Episode 137: Signing Your Own Permission Slip

After working with menopausal women for over a decade, there's one heart breaking theme I see time and time again: waiting for someone to tell us it's ok to take care of US. 

It's the difference between a life that sets your soul on fire...and a life of regret. Here's how to get comfortable putting the oxygen mask on you after a lifetime of putting everyone else first.

If you're loving the podcast, leaving a review is the #1 way to help other women find it! You can do so by clicking the starts on the page where you're currently listening and (brownie points ;)) typing a few words about what you love. Thank you in advance <3

Check out my (free) workshop, How to Fire Up Your Metabolism in Menopause and Beyond right here: www.MindStrongFitness.com

Transcript

Becoming MindStrong Podcast: Signing Your Own Permission Slip
SPEAKERS
Speaker 1
Speaker 1 00:00
Welcome back to the becoming mind strong podcast. My name is Rachel, and I'm the founder
and CEO of mind strong, where we have been helping Peri and postmenopausal women not just
lose weight, not just heal their metabolism, not just get tightened and toned, if that's their goal,
not just get healthy, but take control of their health for a lifetime. I'm a big believer that the
things that overwhelm us are the things we don't understand. So when we can put you in the
driver's seat, when you can understand the how and why, that's when we're in control. That's
when nutrition, workouts, all of the above, stop overwhelming us. And I love to say, if you know
how to ride a bike, try to fall off that bike right when our brains wired for a skill, it's pretty
difficult to do now. With that said, I can teach you everything I know till I'm blue in the face,
about macros, about mindset, about metabolism, as I called all the M's.
00:50
And if you are still
00:53
in a stage of life
00:55
where the mindset is
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as long as I am taking
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care of everyone else,
01:00
everything's fine. Well,
Speaker 1 01:03
me teaching everything I know isn't going to accomplish anything. Here's what I mean by that. We have been doing this a long time.
01:08
I've been in this industry over 10 years,
01:11
and because we only work
01:13
with Peri and postmenopausal women,
01:15
the thing I see time and
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time and time again
Speaker 1 01:19
is so many women struggle with the concept
01:23
of prioritizing themselves.
Speaker 1 01:24
They are so used to and society has rewarded them for taking care of everyone else first that
saying yes to their priorities is such a foreign concept.
01:36
So in today's episode, we are going to dive deep
01:39
into how to prioritize
Speaker 1 01:41
me when I'm not used to prioritizing me. Check it out.
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Speaker 1 01:53
Welcome to the becoming mind strong podcast, the official podcast of mind strong fitness. My
name is Rachel, and I'm the CEO of mind strong. And we are here for two things. We're here for
hope in a stage of life where it feels like we are doing everything right and nothing is working. I
am here to tell you you are not broken. This is fixable, and I promise there is hope. And number
two, we are here for truth in an industry that is designed to keep us confused with shake
systems and point systems and frozen meals, I promise you it doesn't have to be that difficult.
Someone can teach you the skill of riding a bike, someone can teach you the skill of knitting,
and I can teach you to master the skill of nutrition. So are you ready? Let's rock and roll,
Speaker 1 02:51
as you heard me say in the intro, because we only work with women. We only work with Peri
and postmenopausal women.
02:57
This is a topic that
02:59
comes up so many times that
03:00
it hurts my heart a little bit every
03:02
single day. There are so
Speaker 1 03:04
many women out there who have just been raised in families and
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societies that the
Speaker 1 03:10
definition of what makes you super mom or super grandma is your ability to be
03:16
quote, unquote selfless, to put
Speaker 1 03:18
everyone else first, at the expense of yourself, and the problem is we're rewarded for that right.
Society tells us, wow, she's super mom, she's super grandma, because she's always going,
going, going, taking care of everyone. Here's the problem with that. There's multiple problems
with
03:35
that, but we're going to highlight
Speaker 1 03:36
some of the big ones. Number one, we know, if you've listened to this podcast, we know, if not,
we're about to know that when we talk about like,
03:44
attracting, like, when it comes to energy,
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Speaker 1 03:47
that's not some Woo, woo, rainbows and glitter and unicorns thing. You hear me talk a lot on
this podcast, that there is a rule of quantum physics that the energy we put out in the world is
literally the energy we attract back. We're going to talk more about this in a second. So I'm
starting the episode with that, because to me, everything in life comes down to energy, again,
not from a like positive vibes, man, but from a quantum physics point of view. So if we are
walking around, run down, holding on by a thread, we are not doing a service to our family. We
are doing the ultimate disservice to our family. So number one that we're going to dive into
today is the concept of energy.
