A lot of us know moment but rarely talk about out loud. It's not a dramatic breakdown, but it's the morning you wake up and think, is this it? Not with anger, not with certainty, but just with this low, heavy feeling that sometime or something doesn't feed anymore. We call it a kind of midlife crisis. We make jokes about it, both cars and drastic decisions. But for a lot of people, that moment of is this it? That question isn't a crisis at all. It's actually the beginning of the most honest chapters of their lives. So today we are going to sit with that. Hey dear listeners, welcome back to another powerful episode of Healthy Mind Healthy Life. I'm your host, Avik, and this is the podcast, or I would rather say a space, safe space, where we talk about the things that actually matter. The conversations that happen in the quiet, not just the highlighted read. Today I'm sitting down with someone who has lived this story from inside. So please welcome my lovely guest, Jody Brooks. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk about all of that that you've just brought up in the introduction and that moment where we question kind of what's next.

Yeah. Exactly, exactly. And dear listeners, as you all know, before we delve deep into the discussion, I always introduce you with our guests. So today I would love to introduce you with Jodi. So Jodi is a certified life coach, the founder of Mastering Midlife Workshops, and someone who spent over 30 years helping others find their authentic expression before burnout forced him to find his own. So we are going to talk about what really happens when midlife hits, why so many of us feel shame around it, and why burnout might actually be pointing you toward the life that you were always meant to live. So if you are somewhere in the middle of all of this, then this one is for you. So why to it? Let's set it. Welcome to the show again, Jordy.

Thank you. Good to be here.

Amazing. Amazing. So uh Jory, like before we get into the bigger stuff, but uh I want to start here. Like uh you have spent decades helping other people feel more like themselves. Um so in your work, in your coaching, in your workshops, uh somewhere along the way, you had to do that work for yourself. What did mo I mean, what did that moment feel like when uh you first realized something had to change?

Um the moment came. I have worked in education, so building people up, getting them to be confident in their skills and all of those kind of elements. I've had my own staff teams and so, you know, kind of a lot of that. But in my last role, I worked for a huge uh multinational corporate company, and my moment came in a meeting one day that wasn't even that bad, but I'd been feeling so exhausted. And I just sat in the toilet cubicle um at work and just put my head in my hands and started crying and was like, I can't do this anymore. I can't do this anymore. I have to stop this, break free, and do something else. And it was in that moment that I realized that I'd neglected some of the things that I'd said to other people along my way in my career. And that kind of became that moment of me realizing that the important things are the things that we quite often miss, that we let go of, and they're the bits that keep us grounded, essentially.

Okay, okay.

So um and and like if I have to say this way that uh there are a lot of misconceptions. I mean, there's something interesting here as well. Like when we say burnout or midlife, most people picture someone who pushed too hard, rammed themselves into the ground, and the fix is just rest, holiday, slowdown, and all. But I have a feeling that not that's not uh really what's going to going on beneath the surface. So, what do you think people get most wrong about what burnout actually is?

I mean, I think that the reason that you know they quite often throw away terms, and and I love that you say, you know, that kind of midlife is almost a joke. Like people make jokes about you know having a midlife crisis. Um but it's that thing where you feel, and I think mu many more people feel it, but maybe don't put the name to it for you mentioned shame as well, which I'll pick up on. But I'm starting to work with clients now at 30 years of age plus. And I think it's this fast pace, and we're on a hamster wheel almost, and we're just running, running, running, but we don't know where it is we're going. And we get kind of disconnected from our inner selves in that moment. And for a lot of people like me, I the signs started early on, but the shame was is I felt guilty about not being satisfied because I had a really good job, you know, like everything was good on the outside. I had, you know, a nice car, like all of those things. So for me, a lot of the continuation was well, who are you to complain? Who are you to not be satisfied with this? Surely you should be satisfied with this. And you know, the fact of the matter was is that actually I needed to remove stuff from my life that didn't have a place there in the first place. And in removing all those things, you start to then reconnect with what's at your core and who you really are. And with a lot of the clients I work with, it success is such an external measure. And, you know, that's where I truly believe it comes from, because we're all tracing this external destination that we call success. And yet, you know, I now say, look, the ultimate success is to be happy. But if you ask someone what success is, very rarely do they say happy. They can t tell you a whole list of things house, car, the things that you mean, holiday, like all of those things. You know, and I think that that's why, you know, we associate those maybe with midlife or with that crisis, because you're searching for something that makes you feel fulfilled because you have a lack of fulfillment. And that lack of fulfillment is why you push through and you push through and you keep pushing till physically you do burn out. Your body just is like, that's enough. You can't constantly do 12-hour days for more money, you can't constantly keep chasing these things, and so you know, I think the signs are first a lack of fulfillment. And, you know, with that, like you say, there's a huge, you know, for a lot of people that it there is nothing to be ashamed of. The only reason that we feel ashamed is because we're measuring it against external measures. We're thinking we should be happy because, you know, if I look around, there are people worse off than me. But that's still an external measure. It's not a measure of your internal happiness.

