SPEAKER_01: 0:00

All of those things are going to help to regulate the nervous system a little bit better. And we need to be pollinating more of those things into our schedule. But we're not doing that because we're conditioned as a culture that we can do all things for all people at all times. So we just kind of move ourselves off that list because there's just no time for us to take care of ourselves.

SPEAKER_00: 0:22

Welcome to Tried and True with the Dash of Woo, where we blend rock solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach, and professional photographer. At your service, we are all about getting creative, diving into your business, and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. Hey, welcome back to Tried and True with The Dash of Woo. I'm your host, Renee Bowen. And today we have a really amazing guest for you. Her name is Courtney Townley, and she is talking to us about health, but through a different lens today. So she's the host of the top-rated podcast called Grace and Grit, and she helps midlife women to cut through the noise of wellness culture and lead themselves with less overwhelm and more confidence. She's got over three decades in the wellness industry. And she's discovered through that work that Deep Health isn't about following someone else's manual, right? It's about writing your own. And that's what she helps women do as well. So she's a sought-after speaker, she's an educator, she blends science with straight talk, and she helps women navigate behavior change with grace, grit, and self-trust. And that's what we're talking about in today's show. It's a really timely conversation. I think we we do focus on midlife and women, but this is really an important discussion, I think, for everyone. We we definitely touch on burnout, exhaustion, fight or flight, living in a state, a dysregulated state for years and the toll that it takes and the signs to look for and some strategies on how to actually break out of that that might seem very simple, but with intention, are extremely powerful. I know you guys are gonna get a ton out of this. So let's just get right into my conversation with Courtney. Hey, Courtney, thanks for being here today. I am very excited about this conversation because I think it's very timely, not just for me, but for a lot of the women who listen to the podcast. So thanks for being here. Oh, thanks so much for having me. I'm happy to be here. So one of the things that you talk about a lot is how health is not like perfection, right? You talk about health not as perfection, but as a realignment. So can you paint a picture of what that looks like in real life for like a really dizzy creative woman?

SPEAKER_01: 2:49

Yeah. So I would say first, let me give you this image because I think it really helps. When we think about health more as a direction rather than a destination, when we get misaligned, which happens all the time, like sometimes it happens multiple times in a day. We are literally one decision away from realigning into the direction we intended to go. Right. So what is like the next decision I could make that would help to promote my health given this day and given this situation? And it doesn't always boil down to diet and exercise. It might be, you know what, I need to go pee. I haven't peed in a bit. Or I need to make a phone call because I really need to get this thing off my chest, right? Or get this decision made. But when we think about it through that lens, it really helps to simplify. Like, yes, at any given time, I am only one decision away from realigning in the direction of health.

SPEAKER_00: 3:42

Yeah. No, that's really good. Because like I guarantee you, so many people, I know for a fact, don't think that way, right? Like because we have this we're so cursed with this. Well, if it's not gonna be perfect, I don't want to do it at all. Or, you know, if I'm gonna go to the gym, so I'm gonna kill myself the first week or whatever it is, right? Or like go all out. And then it's just you stop so fast because it's not sustainable. So I really like that idea of, okay, well, what is something small? Like what's the next right step?

SPEAKER_01: 4:12

That's that's all it is. And you know, so often we're trying to abide by these like 45-step programs, or if I don't do all these things in my self-care bucket today, I've somehow failed. And then we feel like failures. And when we feel like failures, what do we do? We tend to make more decisions that misalign us from health.

SPEAKER_00: 4:29

Yeah, absolutely. Right. And, you know, numb out or, you know, get distracted some with some level of dopamine.

SPEAKER_01: 4:38

Yes, do something to make us feel better fast for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 4:41

Okay. So, all right. I love that idea of breaking it down into steps like that, especially for like the busy, you know, the busy mom. But you talk a lot about women specifically, and especially in your new book that we're gonna talk about, but in in the midlife, yes, which is me. Um, and so, you know, like I said, it's very timely for me. But I know a lot of women need to hear this conversation as well. So, you know, you've been in the wellness space for a really long time, like upwards of 30 years. And whether it's like, you know, health coach, life coach, all of these different things, and you've you love to talk about this idea of self-trust and self-leadership, right? So how do you bridge that? How do you get to that place, right? Of leaning into that self-trust? What is what does that look like for you, for a lot of the clients you've worked with?

