You Are Waking Up

Jody Brooks 0:00

You're not falling apart, you're waking up. If you're somewhere between 35 and 65, life feels like it's cracking open. There may be a part of you that's exhausted from being cross-examined by the same old evidence. Perhaps you've spent years trying to get a clean verdict about yourself. Good enough or not, safe or not, capable or not, worthy or not, and perhaps the reason it's felt so impossible is that the court was not designed to give you a quick answer. It was designed long ago to keep you alert. Today I want to make room for a possibility that takes the pressure down. Not every sitting ends in the verdict you hope for. Sometimes it's a mistrial, sometimes it's a home jury, sometimes new evidence arrives and the whole case has to be heard from another angle. That is not failure, that is the work.

Season Three Welcome

Jody Brooks 0:52

Welcome back. This is Messy Midlife. It's not a crisis, it's a call in to connect. I'm your host Jodie Brooks. Welcome to Season 3 Trust. This is the Friday closer for week three of season three Trust. This week we've been learning the tools, the quiet, the gentle why, the appointment in the diary, the mediation instead of the argument. We've been asking our question of the week. What if I've only heard one side? On

Tom Cronin And Stillness

Jody Brooks 1:21

Wednesday I spoke with Tom Cronin, founder of the Stillness Project. Before he left finance, Tom spent 26 years working in it. That matters to me not because a long career in finance requires a special sort of human being, but because it punctures the fantasy that stillness is only for people who've already escaped to a field in linen trousers. Stillness has to work in a full diary, a busy mind, and the life that you're actually living. Tom spoke with honesty about depression, panic, addiction, and the things that can happen when the inside of a life is no longer being heard. Those are content warnings for the conversation. He also said something that went straight through me because it sits so neatly beside Sid, my imposter. Even at the top of finance, Tom said, I had a huge sense of imposter syndrome and unworthiness. That is such an important sentence. The outer evidence can look very impressive while an inner barrister is still making a case that you do not belong in the room. Achievements do not automatically dismiss the prosecution. A promotion does not necessarily quiet Sid. A lovely home, a successful project, a qualification, a growing family, a piece of work you are proud of, none of it automatically tells an old protector that the danger has now

When Quiet Feels Noisy

Jody Brooks 2:47

passed. If you had a quiet moment this week and it did not deliver a neat answer, this episode is for you. If you sat in the car, on the edge of the bed, in a chair after the house settled or on a walk and found that all you could hear was noise, this is for you too. Before your mind starts telling you that you did the quiet wrong, notice your body. Are you clenching your teeth while you listen? Are your shoulders an inch closer to your ears than they need to be? Is there a hard little stone in your stomach? Are you tired in that particular way that comes from having a case against yourself permanently open in the background? You do not have to reach a conclusion today. You do not have to produce a verdict before the end of this episode. Your body can be in the room before your story is ready to speak.

The 72 20 Method

Jody Brooks 3:36

On Wednesday, Tom named his practice for us. He calls it the 7220 method. Your day, he says, is made up of 72 segments of 20 minutes. 72. And all he asks is that you give two of them, one in the morning and one in the evening back to yourself. Now, even if you only count roughly 12 waking hours, that is still thirty six blocks, and he is asking for just two, not because the other blocks do not matter, but because those two can alter the way you meet the rest. I love the ordinariness of that. It does not require you to disappear from life. It asks whether a small part of the day can be protected from being immediately filled, a place in which the mind that is always predicting, preparing, anticipating, rescuing, pleasing, and rehearsing can stop doing its unpaid overtime for a moment. My ten minutes in a car park is not Tom's two twenty minute segments. I'm not trying to turn it into a competition. Now the inner critic would adore that. He would be straight out with a little clipboard. Only ten minutes, really, some people do forty. You've clearly failed at sitting down. The point is not the number, it is the protected practice.

Mediation To Meditation

Jody Brooks 4:55

And on Monday I gave you the smallest, most useful piece of coaching alchemy I know. Say the word mediation, now add one letter twice. Mediation becomes meditation. The first T is time, the second T is trust. Tom's 7220 method is exactly that time set aside on purpose and trust that the time will be worth it. The quiet is not what happens by accident once everybody else has taken their share of you. It can be an appointment, it can be evidence that your own inner room is worthy of a slot in your diary. In stillness you may notice that the first thing that comes up is not peace. It can be the very voice you were trying to avoid. That is not a sign to abandon the chair. It may be the first honest thing that's happened all day. The prosecution has had the microphone for years. When the room goes quiet, it will have plenty to say. Let it say it. You're not agreeing, you're listening, and you're preparing to call the defence.