Exactly. And also, I'd love to add one this part of it like uh we always feel that uh we need to be happy or we need to be uh uh always look good in front of a society because it's just a kind of uh external pressure or external uh I'd say societal understanding of societal push that uh society wants this, and we have to be like that way. So uh I believe that is a belief only. So uh yeah.

Yeah, it's a huge thing, you know, the the external, you know, and particularly, you know, with social media, you know, these days there's this huge like externalization of chasing things or believing that if I have that or do that, I'll be happy if I eat in that restaurant, if I go to those shops, if I wear those clothes. And you know, that it we kind of exhaust ourselves in the whole process of that. And I think the flip is you kind of touch on something there as well. You know, I always say to clients, the thing about happiness is it there are moments where you won't have happiness because otherwise you can't experience the true joy of the happiness. You know, it you kind of have to have it's a scale, it's a balance. And when you are really connected internally to who you are and your values and what matters to you, in those moments where your happiness is slightly lower, and we all meet challenges, you are still able to navigate that attached to your purpose, which gives you your direction, because you're then seeking a purpose that is connected to who you are, to where you're going, and not to this external measure. I recently was coaching a client who said that their goal was for this new top of the range car, and you know, we discussed it and went through it, and and I said, and you know, is this the first time you've bought no no no, I've had a you know a brand new one of these, you know, five years ago. And I said, and what was it like picking up the keys? Oh, it was amazing. And then I said, and how long did that feeling last? And then they said, yeah, about a week. And that and so I was like, so you know, this is the direction you're set in right now, but that direction is a moment of happiness, it's not gonna make you fulfilled, and I think that that's maybe you know the trick to that I talk to clients about all the time is what's the fulfillment? How does it fulfill you? How does it add to you, make you grow, make push you on that journey further?

Exactly. Amazing. And um and also if we if you go deeper, uh, because from what I understand about your journey and what I hear from uh so many people who reach out to this show, uh Heavy Man, Healthy Life, like burnout doesn't just happen from doing too much. There's often years of quietly burying what we actually need. So what do you think it's is really uh sitting at the root of and for most of the people in the midlay?

I think you're quite right, you know, it's a really valid point, is it's not something that happens, you know, this is not physical, this is both, I would say, the burnout that we're kind of talking about is an emotional and a physical burnout. You know, physical burnout is exhaustion, you know, and that's because you've worked too many hours, etc. But burnout has an emotional context to it. And that is the overwhelm. And a lot of it, you know, with probably 99% of my clients comes from overwhelm, which frequently is linked to people pleasing. And that's and I think we always see people pleasing as directly helping others. But the point that you raised before about externalizing our um for others, like we're judged by society, that's a form of people pleasing. Meeting the needs of what we think society wants of us is a form of people pleasing. We're just pleasing people en masse. So, so which, if you think about it, that's even more exhausting. And so, and I think for a lot of us, you know, when you look at how we're raised, for me, it was very different. There was a lot of trauma in my childhood, and I learned to be a people pleaser very quickly because it was a way to stay safe. It was a way to, if I keep people happy, then the room stays happy. And so I very rapidly, you know, from a young age, learned that the moment there was negativity, I would leap into doing anything to make it right. And it wasn't until really at 47 when I hit that burnout point that I realized that that's what I'd done a huge amount of is I'd chased other people's expectations of me and not what were the expectations I had for myself. And then there's this huge amount of overwhelm sat in our head where all these thoughts go around on a on a loop. And I do an exercise with clients. It's a tool that I created and I use, and it's called Sulda, Woulda, Coulda. And we write three lists of all the things that, you know, we say, Oh, you know, I really should, uh, I really could, um, I would of. And we write them all down and get them out of people's heads. And it it's amazing how many of these are not things that they own. They're things that they've taken on board from other people, other people's opinions about what they should or would or could do, you know, kind of. And so we then actually take those lists, I shoulda, woulda, could'a, and we turn them into I will, I want to, and I can. And then we have another list, which is I don't need to bother with these. And every single client that does it says it's amazing how quickly it calms their mind because this huge list of things that is swirling round in their head is now out on paper and dealt with. And the problem is with I should, I could, and I would. You're first of all saying you're not going to do it, but you're not taking it off your list. So automatically there's a guilt that goes with that because you have this huge list of unfinished things swelling around in the back of your head every day that you feel guilty about because you know, I should go to the gym. Yeah, I should go to the gym today, and you don't, and then you get up the next day and you say, I should go to the gym today, and then you keep saying that for a year. Now, I use that frequently as an example, and and then you know, I say to people, Well, is it I want to, I will, or I can. And then if they say, Well, it's none of those, and then I say, Well, you don't need to worry about it. And, you know, we have a conversation around that, and I think that doing that, and the other thing that I say to everybody is the the trick to it is to stop and to start stopping and at least pause and catch your breath and look at what's really going on because we're all so busy running, we're not really paying attention to really what's affecting us. And our subconscious is 90% of our thought process, and it's scanning constantly all day and picking up information that we're not even aware of, and it's dealing with so many things, and and not allowing yourself to be calm and still at some point, and allow those thoughts is kind of partly where that emotional exhaustion comes from.

