Ep #190: The Unglamorous Foundations That Are Actually Carrying Me Through Midlife

Midlife gets a bad reputation. We're often told it's a crisis, something to survive or push through. But what if it's actually an invitation to rebuild? In this episode, I share the unglamorous but powerful foundations that are helping me navigate midlife with more clarity, resilience, and peace.

I open up about the daily habits and practices that have become non-negotiables in my life—from meditation and movement to nourishing my body, setting healthy boundaries, and doing the deeper internal healing work. None of these tools are flashy, but together they've helped me create a stronger foundation that supports the life I truly want.

If you've been feeling overwhelmed, disconnected, or uncertain about what's next, I hope this conversation reminds you that you don't need to blow up your life to create change. Sometimes the most meaningful transformation comes from strengthening the basics.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• Why I see midlife as a construction zone, not a crisis

• How meditation has transformed the way I respond to life

• The role movement plays in emotional and physical well-being

• Why boundaries are essential for creating a healthier life

• How gratitude and joy help create lasting change

If you're ready to build a stronger foundation for the next chapter of your life, I'd love to hear from you. Reach out at hello@mikkigardner.com and let me know which of these practices resonates most with you.

If you'd like to schedule a Clarity Call: https://calendly.com/coachwithmikki/clarity_call

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Full Episode Transcript:

What if the reason your life suddenly feels so misaligned in midlife isn't because something is going wrong, but because something inside of you is finally waking up? Well, welcome to Led From Within. I'm Mikki Gardner, and this is a podcast for women who are done outsourcing their authority and are ready to claim a life aligned with who they are today. Because midlife doesn't need to be a crisis. It can be a return to yourself, to clarity, to courage, and to inner authority. So let's begin.

Hey, welcome back to the podcast. Today we are talking about the unglamorous foundations that actually are carrying me through midlife. And I wanted to share them with you because I think a lot of times, you know, certainly with social media, with the world, with all of the things we can kind of glamorize and we see these trends and the things we ought to be doing, and we can feel really like, out of it and like, oh, it's way too much. And then other times, we can just go from thing to thing to thing, hoping that it makes it better, but we just end up feeling anxious and more sort of deflated afterwards. And the thing that nobody talks about, I think, uh, about midlife is that it is not a crisis. And I really believe that it's more of a construction zone than anything, right? Because what we're doing in midlife is tearing down what isn't working and building something stronger in its place.

Midlife can be a crisis. And we. When we think about that midlife crisis, it's like all of a sudden, out of nowhere, he bought the car, she had the affair, they ended the marriage. Like, all of these things, right? But it's not one thing that happens, right? I believe that a midlife crisis happens by, like, death by a thousand paper cuts. There's so many little transgressions, little lies, little places where we don't tell the truth, little places that we don't show up for ourself, that it gets to a breaking point. And that breaking point is when someone just blows their life up. And so that does not have to be midlife, right? Midlife can be this construction zone where we really start to figure out what isn't working, strip it away and build something stronger.

And that's what I wanted to talk about today, because there are some foundational habits that have become non negotiables for me that are literally carrying me through this life. Some of them I stumbled on completely by accident. Others I chose on purpose, right? And here's the other thing. None of them. None of them are sexy. Never. None of them exciting, sexy, fun, all of those things. But all of them are changing my life. And so I wanted to share them with you.

The first one. And I know there's going to be a lot of eye rolling. I can feel it already, and I totally understand it. Meditation. Meditation is training our brain. Uh, just like we go to the gym to train our bodies, it's training our brain because it is a muscle, right? And so that's what meditation does.

You know, for me, six years ago, it was November of, uh, 2020. And we all know what was going on during that time. And I just decided I was home, right? There was more going on. And I thought, you know what? I'm just gonna meditate for five days. And I did the five days, and then I'm like, okay, 10 days, okay, 30 days. Okay, 60 days. Here we are almost six years later. But that promise that I made to myself to just meditate every day, what I didn't know was the sheer amount of changes and goodness it was going to pour in my life.

