Midlife Wake Up Call

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. What if it isn't cracking to break you? It's cracking so that something you've been carrying quietly for a very long time can finally get some air. This is season 4 and the word of the month is honesty. Not the loud kind, not the confessional kind, the quiet kind, the kind that's been sitting at the back of the room for years, not wanting to make a fuss, and getting drowned out every time by something much louder. If you've ever walked out of a room and thought, I already knew that, this season is for you. And it's going to be gentle with you, and it's going to teach you plainly how to be honest, not just with the world around you, but more importantly, with yourself in midlife. This is Messy Midlife. It's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect. I'm your host, Jodie Brooks. Welcome to season four, Honesty.

The Courthouse Oath

Jody Brooks 1:01

Picture a waiting room, not a hospital waiting room this time, though we'll get to one of those in a minute. There are five of these waiting rooms as it turns out, and I'm going to lay all five of them out for you shortly. For now, picture the fifth one, the one at the courthouse, plastic chairs bolted to the floor, a clock on the wall doing the slow official ticking that clocks in that kind of building do. In season three we learnt that a case is already in session, and it's been in session for longer than you realise, and the person on trial is you. Now the person who's going to be asked to swear the oath is also you. You've been in this waiting room for a while. You just did not know that it had a name. The oath when it comes is the one everybody knows. I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And here is the part that only the fifth room teaches. The oath is not about being watched. The oath is the moment you stop editing yourself for the room you are in. You tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth to yourself first.

Meet Saint Just

Jody Brooks 2:15

Everything else, every other room comes after. In that waiting room, standing between you and that door is a figure, a protector, the bodyguard. Yourself saboteur. When I was small, if my grandmother asked whether I'd done a chore and I answered with I was just going to, she'd look at me and say gently Hm Saint Just. It still makes me smile to this day. Saint Just is the one who says do it tomorrow. Have another biscuit. So the door to the courtroom stays shut, and the file stays on the other side of it, and everybody has a very nice afternoon. He gets called the self saboteur, and just like the inner critic, self doubt and the imposter, they are in fact protectors with a superpower, and in fact not a saboteur at all. When you meet them with honesty, now all of that will become clear as the season goes on. For today I want you to notice your Saint Just, not to pick a fight with them, just to notice because the whole of this season and specifically the whole of this week is a hearing, not a battle. The courthouse is never a fight, remember? This is the core of the mediator.

The Week's Question

Jody Brooks 3:33

So here is the question I want you to ask yourself, and I want you to notice what happens in your chest when I ask it. What do I really know that I keep not looking at? That is the question for this week. That is what we were here for. Not to change your life on the strength of it and not to do anything with it today, just to notice it, just to hear it, once without all the other noise of a life at full volume over the top of it. Because if you can hear it, even for a second, you've already learned how to be honest with yourself, and the rest of the month is going to teach you what to do with what you have heard. If you've been here through the previous seasons, welcome back and I'm so glad you're here for the start of season four. If you're brand new, welcome, come in, take a seat. Now you do not need to have heard season one, two or three to be in this room. This season stands on its own and I'll re-explain anything you need on the way through. In a sentence or two, so nothing you may have missed will ever be the reason you cannot follow. And you can always hop back and listen to a previous

Season Three Recap

Jody Brooks 4:45

episode. Of course, I'd highly recommend that. Season three was trust. It taught us that the self we were quietly worried about might actually be capable of change. It heard the case in the courtroom of self-doubt and it changed the verdict. For the first time there was a defense. You walked into a courtroom that was not adversarial but a courtroom of mediation. You opened old files, you reheard the evidence, and the case reached its end. Perhaps there was a verdict, perhaps a hung jury, perhaps more evidence was needed, and the court was simply adjourned. Now comes the harder part, because the one protector we've not dealt with is the one we built ourselves, and there is only one thing that gets you past that protector, and that is where honesty begins. Season three changed the verdict. Season four changes the behaviour. That's the whole argument of the month, and I want to say it plainly at the top so we all know what we're doing. Trust changes what you think about yourself, honesty changes what you actually do next. You can believe sincerely and correctly that you're capable of change and still not open