Yeah.

And, you know, the key signs I think is you start to notice things. For me, it was really, really silly things. Like I would suddenly, I went through a phase where I was parking my car and then couldn't remember where I'd parked my car.

Yeah.

And putting keys down and not remembering where they are and starting to miss simple tasks. And obviously, there's all sorts of health concerns that you have when you're like in your late 40s when you start forgetting things. But it was simply just another sign of burnout that my brain was so exhausted it couldn't even handle like those minimal simple tasks anymore.

I totally agree on this, yes, yes. And um that's interesting, and also like uh I I I mean I definitely wanted to ask this one uh before we move. Um uh like for the person who is listening right now, maybe in the car, maybe at night, uh when everyone else is asleep, who feels that heaviness but hasn't named it to anyone else. So who feels like they have somehow um feeled at the uh version of their life they were supposed to have? What would you want them to feel at this moment?

I think the first thing is that you are one of many, many people, and there are lots of people lying awake at night feeling that, and it's a completely normal feeling, but it's a signal that you need to take action, and it's not a signal that you haven't achieved, and it's not a signal that you don't have enough, it's a signal that you've come to a point in your life where you now have the opportunity to write the best chapter yet. You have the opportunity to pause, to catch your breath, and to set your direction for the next part of your life. And in doing that, you know, and it's a sign to reconnect with your values and what you want and where you're going, and that makes it sound like it's incredibly easy, and it you know, it takes time to sit down and do those things. But I say to people, if you act and do nothing, there is only really one destination for that process, and that is burnout. That is burnout and spiraling kind of mental health to a point where it's much more severe. Whereas taking action in that moment and start stopping. That's I do I have another um tool that I Use with people, which is called start stopping. And it's about stopping and really looking at what in my life serves me and what does not, and what can I let go of and where am I going and where is my destination? And I truly think, you know, that feeling, I explain that feeling that you're describing, and I that you can tell me you agree or disagree, but I kind of describe it a bit like if you were made to get in on a bus to go on a journey, but you didn't know where the bus was going. Wow. And you didn't know how long it was going to be, where where you were going. And that's truly, I think, when people are having that feeling, is they don't know what the destination is. And so it becomes because there's no motivation, there's no sense of achievement, and so stuff starts to get really, really hollow. But we end up trapped by that shame of thinking that we can't say that actually this isn't enough, and I want more. But I want more for me inside, not more for me outside.

Exactly. And if the listeners want to connect with you, how they can connect?

The easiest way to connect with me is to go to my website, which is www.authenticcoaching or oneword.me. So www.authenticcoaching.me. And all the links to my social are there. You can direct message me there. Um there is a couple of free tools if you join the community. Um, there's the start stopping that I've just talked about. They can access that and download that for free. And your listeners, if they put in the discount code podcast4 at the checkout, will get a free mini course, which is five videos of me talking them through how to stop in that moment.

Amazing. Amazing. Great. So, uh, dear listeners, what I'll do is I'll put all the links into the show notes for your easy reference. And uh also I'd have to say that uh first of all, thank you so much, Joey, really, for showing up with this kind of honesty and uh for reminding all of us that redefining your life at any age is not a failure, it's a courage. And uh for everyone who is listening, if something in today's conversation starred something in you, please just look into it. You don't have to fix it today, you just have to be honest about it. That's where it begins. So, uh, with this hope, this is your host of weekend. This is Hellyman Healthy Life, and I'll see you in the next one. Till then, take care of yourself. Thank you so much.