Has it been easy? No. Right. But like I just said, it's training. Meditation is. And I've done other episodes and I'll do another more in depth meditation episode to talk about the mechanics of it. But all I want you to know is that when you train your brain to focus on one thing, right, like our breath, it's like a muscle. And that muscle gets stronger and stronger and stronger. And what it ends up doing over time is creating a little, like a little buffer zone between what happens around us and then ourselves. So that in that buffer zone, when it's everything happening in front of us, and then there's us having the experience of it, we become the witnesser of it, which allows us our ability to respond. That one has saved me more times than I can count.

Dan Harris has a book called 10% happier, where he really talks about this very vulnerable, about a very public breakdown that he had and how much meditation has changed. And even if you just do one thing, I hope it's this, right, because this piece is so foundational that over time, it's that you're not going to see a change in a week, not in two weeks, but in time. You. You will.

And let me stop for a second because I kind of jumped in here, and I think it's really important to say, why are these pieces, like, why is the foundation so important? And it's because life is just chaotic for me. I'm a single mom. I am working. Right. I have my life coaching practice. I'm podcasting. I'm also a part time student getting my master's in counseling. I'm getting ready to start working in that field as well. Right. And I'm taking care of my son's golf career and helping him. We travel a lot for that. There is a lot going on.

Right. And then that's not even. That's just like the, the daily logistics of life. Right. Then you add relationships, friendships, family, taking care of people. Right. All of these things are more and more and more. And then we're expected to take really great care of ourselves. And you can see how it's just so much.

But what I've learned is when there are foundational non negotiables, those foundational pieces in place, it helps us move through midlife. It helps us move through things differently because we are already grounded. We can keep ourselves grounded, which means we can make choices. And so that's why it's so important to start to have these conversations and not, I'm not expecting you to like, say, oh, I have to do all of these things, but maybe some of the things I talk about and I'm starting with the external things like meditation. Right. And I have a few more externals that I want to bring up. And then there's some internal foundational work. Right. But when we're willing to kind of build that foundation, it creates a rock solid place for us to move from.

So the first foundational piece is meditation. It always is for me. Right. And the second one is movement. Right. And I think we hear a lot, especially for midlife women, how important it is to be moving our body, building muscle strength training, cardio, like all of these things. It's hugely important for us to be able to, to move and to build stronger bodies so that we can live longer, healthier, happier lives within that. There's a couple of things that I want to highlight because I think we can again think that we have to go lift weights for three hours, you know, a week or whatever, no short ways of pushing our bodies to its sort of like max is really important. And there's a couple ways that I look at this one. It is strength training, right? Lifting heavy things. There's a hashtag lift heavyshit, right. For midlife women, we have to be able to do that. We have to keep our bodies, our bones, our, uh, muscles, all of our organs and tissues strong.

But yoga has actually also been a foundational practice for me. I was introduced to bikram yoga during the worst weekend of my life when I found out about my ex husband and the affair and I couldn't be alone. And um, a dear friend of mine stayed with me. And after a couple days she said, I'm just gonna go to yoga and then I'll be back. And I said, okay, I'm fine. She didn't even get out the front door. And I was like, oh, no, no, no, no, I'm going with you. Right? And I've been going ever since because this is the interesting thing. Yes, the exercise is great. Yes, my body feels great afterwards. But what I really get from yoga is learning how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

In Bikram, there is a very, very, very hot room. It's very, very humid. We're holding poses for really long periods of time. That is not fun. And the practice is actually, can I stay with myself? Can I keep my brain calm and can I control my breathing and can I keep myself calm enough to move past the uncomfortable? Right. And it's such a beautiful analogy and practice for life. Because when life gets chaotic and hect, we need to, uh, build those foundational pieces in to know that we can do more than we think we can. I can stay in that hot room the entire time without needing to escape. I can lift things heavier than I think I can. I can run further than I think I can because I'm pushing myself to do that.

And I think that's where in midlife it's really important that we use movement and also that we never, ever, ever think that walking is not good enough. I hear people say, uh, ah, it's not really a workout. Okay, well actually just walking is bilateral stimulation of your brain, which is part of one of the practices, emdr, which treats a lot of trauma. That kind of bilateral stimulation is really good for the brain. And so when we need to think or clear our minds, that's why walking, and as I've said on this podcast before, taking an emotional lap is so helpful because we actually moving our bodies helps us clear up what's going on in our, in our minds. Okay, so that was meditation, movement.

