Balancing an Eighteen-Year-Old and a Seventy-Eight-Year-Old (Entering the Perfect Storm)
Lesson 2 from: How to Rewrite the Rules of MidlifeAmy Nobile & Trisha Ashworth
Balancing an Eighteen-Year-Old and a Seventy-Eight-Year-Old (Entering the Perfect Storm)
Lesson 2 from: How to Rewrite the Rules of MidlifeAmy Nobile & Trisha Ashworth
Lesson Info
2. Balancing an Eighteen-Year-Old and a Seventy-Eight-Year-Old (Entering the Perfect Storm)
Lessons
Um, Is This It? (Why We Wrote This Book)
09:45 2Balancing an Eighteen-Year-Old and a Seventy-Eight-Year-Old (Entering the Perfect Storm)
05:59 3Who Do I Want to Be When I Grow Up? (Aligning Expectations and Reality)
16:38 4For the First Time, I’m Becoming Myself (Finding Meaning, Community, and Happiness)
08:23 5Do These Crow’s Feet Make My Ass Look Big? (Redefining the Idea of Beauty)
15:57 6Is This Really the Only Husband I’m Ever Gonna Have? (Expect a Midlife Relationship Reset)
11:53 7Don’t Be Afraid to Fail, Be Afraid Not to Try (Discovering Your Purpose and Passion)
12:46Lesson Info
Balancing an Eighteen-Year-Old and a Seventy-Eight-Year-Old (Entering the Perfect Storm)
Chapter 2 Quiz. which of the following is part of your reality? You have a teenager with some seriously raging hormones. You have some seriously raging hormones (giggles). Your marriage, along with your body, is sagging. That nightly glass of wine has turned into half bottle, and you start thinking about it at 4:30 p.m. You're savings is not quite what you hoped it would be. That anxiety you've been successfully medicating or ignoring for years, is now rearing its head in a new way. This chapter is all about balancing an eighteen-year-old and a seventy-eight-year-old, or entering the perfect storm. Oh gosh, it is the time of our life where we're having kids a little bit later, so everything is kind of coming to a head at one time. We've got our parents who are getting older, we have teenagers who are, like raging hormones, like we're right in it, where are hormones are raging, and everything is kind of, you know, we're trying to discover ourselves, our kids are trying to discover sel...
ves. We're questioning everything. Yeah, we're altering the question, what we want, so we call it the perfect storm, where everything kind of is happening at once, and it's a lot to balance. It's a lot to balance. I mean and our mom's looked at this time like a crisis, and it can feel like a crisis-- Yeah. ..but we almost look at it like a conundrum, like how are we supposed to do this? If we thought that our lives would be, kind of, smoother sailing at this point, and it really hits us like a mac truck that, oh my gosh, like how do I do this? No, it's true, and we really do at this time have to start to look at how we prioritize ourselves, because it's so easy to get lost. It's so easy to get lost in this time when you're, there's no time for us, there's so much happening that there's no time to kind of, to start to make these choices that are-- And we're playing multiple roles to multiple people, we don't even realize we're playing best friend, and sister, and the perfect wife, and the mom, and the caregiver, caregiver on all kinds of levels. One of the women we talked to, she really literally had it happening. She was living with three teenagers. Her parents, who had health issues, just moved in to their home, and it was a little, you know, a little chaotic. There's no time, and a working mom who didn't have any balance, and of course she was having a hard time. There's no room to say to yourself, like, oh I think I'm gonna sit down and you know, go to yoga. Well nobody's taking care of her, and so then her husband started to question, wait a minute, what about me? Right And what about our pets? (laughing) Who's making the appointments? Well the dog became way above her, and we know that, she said that. She's like, we asked her what the priorities were in the household, and it was like this long list, and she was definitely under the dog (giggling). And when we ask women to prioritize everything and everyone in their lives, eight out of 10 times, they leave themselves off the list. Right. Which is ridiculous, but actually true, and so many of us do that, and we would point that out they would say, well what do you mean? Am I supposed to be on a priority list? Yeah, you're supposed to be like really high up. There's ways to get yourself back on the list, and this chapter is really gonna help you prioritize yourself. Yeah. And one of those things is really reconnecting with friends. We don't spend enough time. Our community has changed so dramatically, and we're not running around with our kids on the playgrond and, you know, having 4 o'clock wine hour with our girlfriends anymore, but it's time to kind of go back to that and find those friends again, and connect. Or find one friend who's actually going through it, because so many women are but their just silently suffering through it. We talked to one woman who said, I just feel guilty, everybody else seems like they have it all together, except for me, and it's like, they actually don't, and if you can find one person going through the same or similar thing, latch on to each other for support, it's really, really important. Yeah, and really, take the time to acknowledge your fears. It's something that we have a really hard time with. To say like, to sit down and say, what are my deepest fears? What if I put myself first on the list? What if I make some choices in my life? Like, what's the worst thing that can happen? I mean, what if one of my parents did pass away, and you know, what if I'm guiding them towards their death? I mean it sounds heavy, but it's true. No, I think it's true. Writing those things down sometimes can just like release that fear, so you can start to make healthier choices for yourself, and starting to develop healthcare routines, or self care routines, I should say. More, put yourself, like I've got to do yoga everyday at 9 o'clock, and we're really good about making ourselves, okay we meditate every morning, we make sure that's part of our priority, our kids are like, know not to interrupt us. (mumbles), no one, no one, will dare mess with our meditation, or workouts, and they know that it's something for us but so few women will announce that, and make that a priority every single day-- Well it feels selfish-- ..every single week ..but it's not. Right. We feel like, oh I can't put 20 minutes aside for myself, but okay, you need to. And even if it's going to get a haircut. You know you look at what you're dealing with, such heaviness, and it feels like this trivial thing that's selfish-- I know, it's crazy. .. and whatever it means for you to get those, just minutes back to yourself, to take a breath, whether it's gardening, taking a run, whatever it is. Yeah, different for all of us, and ask for help. You know, like we're so, we're women, who think we can do it all, do it all all the time, that we're not, that if we ask for help, that we are not doing-- Somehow we're weak. .. Yeah, so, gosh, ask for help, because people want to help, and they want to be there for you, and it's okay to ask for help, and it actually shows others that asking for help is healthy, and that we should all be there to help each other when we need it too. Yeah, we all love it when we are needed (giggles), so give that gift to somebody else, and also reconnect with your core values. We lose ourselves in this process so often, especially at this time in our lives, like we forget who we are. Ah, so much noise. There's so much noise, and we're just trying to be everything to everybody, and it's just reconnecting with who you are, and what makes you come alive, and what makes you special. So, you know, really going through that as an exercise, is important, really important.
Ratings and Reviews
Jayne Smith
Thanks so much Amy & Trisha, for helping me get excited about a new door opening before me instead of being sad about the old door closing behind me :)
Student Work
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