Episode #50-When Your Old Life No Longer Fits: Reinventing Yourself with Purpose in Midlife
Hey beautiful friend, it's Marnie. Welcome back to Life is Delicious. I want to start today with a little question. Have you ever felt like your life technically works, but it just doesn't quite fit anymore? Like you've built something solid, your career, your family, responsibilities, routines. And from the outside it it all looks fine. But on the inside, something is missing. Something is off. Maybe you're craving more creativity. Maybe you want more income, but in a way that doesn't cost you your peace. Maybe you're tired of feeling like you have to choose between stability and passion, between purpose and practicality. Or between ambition and being present. And here's what I see so often, especially in midlife. It's not that we lack talent. It's not that we lack drive. And it's not that we suddenly forgot how to work hard. It's that the woman we are becoming no longer fits inside the life we built ten or fifteen years ago. And then comes the overwhelm. Because suddenly there are too many possibilities, too many ideas, too many possible directions. And instead of feeling excited, we feel stuck. So if that resonates with you, you're gonna really appreciate today's guest. Today I'm talking with someone who deeply understands this exact transition. My guest today is Charlene Ridley. Charlene is a business architect, strategist, speaker, and mother. And after years in corporate leadership and consulting, she began to notice something powerful. Women weren't stuck because they lacked talent or ambition, but they were stuck because their lives no longer matched who they were becoming. So now she helps women recalibrate their identity, their direction, and their relationship with work so that they can design what she calls a both and life. One that holds purpose, income, creativity, stability, and joy. And I love that phrase, both and. So if you've been feeling the nudge, if you've been sensing that there's another layer of you waiting to come forward, you're going to love today's conversation.
Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Larnie Martin, and I'm so glad you're here. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious family. This podcast isn't about surviving midlife, it's about crafting your next chapter life, overflowing with purpose, joy, and delicious possibilities. Listen, midlife doesn't have to be a crisis, it can be a beautiful invitation to remember who we are, to rediscover a new version of ourselves, or to completely reinvent our life to reflect who we are becoming now. So if you're tired of being exhausted, living life on autopilot and putting everyone else first, then you are in the right place. Each week we'll bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies as well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your joie de vie. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it. Welcome Charlene to the Life is Delicious podcast. I'm so grateful to have you here.
Thank you, Marnie. I'm I'm excited and grateful to be here, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Yeah, me too. So I know you've spent uh you did spend a fair amount of years in corporate leadership and consulting. So how did you get into the work you're doing now? And tell us a little bit about what your specialty is.
Absolutely.
So I was I was in corporate leadership for almost 30 years. And during that time, I was really good at developing teams. So I started doing some career coaching work on the side and created a career coaching business. Over the years, though, in my career coaching business, I started to notice a pattern. And the pattern was people were getting to middle-age, I'll call it, their mid-40s, early 50s, and they were having questions about what it was that they really wanted. And it wasn't necessarily about the role or the organization, but about who they were and what they wanted to create or step into next. Oftentimes that became some sort of business or nonprofit. And so then there was a natural shift for me into business strategy and coaching, but more specifically into looking at the way that we create value in the world and how we create pathways to income by the value that we create.
Yeah, that's such an important piece of feeling like the work that you do. And especially, I think, even as people kind of lean into retirement, they still want to have value and meaning in their life, even if they're not necessarily still doing just the creative earning, you know?
That is so true. I don't think we ever stop wanting to add value throughout our entire life. I think that the way that we think about adding value changes. When we're in our 20s, we think about what how we add value in terms of what we want and our career trajectory. When we're in our 30s, we start maybe to have families or significant others, and we start to think about how we add value to personal lives and to professional careers. Then in our 40s, we start to think about all of those things differently and how do we create value with our time? And I think that's the big shift. And as you go into retirement, you have more time. And so how you think about value sharing and value adding is different as well.
In your experience, what tends to change about how women kind of see themselves in different seasons of life, because I think there's also that other piece that, at least for me as a woman and for a lot of the women I speak with, there's this sense that it's time now to identify who you are as a woman and as a woman who doesn't necessarily have to take care of babies anymore or look after teenagers. And they have this sense of being able to do something that's specifically for themselves.
That's such a good question. As we shift and our roles change, our
identity changes. And I think that is a really sticky conversation and even realization for most women, because we have been conditioned from the time we're little girls that we are supposed to do certain things, right? And we've also been conditioned that we are supposed to put the needs of others ahead of our own needs, and that if we don't, we are in some way selfish. And so that identity shift comes first with discovery, discovery and uncovering who you are in this moment, not who you used to be, not who the world says you should be, who your family or friends say you should be, but who you are in this moment, what's important to you, what you value, what lights you up, all of those sort of things. And as you do that, it's giving yourself to permission to take those things on, whether in a small way or in a more central focused way. So it's really learning who you are, saying yes to those things and stepping into them in ways that feel comfortable and easy.
And we have to be able to give ourselves permission to do that. And that's the one of the biggest pieces that's not always easy for us because we've been so used to taking care of everybody else.
Permission is a big deal. I think so often when I'm doing work with women, I think about the fact that many of us have not ever realized the agency that we have over our own lives. And when I reflect on my life, um, actually in a conversation that I was having the other day about being a business owner now for the past full um three years full-time, there are ways that I still wait for permission. And these are just subtle things that you don't realize on the surface, but it it comes up in those moments where you're like, I never thought to ask for that.
Right. Yes. I never even think we can all relate to that.
Yes. And so the asking that well, having permission isn't about asking if it's okay. It's about deciding what you want and just taking small steps, small steps in that direction. And I like to emphasize small steps because sometimes we think when we're in an identity shift or change, that we have to burn the old way down. Right. And we don't have to do that. It's just small, steady steps.
Yeah, and it's those little things over and over. And as you do one little thing at a time, you start to be able to trust yourself a little bit more to take the next step that would be also maybe a bit scary, but you start to feel a little bit more where you can start to take bigger steps. But it starts small, right?
