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. Before we go any further, I want to say the quiet, honest thing that this whole season leans on. Most of us are not walking around telling ourselves great big obvious cinema-sized lies. That is not the shape of it. The shape of it is softer than that, and closer and much more expensive once you add it up across a lifetime. The shape of it is that you already know, you already know the thing, and somewhere along the way you found a way of living alongside what you know that means you never have to quite look at it. Most of us have a name for that. We call it a little white lie. A small one told to ourselves in partnership with the protector we know as the self-sapoteur. Hold on to that phrase because later on I'm going to take it off you. This is Messy Midlife. It's not a crisis, it's a calling to connect. I'm your host, Jodie Brooks. Welcome to season 4 Honesty.

Waiting Room Truths

Jody Brooks 1:06

Welcome back. We started the season sitting in a waiting room. Not the court one. Not yet. That is later in the season. We're sitting in the doctor's waiting room. For me, like many in midlife, it's a room that can often deliver a truth we've been avoiding. Health posters taped up slightly crooked by someone in a hurry, a low table of free leaflets that nobody quite picks up, a receptionist half behind glass, not looking up, and a selection of tall magazines whose pages have offered many a much wanted distraction, and a file on the desk with my name on it, closed. Here's the thing I keep coming back to about that room. The appointment had not started, but something had already been in session in there for years, and I was the one running it. Picture Sid just for a moment they are the one I named this season, the bodyguard, the self saboteur. And in that room, they were not menacing at all. They were lovely, they were busy tidying the place up for me in my head. They walked me over to the poster on the wall, and they let me tick off every line of it. One at a time, so I had somewhere restful to put my hands and thoughts, confirming I was under the units of recommended alcohol. Cigarettes had been swapped for vape, I didn't eat meat, no processed food, and when Saint just finished handed me a sentence to hold the way you hand somebody a cup of tea and comfort. No need to read the posters about weight, diabetes, cholesterol and exercise. My body is essentially already a temple. Look at all those health promoting things you do. Endorsed in a doctor's waiting room on an official poster, nothing had been said out loud, everything had been arranged. So here's the question and it is the one I want you to carry away from this episode. What do I already know that I keep not looking at? This is the one where we take that question one step further. Last time I walked you into that room and I told you what happened when my name was called. Now I want to tell you about what I know through the honesty lens was really going on in that twenty minutes before my name was called. Because that is the part I left unspoken last time, and it turns out that this part is the part that matters. Now I did not skip it to be clever, and I would have told you that at the time it was just a little white line. I left it because at the time I honestly thought the interesting bit of that morning was the diagnosis. The interesting bit was the man on the mobility scooter and the posters that said you're okay. None of this applies to you. The interesting bit was a man in his forties reading an NHS poster like a scorecard and feeling calm.

Kirana And The Evidence

Jody Brooks 3:59

In episode two of this season, Karana Siddin joined me from Jakarta. She's a Muslim woman, a writer, a coach, and an author of a book of essays about what a good life actually is. I'm not going to recap the interview here. Go and listen to it. It deserves the hour. You'll find it wherever you listen, and every episode of this show lives at MessymidlifePodcast.world if you'd rather go and browse. I want to tell you one moment out of that conversation, because it's a simple moment and it unlocks everything I want to say today. Karana has a son. He was seven at the time, and one evening at a family dinner in front of everybody, this child looked at his mother and said, Mum, you're so jobless. She explained that everybody laughed. It was that kind of moment where a child says the thing an adult would never say out loud, and the table goes warm and there is laughter, and nobody means any harm by it. Karana told me she went to bed that night and could not sleep. Now she was very clear with me about why she could not sleep, and this is the part I want you to catch. It was not because she was hurt, it was not because she was confused, it was because she recognised the truth in it. That is her word, recognized, and then she said the line I keep coming back to. She said I already had all the evidence, but I had just not paid attention to it. And later in the conversation, she said I had not permitted myself to name it. I sat in my chair after we stopped recording, did not say a thing for a bit. I realized she was talking about my waiting room. It was being said by somebody else on the other side of the world in a kitchen I have never stood in with a seven year old at the table. The same realization in a moment in a different room, but the same weight in both senses of the word the pause and the heaviness. She already had the evidence. She had had it for years quietly in the background of a life that photographed beautifully, and what she had been doing with it. In her own words was renaming it. She called it being busy, she called it being content, she called it being grateful, and then came the sentence that I think is the most honest thing anybody has ever said on this show. I called it anything that meant I did not have to look at it too closely. Now, notice what is not happening there. She did not lie. There was no lie in any of it. She was busy, she was content, she was grateful. All three of those were true, and any one of them would stand up to questioning. What she was doing was choosing the words that would let her keep walking past the door. That's the whole of it.