Dont Do Anything Rash

Jody Brooks 6:00

Tom also offered a phrase that I think many midlife listeners need to hear. Don't do anything rash. That's not a command to stay in a life that is no longer yours. It's not an instruction to swallow your truth. It's the opposite of treating self-trust as a dramatic step. Self-trust is the plan, not the leap. Sometimes a protector gets frightened and says, burn it all down, leave today, send the message at midnight, tell everybody exactly what you think in a voice note that may not age as well as you hope. We can make mistakes that surge for bravery because it feels decisive. But self-trust does not have to be loud to be real. It can be quiet and steady. It can say, I'm going to make a plan, I'm going to gather facts, I'm going to let this decision ripen, I'm going to take the next true step, not every step, all at once. There is a difference between a door opening and an emergency exit. The quiet helps you feel

Verdict Mistrial Hung Jury

Jody Brooks 7:02

it. This brings us to a new part of the courtroom metaphor, the verdict, the mistrial, and the hung jury. We spend so much of our lives hoping for one clean internal ruling. I am enough. This is the right choice. I can trust myself. The trouble is, if you make your peace contingent on a clear verdict, every single time you'll make a new courtroom out of the process of self-trust. You will turn each quiet moment into another performance review. Some days you'll reach the verdict you hope for. You'll sit with the question, hear the fear, understand it, and make a decision with a surprising amount of calm. You'll walk out of the meeting, send the thing, make the choice and feel as though your inner jury has genuinely agreed. Beautiful. Let that be evidence. Some days it'll be a mistrial, the room will be too noisy, you will be hungry, tired, hurt, unwell, rushed, or simply unable to hear the case clearly. The jury will have been distracted by somebody's phone going off. Metaphorically speaking, you'll say, I cannot get a hearing today. I'll come back another day. That is not avoidance if you're honest about it. It's care. It's recognising that an important decision does not need to be made from the most activated place in your body. You're allowed to adjourn for tea, sleep, food, a shower, a walk, a bit more information, or simply because you need a day in which your nervous system is not hanging from the ceiling tiles. And some days you'll have a hung jury. The conscious tip of the iceberg and the 90% below it cannot agree yet. One part of you knows the relationship has changed, another part is terrified of loss. One part wants the new role, another is unsure about being seen and thinks it will end badly. One part longs to rest, and another has a file marked dangerous, lazy, selfish, and will not let go of it. A hung jury does not mean you're broken, it means there is more than one honest piece of evidence in the room. Two things can be partly right at the same time. You can be grateful and unhappy, you can love somebody and need more room, you can be relieved and grieving, you can want change and be frightened of it. A mediation exists so nobody has to lose. Now there are miscarriages of justice too, a conclusion may have been reached when you were far too young to appoint a lawyer, and it may have become so familiar that it feels like fact. New evidence can arrive, a file can be seen from another angle, you can be forty seven, fifty-four, sixty-one and realise that an old verdict was never the whole truth. These principles are not one and done. You do not sit through one excellent meditation and receive a certificate saying you are now permanently self-trusting. Congratulations. If only it would be lovely, and it would make rather nice stationary too. But trust rehears the case. It brings the same evidence into a room with someone finally awake enough to hear it properly. The outcome is not the point, the work is presenting the case, hearing the facts honestly, making room for the defence, returning tomorrow if the hearing was a muddle today.