It starts small. And I I like that you said you start to think about, you know, oh, I can take bigger steps. That's confidence, right? And confidence is a performance-based activity. But so many times we think that if we sit down and we think about it or we plan for it, then somehow we'll be more become more confident and we'll be able to do it. But it comes in the simple doing, the little steps.
Yeah, and I think a lot of us spend way too much time overthinking what's the right thing to do or whether it's
something that's good for everybody, or you know, there's just that decision fatigue that sets in. So how do you help women move past that?
When it comes to overthinking, I overthinking is a way to try to control our outcomes. We don't want to fail, we don't want to be judged, we don't want the discomfort, we don't want to let people down. So we get frozen mapping out all of the what-if scenarios. And that takes a tremendous amount of energy. What I like to teach and practice in my own life is that we move through overthinking in what I call three decisions in a go. It's an easy process. I'll give you an example. I want to start taking an aerial soap class, but I'm afraid I'll get hurt or I'll look stupid because that fear is real, right? Exactly. So the first decision is I identify a studio. The second decision would be calling that studio and finding out about the classes, the requirements, asking questions about what's best suited for beginners. And then the third decision would be enlisting support. I can ask a friend to come along with me for support. And then I go, I schedule the date, and we go and we experience it. Now that's a small example about something that you might like to do as a new hobby, but it can really be applied to any decision that you're making in life. Break it down to three simple steps that move you forward, three decisions, and then go.
I love that. That's so great. Because it is that kind of paralyzation. Sometimes we don't know where to start, so we just don't do anything. And that keeps us stuck in that frozen space.
Definitely. And sometimes we over-research, we overthink, and we think, okay, I'm just gonna learn as much as I need to know about this, so I'll make the right decision, and then I will do it. And I think that fear of being wrong keeps us stuck unintentionally, because you don't know what you don't know until you experience it. And we are all capable adults. We will be able to figure it out and fix it shift, even if it doesn't go the way that you intended it to.
And I think sometimes, at least in my experience, I feel like sometimes that over-analyzing or over-researching or going, I just need to get more information, that's a really sneaky way of us to procrastinate and to use this perfectionism to stall actually making a decision at all.
It's very true. And it's it's also a realization, we have an opportunity to realize during the overanalysis process that there's something going on in our nervous system. And we get to ask questions like what about this really scares me? And address the issue instead of digging for more information, instead of creating new scenarios, address the issue at hand. If the issue at hand is that I'm afraid of getting hurt, what precautions can I put into place to minimize the chance that I'll be hurt?
Right. And that gives you something practical to be able to feel more comfortable about.
Exactly. And that that practicality just gives you the comfort and a little bit of the confidence to go.
Yeah. And I heard somebody say just not that long ago that quite often we'll catastrophize a little bit and the what-ifs of what could go wrong, like whether you could get hurt. You we always imagine the worst case scenario. So the follow-up question to that would be how bad would it be if I did get hurt? Or, you know, how could I mitigate that damage so that I don't get hurt? Could I go to the gym for a few months first or whatever that would be, right?
Exactly. I think that I'm glad that you brought up the catastrophizing because we do it all of the time, right? I I call it our brain jumps to doom and disaster. And we think of the absolute worst case scenario. And that worst case scenario that has a small likelihood of happening is the one thing that keeps us stuck. But if we just plan for it or address it, then at least we're not stuck. We're aware of it, we understand that it's a risk, right? We plan for it, we know how we we will react if it happens, and we move through it.
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It's so true. And on the other side of that concern or that fear, there's joy. Because when you look back on it, most of the time, it does not end up in doom and disaster, right? It ends up being a new experience that you get to have and enjoy and embrace and look back on. And it also becomes what I like to refer to as a deposit to your confidence bank account. So the next time you're thinking of things that you'd like to do that you're scared of, you can make a withdrawal. Like, oh, there was this thing that I did. I was terrified. It did not go badly. It went well, actually. I'm excited about this. I can do it again.
That's an awesome way to look at things. I love that. That's a really good way. Now, I know sometimes we get to that place where we just can't put our finger on what's not working or what's feeling, but just something feels kind of off or out of alignment.
So how does how do you help women understand sort of what they're experiencing, whether it's just a sense of restlessness or whether it's burnout or whether it's something else?
That's a good question. I think we all come to that point where something feels like it's off, not necessarily broken, not necessarily stretched or strained, but just off. And I think that when that moment happens, it's a great time to get curious and to ask yourself questions. Those questions will help you gather information and decide what your next best steps will be because you will identify the moment that you're experiencing. So three of the questions that I would recommend starting with are what's most important to me in this season of life? How often am I able to have that? And what small adjustments could I make to have more of it? Those things are so simple because then if you realize, oh wow, the thing that is so important to me that I value most in this season I'm not experiencing very often, then it's a chance that you're not burnt out, but you're restless or you're bored because you're out of alignment.
I yeah, I agree with that 100%. And and maybe that's where the going, okay, maybe it is time to stretch out of my comfort zone because I haven't done that for
a while and I'm just way too comfortable. So I just need to shake things up and try something new.
Exactly. Because if you realize, if you're asking yourself that question and you say, Oh, I really, I really value adventure, and then you ask yourself, how often am I having adventure in my life? And you realize you're not having adventure at all, then that's the moment that you can become intentional and say, okay, I am going to do something that feels adventurous to me, quarterly or monthly, whatever you decide that is. For me, I recently decided that connection and community was really important to me because I've found over the years that as we get more busy in life, we tend to have to schedule our personal relationships. And at first I was resistant to that, but then I decided connection and community are very important to me, and I'm not experiencing them often enough. And the small adjustment that I made in my life was I said, okay, once a month, I am going to plan something so that I can experience friends, community, and time spent together. Just once a month, nothing major. It could be a dinner, it could be a game night, it could be I brought up Ariel silks earlier in the conversation because I actually tried that as my February event last week.
