A Year to Change: Conversations with women on choice, connections, and clarity in midlife

In today’s episode, we’re looking at fear generally and broadly connected to the unknown – What might happen? What could happen? Fear can be paralyzing or it can be powerful. The stuck place is not so powerful and certainly not the preferred spot for 50 something women. So we’re looking at the resolution of fear as the beginning of the evolution from where we were to where we’re going.

Hope you learn something useful!

 Making fear work for you [24:29m]: Download

Getting ready for something new - preparation - involves choices. You need to determine what you want and what you need to do to get it. “Taking a journey” is a pretty shopworn metaphor, but I am actually taking a vacation! So for me, getting ready involved not only “things to do”, but “things NOT to do”. Listen as we talk about it.

 

 What do I really need to do before I go away. [13:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Things are supposed to just work the way they are supposed to. There aren’t supposed to be surprises when making tomato sauce or bread. I always hope there aren’t surprises when installing new soft ware on my computer. I understand that’s a pipe dream… Nevertheless, a body can dream, can’t she?

Accidents are unexpected, by definition. On the road, the accidents that require police intervention are not so good. But when an accident in the kitchen yields a great taste, well, that’s good.

But I think there’s something about the difference between dependable and expected. They closed Grey’s Anatomy episode, Great Expectations with this thought:

You gotta wonder why we cling to our expectations
The expectation is just what keeps us steady, standing still,
the expected is just the beginning
the unexpected is what changes our lives.

Maybe it’s that unexpected whatever that starts the ball of change rolling?

– kerch and leslie

PS. We’re currently finding that if you try to listen to this using the player in this window, we sound like chipmunks. If you click on the Audio mp3 icon (also called a chicklet) you hear us like we really sound.

 

 Tomato Sauce, Bread and Dependability: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

All kinds of things get in the way of making changes. I am confused by why I can’t really get to make the commitment to exercise more “sticky.” We talked about commitments and being successful at making them to others but not so good about making them for our selves.

I regularly encourage clients to tie a new habit to an old one as one way to kick start a new one. Sometimes that works. But maybe it’s more important to tie the new habit to a whole life. Leslie says she read that Twyla Tharp, the dancer and author of The Creative Life, starts her day with exercise but it’s part of the whole of her life. It’s not just a habit. It’s part of who she is and how she prepares for her life work.

I’m going to reflect on that this week. Think about how exercise is part of my whole life. What would I get if that were true? What would be different or easier? Or at the very least, more fun?

What about for you?
–Leslie and Kerch

 

 What is this committment to change? [20:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Some changes we can plan for — like adjusting your diet. It takes time to make the changes and time for the results of those changes to show up. But some changes are sudden. Death pops to mind quickly. But also the less permanent but some would say almost as traumatic loss of a hair dresser. What do you do when you have to make sudden shifts in the way things work in your life?

Check out this story of WeightWatchers and changing hair dressers.

– Leslie and Kerch

 

 Gradual changes and sudden change: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We made our first podcast the other day. I’ve uploaded it to the server and hope you can get it into your iTunes or some other podcast reader? or listener? or aggregator? But for now, you can just listen to our first podcast here. It’s just under 20 minutes long.
Or you can get it into your iTunes by clicking, in the top navigation line, File | Import | and then fill in this whole link.. including the http:// part.

http://www.tagits.net/podcast/YTC1.mp3

And Hey.. leave us a comment if you can get it… or if you can’t for that matter.

Thanks

and enjoy!

 

 In the beginning: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download