A Childhood File Rhyl

Jody Brooks 10:35

I want to tell you about a file that came up for me in the quiet. I'm going to do that plainly, and I want to say before I begin that this is at your pace. You do not need to go looking for your own difficult memory while I tell mine. You can simply listen. You can notice the room you're in, you can make a cup of tea after this bit. You're allowed to stay with the present. I was six or so, and we were on a caravan holiday in North Wales, near a seaside town called Rill. There was a fun fair and I was desperate to go. I'd been promised we were going. Like the pub memory from season two, I cannot remember exactly what happened beforehand. I do not have the whole scene in sequence. I cannot tell you who said what first or which detail would make it into a court transcript. What I remember is that we did not go to the fair. I remember my stepfather shouting, I remember a smack, I remember the words only good boys go to the fair. We are not going. I can still hear myself screaming, I can still feel the sting. My baby brother barely one was crying. My mother and my grandmother were there on the sidelines, strangely powerless. That is one of the things a child notices but cannot understand. When the grown-ups are present and nobody seems to be able to stop what is happening, I was sent to bed in the caravan, hurt and upset, with the holiday outside somewhere and the fun fare not happening. There's a particular shape to disappointment when you're a child. It drains you. It strips the hope out of the thing you've been holding. You'd built the fare in your mind already, the lights, the noise, the smell, the possibility of being allowed to ride the one that looks too fast. Then it's gone. And somehow the disappearance feels like a statement about you. The pub story was humiliation, a frightened twelve year old made to feel exposed and ashamed. Real was different. Real was not being good enough. Underneath that was rejection, and underneath that was not being liked. And this is why the spider's web is such an important image. One strand of memory spins back to the pub, another to a classroom, another to a caravan near Real. They're not identical events, they should not be made to carry identical meanings, but the silk is the same, not good enough, not liked, not safe to disappoint, not safe to be the person who wants something. The web can be beautiful and intricate. It can catch an unwitting person for decades. One file pulls in another. A work email can suddenly feel like a six year old being told they cannot go to the fair. A cancelled plan can become rejection. A small correction can become proof that you are not good enough. The adult moment is real, but it also tugs a strand that began much earlier in the

Meaning Without Villains

Jody Brooks 13:31

web. But I need to say something important here. This is not a villain story about my stepfather. I have very fond memories of him from those early years. Going to work with him at the car garage, the smell of oil, rubber and metal, and that particular cold of a garage in the morning, adventures in the pickup truck, the egg and tomato sandwiches my mum made, wrapped up and taken with us. As a little boy that felt like an adventure. There was love in those memories, there was fun, and there were moments of real belonging. Both things are true. I do not need to turn a whole human being into one bad scene in order to honour the impact of that scene on me. My truth is my truth. It is not an accusation and I do not need anybody else to validate it for it to matter to me. The memory does not have to prove a case against another person. It tells me something about the file that formed inside me. When I sat with Rill over a number of weeks, what came was huge sadness, not rage, not a clever explanation, not a perfect clinical label. Sadness. That boy had wanted to go to the fair. He'd wanted to be good enough for the promised thing. He had wanted to be liked. In the quiet I could hear that much more clearly than I could in the middle of an argument with myself. And that does not mean I spent every day reliving it. This is not about going back and getting stuck in the caravan. It's about ensuring the case is properly heard for the first time. The adult me could sit beside the six year old me and say, I can see why you made that meaning. I can see why the word good became so loaded. I can see why disappointment later in life sometimes felt like a rejection far bigger than the thing in front of me. There was a time later when I found myself in a workplace grievance process, and in a number of so called mediation meetings. Now I'll not unpack that here, that belongs to a later season, but I could see strangely that this quieter work was already holding. I did not have to become the frightened boy in order to respond to a hard adult situation. That was evidence, even though I did not yet have the language for all of

Your Body As Witness

Jody Brooks 15:53

it. What's your version of the promised treat that did not arrive? Before you search for the scene, notice where the question lands in your body. Does your throat close? Does your chest cut tight? Do you feel a pull behind your eyes? Do your hands want to curl in or do you feel restless in your legs? Let your body be the first witness. It often carries the file before the mind has a date or a place for it. Perhaps it was not a fun fair, perhaps it was a promised outing, a birthday, a sleepover, a Christmas thing, a piece of praise withdrawn, a meal you were not allowed to finish, a door closed, a plan cancelled, a sentence that said only good children get this. Perhaps it happened when you were older. Perhaps it was a teacher, a coach, a parent, a partner, a group of friends. Maybe nobody intended the meaning you took from it, but the meaning still went into the filing cabinet. What did the younger you decide that moment said about you? Were you too much, not enough? Hard to love, a burden, a disappointment? Did you learn that wanting something was risky because it could be taken away? Did you learn that good behaviour was a moving target? You do not need to answer it. You do not need to compare your memory to anybody else's and decide whether it's worthy of attention. My truth is my truth, and your truth is yours. If this is too close today, you can let the question float past. Look at something ordinary in the room, feel your feet. You're not required to open the file because an episode mentioned it. Always remember to go at your pace.

TLC Practice Explained

Jody Brooks 17:29

Let us come back to the practical part because this is not about collecting painful stories. It's about changing who gets to speak in the present. On Monday I gave this practice a name, TLC. Tender loving care, thank, learn, confirm. Thank the protector for its care. Learn what it is trying to protect, and confirm the decision you are going to make anyway. In a few minutes on the listener's bench, we'll do it together. Before we get there, I want to name what we're actually practicing. This is self-trust. Not certainty at all costs, not an impulsive detonation of your life, not a grand declaration that you will never doubt yourself again. Self-trust is knowing that you will not abandon yourself when the evidence gets complicated.