Well, good for you.
And so it just causes me to step outside of my comfort zone, but to also readjust and align with things that I value.
So just on that note before we move on to the next question, um, what was the most surprising thing that you found by doing the aerial silks that maybe blew some of your fears out of the water?
The most surprising thing is that, like many things in life, it's not about physical strength or physical stamina, it's about technique.
Oh, interesting.
And I didn't realize that going in. I used my three and go plan because I was nervous. I said, okay, I'm not very strong upper body, but I wanted to do this. This is something that I thought, okay, would be exciting. So I called the studio and they said, Oh, you do not have to be able to do a pull-up. And I said, Oh, that's wonderful. I can do this then. I can. And I enlisted my adult daughter and some of her friends to go because they're always so fun. And we went. And I realized that one, when I was in my head, I kept overthinking it and getting it wrong. But when I stopped thinking about how to do it and focused on the technique that she said it
was easier on my body, and it went seamlessly. And so I think that's just another example for life. If we focus on the wrong things, it's a much more difficult experience. But if we focus on the strategy or the technique behind something, then we're able to do it with ease and make it enjoyable. Now, is this going to be something that I do forever? Probably not, to be honest. But I enjoyed it. And I look back on it and said, that was fun. I had a really great evening. I did something outside of my comfort zone. I even took pictures to remind myself that you can do these things. And it was, it was delightful.
Yeah, and sometimes we assume we know what we don't know, and then we get in our own way by making these assumptions like, oh, it's all this upper body strength. When all you didn't needed to do is ask the question, and then it's like, oh, okay, well, that roadblock's gone, you know. And how simple is that, but how easy it is to get in our own way.
It's so true. I've been thinking about Ariel silts for years, at least two years. And for those two years, I thought, well, I cannot do a pull-up. I kept thinking that. And I literally was sitting in a coaching session talking about three decisions in go. And I thought, wait a minute, you've never asked them if you have to do a pull-up. And later that day I called and said, Do I need to be able to do a pull-up to do this class? And they said, Absolutely not. And I was like, Really? Well, schedule me. Then that's fine. We're ready to do it. So it was really good to understand what was involved, get past my own roadblocks and thinking, and to have the experience.
Yes, for sure. And I love what you said about scheduling time for friends. I actually find, I feel like in my 40s, in my late 40s, if everybody was around
and it was really easy to get together with everybody. But I'm finding as some of my friends are retiring and there's just shifts in some people move away or whatever happens, I find it's actually a little more challenging to get together with some of my friends. So it's a, it's a you have to make a real conscious effort to keep that community and keep those really special people in your life because everybody's busy.
Everyone is busy. And I think for me, what I realized is that for so long I was resisting the times when we weren't as busy. And I was, well, I was resisting it and wanting the times where we weren't as busy. I kept saying, Oh, I remember when we could just get together on a Friday night or on a weekend. And and it was so easy. And that stood in the way of me making the decision to just plan time for a little bit of time. For maybe six months, I was like, no, I just wish it was the old way. And I have to share that because so many times we get caught up in what things used to be and how it used to work, and we resist change. And sometimes in that we miss out on the things that we really want, the rich experiences that we could have in this life because we want it to be the way that it was. When I shifted from, okay, it's no longer that way, we don't have as much free time, we're not able to just come together sort of spontaneously. Then I was able to say, okay, how can I make sure that we can still get together? And it was just a once-a-month plan. It's it's nice because we still get to have that community and that connection.
And that's what's so beautiful about being able to craft your own life is to be able to fill your cup up with the things like you say, whether it's adventure or friendship or community. It's important to put some of those big rocks into your jar first because that's where the joy comes from because we've got so many responsibilities and other things that kind of pull away at our attention. Those things really matter to put them into your life.
They do. They do. And I I love thinking about what we value in terms of how we set our goals. In fact, I created an alternative goal setting model called Heart Goals. And in Heart Goals, Heart Goals are holistic, they are energizing, they are aligned with our values, our priorities, our mission, our purpose in life. They are realistic and they give those three quick decisions. So I think that when we're setting goals for whatever it is in our life that we are up to, it's important to be rooted in your value system, what's important to you, and what you prioritize in this current season of your life.
Yes, absolutely. But you also talk about having the both and and life. Can you explain that to the listeners what that means and how they could incorporate that into their life?
Absolutely. So limited thinking embraces the either-or perspective.
And this is how we've been raised, right? And going back to what I've said earlier, it's sort of the I call it doom and disaster mindset. It's, for example, either I work a job that I hate and make money to take care of my expenses, or I do what I love and I'm homeless.
That's kind of disaster.
Doom and disaster, yes. And when we say that here in this context, we're able to laugh about it. But when we are at home and when we're going through these moments by ourselves, our brain really tends to jump to those, those, you know, very disastrous situations. Whereas a more expansive way of thinking is the both and perspective. And the both and perspective allows us to ask questions that open us up to problem solving and creativity. So using the same example, it would be how can I do what I love and make the money to take care of my responsibilities. And in those questions, we find solutions that lead us to greater fulfillment, more rich experiences, and as you describe, a more delicious life.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I I do say that too quite often. We talk about how you don't have to just be one thing or another thing. You can be an accountant and a jewelry maker, you know, because that fills your soul and it makes you happy and it's a piece of the way you express yourself. But whether you make a lot of money at it, that's not really the point. The point is you get to have those both hats and wear them both, you know? Or a music teacher and I don't know, a baker, you know, whatever it is. So we don't have to put ourselves in that pigeonhole box quite as often. But you're right, it does, it is good to be able to rephrase the question in a way that allows you to see the solution in a more fulfilling way.