The Cupboard And Labels

Jody Brooks 6:51

That is what I want to give you today, and I'm only going to say it once, so here it is. The thing behind the door is not lying to you. The cupboard holds the truth. The label on the front of the cupboard is the thing that's lying. You know the cupboard I mean. We've been in that kitchen for a while now. The cupboard you do not open, the one where you know exactly what is in there, or you think you do, and you're not confused and you have not forgotten, and yet over months and years and sometimes decades you quietly organise the entire kitchen around not opening it. That is the cupboard. What I did not say properly before is the bit that's been doing the actual work all this time. It's not the cupboard. Anybody can have a cupboard. It is the little brass label screwed onto the front of it, and the fact that you are the one who chose the wording, and the fact that you write it every time somebody asks. Oh that one is just full of old stuff. That one is mostly empty actually. And my favourite, the one Kirana caught for us. That one is fine. I've just been busy. Nothing to see here at all. And the labels are not even dishonest. Most of the time that is what makes them so effective. A lie you would notice, a lie would snag. A true sentence in the wrong job goes down like

Busy Fine Later

Jody Brooks 8:23

water. I've been listening to myself since that conversation, and as far as I can tell, there are only about three labels in the whole world. Everybody has all three and everybody has a favourite. The first one is busy. Busy is the market leader. Busy is unarguable because it's usually true, and because nobody has ever once asked you to provide evidence for it. I would go to the gym, but I don't have the time. I would cook healthy nutritious food, but I just want something fast after a day at work. They're all labels I know too well. Busy is also the only label that people will actively help you keep on the door. They'll even encourage you to keep it there and make it bigger. Tell somebody you're too busy, and they'll nod and say, Oh no, tell me about it, and then tell you how busy they are. And there it is, screwed back onto the cupboard door tighter than before. Now, the second one is fine, fine is quieter and a bit more dangerous because fine is not a description, it's a full stop. Fine is what you say to stop the sentence or any further discussion. I'm fine, it's fine. Honestly don't worry, it's fine, and my personal favourite, I said I'm fine, stop asking. And you'll notice if you catch yourself doing it, that fine almost always arrives half a second faster than the truth would have done. That half a second is the whole thing. The truth was on its way and something got there first and silenced it. In fact, the truth usually arrives just as you finish saying you're fine and then you immediately beat yourself up. Why did I just say that? And the third one is later. Later is the kind one. Later does not deny anything at all. Later agrees with you completely, which is why it works so beautifully. I'll start the diet later. I'll save money later, I'll work on my relationship later. Later says yes, absolutely that does need looking at and you will and it is important, just not this evening. Later has never once been caught out because nobody can prove that later is not coming. Busy, fine, later, every one of them true. Every one of them doing a job that has nothing to do with being true. Combined they become a whole security system around the truth. Honestly it's fine, I'll do that later when I'm not

Comparison As A Label

Jody Brooks 11:02

busy. And there is a fourth one, and it is the one that does not even need words. Let me take you into that room for a second because this label has a body in it. There was a gentleman further along the row on a mobility scooter with an oxygen tank at his feet, and I told you in episode one that I looked at him and I heard the sentence in my head. I'm not like that. How do you let it get that bad? I am not. This is a label as well, and it's possibly the most popular label of the lot. It does not even need words, it just needs somebody in the room who is further along or worse than you are at that time. And it's a terrible piece of measurement when you think about it because it tells you nothing about yourself at all. It only tells you where you are standing relative to a stranger with an oxygen mask who has a name and a family and a Tuesday morning appointment, and who is not in that room to make you feel better about your health or in fact lack of it. Nobody in a waiting room is comparing upwards. Have you ever noticed that? Nobody looks around a doctor's surgery for the healthiest person in there and measures themselves against them. We only ever look down the row. And the reason we only look down the row is that looking down the row is the one direction that lets us stay exactly where we are. Like Karana said, I had all the evidence I just did not look. Which is where I want to take the white lie off you, as I promised I would, because what we're doing is not a little white lie. A white lie would at least be a lie and you would notice a lie. There was nothing to catch and that is exactly why it works, and exactly why it costs so much more than a lie ever would. A lie gets found out. A true sentence on the wrong door can last thirty years.