The Defence Speaks

Jody Brooks 18:20

When I revisit real now, I can see the prosecution's version of the case very clearly. It says you were not good enough. You do not get the thing you want if you disappoint somebody, you lose love, if you are not liked, you are not safe. For a long time the prosecution spoke as though that was the whole record, and to be fair, it had cross-references. It could point at the pub, it could point at a classroom, it could point at later losses, it could point at adult situations which lit up the same old fear. It was not inventing the evidence, it was making it into the only possible version of the story. The defence asked different questions. Was that six-year-old actually responsible for the whole world around him? Could a child understand adult tension, adult choices, adult limitations, adult pain? Does a promise being broken prove that he was not good enough? Does the sting of rejection prove that he was unlovable? Does sadness mean the old verdict was true? The defense does not erase the memory, it just hears the facts properly. The adult me can say to that boy, you wanted the funfair, of course you were devastated, you were small, you were hurt, you made sense of it with the tools you had. You did not cause everything around you. You were never required to earn love by becoming a perfect boy. You were worthy before you understood any of this. Now, I do not say that to produce a magical ending. Some days it lands more than others, some days the jury agrees, some days it does not. The work still counts. The file is being heard by someone awake. Your defense might have to say something different. It might say you did what you could with what you knew. It might say that treatment was not a measure of your value. It might say you're allowed to want things, it might say you're allowed to disappoint somebody without becoming a disappointment, and it might say you can feel grief and still choose the future. It might say you can take this slowly. The exact sentence does not matter as much as the fact that it is finally spoken.

Listener Bench Guided TLC

Jody Brooks 20:36

This is the bench. For the next few minutes, leave my caravan in real where it belongs in my story and come to your own present day room. Choose one recent moment in which a protector turned up. Not necessarily the biggest one, choose something manageable. The email you've been delaying, the conversation you keep rehearsing, the invitation you want to decline, the change you keep telling yourself you're not ready for, the compliment you immediately dismissed, the ordinary moment in which something in you said, do not hide, wait, prove it first. Make yourself smaller. Before you touch the story, come into your body, let your feet meet the floor, let your hands rest somewhere, look around and name a few things that are here now. A window, a book, a glass, a coat, the edge of the table. You're not back in the old scene. Connect with the scene that you're in now. You are here in the age you are now, with choices you did not have then. Now notice where the protector lives in your body when it starts talking. Is it pressing a weight in the centre of your chest? Is it a fast little buzz behind your ribs? Is it a contraction in your throat that makes speaking feel impossible? Is it your stomach trying to persuade you that cancellation is the only sensible course of action? Simply name it tight chest, hot face, heavy legs, nothing is too small to notice. Give the protector a name. If you already know it, use it. Self-doubt, Sid, Ian, the not good enough voice, the voice that says no treat for you, the voice that sounds like somebody from years ago. You're not calling it because it is the whole of you. You're calling it because it is only one part, and a part can be spoken to. This is where TLC begins. Thank, learn, confirm. Say either aloud or silently, I can hear you. Pause. Notice what happens in your body. Perhaps for the first time all day this voice does not have to shout to be noticed. Then thank it. Thank you for trying to keep me safe. You're not thanking the interruption, you are thanking the intention that formed before you had the language, power, or choices you have now. Somewhere this protector learned that a certain thing was dangerous. It stepped into the doorway and it's been standing there guarding it a very long time. Now learn, ask the gentle why. What are you trying to protect me from? Keep the question soft. No demand, let it land in your ribs, your stomach, your shoulders, wherever you feel it. You're not running down a corridor with a torch, you're sitting in a chair, leaving the door open. Perhaps an answer comes as words, being laughed at, hearing no, being left, making a mistake in public, perhaps it comes as an image, perhaps it does not come at all. You can still say I do not know yet, but I am listening. Then confirm. This is the C. Not explain, not defend, confirm. Choose one small decision that belongs to the present. Not a dramatic declaration, one real modest decision. I'm going to send the email. I'm going to say no to this invitation. I'm going to take the rest. I'm going to tell the truth about what I can manage. Then say it to the protector. I hear that you're worried I'll be judged. I'm going to send this anyway. I hear that you want me to avoid disappointment. I'm going to try this anyway. I hear that you think rest is unsafe. But I'm going to sit down anyway. Notice the word anyway. It's not defiant in a brittle way. It's not a slammed door. It is the voice of a judge who has heard the evidence and is able to make a decision. You can come with me, you do not get to make the choices for me. If the protector argues back, do not explain. Explaining hands the microphone back to the prosecution. Confirming puts the gavel down. If it gets louder or more urgent, you can use the appointment in the diary. Say, I hear that you have more evidence. I'm not ignoring you. It's not never, it's just not now. Bring it back at the time I have set aside. That distinction teaches something new. It tells a protector that its concerns can exist without becoming an emergency in that very moment. Now, see if you can picture it taking a step back. Just half a step, that is all. It might take a few tries. You may need to imagine it standing in the doorway rather than in the middle of the room. It does not disappear, it does not have to be humiliated or defeated. It simply steps far enough back that you can see your own feet again. Pause. Ask, what is the verdict today? Maybe it is I can send this message. Maybe it is I know what I want. Maybe it is I need more information. Maybe it is I need to sleep on this. Maybe it is I can only hold both truths for now. You do not need the final answer. You need the most honest answer available in this body on this day. If it is clear, let it be a verdict for today. Do not turn it into a lifelong contract though. If it is muddled, call it a mistrial. You do not have enough choir, enough rest, enough information or enough steadiness for a fair hearing today. You can return, nothing about that makes you weak or indecisive. It makes you unwilling to hand down a sentence in a noisy courtroom. If you can hear two sides and neither can agree yet, call it a hung jury. You may feel relieved just to have named it. You do not have to decide that the side wanting change is selfish or that the side wanting safety is cowardly. Both have evidence, both can stay in the room while you take a small, kind step. Notice what happens in your body when you grant yourself that. Perhaps your jaw loosens, perhaps you can breathe a little lower, perhaps you are still tense but are less alone inside the tension. That is not nothing. That is the beginning of self-trust.