Five Waiting Rooms

Jody Brooks 6:02

the cupboard. Now before I get to the cupboard, I owe you an explanation of the waiting rooms because I've never laid them all out like this before, not on this show, in fact not anywhere. So here they are. And I want you to notice as I go that you have sat in every single one of them, both literally and also in the sense I use them metaphorically. And there is one more thing to notice as I go. You're never in any of these rooms on your own. There is a figure on the chair beside you in all five of them, and they do not change. Saint Just, the bodyguard. They do not have a specialist subject because they do not need to. They say the same thing in every one of those rooms, and they say it kindly, don't look, leave it for now. That is their whole job and they are extremely good at it. What changes from room to room is who sits down on the other side of you. So the dentist's waiting room. Necessary discomfort you'd rather skip. You're not frightened exactly, but you could have done more. Are you here because you didn't take action? You'd rather avoid it, but it is necessary pain, and often not as bad as you thought. This room is Saint Just's home ground and they need no help in it because delay tactics are the only thing being asked of them. The file on their lap in this room is a record of every single time you were just going to. That's why the bodyguard is called Saint Just. The doctor's waiting room. The unknown and then underneath the unknown a second thing that nobody ever mentions, which is quiet doubt about whether you are even entitled to be there. Whether you're wasting their time with this, that is the room where Sid sits down next to you. Sid is the imposter syndrome in the shape of the headmaster, and the file they bring is every occasion you decided other people were properly ill and deserved to be seen before you. You were only making a fuss. Saint Just says leave it for now, it'll go away, it's not that bad, and Sid says anyway, who are you to be here? The exam results waiting room. The strangest of the four because the outcome already exists. It's written down, somebody in that building already knows it. You just have not been told yet, and nothing you do in that chair changes a single word of it. That's Ian's room. Ian is my inner critic, and in a room where there is nothing left to decide and nothing left to fix, he does the only thing he knows how to do. With twenty empty minutes on his side, he opens the file marked every other time we were here. The interview waiting room, where the fear is not proportionate to the threat. It's proportionate to how much you want the thing. Nobody is nervous before an interview for a job they do not want. This is the barrister's room, self-doubt. Therefore is the case for the no, for the disappointment prepared well in advance so that if the no comes, it does not land on you unprotected. Four waiting rooms, four different types of waiting, each with a different accompanying feelings and emotions. The good news is that every one of them builds the same muscle, which is the ability to sit still while something you cannot control is being decided. One bodyguard in all four of them, and a specialist beside them depending on which kind of honesty the moment is asking for. The waiting room brings us a moment of pause, a certain amount of silence, and the opportunity to hear the answer to the question we've been avoiding.

The Fifth Room Truth

Jody Brooks 9:56

Then there's the fifth, the court waiting room. And it's different altogether. Because in the first four you're waiting for information. In the fifth you're waiting to be asked to speak. That is the whole difference, and it's the reason this room is in season four, honesty. And in this one, they are all there at once. Saint just on the chair beside you, and Sid and Ian and the barrister and every file between them. They're not there to keep you out. They are there because they are the witnesses, the expert witnesses, of your life. Everything that is known about your life is in those files and they've been carrying it for you for years, waiting to be called to give evidence. Now we keep the oath for court because the whole culture agrees that in a court at least the truth has to be spoken, or something in the whole structure gives way. And I want to borrow that oath because it belongs in all five of these rooms, not only the fifth one. Because here is what all five rooms actually are. They're not buildings, they are a space, the silence, the gap between sitting down and your name being called. There is nothing to do and nothing to fix and nobody to perform for, and the files are right there on the laps beside you. That is the only condition under which any of us examines a file. Not in the rush, not in the noise, but in the quiet wait. Which is why the room you are most often sitting in is not a waiting room at all. It's in your car in a supermarket car park at forty seven, engine off, shopping in the boot, staring at nothing in particular, and not going into the supermarket. Nobody booked you in, nobody is going to call your name, but it's the same room, the same plastic chair silence, the same figures beside you, and the same files, and the same question, which is whether you're willing to open one while it's quiet enough to