What goes in our bodies has become so much more important to me in midlife. There's two things that I've noticed. The more work that I do to create a connection between my mind and my body and spirit. I notice how sensitive I am to what I put in my body. I notice when I eat something, it's really highly processed or a lot of sugar. I just notice how I feel and it's not usually very good.

I started to notice in my late 40s that every time I drank alcohol, I would get a headache in the back of my head before I even was like a glass in. And I'm like, it's not fun. It's not fun. So I've really stepped back from drinking. I don't say that I don't drink at all because every once in a while I might have something, but for the most part, I don't drink because I. I don't like how I feel later. And I'm willing to not do something because I want to have a better day. I'd much rather wake up feeling good than have an hour of quote unquote fun. But again, my body took that away late in my 40s when I just started getting headaches all the time when I would drink.

Limiting caffeine. Listen, I love my coffee, but I also drink decaf because the caffeine, I'm really sensitive to it. And I just notice the older I get, I can make fun of myself. My kid makes fun of me sometimes, but I just notice more. And so it's not about fad diets, but it is about listening to my body and what does it need? Do I feel better with healthier foods? I do. Do I drink loads and loads of water? I do, because I feel better when I don't have it. I can feel myself like I'm cranky. I get a little hangry, right? And so the first thing I do, and everyone again makes fun of me because I'm like, have you had water today? And that's always the first because sometimes we just need some water. We just need some healthy food.

And so really looking at fueling our bodies versus, you know, just eating to eat, but really finding pleasure in food, finding the pleasure in the way that it feels fuels your body. Making really delicious things. I love to cook. I went to culinary school. I owned a catering company, an event planning company. I love food, right? And I enjoy having a lot of people around the table. And it's important to me that that food is really healthy. But I also don't get really hung up on that at the same time. We just went to Dave's, had chicken last week, you know, like, come on. Sometimes we just need a little chick fil a or whatever it is, right? And I am the first to say that if I do have some caffeine or need a little caffeine, pick me up. You may see me in the drive through at McDonald's, getting my diet Coke, because they just have the best Diet Coke. So those are my guilty pleasures, I will say.

But going back, it's like those foundational pieces to know that what's most important is that I'm paying attention to what I'm putting in my body, that I am, um, drinking loads and loads of water, that I start and stop my day, like, really thinking about what it, what would nourish me, what's necessary and what isn't, and just noticing what I put in and what I get out. So those are some of the, like, foundational, external things that have become really, really important. But I also want to talk about some of the internal foundational pieces. And again, I said at the top of the show, like, some of this I've just figured out, kind of stumbled upon and figured out the hard way.

So some of those internal pieces are the ones that it's like stitching together. Uh, I don't know if you've ever done cross stitch, but it's like you'll do a line and then another line and a line. And it takes a while to start to really see the shape come into view. And I feel like with all these foundational pieces, that's often true. We have to be willing to commit and to just try something long enough to see what comes out of it.

For me, one of the most important internal pieces, meditation, kind of fits into this, right. While it's an external practice, what it does is also it creates space inside for choice, for self awareness. And the ways that we go about that are really doing the healing work. And therapy for me has been, uh, a constant. And when I say constant, I go in and out, right. I had gone through phases like during my divorce, and that was a time of a lot of therapy. And then I would take a year or so off and then maybe something would happen and I would find myself back. A good therapist is a gift. To have someone to be with you, to witness, to hold a mirror, to hold and let you reflect back and see what's going on. To identify those patterns is so important.

Thought work for me was such a, uh, huge game changer as well. Right. And that's when I was introduced to coaching and started to understand how impactful our thoughts are on our actions and our feelings. And to start to do that self awareness and practices, to start to build a picture, an honest reality with ourselves, to start to choose how we want to move forward instead of just reacting, how to identify patterns and actually shift them. Right. So therapy, thought work, somatic healing, Breath work. All of these have been really important pieces that I use. Maybe not every day, but they have woven into the foundation of my life. Journaling, reflection, prayer. All of these can be important internal components.