04:22
Because, again, to me, that that's everything we have
04:24
in life. Number two is this.
04:27
It's a bit more logistical, you know, I like
Speaker 1 04:29
to start big picture and then get in the weeds. Menopause is a time of life where I've heard it
referred to as like a second puberty. It's like, what is
04:37
happening to my body, right?
Speaker 1 04:39
The the kind of quick and dirty Cliff Notes. Version of menopause is we can't get away with the
stuff that we used to I always
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think about, if we zoom out from a universal
Speaker 1 04:48
perspective, menopause is kind of our body being like, no this. This is me drawing a line in the
sand, right? It's someone who stayed in an unhealthy relationship for 20 years, and then they
have their. Tiffany moment,
05:00
and our bodies are like, No,
Speaker 1 05:03
this is it. You have been under fueling me. You've been over stressing me, whatever the case
may be, for all these years. This is our time. This is our stage of life. Call it midlife.
05:12
Call it whatever you want. We are
Speaker 1 05:14
putting the oxygen mask on us now, and it
05:19
does this biologically.
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Speaker 1 05:21
So, as I love to do on this podcast, I want to start big picture from this energy conversation, and
then I want to really hone into why you can't get away away with that anymore in a
menopausal body. And from there, we'll dig a little deeper into some more logistics, get our
hands in the dirt and really do some quote, unquote problem solving. Here. I'm going to
interrupt this episode real quickly to ask a 32nd favor, if you are loving the podcast, if you can
tap that Five Star Review button above, maybe even leave a few nice words. It is the biggest
help to getting the podcast out there. As the time I'm recording this, we don't advertise the
podcast, so we rely on our old friend, the algorithm, to help get it in the hands of other women.
Leaving a review is the absolute number one way to help us do that. Thank you in advance.
Thank you. Thank you. Now, let's get back to the episode. All right, so let's start really zoomed
out energy, and then again, we'll get more menopause specific, and then we'll talk some some
action steps. If you've listened this podcast a lot, you already know. You already know what I'm
about say, so listen to this on double time. Or I'm a big believer in the saying, you know, people
need to remind, be reminded, not told. There is a rule of quantum physics that says, when it
comes to energy, like attracts like. My favorite example, if you've ever seen my how to fire up
your metabolism. Workshop I use all the
06:36
time is in music, we have something
Speaker 1 06:39
called tuning forks. A tuning fork is a curved piece of metal that when you strike it, it vibrates,
because sound travels in waves. So it vibrates, it creates waves in the air, and it creates a tone.
So depending on how thick or how thin the metal is, it creates different notes. You can have a
tuning fork for A, B, C, sharp, etc. So if you were to go in a room full of tuning forks, and let's
say you're holding an a tuning fork, and you only strike the tuning fork you're touching. You
don't you're holding, you don't touch any of the other ones in the room.
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Logic would say that the only
Speaker 1 07:10
tuning fork making a sound is that a tuning fork you're holding. Quantum physics would say
that when it comes to energy, like attracts like.
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So what actually happens is when
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I strike that a tuning fork, all the other a tuning forks in that room go off even though you didn't
touch them. Now that logically doesn't make sense, right? That sounds like woo, woo, rainbows
and glitter and unicorn again, we are talking about science here, because sound is moving
energy. It sound travels in waves, right? If you can nerd out on this stuff on on YouTube. Back in
college, I took a class called the physics of sound, which was the nerdiest, coolest thing I've
ever seen in my life. What's happening in real time, if we could see this stuff with our human
eyes, is that the vibrations that the a tuning fork is creating is attracting back the same
frequency of the other a tuning forks,
08:00
and they're like, Hey, that's my jam.
08:02
We are on the same wavelength.
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That's where that expression comes from. So they
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go off the B, the C
08:08
sharp, the D tuning forks. They're on a different vibration.