Meditation As Waiting

Jody Brooks 12:07

read. And if you did season three with me, you've already built one of these rooms on purpose. That's what the morning and evening meditations were. I do not think I said it plainly enough at the time. A meditation is a waiting room. You book for yourself. The same silence, the same nothing to do and nothing to fix, the same files on the laps beside you, except that nobody called your name and nobody is going to. You're not waiting for information, you're not waiting to be asked to speak. You made the gap yourself, so that when a file needed reading, there would be somewhere quiet enough to read it. Time plus trust, which is how mediation quietly becomes meditation, and that is the difference between the rooms you get summoned into and the room you choose. Life will put you in the first kind whether you like it or not. Season three taught you how to build the second kind. Season four is what you do once you're sitting in it. In the oath, the clause that does the work is the small one in the middle, the whole truth. Not the version, not the flattering slice, not the socially acceptable rewrite, the whole truth. Which means unavoidably the truth to yourself first, because there is no whole truth for a room if the person speaking it is still hiding a chunk of it for themselves. Everything in this season sits on top of that. External honesty follows internal honesty, never the other way round. If any part of you thinks the way to start being honest with yourself is by telling somebody else first, gently no, that is not how this works. The oath is taken in fifth room in your own head first.

Mistrials And Patience

Jody Brooks 14:02

Only then does it walk out into the world. And that is why this week we sit in the waiting room and do not go through the door, because a witness who takes the oath and then edits themselves does not get a bad verdict, they get a mistrial. The whole thing collapses and it has to be heard again, and they go back out to the plastic chairs and they wait for another day. For some of us, that's exactly what the last thirty years plus have been. Mistrial after mistrial after mistrial. Not because we're dishonest people, but because we kept taking the oath before we were really ready to keep it. So we stay in the room with all four of them until you can say the words and mean them. And here's the thing I love about waiting rooms. The waiting is not the failure state, the waiting is the room doing its job. Waiting rooms are quiet places and the quiet is exactly where the court of self-doubt likes to call witnesses and bring evidence, which sounds heavy and it is not because now you know that it is what the room is for. The waiting is not you being lost, the discomfort belongs to the room and not to you. So if you're sitting in a waiting room in your own life right now, one you did not consciously book yourself into, one you cannot quite name, please hear this. It is not evidence against you, it is a room with a purpose,

The Cupboard Metaphor

Jody Brooks 15:34

and you get to choose what you do when your name is called. Which brings me to the cupboard. Everybody knows the cupboard. Now yours might actually be a cupboard, mine is, it might be a drawer or a room in the house you walk past. It might be a folder on your laptop, it might be a conversation you are not having. You're not in denial, you know exactly what is in there, you just do not open it. And if you look honestly, you'll notice that you've organized the whole kitchen around not opening it. The kettle has moved, the mugs have moved, the tea is in a slightly less convenient place than it used to be, because if the tea were where the tea logically ought to be, you'd have to open the cupboard to reach it, and you're not doing that today. So here is the season's question and it belongs to you and not to me. What is your cupboard that you have organized your whole kitchen around? Not opening. Say it back. What is my cupboard that I have organized my whole kitchen around not opening? Notice and this is important the question is not about the organizing, not about the cupboard. This week we're not asking what is in there. That comes later and softer than you think. This week we're asking where has your kitchen quietly rearranged itself? Is the tea not where the tea should be? Where have you accepted a slightly less convenient version of your own life so that you did not have to open the cupboard door? Now that might be a relationship you keep on a lower heat than it deserves. It might be a friendship you've been letting drift because if you called them you would have to admit something. It might be a body you're looking after just carefully enough to feel virtuous and just carelessly enough to keep the diagnosis at arm's length. It might be a job, a house, a bottle, a screen, a silence. It might be a whole second life you've been running quietly in your head where you already left this one, and you've been running it for so long that you've made yourself entirely comfortable in the running of it. Whatever it is, it's not the point of this episode to name it. The point of this episode is simply to notice that you've been organizing a kitchen. That's