Correct. And it gives us the opportunity to realize that everything doesn't have to be a primary source of income, right? So using your example, if you have, if you love music and you want to be a music teacher, you can certainly contribute to a children's music program or you can teach music lessons on the side, right? It doesn't have to be your full source of income. You can do both and still have that experience that lights you up and brings you joy without having to make that the focus of how you create your livelihood.
That's exactly right. Because I think, especially if we have an entrepreneurial mindset there, I know for myself, it's just sometimes everything in my brain goes, oh, I should make money at that because I can't, because that's how my brain works. But there's a lot of things that I think you simply it's it's good to do for just the sheer joy of doing it. And maybe you maybe you make money at it, but maybe you don't, and that's okay too.
I I agree. I tend to have that mind that is quickly to monetizing all of the things that I like.
Yeah.
And I've learned
to slow down and and then ask myself, well, do you want to monetize this? Because you can, but does that mean that you want to?
Exactly. Because it puts a different spin on it if you monetize it. And it now feels a bit, I don't say it takes the joy out of it, but it also, you know, puts a bit of a job hat on it.
It does. It does. And it shifts, it shifts, I think, how you you get to show up.
I know the beginning of this year, um, I'm always very adamant about not kind of getting into the whole New Year's resolution and reinvent yourself in two days because it's January 1st. So one of the things I did this year is like this beginning season, January, February, March, into um what I like to call recalibration. And I know you talk about a recalibration season, and that's really what I'm kind of introducing to my listeners as well, is it's just a place where we give ourselves the opportunity to do that little internal audit about where we are and where we want to go. And and so talk to us a little bit about how important that is to actually have seasons of recalibration where we're not hustling constantly.
Oh, that is such an important thought and perspective to take in life. I think that we should absolutely sit down and do what I like to call life audits. And I don't think that you can just do them annually. I think that we are in the experience of new year, new you sort of thing. And so we we tend to sit down and look at our lives then and and make all of these adjustments or resolutions and then feel rather frustrated when those things don't have this sticky stickiness and stay in our lives for a while. But recalibration, I think that you get to sit down every time you're experiencing something in your life feeling a little bit off, right? You get to sit and be in the question of that and understanding, okay, is this misalignment,
for example, when I ask the question, how often am I doing something that I value or that brings me joy, right? Is it misalignment where I'm just not doing more of that? Or is it in fact a change of season? For example, maybe you are professional. There have been so many women that have exited the workforce in 2025 around the globe. I know in the United States there were 600,000 women that exited, according to one of the CNN studies. But it's sitting down and saying, is this aligned with what I'm doing right now in my life? And with that CNN study, when I think of the recalibration, and they asked many of the women why were they leaving, many of them realized they were in different seasons of life and the demands of the corporate workplace structure did not align with the demands on their lives.
Interesting.
Mm-hmm. You would realize that in a season of recalibration where you're sitting down and saying, Okay, I have this great position, right? On paper, everything looks good, but I'm feeling this internal strain. I'm feeling a pull in this direction. I'm wanting to spend more time maybe with my children, or the study also revealed that there are many women that are experiencing the sandwich generation where they still have children at home and they have aging parents and they're in the middle of that.
And that's a big one.
That's a very big one. I'm in that situ that sandwich generation myself. And being able to sit down and audit your life to say, okay, here's what's going on, here's what I value, here's what my top priorities are, and make small adjustments and changes, regardless of the time of year, to bring your life back into alignment so that you can work towards your new set of goals. And that when it's time, you can accelerate in a different way.
And I love the word alignment so much because it's like it really does help us to see it from the place of being steady and being on balance with our lives and our values. Because quite often, especially when we're in something like the sandwich generation and we're being pulled in multiple directions, that balance can get pulled out from under us really quickly.
It can. It can. And so I think that those those moments of auditing your life. I sit down and I audit my life quarterly, and I suggest that people do that because then you have enough data, right? You have three months of data to say, okay, what's working right now in this season and what's not working? What small adjustments can I make? Are there any major adjustments that I make I need to make? And how do I plan
for and create strategies to move towards making those major adjustments so that they're not just knee-jerking decisions down the road?
And I think that's why we have seasons like hibernation, right? It's just like those natural rhythms of the universe and humanity where we have to listen to those quieter times where it's it's where we're supposed to pause and we're supposed to reflect and we're supposed to allow ourselves to feel into what's happening now so that we can move forward with confidence that we're, like you say, not doing the knee-jerk reactions.
Agreed. I think that also in realizing that to your point of hibernation seasons, that requires us to go against the grain a little bit because much of the world, at least in the United States, much of the world is still on hustle culture. It's on achievement and productivity, right? And it's on go, go, go, go. You know, you hear these things, and I don't hear them. I'm 48. I don't hear them as much in my age band right now, but I definitely heard it in my 30s, like no, like teams of no sleep. We'll sleep later. We're just on the road to success, we're gonna grow, we're hustling, and we're focused on achievement and titles and money and all of those sort of things. And I've found, at least for me in my life and for many of the women that I've worked with or talked to in the past three years, that that shifts in our 40s, and we no longer have the desire to be those people, or we no longer have the desire to buy into that aspect of culture. We are more concerned with our time and the value of our time and how we get to spend that time.
And I think there's always that piece as well as we get into that, is that we have less time left. So we want to be a little more intentional with the time we do have, because you're
there are seasons where you have to make a living and raise a family and do all the things, and then you kind of come out of that or come to the end of that, and it's like, okay, well, now I actually want to have a quality of life. Not that the other wasn't quality, but you know what I mean. Where we're kind of being a little bit more intentional about having that joy in our lives and not missing all the good stuff because we were too busy to notice it.
Agreed. Agreed. I definitely, you know, my quality of life when I was in that hustle culture was very different. I thought that I was having the quality that I wanted in terms of family time and those experiences, but looking back on it, it seems like I worked more than I did anything. And I didn't necessarily need to, right? Like we were financially secure, but I was I was just caught up in the grind.