SPEAKER_01: 5:34

Well, I'll start by saying this that I have such a heart for the midlife population because it's such a fascinating time. We have more stress than we've ever contended with in our life because we're dealing with all the things career transitions, aging parents, raising kids, if that's a thing for you, um, changing bodies, changing chemistry. So we're living at the time in our life with the most amount of stress that we've ever had, with the least amount of hormones that actually help us to manage stress. So estrogen and progesterone specifically help us to manage cortisol. And when those two are leaving the party, all of a sudden we don't have the ability to manage cortisol in the way that we once did. And so I often look at midlife, and I know this is not only my opinion. I've heard this a lot of places, that midlife really is an invitation. It's an invitation to continue to live the way you've been living, or it's an invitation to start doing some serious renovation work. So I call midlife the renovation years because we often arrive at midlife and we look around and there's some things we're really proud of. Like I built some really awesome stuff here. Maybe it's family, maybe it's a business. Like you've done some awesome things. We're also looking around and we see some things that, you know what, this doesn't fit anymore. This maybe never fit. And because my tolerance is also decreasing because of my lack of hormones, that's a beautiful thing. Because we, again, it's a little easier in some ways to say, okay, I need to offload this or I need to change this in order to nourish my life better at this stage. And all of that demands self-trust. Because if we don't trust ourselves to make decisions that are in the best interest of ourselves, we'll never really experience what I call deep health. Deep health is like health, cell to soul, right? It's like not just physically being healthy, but mentally, emotionally, relationships, all health in all of those spaces and places. And we have to be able to trust ourselves to make decisions on the regular that help us to move in that direction that I talked about at the very beginning, move us in the direction of health, whatever that is for you.

SPEAKER_00: 7:46

It's so interesting too, because I don't know. I mean, I was definitely, well, I could go in a lot of different directions with this, but basically what I want, what I'm trying to convey is that I have been through a lot of different iterations, right? Like most of us have, especially in our 20s, even teens, like teens, 20s, 30s, 40s. And then now I find myself in my 50s. First of all, I find it easier to trust myself, which is very interesting. And, you know, that could be for a lot of reasons, but also I'm thinking about my health in a whole different way than I ever, ever have, right? Because like before, like literally before the age of 50, probably. Yeah, pretty much. It's always been about like mainly how more so how I looked than how I was, right? Right. But disguised as that, you know, because we gaslight ourselves. And you know, I'm a product of, yeah, I was born in the 70s and teenage in the 80s and all of that. So, you know, we definitely have been programmed by a lot of the things that we consume and see and hear and our environment and family and all of that. And, you know, my the joke was always like, well, I wish I were as fat now as I as I thought I was when I was 18, right? Like, or and I was not, but it was because of that self-perception and how we compare, you know, we just constantly compare ourselves to everything that we see. And so now I find that, you know, I go to the gym because I want to be strong, because I want my bones to stay intact. You know, like I'm just thinking about it in such a different way. And it hit me the other day while I was at the gym. I was like, I hate the gym. Like I'm gonna be honest, like I really don't love going, right? That's why it's been always hard for me to consistently, I think, stay there. But now it's different because I'm doing it from a deeper, that deeper sense of health. Like I really do want to live longer. I want to be more active. I don't want to be breaking down in my 60s and 70s. And so, do you find that that is the case with a lot of women in midlife? Like we kind of come to this place, whether we're trying to or not, because we're like all the things that are happening, right? Like we're losing the hormones, and so we don't have any like buffer for being nice about it. Um, you know, so that might be a part of it too. Do you find that makes it a little bit maybe easier for people to lean into it or want to?

SPEAKER_01: 10:20

Yes. I mean, I think it, I think some women arrive at midlife and they are starting to think of health so much differently, which is helpful, right? And they they do have such a low tolerance that they are no longer willing to not make decisions that help to nourish them. There, there is definitely a large camp of those women. And I would also say in that camp, they do trust themselves, like what you just described. You trust yourself, but maybe we rumble more with the giving ourselves permission to follow through on that trust. Right. But then there's a camp of women who I think roll into midlife that have practiced a lifetime of not trusting themselves. And they've always looked to other people, they've outsourced every decision that they do feel a little bit disoriented at midlife with this word self-trust. Like, how do I even do that? And sometimes it shows up as simple, like in a conversation. I was just having a conversation earlier this morning with a client asking her, like, what do you do for fun? Right. And what would you do if you had a whole weekend to yourself? And kind of the look of horror that came across her face was very telling. You know, she's so disconnected from who she is and what she enjoys and what lights her up that it's a form of malnutrition. And it's it's obviously going to deplete her health if she doesn't start to figure that piece out and kind of come home to herself in that way. So I think I think there's both. I think there's women who roll into midlife ready to trust themselves and kind of ready to make that second act their boldest act yet. And then there's another group of women that roll into midlife really unarmed with skills that are going to help them to keep traveling with more grace and ease through that second half.