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Speaker 1 08:11
They do not connect, so they don't make a sound. What does this have to do with our life?
Because humans are at our core, made up of atoms, right? We learned this in elementary
school, where we are made up primarily of atoms. It's the smallest construction
08:27
piece, so to speak, of everything on this earth.
08:29
What science has discovered
08:31
is that an atom is 99.99999%
08:35
vibrating energy.
08:36
So we as humans,
Speaker 1 08:39
a according to quantum physics, we are vibrating energy. Now, things vibrate at different
speeds, right? There's a reason I'm not falling through the desk chair that I'm sitting in right
now, because I'm vibrating at a different speed
08:51
than than my chair. But
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Speaker 1 08:53
if we are to embrace the fact, which I hope you are, because science doesn't
08:57
lie that an atom is 99.99%
Speaker 1 08:59
vibrating energy we as humans, are made up primarily of atoms, as is everything in this earth. We are vibrating energy. And guess what? The rules of quantum physics apply. Here's what
that means when we have spent a lifetime only investing in our spouse, only spending money
on things for our grandkids, putting our health last, going, going, going every day so we can
take care of everyone else and saying it's less important that I take care of me, or whatever
09:26
version that voice in your head says
09:29
our energy right now
09:31
is low. It would be
Speaker 1 09:32
nearly impossible for it not to be if we are not prioritizing our health, if we are not doing our
neuroscience mindset
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work, there is no way that we are
09:40
vibrating at a higher energy,
Speaker 1 09:43
and because the rules of quantum physics say that when it comes to energy like attracts like
that is the life you are attracting back. So logistically, you can be doing all the things you can
be doing the laundry and the food shopping and the hustling to soccer and class holiday
parties. Yeah, but at the end of the day, if we truly want to take care of our family and friends,
we can't bypass quantum physics because you are always attracting back the energy on the
same wavelength that you're on. So if you're hanging on by a thread, if you're worn down, if
you're powering through, you can't bypass quantum physics. That is the life you're attracting
back. I don't care how many positive deeds you're doing, that's the life you're tracking back.
This is why I harp so much. If you're not watching this on video, my hands are flailing
10:33
now. This is why, to me,
Speaker 1 10:34
energy is everything. You hear me talk a lot in the more logistical podcasts, we talk a lot about
how weight loss and menopause takes time that that is just a fact of biology, and one of the
first things that we can start improving is your energy. And to me, there is nothing more
important because of this quantum physics conversation, if we want to give our family and
friends a life of their dreams, we have to be taking action that's going to literally, physically
raise our vibration so that we can attract that back.
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Last thing I'll say about this, I don't
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believe in coincidences. I truly do
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not believe there's such a thing as a coincidence on
11:10
the face of the earth. It is not a
Speaker 1 11:12
coincidence that we have seen 1000s at this point, 1000s of women that when they finally say
yes to themselves, when they finally start prioritizing their health. Miraculously, life starts
leveling up, right? We have seen women get promotions. We've seen women get into healthy
relationships after years of being scared to we've seen women leave unhealthy relationships
because they've stepped into their power and found their voice. These things
11:37
are not coincidences. When you
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Speaker 1 11:39
raise your vibration, your life has no choice, according to science, no choice but to race along
with you. So, big picture spiel, let's take it a little bit more logistically. If you've seen my how to
fire up your metabolism workshop, I show you one of my favorite analogies I've ever seen. I
wish I could take credit for because, you know, I love a good analogy, but the analogy has three
glasses water. There's a glass half full, there's a glass a little more than three quarters the way
full, and there's a glass overflowing. And we talk about with that analogy, that menopause is a
time of life where it's called your cortisol resilience goes down. So if you can imagine in your
brain a glass half full, right? That was our body. That was our cortisol level in our body before
this menopausal stage of life, including perimenopause, where it starts creeping, which means
we could get away with all the things. We could over exercise, we could under eat, we could do
all the errands. We could not prioritize our health. And we were fine because we had an entire
half a glass that we could fill with cortisol raising activities, then menopause hits. And if you
listen this podcast, we talk a lot about how one of the themes of menopause is, as our estrogen
drops, our cortisol naturally spikes. So in menopause, we say we have less cortisol resilience.