Booked Waiting Room Practice

Jody Brooks 13:05

And I'll tell you something that's been sitting oddly with me ever since trust season three. We spent that whole season on trust and a good chunk of it on the morning and evening practice. The sitting still, the ten minutes before the house wakes up. I called it a lot of things at the time. What I do not think I said plainly enough at the time is what it actually is. It's a waiting room you book yourself. That is all it is. It is you choosing to sit in a quiet space with no poster on the wall on purpose for ten minutes before life and you are time plus trust, which is how mediation quietly becomes meditation. Both of those meditations are waiting for you in the Messy Midlife community. Just go to Messymidlife Podcast.world forward slash join. It's free and so are the meditations and all of the tools that are in there. Now I missed that in trust and so I'm saying it now because the difference between the waiting room you are put in and the waiting room you book yourself is the one that you book nobody calls your name. You're not braced and St. Just is unemployed in this waiting room. Once you get past the initial agreement to take the time, nothing is about to be handed to you, which means you can look at the label on your own door without the door opening and the entire contents falling out around you. And that, it turns out, is the only condition under which most of us can actually look at anything at

Honesty In The 20 Minutes

Jody Brooks 14:41

all. So let's get back to those twenty minutes and this time let us look at the waiting room through honesty, which is the only lens that shows you anything. I sat down on the second chair along. The receptionist did not look up. There was a couple opposite me who were not talking to each other in the particular way that people do not talk to each other in a waiting room. Now the poster here is the honest thing about how I read it. I did not read that poster to learn anything, I read it to be marked. I went down it line by line the way you go down a list of results, looking for your own name. And I ticked. Units of alcohol, tick and comfortably. Cigarettes tick, although I gave myself a small asterisk there because I had a vape in my pocket. And the poster did not have a line for vape and I decided on the spot that the absence of the line was in fact a tick. Red meat tick. Processed food tick. Exercise. I granted myself considerable license on that one because I walk the dog every day and I decided some time ago that walking the dog was exercise enough. Tick. My body is essentially a temple. Nothing more to read here, no need to read the poster on weight, diabetes, heart disease and the numerous others I am sure there were, but I had achieved enough for today. I want to be precise about this because it matters. I did not construct or make these positive behaviours up, and I did not think the sentence either. It arrived fully built, like the last line of an official report, and it made me calm. It made me feel calm while I was sitting on a plastic chair at nineteen stone one, which is two hundred and sixty seven pounds, or one hundred and twenty one kilos, which was already down from twenty one stone the year before, which is two hundred and ninety four pounds, one hundred and thirty three kilos, and down from twenty-four stone seven years before, three hundred and thirty six pounds, one hundred and fifty two kilos, a few more ticks added. Two things can be right, and this is where that doctrine earns its keep. The eating was genuinely good, every tick on the poster was honest, and I was at the same time in a body that was twenty minutes away from being handed something. Both of those are true, and the thing that stands between them holding them apart so they never had to meet was a label on the cupboard door of my health, weight and body. The label is not a nice thing to notice