Defining Quiet Honesty

Jody Brooks 18:05

all. So let me say plainly what honesty is for the purpose of the next twelve episodes. Honesty is the willingness to say the true thing to yourself first before anyone else hears it and without turning it into a case against yourself. Read that with me to yourself first before anyone else hears it, without turning it into a case against yourself. That last part is doing a great deal of work. This is not a season for beating yourself up. If you find yourself at any point in these twelve episodes using what you notice as fresh evidence for a case you have already been running against yourself for years, stop. Put it down. That is not honesty. That is the barrister for the prosecution wearing a brand new wig. And we'll meet him properly later in the month. For today, if you notice you're building a case, just notice that and set it down. It's not what we're doing here. Honesty is quiet. It sits at the back of the room, it does not want to make a fuss, and it is almost always drowned out by something louder. That is how it works. That is how it's always worked. Learning how to be honest with yourself in midlife is not really learning anything new. It's just learning to stop talking over the thing that has been trying to speak for a long time.

My Doctor Results Day

Jody Brooks 19:32

Now, I want to tell you about my cupboard because I have one and mine was my body, my health. I did not find it in a book, I did not find it in a coaching room, I found it in a doctor's surgery on results day. Now, fair warning before we go, this is a room where a diagnosis got read out, and over the season there is medical detail in it. This is not a weight loss podcast and it will never become one. And anything you take from this room about your body, please, please, please always seek the advice of an appropriate medical professional before proceeding. This is a story about a cupboard and about what was already in it before the doctor spoke. Now, I'd done the trust work genuinely. I'd listened to my body, I'd asked for help and I'd been to the doctor. I wasn't sleeping and my mood was really low. I'd had the blood tests, I'd told the truth in the appointment, or something in the neighbourhood of it anyway. And today was results day. Now, in the twenty minutes before my name was called, I did what everybody does in a doctor's waiting room. I diagnosed everybody else in it. There was a very overweight gentleman on a mobility scooter. He looked older than his years and in no way whatsoever could he have been described as healthy. As I sat there, I looked at him and I thought, well, I'll never get like that. I mean, how do you let yourself get so bad? Now, before I continue, I'll give you all the weight in all the various variations as this is an international podcast. So there I was, sat in the waiting room, at this time weighing 19 stone 1 pounds, which is £267 or £121 kilos. Now that was down from £21 stone, £294 the year before, and down from an all-time high of £24 stone, £336 before that. There I sat, silently diagnosing another man in my head. It was almost funny, at least it would have been funny if it were not the exact same mechanism this whole season is about. As I sat waiting, I also read all the health advice on the walls, and I ticked things off under the unit. Of alcohol, yes, tick, cigarette swap for vate, tick, no meat, tick, no processed food, tick. And I thought, and I'm quoting my own voice and head at the time accurately here. Well, basically my body is essentially a temple. All I need now is a prescription to help me sleep and improve my mood and I can be on my way. You can already see Saint Just at work in that room, can't you? Every tick was a plausible sounding fact. Every tick was a belief wearing a fax clothes. And every tick was

Diagnosis to Honesty

Jody Brooks 22:36

the bodyguard rearranging the mugs, opening the biscuits. That was my cupboard and my kitchen. Years of it, moving things around so that I never had to reach past the door I was not wanting to open. Now my name came over the intercom. I got up, I went in, and I was handed the results, and I walked out of that room a type 2 diabetic. Having declined the prescription for insulin I was told I needed, I made a deal that I would return in twelve weeks, sure that I could do something to change this result. And here is the moment that actually matters, and it's not the diagnosis or the results. On the walk back through the waiting room, I went past the gentleman on the scooter again, and I answered my own question How do you let it get so bad? This time though, I was asking myself the question, and the answer was that I had let it get that bad. Despite the warning, the numerous pre-diabetic checks, I was now still overweight, a much worse type 2 diabetic. That sentence is the whole season. It took about two seconds, it cost nothing. Nobody heard it, I did not write it down, I did not tell anybody, and I did not make a plan on the back of it. I just said the true thing to myself once, without turning it into a case against myself. And it was the first honest sentence I'd said about my body in a very long time.