SPEAKER_00: 12:03

Yeah, no, that makes sense. I see a lot of that in my coaching as well. Yeah. And that is, yeah, very, very true. And there's that whole level of burnout too that enters the conversation, too, you know. So a lot, I feel like a lot of women, um, especially us doers and type A professional.

SPEAKER_01: 12:24

I don't know what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_00: 12:27

Eldest daughters. Um you know, like that whole trope. It's like true. Like we we find ourselves and then it's like, oh, okay, all of a sudden now we're in like actual burnout and we want to burn everything down to the ground. And you know what I mean? Like that happens a lot too at this time because we're also, like you said before, losing some hormones, losing all that stuff. And so uh, and a lot of women too get diagnosed at this age with ADHD and things like that. And they're like, they've been masking their whole life, right? And like kind of like just getting by, doing their thing. And then all of a sudden, they cannot. They literally cannot hold it up anymore because there's no hormones to support it. And so they find themselves in complete burnout, like health related, as well as like the business, maybe that they're running, all of that. Um, and I know you talk about this a lot too. So you call burnout a symptom of a broken system, right? So it's not a personal failure. A lot of women do beat themselves up about that. And, you know, they they tend to like, that's not gonna help anything, obviously. Um, so how can women begin to sort of shift from that old narrative into, you know, it's not necessarily my fault here, but how can I, how can I shift it?

SPEAKER_01: 13:40

Yes. I think I think a couple of things are really important to acknowledge. Like, number one, you're absolutely right. I do not know a midlife woman who comes into the midlife years with a regulated nervous system. Like that's just most women are rolling into midlife with a very dysregulated nervous system. And let's be honest, nobody was talking about nervous system regulation a few years ago. So most of us who are in midlife right now spent the first 40, 50 years not understanding the massive impact that the nervous system has on the human body. It basically governs everything, right? Our ability to think through problems, our ability to respond rather than react. And what happens at midlife, because we have lived for so long, so dysregulated, and now we have hormones leaving the party that are also helping us to regulate. If we aren't armed with things that help us to soothe in healthy ways, we are reaching for things that are actually, they're soothing us in the moment, but then they have massive detrimental health outcomes down the road. So if every time I'm feeling dysregulated, I drink alcohol or I scroll social media or I eat or I shop online, right? There's a thousand things I can do to make myself feel better temporarily and escape that emotional pain, but the price tag for my health on the other side is intense. And we hear this phrase a lot, which drives me crazy, which is self-sabotage. Okay. Self-sabotage, if you look it up in the dictionary, it's when someone intentionally or purposefully harms themselves. I've never worked with a woman who purposefully or intentionally harms herself by drinking alcohol or eating the crappy food or whatever the thing is. Right. That's not what she's doing. She's trying to self-soothe. She's trying to soften the intensity of what she's feeling in her body because she never learned any other skills. And so this definitely is a time in our life where I hate, can I don't know if I can cuss on your show, but it's like bitter to a capa pot, right? Like now, if you do not have self-soothing strategies that actually promote health rather than rob it from you, now is the time to learn. Now is the time. And really, what suits my nervous system is probably gonna be different than what soothes yours, right? Like, what are the things that actually help you to get into that rest and digest state, that help you to feel calmer, to help you to feel a level of peace or joy or connection? All of those things are gonna help to regulate the nervous system a little bit better. And we need to be pollinating more of those things into our schedule. But we're not doing that because we're conditioned as a culture that we can do all things for all people at all times. So we just kind of move ourselves off that list because there's just no time for us to take care of ourselves. So I think it's it's a matter of learning strategies that help help us to regulate better at midlife, like really beginning a practice of that and also making ourselves a priority, which is so hard for someone who's never done it.

SPEAKER_00: 16:51

It's really hard. So hard. It can be like almost excruciating for some people because I mean, depending on the level of programming and trauma possibly that exists there as well, which is a really big factor. Because, you know, everybody's got something, whether it's like a big T or a little T or whatever, like there's there's always something in there. And you're right, that whole self-sabotage thing, it's not an intentional thing. It's just your unconscious mind trying to keep you alive and safe, right? It's like, okay, let's go. Let's, this is unsafe. And so the first thing is to just stop beating yourself up, honestly. Right. Like if we can kind of at least get to a place of non-judgment and neutral observer, then I feel like, you know, that's a huge step. And I do a lot of that with my clients as well. And nervous system regulation is a huge part of it. And you're right, nobody was talking about this, especially when we were like moms, young moms, you know what I mean? Or like, even if you don't have children, if you were in your 30s and 40s, nobody's really talking about that for our age group. And now, thankfully, we are having this conversation. You know, I look at my daughter and she's already so much more well equipped than I was at her age. She's 25. And I'm like, how are you this like stable? And like, she's just like, I mean, you know, she's got her stuff, but it's kind of insane. You know, my husband and I talk about that a lot, even with our boys, same kind of thing. It's like so interesting. It's great. However, okay, for those of us who, you know, are still learning all of that, right? Old dog new tricks kind of thing, right? Like your brain has been doing one thing for so long and you live in fight or flight long enough, your body's just gonna want to stay there because it thinks it's safe now. So then it's like, okay, how do I, how do I get off of that?