Sid And The File

Jody Brooks 17:29

about yourself. It is, however, a very human thing to have one and to notice. Something else happened in those twenty minutes. My protector Sid, the imposter syndrome, tried to speak. Now you met Cyd in Trust Season three. In my head, Cid has always come dressed as a headmaster, and their line for thirty years has been some version of they're about to find you out. Sid belongs in the doctor's room. That room is theirs, and they had a file with them that morning, and it was not a cruel file, it was just a file. It had in it the pre diabetic conversations from the numerous checkups over the previous three years, the ones where somebody issued the warnings and I listened and agreed with whatever was said, and I went out to the car park to drive home and comfort myself. The instruction of Saint Just with a nice cup of tea and a piece of cake. Well, not a piece, several. Sid did not whisper it. That is what I've had to be honest about. They did not sit in the corner muttering. They leaned over and said it plainly. They said that you've been told this before. They said that you've been told this several times before actually. They said you already know what's in that file on the doctor's desk, and you have known since the last time, and the only new information you're going to receive today is the day and all the other reasons of your lack of sleep, low energy, and poor mood will be off the table, and I heard them. I want to be very clear because it would be easy to tell you that I did not hear them. I heard every word, and then I did something so small and so ordinary that I did not clock it as a decision for the best part of two years. I looked back at the poster, I went back up to the top of it, and I started again on the units of alcohol. This is all I did. I did not argue with Sid, I did not push them away, I did not tell them they were wrong, because they were not wrong, and some part of me has always known the difference. I just gave my eyes something else to do, and Saint Just, who had been waiting, stepped straight in, put the file back on the shelf for me, gently, the way you would take a hot pan out of somebody's hands. That is what I mean when I say the label goes on the door. It's not a big act of denial, it's a man on a plastic chair reading a poster twice in search of comfort and reassurance, desperately wanting to be right and wrong in the same breath. Two things can be right. I've said that all season. What I had not admitted is the more comfortable version. Two things can be partially right at the same time, and that is the one you can live inside for

Mistrial And Postponement

Jody Brooks 20:28

years. Here is why it matters and here is where I have to take you back to what we said about the oath, because the two halves of this only make sense together. Earlier I told you about the oath at the end of the corridor in the fifth waiting room, the one we are not in yet, where there is a case being heard and there is an oath to be said, the whole truth. And I told you what happened to a witness who swears that oath and then, once they're in the witness box, quietly edits themselves. They do not get a bad verdict, they get a mistrial, the whole thing collapses and it's thrown out and they go back out to the plastic chairs in the corridor to wait for another date. That is what I'd been doing in numerous pre diabetes appointments. This editing that we do is why we do not go through the door yet. I want to tell you today why I know that rather than just asserting it. Because I've been that witness. That morning in the doctors, I'd already sworn I'd been telling myself for three years that I was being honest about my health, and I had the evidence to prove it. Ticked off line by line, and when the actual file came within three feet of me, I edited. I did not lie, I edited, and the cost was not a telling off. Nobody told me off. The cost was the date. The cost was three years, the cost was a second conversation I could have had years earlier, and in fact might never have had to be. To have at all, and instead I had it that morning. And somewhere in those three years, a set of numbers that got quietly worse while I was being commendably good about red meat, alcohol, cigarettes and exercise. That is a mistrial, not punishment, postponement. You go back out, you sit down again, and you wait for another date, and the terrible thing about waiting rooms is that they're extremely comfortable if you've got a poster to read and a suitable collection of unsuspecting individuals for some downwards comparison, which is why I'm only asking you to notice not to open anything, not to fix anything, simply to notice the label on the cupboard door. I want to say a word about why waiting itself is so much more dangerous than the appointment, because I do not think I understood this until I started writing this episode. A waiting room is the only place in an adult life where doing nothing is not only permitted but also the entire instruction. You're told to sit, you're told somebody will call you, you are explicitly relieved of every decision you might otherwise be making, and then you are handed a magazine from twenty nineteen and a poster and a room full of people all doing the same thing. Nothing at the same time. It's the most socially respectable form of avoidance ever invented and we've even put a chair in it to make it comfortable. And the thing is nobody is nervous in a waiting room for an appointment they do not care about. Nobody has ever sat tense and dry mouthed outside a routine eye test they were indifferent to, which means the discomfort itself is information. The rooms we get twitchy in are the rooms where something we already know is about to be said out loud by somebody with a file. The nerves are not the problem. The nerves are just the postcode.