Weekend Practice And Return

Jody Brooks 26:58

When you finish, you might make a tiny note Today the prosecution said this, the defence said this. The next small step is this, or simply I heard myself, you are not producing evidence for social media, you are giving the defence a record. The prosecution has had a lifetime of notes, it is time for the other side to have a file too. If you choose to use the morning and evening trust meditations in the community, this is exactly the kind of room they are designed to help you enter. The morning gives you the internal navigation before the day begins. The evening gives you a place to hear what happened, to thank the protector, to invite that half step back, and to gather your own evidence. You do not have to use them perfectly. There is no perfect way to use them. For this weekend, book one ten-minute appointment with a protector that has been loudest this week. Give it some TLC, thank it for its care, learn what it's trying to protect, and confirm one small decision you're going to make anyway. And if the diary slips, do not turn a missed appointment into exhibit A for the prosecution. Make another one. That is the whole practice. Returning without punishment. Self-trust is not a dramatic leap or a demand for certainty. It is a plan, it is the quiet return, it is the willingness to hear the case without abandoning the person, the centre of it. The question, what if I've only heard one side, has a very tender answer. It's time to let the defense speak. Not to erase the prosecution, not to claim that none of it hurt, not to make a villain out of every person who appears in an old file, but to let the whole truth have a hearing. Your protectors are not the enemy. They may be operating from maps that are old, worried, and sincerely mistaken. They may lay mist across the road, hide you behind a mask or present evidence with the enthusiasm of a barrister who has had three espresso. Take them, learn what they are protecting, confirm your decision, go the other way and repeat. And if the result today is a verdict, a mistrial or a hung jury, it is all right. The work is not winning, the work is showing up, presenting the case, hearing the facts honestly, and returning with compassion. The court is no longer running without you.

Closing And Next Week

Jody Brooks 29:30

You're not falling apart, you're waking up, and waking up can look like sitting quietly with a memory, feeling its sadness without letting it sentence you, then making one modest, truthful choice in the life you have now. Next week we move into week four, integration, and our question will be what would I do if I believed myself? We'll return to the courtroom not to win it, but to let it adjourn with the evidence

Resources And Disclaimer

Jody Brooks 29:58

heard. And if you missed Wednesday's conversation with Tom Cronin, founder of the Stillness Project, you don't just have to listen, you can watch it too on Apple, on YouTube, on Spotify, and of course over on the Messy Midlife homepage. You can join the free Messy Midlife community, a warm place with no judgment where the morning and evening trust meditations live, where all the free tools are waiting and where you can bring the complicated case without having to perform a neat ending. The link is in the 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 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.