SPEAKER_01: 18:37

That you know, that's well, I love, I love that you're bringing that like you're doing a deep dive into the nervous system stuff because it's I think for so many years of my career, I was conditioned as a professional to believe that if we could just get someone to do the right exercise program and eat the right foods, they would be healthy because we were equating health with a body type, right? With and with weight loss. But I have worked with so many type A people, extreme athletes, incredibly successful business owners who are such a far cry from health because they're living in a state of chronic hyperdrive. And so what happens when we're living in a state of chronic hyperdrive is we're actually shutting down digestion. We're shutting down a lot of the systems. Because what does your body do in fight or flight? It's really just trying to detach you from all the unnecessary activities in your biology to focus on saving your own life, right? Fight, flee, or freeze. And so really helping a woman to understand that by doing all the things she is so resistant to, like taking more time for herself just to chill out, going to bed earlier, saying no to commitments, changing her self-narrative to actually become a cheerleader rather than a bully, right? Like these are all things that we think are so silly when we say them, and they're so counter to the whole diet and exercise culture. But those things help to regulate the nervous system. And once your system is regulated, what happens? All your biology comes back online. Your systems start functioning the way they were designed to function. Lo and behold, you start to have more energy. And all these weird like symptoms and things you were contending with health-wise start to dissipate. Not because you hyperfocused on diet and exercise, but because you focused on aligning your life in a way that helps to regulate your nervous system. And that's a completely different exercise than what we've been sold.

SPEAKER_00: 20:39

100%. 100%. Like I it I've seen it with my my own in my own biology, you know, and in my own life. But I also wanted to real quick touch on while we're on the subject of nervous system uh deep dive. Because yeah, all of those, you know, fight, flight. I always say when you live in that, I mean, biologically, all the brain is gonna go to your limbs so that you can run away and get faster. But like you get fast, but you get dumb, right? Like it you, you get dumb, you're not thinking exploded, you get right, right. But there's another one too that is a huge, huge one that I see all the time, which is fawn. Yeah. Yeah. And that's that I mean, like so many, and again, a lot of eldest daughters, a lot of women who have been told like you can be everything and you should be. We fawn more than anything. And we and it's a really easy one to miss because early on, it looks you know, like you're just a giving person. A good person, totally. Yes. But deep down, you are literally denying yourself on the daily, you know, putting everybody else first. Um, and and we've been taught that that's what you should do, right? Like as a parent, especially. Um, and that over time is really insidious because, like I said, you don't notice it as much. You don't like maybe you're not having anxiety attacks all the time, right? Like, so you're not like seeing yourself in that state, but that fawn response is a really, really strong hold, takes it takes hold of you. I am speaking from personal experience here. And so how do you how do you work with your clients with that, especially, you know, when they are trying to revamp their health for the 50th time, right?

SPEAKER_01: 22:31

Yeah, absolutely. So a couple of things. Like number one, I just want to say that I think that we are rewarded for dysregulation, period. Whether you're if you're right, if your dysregulation response is to fight or flee or push or overachieve or fawn or freeze, it's almost like it's more acceptable than living in a way that regulates your nervous system, right? Cause it's like you're lay, you must be lazy if you don't want to work 24 hours a day, right? You don't want to work through the weekends, you must not be a hustler, right? You must not be serious about what you're what you're really passionate about. Like we hear these messages all the time. And I think with my clients, the biggest, and this is like what the first practice I teach in the consistency code is the practice of awareness, of becoming aware of how you are spending your precious life resources. If you are always spending your resources on helping other people to solve their problems, like it can look good from the outside, but it can also be what I call a hiding habit where you're just avoiding your own shit. Right. So, and again, that's a that's a dysregulation response. And so sometimes we're so caught up in that we don't even see it. But we have to be willing to turn on the lights and really see our behavior for what it is to even be able to start to design a plan or a strategy or a skill set to help us overcome it. And awareness unfortunately takes a lot of things that we don't want to give. It takes time, it takes quiet, it takes introspection. And no one's got time for that, right? No, seriously. So awareness, I always say, is not a feel-good exercise, but you can't, of course, you can't change what you don't see. And Martha Beck, you know, she's like the ult ultimate life coach, but she always says that awareness is the way out. And I just love that because it's so true.