Faith Before Proof

Jody Brooks 24:02

Let me put the other half of the season's engine in because it sets up what comes next, and then I'll leave it alone. Every step of each season sits inside a four step arc. In this order Faith, hope, surrender, peace. And this one is the faith step, and faith here does not mean anything religious and as you would like it to. Faith in this show is this, and I quote it exactly, never paraphrase it. Faith is the possibility of something better. Hope is the belief in the faith being possible. When I feel beaten, there is always faith that this will pass, that there is something better and hope to make me believe it is possible. This is the faith step because it asks you to put a possibility on the table before you've got any evidence for it. You cannot audit yourself on evidence you have not collected. You cannot know what is in the cupboard when you have not opened it. So the thing being held without proof is that the truth will not knock you over. That is all. That is faith doing real work before anything has been checked. And Kurana is the bit of evidence I can offer you that somebody has held it and stayed standing.

When The Door Opens

Jody Brooks 25:24

Alright, my name was called. And I want to tell you about this bit properly because the first time round I gave you the outside of it, and the outside of it is not honest enough. My name was called, I stood up, and the poster stopped working instantly. That's the thing nobody tells you about labels. They are load bearing right up until the door opens, and they are paper. I walked down that little corridor with the clinical smell and the lighting so bright that you're aware there is nowhere to hide. No comforting corner, I knocked on the door, and I went in and I sat down, and the doctor had my file open before I was properly in the chair. She turned the screen slightly towards me, which is never a good sign, and she said the number. And I did not feel shocked. That's what undid me. I sat there and I felt the opposite of shocked. I felt recognised in exactly the way Karana described lying awake in Jakarta. There was a part of me that said quietly, Well yes, because I already had all the evidence I was just refusing to look. I'd known in the car park following every previous visit to this room. In the previous three years, I'd known while I was ticking off the units of alcohol eleven minutes previously. The only thing I did not have was the courage to take the label off the cupboard door. And what the doctor actually did that morning was not hand me information. She removed the label. And that is what happens to partially right when somebody turns a screen towards you. It does not survive the room. Partially right is a waiting room word. She told me I needed to start insulin, and I declined it. I sat there having just been given a number I already knew in a body that had been telling me the truth for years. Despite the warnings, despite the numerous pre-diabetic checks, and I asked for twelve weeks. I made a deal, I said give me twelve weeks and let me come back, because I was sure I could do something to change this result. Now that turned out to matter enormously and we'll come back to it later in the season. So I'm not going to tell you today how the twelve weeks went, but I want to be accurate about what was actually happening in that chair, because it would be very easy to dress it up as courage. Now, some of it was, and some of it was Saint Just back on their feet finding me one last poster to read. Now let me sit down with you for a minute because we've been in that surgery a very long time now. If you've ever stood in your own kitchen at ten past eleven at night when the house has gone quiet and everybody else is upstairs, and you've looked at a cupboard or a drawer or a stack of paperwork on top of the fridge and felt the small tug in your chest that said not tonight, and then walked past it and gone up to bed. I want to say something to you. You're not doing anything wrong, you're not lazy and you're not weak, and you're not even lying exactly. You're labelling a door, you're choosing the words that let you get up the stairs. And that word is buying you something. It nearly always is. Sit with it for a second and you'll usually find it is buying you sleep or a bit of peace, or the ability to be kind to somebody at breakfast. That is not nothing, that is worth honouring, and I'm not going to stand here and tell you to stop doing it. You're not frightened exactly, but perhaps you could have done more. Are you here listening to a man talk about a plastic chair because you did not take action? Action that you've avoided, an action that you would rather continue to avoid. It is, however, usually a necessary pain, and it's very often nowhere near as bad as the version you've been carrying around. And if any of this is landing hard, put me on pause. Honestly, go and put the kettle on, sit with the dog, come back to me tomorrow or next week. Be gentle with yourself. Move at your pace, never at mine. If you need time, that is honest too. And if any of this is landed, you can tell me. There's a connect with Jody link at the top of the show notes and it comes straight to me, text or voice note, whichever is easier. I read them all and I reply personally. Not an AI assistant and not an assistant, just me and you in a message.