That's really common, though, I think, for a lot of people. And um I don't even think it's so much about you know having regret. It's just that our needs change, right? And so at that point in time, maybe that quality of life was was good for you, and now the quality of life just looks different, you know? So for you, um if there's someone listening to this podcast right now that is maybe stuck in a little bit of feeling like she's out of alignment, can you give us some practical step that she could maybe do this week to feel some ease around that? I know you've talked about some really great things, but is there anything else that comes to mind for you?
Absolutely. So I think that if she's feeling like she's out of alignment, something that's a very easy thing to do is to sit down and ask herself what are her priorities, or if she can't decide what her number one priority is this week, then to ask herself what she wants more of this week. And then once she's able to define that, to write down three simple ways that she can feel that in her life immediately and set out to do one of those things every day for the next three days. What she'll experience by the end of that is some relief, some relief from feeling like things are out of alignment or maybe I don't know what to do. And then she'll be re in a state of remembering that she can make small shifts in her life to create change. So starting with just those three simple things, doing them over the next three days, owning and celebrating the fact that she has made those changes in her life, and then being able to just do it again and reapply it going forward. Those things will move her forward and make you feel like you are in alignment again.
I love that. Thank you so much. And it's been such a pleasure to speak with you. Would you like to tell the listeners where they can find you if they would like to work with you and uh give us your website and a few of the places that they can uh connect with you if they would like to?
Absolutely. So I'm Charlene Ridley, and you can find me
at charleneridly.com. You can also find me on social media either on LinkedIn at Charlene Ridley or on Instagram, I am Charlene Ridley, or Facebook Charlene Ridley. And if you're interested in getting in touch with me, please go to either of those sources, reach out to me, and I would love to have a conversation with you and to consider to continue the dialogue. Thank you so much, Marnie.
I hope you enjoyed today's episode. I hope it inspired you or motivated you in some way to keep going and to create your very best life. If you did, would you take five quick minutes to leave me a review on Apple Podcasts? It's the best way for me to know that you are enjoying the show, and it helps other listeners find me as well. And while you're at it, head over to lifeisdelicious.ca and sign up for my email newsletter. It's like a warm hug from me every week. And not only will you get first access to new episodes, I've also put together a free five-day email experience called the Midlife Boundary Reset, where you'll get five days of insights, mindset shifts, and daily journal prompts to help you gently start choosing yourself again and create better boundaries without guilt, drama, or burning bridges. I've put the link in the show notes as well, and I think you're gonna love it. One last thing if you know someone who would enjoy an episode like this, please do them a favor and share it with them. It's the best gift you can give someone that you love. If no one has told you today, there is no one on this planet that is exactly like you. And this world is a better place because you're here. So thank you for being here. I'll be back next week, and I hope you'll join me right here on Life is Delicious.
Welcome to this episode of Life is Delicious. I'm Larnie Martin, and I'm so glad you're here. And if this is your first time here, welcome to the Life is Delicious family. This podcast isn't about surviving midlife, it's about crafting your next chapter life, overflowing with purpose, joy, and delicious possibilities. Listen, midlife doesn't have to be a crisis, it can be a beautiful invitation to remember who we are, to rediscover a new version of ourselves, or to completely reinvent our life to reflect who we are becoming now. So if you're tired of being exhausted, living life on autopilot and putting everyone else first, then you are in the right place. Each week we'll bring you thought-provoking ideas and practical strategies as well as inspiration to help you prioritize yourself again. It's time to take back your joie de vie. So grab a notebook and pen and pop in those earbuds and let's go get it. Welcome Charlene to the Life is Delicious podcast. I'm so grateful to have you here.
Thank you, Marnie. I'm I'm excited and grateful to be here, and I'm looking forward to this conversation.
Yeah, me too. So I know you've spent uh you did spend a fair amount of years in corporate leadership and consulting. So how did you get into the work you're doing now? And tell us a little bit about what your specialty is.
Absolutely.
So I was I was in corporate leadership for almost 30 years. And during that time, I was really good at developing teams. So I started doing some career coaching work on the side and created a career coaching business. Over the years, though, in my career coaching business, I started to notice a pattern. And the pattern was people were getting to middle-age, I'll call it, their mid-40s, early 50s, and they were having questions about what it was that they really wanted. And it wasn't necessarily about the role or the organization, but about who they were and what they wanted to create or step into next. Oftentimes that became some sort of business or nonprofit. And so then there was a natural shift for me into business strategy and coaching, but more specifically into looking at the way that we create value in the world and how we create pathways to income by the value that we create.
Yeah, that's such an important piece of feeling like the work that you do. And especially, I think, even as people kind of lean into retirement, they still want to have value and meaning in their life, even if they're not necessarily still doing just the creative earning, you know?
That is so true. I don't think we ever stop wanting to add value throughout our entire life. I think that the way that we think about adding value changes. When we're in our 20s, we think about what how we add value in terms of what we want and our career trajectory. When we're in our 30s, we start maybe to have families or significant others, and we start to think about how we add value to personal lives and to professional careers. Then in our 40s, we start to think about all of those things differently and how do we create value with our time? And I think that's the big shift. And as you go into retirement, you have more time. And so how you think about value sharing and value adding is different as well.
In your experience, what tends to change about how women kind of see themselves in different seasons of life, because I think there's also that other piece that, at least for me as a woman and for a lot of the women I speak with, there's this sense that it's time now to identify who you are as a woman and as a woman who doesn't necessarily have to take care of babies anymore or look after teenagers. And they have this sense of being able to do something that's specifically for themselves.