SPEAKER_00: 24:25

Absolutely. And it's the sitting with it, you know, like allowing yourself to actually just sit with the discomfort instead of numbing and running away or pushing it away, whatever. Again, we were never really taught that. Um, and so if you've been living all this time not doing it, um, it's gonna feel really uncomfortable, like you said. And it's not, it's not gonna be a preferred activity at first. Definitely. Um, but I mean, if you don't, and I know you see this, if you don't do that work and you don't pay attention to it, your body's gonna make sure you pay attention to it somehow. Yeah. It's gonna show up in illness, sickness, something is gonna happen. It'll step in because that we we are all connected. Like this is all one system.

SPEAKER_01: 25:14

I had a mentor years ago and she said it so beautifully. She was like, you know, there's such a wisdom to our bodies. It's always trying to communicate with us. But of course, again, we've been conditioned to override what our body's telling us. Like I always say we act like a dictator to our body rather than a rather than like a friend or like we're in a relationship with it. We just dictate our demands to it. But she said, you know, your body's always communicating with you. And when you are starting to get dysregulated, you're gonna start getting little pebbles thrown at the window. And that's the pebble might be maybe you have a bad cycle, like a bad period, maybe you have a headache, uh, maybe you get acne, right? You get a little indigestion. And so you pop a pill, you do whatever, you know, we're trained to do to override it, uh, but you kind of ignore it. And then it keeps coming back, you keep ignoring it. So then those pebbles start to become bigger rocks. And then the bigger rocks ultimately become boulders. And the boulders, of course, are disease, right? Diagnoses, autoimmunity challenges. And those are really hard to come back from. Not saying it's impossible, but it's a lot more work. So if we can catch it sooner, which is what awareness allows us to do.

SPEAKER_02: 26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 26:24

If we can catch the pebbles and be like, ooh, what's going on here? Like, oh, isn't it interesting that every time I drink red wine at night, I wake up with a headache the next morning? Right. Right. Like maybe, maybe I should put those two things together instead of arguing for why I should be able to drink alcohol every night because Susie Q down the street drinks it every night and she has the perfect life, right? Because that's what we do. Like you said earlier, we compare and we think because seemingly someone else is getting away with it, which by the way, no one is getting anything, but we tell ourselves that story and then we justify, well, I should be able to do it too, even though clearly your body is telling you it's not working.

SPEAKER_00: 27:02

Clearly. Yeah. No, I I overrode, I overrided, overrode, whatever the whatever. I did not listen to that for a long time. I'm telling you. Like, I, you know, there was like this level of that and the whole like pushing past like staying up, right? Um, staying up later that I knew that I I knew I wasn't good for me. I knew it was gonna not make me feel good. That and and drinking wine at night, those two things were, it was so hard for me to let go of that. Like so, so hard. I gripped onto those things. It was like, no, these are the things that are mine because oh, guess what? I was doing everything else for everybody else all day long. So those are the only two things that I was actually giving myself. So in my mind, I justified it, like you said. And yeah, so and so can do it and looks fine. So I went years living like that and feeling awful. And when I stopped, when I started like, you know, going to bed early and I stopped drinking wine, like I don't drink alcohol at all in my home anymore. And I mean, I went from, I think it was probably almost a nightly thing, right? For years to now maybe I'll have a cocktail or a glass of wine if I'm out at dinner, like once a month or something, you know what I mean? Um, and it doesn't make me feel great, by the way. Like, you know, like one cocktail, one glass of wine, I will feel that in the morning. So I know that going into it if I do it, but it was not that way for so long. And nobody wants to hear that. It's not fun. That's not something that, like, it's like, oh, you're taking away all my the only thing that is mine, right? So how do you, I know the awareness part is like really, really big key, but what does it take, right, for people to make that change that you've seen?