Tiny Invitation To Notice

Jody Brooks 29:55

Now, let this podcast be the waiting room. It may already feel like that to some of you, but notice what you did. You sat down in this room on purpose and nobody made you. Nothing in here is going to call your name. This is the waiting room that you've booked yourself. So here's the invitation and it is deliberately tiny because noticing is the whole job here. So in the days after this waiting room, sometime soon, you'll be on your own in the quiet, the kitchen, the car, the bath, the dog walk, whichever one is yours. When you are, I'd like you to finish one sentence in your head with nobody listening, and no plan attached to it. The thing I already know and keep not looking at is that's it, one sentence finished. And then let it go. Put the kettle on. It's not homework, it's not a task and it's not a promise, and it does not commit you to a single thing. You're not opening the cupboard yet, you're just reading the label out loud. Once to yourself and noticing who wrote it. And if nothing comes, that is fine. And it's not a failure, and I want to tell you what it actually means. It usually does not mean there is nothing there, it usually means the sentence turned up with a condition attached, and you sent it away f for not being tidy enough. So if nothing comes, try the smaller version instead. Not the thing I already know, just the thing I would rather not be asked about right now is. That one almost always answers and it answers fast, and it tends to answer in a slightly irritated voice, which is how you know you've got the right door. And notice your Saint Just while you're there, not to pick a fight with them, just to see them working. They will offer you something else to look at within about four seconds, and it will generally be useful and probably true, and that is the whole trick. If you catch them doing it, you've done the work. And if you want something to hold while you do it, the gentle Y is in the community and it's free, and so is everything else

Nobody Is Bringing The Word

Jody Brooks 32:10

in there. One more thing, and then I'll let you go because I think it's the most important thing Karana gave us. Her honesty did not come from her son. Her son did not do the work. Her son passed her a word like the doctor passing me a test result. What did the work was that she had already been carrying the sentence for years, and when the word arrived, she did not put it down and she did not pretend she had not heard it. So you're not waiting for a seven year old at a dinner table to tell you about your life. You're not waiting for a doctor to turn the screen towards you. You're not waiting for anything or anybody, and this is the thing I wish somebody had said to me in that corridor. Nobody is coming with the sentence you have already got it. What we are practising all this season is being able to receive the word when it comes and not reorganise the entire kitchen around not hearing it. So the room and the oath at the end of the corridor and the mistrial that comes from swearing it before you can keep it, Kirana in Jakarta and a seven year old with a word, and a woman who already had all the evidence, and the twenty minutes before my name was called, Saint Just with their poster, Sid with their file, and the small, ordinary, extremely expensive act of reading the units of alcohol twice. You're not falling apart, you're waking up, and this is the part I want you to hold on to in this waiting room. With honesty comes real change, and out of that change comes purpose and joy. The cupboard has never lied to you, the label has, and you have a choice about how that label comes off. You can wait until somebody rips it off for you in a waiting room you did not book, or you can take it off yourself calmly and quietly, with faith that what is really in the cupboard is the truth, and more importantly, the possibility of something better.

Wrap Up And Next Episode

Jody Brooks 34:16

Before I go, a quick roundup. Don't forget you can tell me this landed, share what you're feeling or ask a question about your own messy midlife. Just click connect with Jody at the top of the show notes. It opens a message straight from wherever you're listening, and you can send a text or voice note from there. You can find out more about my guests in every single episode of this show at Messymidlife Podcast.world. And if you want company for the sentence this week, the messy midlife community is at Messymidlife Podcast.world forward slash join. It's free to join and so are all the tools, including your meditation and the gentle why. It's a safe, judgment free space full of other people standing in their own kitchens at ten past eleven at night looking at a cupboard, thinking, hmm, not tonight. Next time it gets interesting because next time is the blocks. I want to talk about the reasons, the good ones, the respectable ones, the ones with the dates and the responsibilities attached, the ones that are not excuses at all, and are doing exactly the same job as an excuse. And I've got a guest coming next week whose story I've been waiting to put in front of you ever since we recorded it, Eric Robinson, a former pastor, turned FBI agent and now an author. And remember you do not have to listen to these guest conversations. You can watch them too on Apple on YouTube and on Spotify and of course and of course over at Messy Midlife Podcast.world. 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.

Final Disclaimer And Goodbye

Jody Brooks 36:02

If this episode resonated, please subscribe, leave a review and share it with someone who might need to hear it today. 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.