That's such a good question. As we shift and our roles change, our
identity changes. And I think that is a really sticky conversation and even realization for most women, because we have been conditioned from the time we're little girls that we are supposed to do certain things, right? And we've also been conditioned that we are supposed to put the needs of others ahead of our own needs, and that if we don't, we are in some way selfish. And so that identity shift comes first with discovery, discovery and uncovering who you are in this moment, not who you used to be, not who the world says you should be, who your family or friends say you should be, but who you are in this moment, what's important to you, what you value, what lights you up, all of those sort of things. And as you do that, it's giving yourself to permission to take those things on, whether in a small way or in a more central focused way. So it's really learning who you are, saying yes to those things and stepping into them in ways that feel comfortable and easy.
And we have to be able to give ourselves permission to do that. And that's the one of the biggest pieces that's not always easy for us because we've been so used to taking care of everybody else.
Permission is a big deal. I think so often when I'm doing work with women, I think about the fact that many of us have not ever realized the agency that we have over our own lives. And when I reflect on my life, um, actually in a conversation that I was having the other day about being a business owner now for the past full um three years full-time, there are ways that I still wait for permission. And these are just subtle things that you don't realize on the surface, but it it comes up in those moments where you're like, I never thought to ask for that.
Right. Yes. I never even think we can all relate to that.
Yes. And so the asking that well, having permission isn't about asking if it's okay. It's about deciding what you want and just taking small steps, small steps in that direction. And I like to emphasize small steps because sometimes we think when we're in an identity shift or change, that we have to burn the old way down. Right. And we don't have to do that. It's just small, steady steps.
Yeah, and it's those little things over and over. And as you do one little thing at a time, you start to be able to trust yourself a little bit more to take the next step that would be also maybe a bit scary, but you start to feel a little bit more where you can start to take bigger steps. But it starts small, right?
It starts small. And I I like that you said you start to think about, you know, oh, I can take bigger steps. That's confidence, right? And confidence is a performance-based activity. But so many times we think that if we sit down and we think about it or we plan for it, then somehow we'll be more become more confident and we'll be able to do it. But it comes in the simple doing, the little steps.
Yeah, and I think a lot of us spend way too much time overthinking what's the right thing to do or whether it's
something that's good for everybody, or you know, there's just that decision fatigue that sets in. So how do you help women move past that?
When it comes to overthinking, I overthinking is a way to try to control our outcomes. We don't want to fail, we don't want to be judged, we don't want the discomfort, we don't want to let people down. So we get frozen mapping out all of the what-if scenarios. And that takes a tremendous amount of energy. What I like to teach and practice in my own life is that we move through overthinking in what I call three decisions in a go. It's an easy process. I'll give you an example. I want to start taking an aerial soap class, but I'm afraid I'll get hurt or I'll look stupid because that fear is real, right? Exactly. So the first decision is I identify a studio. The second decision would be calling that studio and finding out about the classes, the requirements, asking questions about what's best suited for beginners. And then the third decision would be enlisting support. I can ask a friend to come along with me for support. And then I go, I schedule the date, and we go and we experience it. Now that's a small example about something that you might like to do as a new hobby, but it can really be applied to any decision that you're making in life. Break it down to three simple steps that move you forward, three decisions, and then go.
I love that. That's so great. Because it is that kind of paralyzation. Sometimes we don't know where to start, so we just don't do anything. And that keeps us stuck in that frozen space.
Definitely. And sometimes we over-research, we overthink, and we think, okay, I'm just gonna learn as much as I need to know about this, so I'll make the right decision, and then I will do it. And I think that fear of being wrong keeps us stuck unintentionally, because you don't know what you don't know until you experience it. And we are all capable adults. We will be able to figure it out and fix it shift, even if it doesn't go the way that you intended it to.
And I think sometimes, at least in my experience, I feel like sometimes that over-analyzing or over-researching or going, I just need to get more information, that's a really sneaky way of us to procrastinate and to use this perfectionism to stall actually making a decision at all.
It's very true. And it's it's also a realization, we have an opportunity to realize during the overanalysis process that there's something going on in our nervous system. And we get to ask questions like what about this really scares me? And address the issue instead of digging for more information, instead of creating new scenarios, address the issue at hand. If the issue at hand is that I'm afraid of getting hurt, what precautions can I put into place to minimize the chance that I'll be hurt?
Right. And that gives you something practical to be able to feel more comfortable about.
Exactly. And that that practicality just gives you the comfort and a little bit of the confidence to go.
Yeah. And I heard somebody say just not that long ago that quite often we'll catastrophize a little bit and the what-ifs of what could go wrong, like whether you could get hurt. You we always imagine the worst case scenario. So the follow-up question to that would be how bad would it be if I did get hurt? Or, you know, how could I mitigate that damage so that I don't get hurt? Could I go to the gym for a few months first or whatever that would be, right?
Exactly. I think that I'm glad that you brought up the catastrophizing because we do it all of the time, right? I I call it our brain jumps to doom and disaster. And we think of the absolute worst case scenario. And that worst case scenario that has a small likelihood of happening is the one thing that keeps us stuck. But if we just plan for it or address it, then at least we're not stuck. We're aware of it, we understand that it's a risk, right? We plan for it, we know how we we will react if it happens, and we move through it.
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It's so true. And on the other side of that concern or that fear, there's joy. Because when you look back on it, most of the time, it does not end up in doom and disaster, right? It ends up being a new experience that you get to have and enjoy and embrace and look back on. And it also becomes what I like to refer to as a deposit to your confidence bank account. So the next time you're thinking of things that you'd like to do that you're scared of, you can make a withdrawal. Like, oh, there was this thing that I did. I was terrified. It did not go badly. It went well, actually. I'm excited about this. I can do it again.
That's an awesome way to look at things. I love that. That's a really good way. Now, I know sometimes we get to that place where we just can't put our finger on what's not working or what's feeling, but just something feels kind of off or out of alignment.
So how does how do you help women understand sort of what they're experiencing, whether it's just a sense of restlessness or whether it's burnout or whether it's something else?