SPEAKER_01: 28:56

You're not gonna like my answer, but it's the answer. Everyone has to hit the brick wall at a different intensity. I've had clients, I'm sure you have too, where they do something that isn't serving their health like one or two times. They feel like hell and they're like, Oh, I'm never doing that again. That's a rare breed, by the way. That's not most people. Most people, do you remember the movie Parenthood from way back in the day? And the kid had the bucket on his head and he kept running the wall. That's how I feel like most people are with listening to their bodies. They just keep hitting the brick wall, hitting the brick wall, hitting the brick wall until finally something gets hurt enough, whether it's the marriage or it's their job or it's their relationship with their kids, or they just there's just so much self-loathing that the pain to stay the same starts to get bigger than the pain of what it would take to change. And I that is such a different moment for everybody. And I wish there was a formula because man, we could save so many people needless suffering. But I I truly feel everyone just has a different pain threshold. We see this all the time, like with addictions and with. You know, different things that you can from the outside, you're like, man, why do they keep doing it? And they just have not hit that brick wall hard enough yet. I do want to see this too, though, because I think this is really actionable for listeners. We're trained a lot when we work with coaches and we do any kind of self-help to really identify misalignment. Like, what does misalignment look like for you? Well, I get reactive or I focus more on problems than solutions. Like those are the types of answers we usually hear. But I think it's equally as important to really start acknowledging what alignment looks like for you. You're gonna have moments where you taste it. You wake up feeling good, right? Or you're just in your backyard and you just feel awesome, like physically, emotionally, mentally. But I think we tend to go past those moments so quickly, we don't take time to acknowledge them. And so we don't really pursue them. And I think that that it's a it's a powerful exercise to start acknowledging what alignment looks like, what makes you feel joyful, what makes you feel strong, what makes you feel excited about life, what makes you want to get up out of bed in the morning. Look for those breadcrumbs and life gets a whole lot better.

SPEAKER_00: 31:12

Absolutely. Because then you're gonna find more of it because you're programming your brain. Because our unconscious mind doesn't know what's real and what's not. Like it just believes whatever we tell it. So if you are looking for those and if you can conjure up that feeling, that's a that's the really powerful piece of it. Because I mean, like even just thinking about the last time you felt that way, right? Like when was the last time you felt at peace? Was it on vacation on the beach 12 years ago? You know what I mean? Like, how long has it been since you feel that? And and how can you find those little pieces in your everyday life? You know, like you said, we we kind of gloss over those things. We don't notice them as much or acknowledge them as much. And so it's such a powerful thing when you become more intentional with your focus and awareness of those. Um, it it's it's such a hack for your brain because you can just instantly start all of a sudden within like two weeks, you're like, oh, I'm noticing all of these things now, you know, like that you're bringing in. You're literally bringing them into your awareness by doing that because it's your resonance, because you've opened your heart center and there's a whole other thing, you know, all that stuff that happens. But I want to kind of talk really quickly about this consistency piece because, you know, your book is actually called the consistency code for a lot of creatives, especially, because a lot of my listeners are creative women. We sort of fear consistency a lot, like maybe not consciously, but unconsciously, because I think we feel like it'll stifle our freedom, right? Like I'm I'm most creatives have that desire for freedom. Like that's kind of really what we're after, right? Like we might think we want money and whatever, it's freedom, um, is what we really want. But how can consistency actually create more space for creativity and spontaneity?

SPEAKER_01: 32:58

Yeah. Well, let me answer the question two ways. Like, first of all, I would just say immediately in answer to that question, that there is freedom on the other side of discipline, period, right? There just is. Like, so if I put myself to bed at a reasonable hour, even though I want to watch my 20th episode of my favorite Netflix show, right? Like, I mean, there's a cost, there's a sacrifice. But if I lean into the discomfort of doing the thing that's going to serve my health, I wake up having more energy, more resources to do the things I want to be doing. So there is that. But I would also say that I think we have to reframe how we think about consistency. And that's really what I do in this book is I'm challenging women to think about consistency, not as doing the same thing over and over until you die. That sounds really awful. Sounds awful, especially to a creative. Yeah. But the the consistency I'm really advocating for in the book is consistent self-honoring. And guess what? That changes all the time. Because what I need to do today, given what's happening in my life today, looks a little different. To honor myself today looks a little different than what I did yesterday or last week. So it's kind of looking at consistency through a new lens of just in this moment right now, everyone listening to this episode, just ask yourself if I was going to do one thing to honor just myself as a human, what might that look like? And again, it might be laying on the ground for five minutes, just doing nothing. It might be going outside to get your feet in the grass. It might be making a phone call to apply for the job you keep, you know, pining for. I mean, it could be a lot of different things, but I think we we look at consistency as someone, I need to buy a three-month program from somebody. And consistency means I check off the box and I do it perfectly. That's what consistency is. That's not consistency, right? I mean, yes, it's a form of consistency. But again, what would it look like with no outside input for you to honor yourself today? You know, I've never worked with a woman who doesn't know ever. But the bigger problem is she's convincing herself she doesn't know or she's not giving herself permission to take action on the things she does know.

SPEAKER_00: 35:10

Exactly. And mostly, most of the time it's because she's too exhausted from all the other things, right?

SPEAKER_01: 35:16

Or she's worried about being judged or people not liking her because it's gonna usually self-honoring inconveniences someone else. Absolutely. It just does.