Facts Don’t Move Us

Jody Brooks 24:15

Now the diagnosis was a fact, and facts are in a way the easy bit. Facts sit still, facts don't argue, you can put a fact down on the table and go and make a cup of tea and when you come back, it's still there. But a fact on its own changes nothing. And I can prove that because I've been collecting facts about my own body for years. Weights, numbers, photographs, trouser sizes. Not one of them moved me an inch, because every one of them arrived in a kitchen that had already been rearranged around the cupboard that I was refusing to open. What moved was the sentence, not the number on the chart, the sentence in the corridor. And that is what I want to set up for this season plainly before we go anywhere near what happened over those twelve weeks. Because there is the order of things, and the order is the entire point. I did not get honest because I lost weight, I lost weight because I got honest. Honesty was not the reward at the end of it, honesty was the door. It was the only door, and I'd been walking past it for years, rearranging a whole kitchen so that I would never have to touch the handle or open the cupboard. Season three told me that a man capable of change existed. That was trust, and it was true, and on its own it did not move me at all. What moved me was one sentence said to myself in a corridor past a man on a mobility scooter. Now I'm not going to tell you the rest of the story today or what happened across those twelve weeks. What the numbers did, where I am now, that all comes later in the season, and it comes later on purpose. If I put it here it becomes a before and an after, and this show is not a before and an after. Today I only want three things in the room with you the cupboard, the sentence in the corridor, and the order they came in. That is my waiting room. Here is the sit down.

Your Scooter Man

Jody Brooks 26:21

Who is your man on the scooter? Not literally, I don't mean have you ever been unkind about somebody in a doctor's surgery. If we're honest, almost everybody has. That is not the question. The question is what have you been doing recently that looks like diagnosing somebody else, but is really you not looking at something in yourself? Whose life have you been quietly commenting on in your own head while your own life waited outside the room? Whose choices have you been surprised by when part of you already knows the person doing the surprising is you? Be gentle with yourself as you answer that. There is no verdict here, it is a hearing not a battle. Now, if it's nobody today, that is fine. But most of us, if we sit still for a moment, can name a scooter man. It's not a nice thing to notice, it is, however, a very human thing to notice. And here is the second

Ticks and Cupboards

Jody Brooks 27:23

one. What is your ticking off? What is your list of things you do not need to worry about under the units? The vape, the temple. Everybody has a version. It might be I'm not one of those parents. I always show up. It might be I'm not the kind of person who lets a relationship rot. I'd notice. It might be that I'm really careful with money. I'm not the person my dad was afraid of me becoming. Those ticks might all genuinely be true, and it doesn't matter. What matters is whether they're on the wall because they are true or whether they are on the wall so that you do not have to look at the ones in the cupboard that you cannot tick. And if nothing came up, that is fine. Nothing is a legitimate answer. If quite a lot came up, that is also fine. And it's not evidence against you. Now I want to give you the engine for the season, but very lightly because it gets taught properly in week two. But if you're anything like me, you like to see the map before you walk it. So this is the map for season four. And if you're not a map person, then this next bit you can just let it wash over you and you'll find it in the coming

Fact Faith Belief Map

Jody Brooks 28:42

weeks. Everything you hold about yourself sits in one of these three places. There is fact. Fact is provable. Water boils at a hundred degrees, I'm fifty three, I'm married. Facts do not need you to believe them. They just are, and they are honestly quite restful, because there's nothing to negotiate with a fact. There is faith. Now faith is unprovable. It's not only religious though, for many of us, myself included, it is also that too. Faith is what you hold without evidence because holding it does something for you. Faith is not a weakness in the system. It is not a failure of thinking. We will treat it with the respect it deserves this season. My friend Karana Siddin, who is this week's guest on Wednesday's episode, is a woman of faith, and it is one of the honest things about her life, and she names it herself. And then there is belief. Well, belief is the flexible middle. Beliefs feel like facts from the inside and they behave like faith under questioning, which means the belief is the only one of the three you can check, and the only one of the three you can change and update, which is why almost the entire season happens in belief. Let me give you the smallest possible example of mine. Now I believed for many years that I did not like olives. I held it as fact. If somebody offered me an olive, I'd say, Ugh no, I don't like olives, in the same kind of tone that somebody uses to say, Ugh no, I don't eat glass. And it turned out to be a belief I had not revisited in many years. I tried an olive when I was very young, I did not like it, my younger self filed it under fact and moved on. And I went to a great deal of trouble at dinner parties on the strength of that file written by a child to make sure that I never ate an olive again. Then, in my late twenties on holiday in Greece, a friend dared me to eat one at dinner. I put it in my mouth, already braced to spread it out, fully expecting the horrors to be confirmed. Olives are disgusting. Everybody knows that, I know that. It was delicious. The only horror in that moment was working out how many years I'd gone without something I actually loved, on the authority of a child who tried one once. That is the mechanism right there in an olive. As far as I was concerned, the taste of an olive was fact. On closer examination, it was actually a belief, and a belief is the one of the three you can check, and the one of the three you can change. I want to name where the three positions come from because the credit matters and I'm not going to pretend that I invented it. The framing facts, faith and belief comes from near IL, right at the start of his book Beyond Belief, which he co-wrote with Julie Lee. It is truly a fantastic read and I highly recommend it. The order this season uses is fact, belief then faith. Fact first because facts are the easy end. Belief in the middle because belief is the messy middle. And it is where the work is. Faith at the end because faith deserves to be spoken about with the kind of care that comes after you've already agreed to be honest. Today is about fact and faith at either end. Week two is when we open belief properly. This week's job is smaller than any other week's and I want you to trust me about that.