That's a good question. I think we all come to that point where something feels like it's off, not necessarily broken, not necessarily stretched or strained, but just off. And I think that when that moment happens, it's a great time to get curious and to ask yourself questions. Those questions will help you gather information and decide what your next best steps will be because you will identify the moment that you're experiencing. So three of the questions that I would recommend starting with are what's most important to me in this season of life? How often am I able to have that? And what small adjustments could I make to have more of it? Those things are so simple because then if you realize, oh wow, the thing that is so important to me that I value most in this season I'm not experiencing very often, then it's a chance that you're not burnt out, but you're restless or you're bored because you're out of alignment.
I yeah, I agree with that 100%. And and maybe that's where the going, okay, maybe it is time to stretch out of my comfort zone because I haven't done that for
a while and I'm just way too comfortable. So I just need to shake things up and try something new.
Exactly. Because if you realize, if you're asking yourself that question and you say, Oh, I really, I really value adventure, and then you ask yourself, how often am I having adventure in my life? And you realize you're not having adventure at all, then that's the moment that you can become intentional and say, okay, I am going to do something that feels adventurous to me, quarterly or monthly, whatever you decide that is. For me, I recently decided that connection and community was really important to me because I've found over the years that as we get more busy in life, we tend to have to schedule our personal relationships. And at first I was resistant to that, but then I decided connection and community are very important to me, and I'm not experiencing them often enough. And the small adjustment that I made in my life was I said, okay, once a month, I am going to plan something so that I can experience friends, community, and time spent together. Just once a month, nothing major. It could be a dinner, it could be a game night, it could be I brought up Ariel silks earlier in the conversation because I actually tried that as my February event last week.
Well, good for you.
And so it just causes me to step outside of my comfort zone, but to also readjust and align with things that I value.
So just on that note before we move on to the next question, um, what was the most surprising thing that you found by doing the aerial silks that maybe blew some of your fears out of the water?
The most surprising thing is that, like many things in life, it's not about physical strength or physical stamina, it's about technique.
Oh, interesting.
And I didn't realize that going in. I used my three and go plan because I was nervous. I said, okay, I'm not very strong upper body, but I wanted to do this. This is something that I thought, okay, would be exciting. So I called the studio and they said, Oh, you do not have to be able to do a pull-up. And I said, Oh, that's wonderful. I can do this then. I can. And I enlisted my adult daughter and some of her friends to go because they're always so fun. And we went. And I realized that one, when I was in my head, I kept overthinking it and getting it wrong. But when I stopped thinking about how to do it and focused on the technique that she said it
was easier on my body, and it went seamlessly. And so I think that's just another example for life. If we focus on the wrong things, it's a much more difficult experience. But if we focus on the strategy or the technique behind something, then we're able to do it with ease and make it enjoyable. Now, is this going to be something that I do forever? Probably not, to be honest. But I enjoyed it. And I look back on it and said, that was fun. I had a really great evening. I did something outside of my comfort zone. I even took pictures to remind myself that you can do these things. And it was, it was delightful.
Yeah, and sometimes we assume we know what we don't know, and then we get in our own way by making these assumptions like, oh, it's all this upper body strength. When all you didn't needed to do is ask the question, and then it's like, oh, okay, well, that roadblock's gone, you know. And how simple is that, but how easy it is to get in our own way.
It's so true. I've been thinking about Ariel silts for years, at least two years. And for those two years, I thought, well, I cannot do a pull-up. I kept thinking that. And I literally was sitting in a coaching session talking about three decisions in go. And I thought, wait a minute, you've never asked them if you have to do a pull-up. And later that day I called and said, Do I need to be able to do a pull-up to do this class? And they said, Absolutely not. And I was like, Really? Well, schedule me. Then that's fine. We're ready to do it. So it was really good to understand what was involved, get past my own roadblocks and thinking, and to have the experience.
Yes, for sure. And I love what you said about scheduling time for friends. I actually find, I feel like in my 40s, in my late 40s, if everybody was around
and it was really easy to get together with everybody. But I'm finding as some of my friends are retiring and there's just shifts in some people move away or whatever happens, I find it's actually a little more challenging to get together with some of my friends. So it's a, it's a you have to make a real conscious effort to keep that community and keep those really special people in your life because everybody's busy.
Everyone is busy. And I think for me, what I realized is that for so long I was resisting the times when we weren't as busy. And I was, well, I was resisting it and wanting the times where we weren't as busy. I kept saying, Oh, I remember when we could just get together on a Friday night or on a weekend. And and it was so easy. And that stood in the way of me making the decision to just plan time for a little bit of time. For maybe six months, I was like, no, I just wish it was the old way. And I have to share that because so many times we get caught up in what things used to be and how it used to work, and we resist change. And sometimes in that we miss out on the things that we really want, the rich experiences that we could have in this life because we want it to be the way that it was. When I shifted from, okay, it's no longer that way, we don't have as much free time, we're not able to just come together sort of spontaneously. Then I was able to say, okay, how can I make sure that we can still get together? And it was just a once-a-month plan. It's it's nice because we still get to have that community and that connection.
And that's what's so beautiful about being able to craft your own life is to be able to fill your cup up with the things like you say, whether it's adventure or friendship or community. It's important to put some of those big rocks into your jar first because that's where the joy comes from because we've got so many responsibilities and other things that kind of pull away at our attention. Those things really matter to put them into your life.
They do. They do. And I I love thinking about what we value in terms of how we set our goals. In fact, I created an alternative goal setting model called Heart Goals. And in Heart Goals, Heart Goals are holistic, they are energizing, they are aligned with our values, our priorities, our mission, our purpose in life. They are realistic and they give those three quick decisions. So I think that when we're setting goals for whatever it is in our life that we are up to, it's important to be rooted in your value system, what's important to you, and what you prioritize in this current season of your life.
Yes, absolutely. But you also talk about having the both and and life. Can you explain that to the listeners what that means and how they could incorporate that into their life?
Absolutely. So limited thinking embraces the either-or perspective.