SPEAKER_00: 35:25

It's a really that's why it's so tough to break that. Yeah, that especially that that people pleasing thing it is it is deep, like really, really deep for so many women. I love that because I I feel like you're right, we think about it in this different way. And that that's not that's not really what it's about. And you're right, discipline is is like the best gift you can give yourself, but it all changes when you start to look at it through that different lens and give it like you know a slightly different take, like reframe it, right? Because you know, you you can you can convince yourself of pretty much anything. It's just that most of us sort of live hypnotically and reactive. And you're talking about coming from a place of empowerment and intention. And that, you know, it so many things open up to you when you embrace that.

SPEAKER_01: 36:22

And I don't know why, like in the health and wellness industry, we ignore the fact that life is dynamic. Life is always changing. We have, you know, I call them curveballs, but the curveballs are always being thrown. So people in our family die, loved ones die, jobs get lost, like just challenges we never could have seen coming show up. And we're telling ourselves that we're only successful in the health arena if I'm able to abide by this diet and this exercise protocol all the time. It's like, no, health is also dynamic, meaning it's not something you have or don't have. It's something that you're either moving towards with your decisions or you're moving slightly away from. And there's so many different dimensions of health, right? There's the physical, there's the mental, emotional, relationship, environmental, spiritual, so many different realms of health. So, my point being that because life is dynamic, our strategies for honoring our health need to be dynamic. Self-care does not always look the same. And that belief that it does always look the same, I think is making a lot of women very unhealthy because they're just feeling like a constant failure because they don't have the resources to be showing up in exactly the same way all the time. And so they get pushed into this all or nothing mindset. Well, if I can't quit, then I'm just not going to do anything at all. And then that bodes well for health.

SPEAKER_00: 37:44

Exactly. So I know you go into this in the book. Um, talk to me a little bit about um, obviously, we can't go into all the different pieces, but maybe what's the transformation or even like one piece of it that you feel is a pivotal part of that process.

SPEAKER_01: 38:04

Um, I would say this. Like, first of all, I'll just say this really quickly. There's there's three sections to the book because the first section of the book is all about behavior change science. It's about the purpose system, it's about the brain, it's about really understanding and also hormones, how all those things are shifting at midlife and why we have to go about self-care differently. The center of the book is all about the consistency code framework to help women build strategy. And then the ending is really just kind of wrapping that all together in a nice little package so you can practice it consistently. But the one thing I would say is probably the core message of the book is that health at midlife, especially, is really an exercise in stress management. And it's two parts. We have to reduce unnecessary stressors. So things that are causing stress that have no benefit. So being a jerk to myself, no benefit, right? Never having boundaries, no benefit. Um, eating terribly all the time, really no benefit. So I have to identify the things that are causing unnecessary stress and remove them. And the second thing I have to do is I have to start identifying where I need to lean into intentional stress, pursuing stress on purpose to make myself more resilient or to even to make myself more alive. What are the things I consistently have a heart to go after that I deny myself? Whether it's a career, creative endeavor, relationship, right? Um, strength training is a great example, right? Nobody likes it. Like you started the podcast saying that we don't like strength training, but man, we like the benefits and it makes us more resilient and it gives us more power. So that's a form of intentionally pursuing stress. That's what strength training is. Yeah. So those two things can I reduce unnecessary stress and can I actually lean into intentional stressors that help to fortify and bring me more alive? That's that's the name of the game. Yeah. Yeah. And those two things are way bigger than this tiny little diet and exercise conversation.

SPEAKER_00: 40:04

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, honestly, it became, it was such a shift for me too. Like when I leaned more into the actual deeper sense of health and feeling good and longevity, that's when I lost weight.

SPEAKER_01: 40:19

Right. Because you had a bigger, compelling reason. It wasn't about having it really wasn't about that.

SPEAKER_00: 40:23

I was like, I don't even care anymore. Like I, it's just a whole, it's a whole different mindset, truly, you know. And I really feel like I let go of so much in that process. And like in, I think life is just literally a series of letting go. Like, that's literally the meaning of life. It's just to learn to let go of literally everything. Um, and you know, so that hold it tight and control and you know, constantly wanting to like control whether it's calories or stress or whatever it is, right? You're trying to control, um, it keeps you in that state of being a reactive person in general. And that's not conducive to anything to receive anything as well, right? Like so receiving love, receiving accolade, receiving compliments, right? So you have a hard time receiving compliments, that's a good sign that something's closed off in there. And, you know, might want to dig a little bit deeper. So I love that you are you break that down and and break it down into those three separate pieces in the book, too. But it's gonna make it a lot easier for people to get into it. Is it also an Audible? Because that's a jam.

unknown: 41:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 41:37

I have I did, I did all the recording because as a podcaster, I think it would be weird if I hadn't recorded my own book. Yeah. Yes, there's an Audible version, there's a Kindle version, and then there's the actual book. Awesome. So I'm really excited about it.