All of those, right, along with the externals that I talked about, bring us to one of the most important pieces that I think is necessary to talk about, which is boundaries. Because boundaries are a foundation for healthy relationships, for a healthy relationship with yourself and with others. Because there are energetic boundaries, there are physical boundaries, there are relational boundaries, right? It's really starting to challenge yourself. And this is where midlife really brings you this opportunity is to challenge what are the roles and the identities? What are the things that I've sort of constructed in my life and how are they working? And oftentimes we need to work on new boundaries.

You know, energetic boundaries could look like cutting out people or things that drain our energy. You know, I just mentioned a couple, right? Like alcohol, excessive caffeine. Those are actual energetic boundaries that I put in place. But it also comes to people, right? Those people that are around us that maybe are toxic maybe drain our energy. Really learning how to limit exposure to that is highly important.

Physical boundaries for ourselves, right? I know for me, I have boundaries around sleep, I have boundaries around water consumption, all of these things. Because it's important that we start to build a framework, right? Boundaries are like the walls that hold up the house. It's the property line that helps us actually live in our lives. Many of us think boundaries keep everything out, but boundaries are what allow us to live a, uh, more full, rich, healthy life. And so it's important that we start to build these external foundational pieces and also the internal foundational pieces to be able to create strong, healthy boundaries that support the life that we want. It doesn't happen all at once, for sure, and it takes time.

But I like to think of all of these different foundational pieces as if I have, like, a cup, right? If I'm the cup and I pour in all of the good stuff, it actually doesn't leave room for what I don't want, right? All the good stuff starts to kind of push out the negative. The more I put in, the less room there is for other people to pour in things that aren't welcome, right? The thing about, like, sort of chaos in our lives, chaos disappears when we add more peace into our life. Not simply by removing things. What are the foundational tools and what are the things that I need to create more peace, to create more balance, to create more healthy, good things inside of me. And the more we can do that, the less room there is for everything else.

And the last one that I want to say, because I think it's. We hear a lot about it and you're, uh. It's another eye roller. We started with one, we'll end with one. But gratitude and joy, you know, really finding a mindfulness practice has been hugely important. Mindfulness can look like meditation, it can look like breath work, it can look like gratitude work as well. There is. I'll put a link in the show notes, but the five minute journal is one of my favorite gratitude journals. It's a way to start and end your day with gratitude. Oprah says that the best habit that she ever created was her gratitude habit, right? It shifted more than anything else she's ever done. Because when we find ourselves finding gratitude for what is already inside of our lives, we expand on that, right? We shift our perspective to start to see more of it. And so really practicing gratitude, practicing being present in the moment, being present with what is, even when that's uncomfortable, even when that's difficult, allows us to have more gratitude for the fact that we're breathing, the fact that we have goodness in our lives and we can create more of it from that place.

The last thing is, I think midlife is underrated in how much joy we can find. And passion. I think that's one of the most exciting things about midlife, is that we, because of. And we've talked about on other episodes, but there's so many biological changes, physical changes, hormonal changes. It is not the end of our life. It is actually the sort of next step into the greatest part, right? We actually get to feel so alive, so juicy, so fun, so passionate when we choose to move in that direction. And so having that strong foundation of health, of wellness, of supporting ourselves, of taking really, really good care of ourselves, can allow us to feel more joy, more passion, more of all the good stuff.

So I wanted to just offer you some of these foundational pieces again, because midlife can be a crisis for sure. But you can also choose to let it be that recalibration, to be that construction zone where you tear down what isn't working and you build something stronger in its place. And I just want you to remember that you have a choice. You always have a choice. And you get to choose what happens in midlife for you. It's not happening to you. You get to direct the story. And you do so with being strong in your mind, in your body, in your voice, and in your spirit, right? It's not about letting life happen to you, it is about living it on your own terms. I'll see you on the next episode.

Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I hope that it spoke to you and you found something useful to take away from it. If you did, I would be so grateful if you would take 2 seconds to subscribe to the show, which will help you because you want miss another episode. And it would help me because you would never miss another episode. And if you are in the giving spirit and would take 30 seconds to rate and review this episode, it would do wonders for the show and for me. Thanks so much for being here and I can't wait to talk to you again next week.