So picture a glass even more than three quarters the way full that little space at the top, that's
all we got left when it comes to cortisol resilience.
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So when we try
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Speaker 1 13:07
to keep under eating, to keep over exercising, to keep putting everyone else first and ourselves
last our cup, I always like to say runneth over and not in the good way. This is why so many
women feel like their body is shutting down in menopause, we are not living in the same body
as our 20s, 30s, early 40s. And a big part of that, not the only part, obviously, but a big part of
that is our cortisol resilience. This is why you heard me say in the beginning, I truly believe,
from a zoomed out, universal level, it's our body like drawing a line in the sand being like no,
because I know left up your own devices. You will keep doing more of the same. You will keep
putting everyone else first at the expense of yourself. So I am not going to let you anymore. I
am biologically going to draw a line in the sand. So you have to take different action. I truly, in
my soul, of souls, have been doing this long enough to think there is some universal zoomed
out. Call it God. Call it the universe, whatever you call it, that it is forcing our hand to make a
change. Menopause is a time life you can't power through. And believe me, I've seen women
try. I've seen women try for 20 years before they make it to us. And every day that they
continue pushing, pushing, pushing that hole, as I like to call it, the whole Their metabolism is
in. It gets deeper the sooner we can stop the bleeding, start the healing, the better results
they're going to get. And that means embracing the fact that we can't get away with the stuff
we did in our 20s and 30s. That means cutting carbs, that means under eating, that means
intermittent fasting, and it means prioritizing our health. You cannot power through this in
menopause, it is making the problem worse. All right, so let's pause here do a little recap.
Number one, energy is everything, right? If you truly want to live a life of, well, I, you know, I
don't mean this as sarcastically as it sounds, but like the martyr life, right, that a lot of us have
been praised for. Of like, I put everyone else first. So. Number one, we're about to talk about
that. Number two, you're not actually doing it right. You're this is like when my terrible analogy
here is when people think they're they're tracking macros perfectly, and they're like, beating
themselves up over it, and then we have that aha moment of like, hey, nutrition labels can be
up to 25% accurate, even if you're driving yourself nuts. To do this perfectly, you're not doing it
perfectly. It's the same conversation here, right? You can put everyone else first and drive
yourself nuts and wear yourself into the ground. And guess what? You're not actually putting
everyone else first, because you're energetically attracting back a lower vibration frequency
into all of your lives. Taking care of this is the least selfish, best thing you can do. Number two
second bullet point is that we can't get away with it in menopause. Every day that goes by that
you try to power through, the hole is getting deeper. The work gets harder. When we can get
with someone who's who's early on, into their their beating their metabolism into the ground,
so to speak, under eating, cutting carbs, all that they're going to get way faster results. Right?
We've worked with women who've been doing under eating, beating their metabolism into the
ground for 20 years.
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Ground for 20 years. Can we still fix it
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absolutely and the journey takes a bit longer, so the sooner we can stop the bleeding, start the
healing better. Here's the last thing I'm going to say, and I'm going to zoom back out here.
Usually I like to start zoom out and really get logistical today, where we're zooming in and
zooming back out, because this is just, I don't know. This is like, the driving force of my life. And
if you if you've listened to podcasts, you know me, and you know, like, I always say, nowhere in
my bio does it say motivational speaker. I'm not here for pump you up fluff. When I share
bigger mindset things like this, it's because this is truly what goes on in my in my brain every
single day. I sometimes when I'm talking to people, there's a a poorly worded expression I use.
I've never found a quick and punchy way to say this, but I believe there's two types of people in
the world. I believe there have are people who have experienced a great loss that have shown
them how fleeting life is. And then I believe there are people who haven't yet experienced a
great loss to understand how fleeting life is. At some point in life, unfortunately, we will all
experience a major loss that shows us how fleeting life is. Some of us experienced it earlier life
in life, and it was a kick in the rear end. Some of us experience it later, and then we tend to
look back with regrets. I don't even know if I mean unfortunately, because it was gut
wrenching, fortunately, because it changed the trajectory of my life, but I lost a friend in my
very early 30s. He was this strapping young man, a rugby player, like big dude. Seemed totally
healthy all of a sudden, had stage four prostate cancer, which is unheard of in your early 30s.