SPEAKER_00: 41:50

Yeah, I will put the links for everybody below for that. But where do you like to connect with people in general? Is it Instagram? Do you want them to hit you up on that side?

SPEAKER_01: 42:01

I would say Instagram for sure, Grace Grit, and just my website. I mean, my web, but my website's kind of the one-stop shop for all the things. So graceandgrit.com is a really easy place to find the the deeper dive of things if people are interested. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 42:13

Yes. And your show. So I will I will link those for people below so they can get in touch with you and continue reading or listening to all of this as well. But um, yeah, thank you for for sharing all of that. I think that it, like I said, this is a really timely conversation. It's a it's a great time for your book as well. I think that a lot of uh women are gonna find so much value in it. So I hope so. Thank you. Yeah. Good stuff, right? So, okay, what are your takeaways? For me, I specifically want to highlight that health isn't about control, it's about self-trust. Okay. And when we lean more into self-trust, a whole world opens up to us. Another takeaway for me is that burnout's not failure and stop beating yourself up for it. So I see a lot of you guys doing that. Like she said, it's a symptom of a broken system. Okay. Like it's it's a chaos system of this modern wellness culture that we've been sold. But like she said, you can actually rebuild that approach from the ground up with awareness, emotional intelligence, and self-leadership. And then the main thing, too, here is that consistency is not about perfection, it's about realignment. So instead of chasing unrealistic ideals, you really want to lean into gently returning to your center over and over again through simple practices that build true deep resilience and clarity. And she talks about all of that in her book. So I'm definitely going to link that for you guys below. And I'd actually love to give one of you guys a copy of this book. So if you are on Audible, like me, I am an Audible fanatic. I listened to, I've listening to like probably four or five books at the same time. It's just how my brain works. I like to pop back, you know, in and out of them. So if you are also an audible listener and you want to win an audible copy of her book, The Consistency Code, here's how to enter. It's really simple. Just leave a review for the show. You can do that at ratethispodcast.com slash Renee Bowen. That's just the easiest way to do it. You can do it directly from Apple if you're already in the in the platform inside the app. But if you just want to make it easy for yourself, just go to ratethispodcast.com slash Renee Bowen and you can rate it on any of the platforms that you listen to it. So that might be easier for you. Um, so go ahead and do that, and then please send me a screenshot that you did, leave a review. You can do that renee at reneybowen.com and then share it to your story. Share about this episode on your story on Instagram and tag me. So those three steps, and you will be entered to win a copy of this book. And I know you guys are gonna love it. So, regardless, um, grab a copy, listen to it, read it, however you like to consume books, and also go ahead and connect with Courtney at the links below. And remember, you don't have to climb the entire mountain today. Okay. You can take it one step at a time. I talk about this all the time in my coaching. We talk a lot about what's the next right step, right? So whether we're talking about a health journey or we're talking about your self-development in general or building your business, you know, I a lot of people come to me for various different reasons for coaching. Uh, but one of the reasons why I am a certified life coach is because it usually always kind of comes back to some of these themes. And unless we are working at that deeper level and making those changes, the strategies that we put in place for your business are just not gonna stick. So I want you to be thinking about breaking the big things into smaller steps. What is the next right step? What's something that you can do right now? Something actionable, small, but meaningful. If you do it with intention, it's gonna make a huge impact, I promise. And that's how you build that consistency. It's how you build your own self-trust and confidence. It's in the action. You can think about it all day long, but you actually have to take a step in the direction. As always, I am happy to chat with you if you need help with any of this. I do have a couple spots open for one-on-one coaching. You can grab a call with me. We just hop on a quick chat, see if we're a good fit to work together. And the link for that is below as well. So grab a call, let's chat, let's see what's going on. I will let you know if I can help. And if I can't, I'm gonna point you in a direction that I think will serve you better. But if you feel like you've got something on your heart, something that is weighing on you, or if you feel stuck, you feel like you can't get out of it, or if you feel like you want to finally build this life of your dreams, this life and your business of your dreams, and you want accountability and help to get you there faster, you want to rewire some old programming that is still kind of keeping you stuck, go ahead and just grab a quick call with me and uh let's get that done. We're almost to the end of 2025. And so it is gonna be 2026 before we know it. And, you know, this last quarter of 2025 and the first quarter of 2026, a lot of you are going to be in winter months. You're gonna be in a natural sort of hibernation mode. It's a great time to work on this kind of stuff. So you guys have a great rest of your week. Talk to you soon. Love you. Bye.