Week One Faith Lean

Jody Brooks 32:37

There is a spine that runs quietly underneath every season of this show, and it walks four steps in order faith, hope, surrender and peace. It runs week by week, not season by season. Week one in every season is always faith. Faith in the specific sense is not a religious word for use here, though it can be that too. Faith is the possibility of something better. Hope is the belief in the faith being possible. So faith comes first because there is nothing to believe in until the possibility is on the table. So this is where I put the possibility of honesty on the table. All I'm asking you to hold this week without any proof is that the truth about your life, whatever the truth is, will not destroy you. That is faith doing work before anything has been checked. You do not have to know what the truth is, you do not have to be sure the possibility is real, you just have to be willing to hold that it might be. That there might be a version of you sturdy enough to hear what you already know. That is not a leap, it is a lean. Just a lean slightly in your mind in the direction of the possibility and see what your body does. Some of you will feel your shoulders drop, some of you will feel a small tightening, some of you will feel absolutely nothing today and that is completely fine. And it does not mean you failed at the start. It means it's going to keep working throughout the week. Every week in this season there is a tool, and each one works on its own

Smallest True Sentence

Jody Brooks 34:24

for somebody who only heard this one episode. This week's tool has been sitting underneath everything I've said so far, and I'm going to name it now. It's called the Smallest True Sentence. Here's what you do in your own head. In your own voice, no audience, no notebook, no pressure. You finish this sentence. The thing I already know and keep not looking at is the thing I already know and keep not looking at is one sentence that's it. Not a plan, not a resolution, not a promise, not a to do list, not an action. Just one sentence. Finished in your head without turning it into a case against yourself. Four notes now on how it works. It's small on purpose, not the whole truth, not the whole story, not the whole shape of your life. The smallest true sentence. If it feels enormous, then it's not the smallest true sentence. It's a bigger one wearing a coat. Take the coat off. Underneath, there is usually a smaller sentence that is more embarrassing to say. In a good way. It usually contains the words actually or the word really. Actually I've not been fine for a while. Really, I've been drinking more than I used to. Actually, I do not think I love this job. It's honest which means no adjectives that are actually a verdict. Not I have been catastrophically failing as a father. That is a case for the prosecution and we already agreed we are not building cases today. Try. I've been half here when I am with my kids. Same room, just different weather. It does not need to be said out loud, not this week. I'll get to that before the end of the season. Today in your head is fine. In fact for the first pass in your head is better. Because the moment you start choosing who to say it to, you're already editing it for the room you're speaking it in. And this is not about editing for a room. And this is the one that is the easiest to skim past and the hardest to actually obey.