His name is Ian. And losing Ian, I had my best friend group at the time, and it was like every
weekend, all eight or 10 of us, that was our thing. What are we doing this weekend? Right? Like
straight out of friends. And it was out of nowhere, like out of nowhere. Ian went to the doctor
because he just it hurt when he peed, and next thing we know, it's chemo and it's spreading
and it's in his blood and it's in his brain, and then he's gone. And that moment was the change
of the course of my life, because seeing people say life is fleeting. When you watch someone go
from 30 years old and an athlete and engage to your best friend and spending every weekend
together to just gone in a short amount of time, nothing will kick you in the butt like that,
because then you realize, what the heck are we doing? What are we stressing about? What are
we so worried about all the time? What are we focusing on? Like when we say, this could go
tomorrow, this could go next year. That is not just something we say. And that was one
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of the pivotal, maybe the
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pivotal moment of my life, because anytime I find myself where I know what I need to do, right?
We all know we need to prioritize our health. It's the fear that gets in the way. It's the limiting
beliefs about it's selfish and I should be putting everyone else first, and everything we talked
about in the first three quarters of this episode, when those voices start to chime in. There is a
moment that we have to draw the line in the sand, right? Our body is biologically doing it for us,
and we have to do it mentally and be like, You know what? Who freaking cares? Maybe at the
end of the day, the fact that I want this and I need this for myself is enough, right? My spouse,
they love me, they support me. If I can go up to them and be like, Look, I need to do this. Yes,
it's our finances. Yes, we'll have a conversation together. But this is me drawing my own line for
myself in the sand. I need a change, right? That is a very different conversation than what I.
See on all these strategy sessions with women who are like in tears. I cannot tell you how many
of our strategy sessions start or start and end with tears. I need this. I need this. I need this. I
have to talk to my husband and I get it finances. It's an easier said than done conversation. And
there has to come a day where we draw the line in the sand and say, You know what, I am
signing my own permission slip. I am the one that gets to decide Life is short, life is fleeting. I
have spent the last 10 years feeling like garbage about myself, avoiding mirrors, pulling on my
waistline, or maybe I've only spent the past year because I don't recognize my body in
menopause. Whatever the story is there. We are allowed to sign our own permission slip,
because at the end of the day, this is fleeting, and we are all going to look back on our life one
day, and to me, my hell on earth is looking back in my life and saying, what if? Saying, I really
wish 10 years ago I had just said, Screw it, and I had done what I need to do and not let fear
get in the way, or I had not let figuring out finances get in the way. Because I believe not
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for everyone, but for most people, that's
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figure outable. And I don't say that to belittle anything. I mean, I believe it's figureoutable
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For most people,
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but at the end of the day, we have to make that decision, and I think that is a very challenging
thing for a lot of women. We have lived a lifetime of waiting for someone else to give us
permission when we can have that, that aha moment. We don't just say this is fleeting. It is. We
are all going to be reflecting back on our life one day, and what is the story that I want to tell?
Is it the story that fear won out and now I live the next 30 years of what if, what if? What if? Or
is it the story that I said, Screw it. Not another day, not another minute, not another second. I
will figure it out, because I need to take care of me, because I get one go around in this
lifetime, and it is too important not to and you not your spouse, not your best friend, not even
your coach. You are the only person
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who can make that decision.
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There's no topic that I will ever talk about
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on this podcast that I get more passionate about than this, because I see too
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many women in tears
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talking about how miserable they feel.
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They don't recognize their body.
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They're shrunken down in their skin. They know it's impacting their family. And at the end of
the day, I have to talk to my husband,
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talk to your husband.
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But the conversation is not honey. May I the conversation is honey. I need this.
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Can we get her? It's not butting heads.
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Can we sit down and figure this out together? Because I'm not happy, and I don't want to look
back with regret.
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You deserve better. The kids deserve
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better, the grandkids deserve better. And you know what? I deserve better. So this is the day
that I am making decision.
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I am drawing a line in the sand. I need a change.
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Can we sit down together and figure this out? We have to start getting comfortable signing our
own permissions
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for more information on mind strong fitness, or to apply for a free one to one strategy session
with my Incredible all female team, visit www dot mindstrong fitness.com, you
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