, why did I just do that moment's pause just for a breath and ask where did I feel that? And then if you're feeling brave, one more soft question, the same one I gave you on Monday, when have I felt this particular feeling before? Remember you don't have to answer it, you really don't. Sometimes just asking is enough to make something stir, the memory, an image, a younger version of you, standing in a room somewhere feeling exactly this. And if that younger you shows up this weekend, be tender with them, don't quiz them, don't fix them, just sit beside them the way I've been trying to sit beside you all week. They were doing their very best with the map they had been given. That's it, that's the whole homework. Notice, feel and be kind. You're becoming a kind observer of your own life, and honestly, there are few more loving things you can learn to do. Let me add one more tiny thing because I know some of you are the sort who'll turn even a gentle invitation into an entire project, complete with a spreadsheet and colour-coded system, and end up feeling like a failure by Sunday tea time when you haven't kept it up. I see you, I am you. So that comes from personal experience. This is never about perfection, it is simply about practice. If you do nothing at all this weekend, if you forget every word I've ever said and just enjoy your Saturday, that is completely fine. You have not fallen behind, there is no behind. This work waits for you. It's the most patient work there is. The wise will still be there on Monday, and so will I. So please don't turn this rest into another thing to get right. Sometimes the most authentic thing you can do is simply put the podcast down. Go and live your actual life and let all of this quietly settle in the background. It will, it's already doing just

Support and Safety Note

Jody Brooks 34:11

that. If anything this week has stirred something in you, a memory surfaced, a feeling you weren't expecting, arrived and stayed, please be gentle with yourself. This work can bring up things. That's normal and it's often a sign that you're on to something very real. But please hear me clearly. This podcast is here for support and your reflection, not to replace proper care. If you're struggling, if things feel heavy or unsafe, please reach out to a doctor or a qualified mental health professional or a trusted support line in your part of the world. There is no bravery in going it alone, and there is enormous strength in asking for help. Asking for help is one of the most authentic and bravest things you can ever do. A lesson I learned all too painfully that I shared in episode one of season one.

Closing Stories and Next Week

Jody Brooks 35:06

Let me leave you where we always begin. You're not falling apart, you're waking up. This week you learn to notice, you learn that your body has been keeping a record, your mind forgot, you learn that the loud, confident voice inside you might just be reading from an old map, and that the quiet voice underneath, the one saying this isn't the way home, is the one worth listening to. That's not a small thing, that's the beginning of finding your way back to yourself. And whatever showed up for you this week, whatever you noticed or felt or remembered, it isn't proof that you're broken, it's proof that understanding has begun. It's the light going on, it's you at last turning towards yourself with curiosity instead of criticism. I think of William, 42 years old, standing at a start line he never expected to be standing at, with no idea yet that fifty marathons and seven continents and the North Pole were waiting somewhere up ahead once he crossed that very first finish line. He couldn't see any of that from the start. He just knew he'd put in a new destination and he was willing to take the first step towards it. He even says that getting to the start line is the hardest part of any race. And I think of a twelve year old in a pub here in Oxfordshire, who couldn't see any of what was ahead either, but who was without knowing it at that very start of a journey that would one day lead here to this, to me talking to you. Both of them a start line, both of them unable to see the road, both of them taking a step anyway. That's all any of us are ever doing. Taking the next step on a road we can't fully see, trusting that the seeing comes as we go. So be kind to whoever shows up this weekend. They've been holding the wheel for a very long time, all on their own, following a map that expired years ago. They did their best, they kept you safe, and now gently you're learning to read the road yourself.

Monday Preview and Community

Jody Brooks 37:26

So here's what's coming on Monday. We begin something new, we go a layer deeper. Week one was about noticing the runaway bus. Week two is about asking where the bus actually came from and where do these responses get built? Why are they so tricky and so hard to shift? Even when we can see them clearly, we're going to look at the blocks and I'll take you a little further into the pub story too, because it's ready to be unpacked now. Gently, of course, always gently. It's going to be a really important one, and I'd love for you to join me. And remember, you can watch the guest episodes as well as listen to all of the episodes. They're there for you on Apple, on YouTube and on Spotify, or over on the Messy Midlife homepage, whichever way feels right for you. If this week has stirred something in you, if you're ready to stop doing this alone, I'd love you to come and join us inside the Messy Midlife community. It's warm, it's honest, it's completely free from judgment, and it's where you'll find all the free tools and worksheets I talk about in the podcast. It's the place where the mess becomes the beginning. In good company with people walking exactly the same road as you. Come and find us, we've saved you a seat. There's a link in the show notes below. So, until next time, stay curious, stay kind, and keep coming home to who you really are. 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 health care 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.