No Plans Just Naming

Jody Brooks 36:45

The sentence does not do anything. You do not act on it, you do not tidy it, you do not turn it into a plan, it is not a start line for a new regime. It is simply a naming. That is all it is meant to be. Take as long as you like over it. If it takes you three seconds wonderful, if it takes you three days wonderful. If it takes you a whole week and it arrives in the queue at the post office on Sunday, wonderful. If you say it and it drifts out of your head and you have to find it again on Tuesday, wonderful. The sentence knows when to arrive and it does not need to be forced, so do not stand over yourself with a stopwatch. Saint Justin loves the stopwatch because when you fail the stopwatch, he can offer you the sofa, a cup of tea, a biscuit, and the two of you can agree that it might be better to wait for the right time to try again. And if you say the sentence and immediately want to argue with it, notice the arguer, thank them, sit them on the sofa with the tea, and let the sentence stand. If you can finish that sentence once this week in your own head, honestly, you've done everything this episode asks of you. That is how to be honest with yourself in midlife. When you are just beginning, you say the sentence to yourself, you do not do anything with it, and you do not use it against yourself. That is your week one. And if any of this has stirred something up, please be gentle with yourself. Take your time, there is no rush, nothing this week wants you to be brave, it just wants you to be honest, which is a different thing.

Season Shape Preview

Jody Brooks 38:29

If you want to know what's coming without me spoiling it too much, here is the shape. Next week we look at what the not looking is buying you, because it's buying you something, and honesty gets a lot warmer once you know what a habit is actually protecting. In week three we teach a tool called the Gentle Why. You'll have seen it before from previous seasons, but this is a slightly different gentle why, which is how you walk one of your beliefs all the way back warmly to where it came from. And in week four we let it all settle into something ordinary, which is the point of it, because honesty is meant to be a practice and not a confession. That is the whole month. Nothing about this is meant to change your life this week. That is somebody else's season, and I love that season and I promise I will get you there. For today though, one sentence.

Closing and Next Steps

Jody Brooks 39:26

So let me close this episode. You've arrived in season four, you've met all five waiting rooms, laid out together for the first time, and you've heard why the fifth one is different from the other four. You've met Saint Just in his working clothes, and you've been asked to notice them rather than pick a fight with them. You've heard about my man on the scooter, and you've been asked to notice yours, and to be gentle if you find them. You've had the lightest sketch of fact, belief and faith, which gets taught properly next week, and you have one tool, the smallest true sentence, and one invitation which is to finish it in your own head once this week. You've also heard more than once that this season does not chase anything, does not resolve anything, and does not ask you to change anything. It names, it updates, and that is enough for a month. And that is how to be honest with yourself in midlife when you're just starting out. You put a possibility on the table, you notice a cupboard, you finish a sentence in your head, you leave the sentence to do its own quiet work, and you go on with your Monday. Two things can be right this week at the same time. You can be doing well and there can be a cupboard in your kitchen that you've been organizing the room around. Both are allowed, both are true. Honesty is not one truth winning, honesty is being honest about both.

Guest and Community Invite

Jody Brooks 41:01

On Wednesday, I'm joined by my friend and guest that I've been so looking forward to introducing you to. Her name is Karana Siddin, she's a writer in Jakarta and the author of a book called Cheers for a Good Life, and she said something to me on the recording that I have not been able to put down since. She said she already had all the evidence, all of it, in a life that from the outside looked genuinely good, worked genuinely well, and photographed genuinely happily. She had all the evidence and she did not pay attention to it, which is the whole of this week one, spoken by somebody else without being led there. That conversation is the perfect follow-on to today, and you can hear it and watch it too on Apple, on YouTube, on Spotify, or over on the Messy Midlife podcast homepage. The Wednesday guest episodes are the ones that are full videos, so if you like to have a face with your voice or you like being able to see somebody actually thinking, that is the place to catch myself and Karana on Wednesday in conversation. And I want to tell you about the Messy Midlife community because a lot of season four is going to point you back to it. It's a warm, honest, free from judgment place. It's where all the free tools live, it is where I'll be posting a discussion prompt each week that matches whatever we're doing here. And this week, because the invitation is a private one in your own head, all I'm going to do over there is put the question, what are you not opening? You do not have to answer it in public and you do not have to answer it at all. It will just be there in the season chat room along with the rest of the community at your own pace so that when you are ready you have somewhere to go and not be alone with it. There is a seat already in the community for you. To join, go to messy midlife podcast.world forward slash join or click on the link in the show notes. It's free and it takes 40 seconds

Final Sign Off

Jody Brooks 43:11

to join. So all that's left to say now is 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.