And this is how we've been raised, right? And going back to what I've said earlier, it's sort of the I call it doom and disaster mindset. It's, for example, either I work a job that I hate and make money to take care of my expenses, or I do what I love and I'm homeless.
That's kind of disaster.
Doom and disaster, yes. And when we say that here in this context, we're able to laugh about it. But when we are at home and when we're going through these moments by ourselves, our brain really tends to jump to those, those, you know, very disastrous situations. Whereas a more expansive way of thinking is the both and perspective. And the both and perspective allows us to ask questions that open us up to problem solving and creativity. So using the same example, it would be how can I do what I love and make the money to take care of my responsibilities. And in those questions, we find solutions that lead us to greater fulfillment, more rich experiences, and as you describe, a more delicious life.
Absolutely. Absolutely. And I I do say that too quite often. We talk about how you don't have to just be one thing or another thing. You can be an accountant and a jewelry maker, you know, because that fills your soul and it makes you happy and it's a piece of the way you express yourself. But whether you make a lot of money at it, that's not really the point. The point is you get to have those both hats and wear them both, you know? Or a music teacher and I don't know, a baker, you know, whatever it is. So we don't have to put ourselves in that pigeonhole box quite as often. But you're right, it does, it is good to be able to rephrase the question in a way that allows you to see the solution in a more fulfilling way.
Correct. And it gives us the opportunity to realize that everything doesn't have to be a primary source of income, right? So using your example, if you have, if you love music and you want to be a music teacher, you can certainly contribute to a children's music program or you can teach music lessons on the side, right? It doesn't have to be your full source of income. You can do both and still have that experience that lights you up and brings you joy without having to make that the focus of how you create your livelihood.
That's exactly right. Because I think, especially if we have an entrepreneurial mindset there, I know for myself, it's just sometimes everything in my brain goes, oh, I should make money at that because I can't, because that's how my brain works. But there's a lot of things that I think you simply it's it's good to do for just the sheer joy of doing it. And maybe you maybe you make money at it, but maybe you don't, and that's okay too.
I I agree. I tend to have that mind that is quickly to monetizing all of the things that I like.
Yeah.
And I've learned
to slow down and and then ask myself, well, do you want to monetize this? Because you can, but does that mean that you want to?
Exactly. Because it puts a different spin on it if you monetize it. And it now feels a bit, I don't say it takes the joy out of it, but it also, you know, puts a bit of a job hat on it.
It does. It does. And it shifts, it shifts, I think, how you you get to show up.
I know the beginning of this year, um, I'm always very adamant about not kind of getting into the whole New Year's resolution and reinvent yourself in two days because it's January 1st. So one of the things I did this year is like this beginning season, January, February, March, into um what I like to call recalibration. And I know you talk about a recalibration season, and that's really what I'm kind of introducing to my listeners as well, is it's just a place where we give ourselves the opportunity to do that little internal audit about where we are and where we want to go. And and so talk to us a little bit about how important that is to actually have seasons of recalibration where we're not hustling constantly.
Oh, that is such an important thought and perspective to take in life. I think that we should absolutely sit down and do what I like to call life audits. And I don't think that you can just do them annually. I think that we are in the experience of new year, new you sort of thing. And so we we tend to sit down and look at our lives then and and make all of these adjustments or resolutions and then feel rather frustrated when those things don't have this sticky stickiness and stay in our lives for a while. But recalibration, I think that you get to sit down every time you're experiencing something in your life feeling a little bit off, right? You get to sit and be in the question of that and understanding, okay, is this misalignment,
for example, when I ask the question, how often am I doing something that I value or that brings me joy, right? Is it misalignment where I'm just not doing more of that? Or is it in fact a change of season? For example, maybe you are professional. There have been so many women that have exited the workforce in 2025 around the globe. I know in the United States there were 600,000 women that exited, according to one of the CNN studies. But it's sitting down and saying, is this aligned with what I'm doing right now in my life? And with that CNN study, when I think of the recalibration, and they asked many of the women why were they leaving, many of them realized they were in different seasons of life and the demands of the corporate workplace structure did not align with the demands on their lives.
Interesting.
Mm-hmm. You would realize that in a season of recalibration where you're sitting down and saying, Okay, I have this great position, right? On paper, everything looks good, but I'm feeling this internal strain. I'm feeling a pull in this direction. I'm wanting to spend more time maybe with my children, or the study also revealed that there are many women that are experiencing the sandwich generation where they still have children at home and they have aging parents and they're in the middle of that.
And that's a big one.
That's a very big one. I'm in that situ that sandwich generation myself. And being able to sit down and audit your life to say, okay, here's what's going on, here's what I value, here's what my top priorities are, and make small adjustments and changes, regardless of the time of year, to bring your life back into alignment so that you can work towards your new set of goals. And that when it's time, you can accelerate in a different way.
And I love the word alignment so much because it's like it really does help us to see it from the place of being steady and being on balance with our lives and our values. Because quite often, especially when we're in something like the sandwich generation and we're being pulled in multiple directions, that balance can get pulled out from under us really quickly.
It can. It can. And so I think that those those moments of auditing your life. I sit down and I audit my life quarterly, and I suggest that people do that because then you have enough data, right? You have three months of data to say, okay, what's working right now in this season and what's not working? What small adjustments can I make? Are there any major adjustments that I make I need to make? And how do I plan
for and create strategies to move towards making those major adjustments so that they're not just knee-jerking decisions down the road?
And I think that's why we have seasons like hibernation, right? It's just like those natural rhythms of the universe and humanity where we have to listen to those quieter times where it's it's where we're supposed to pause and we're supposed to reflect and we're supposed to allow ourselves to feel into what's happening now so that we can move forward with confidence that we're, like you say, not doing the knee-jerk reactions.
Agreed. I think that also in realizing that to your point of hibernation seasons, that requires us to go against the grain a little bit because much of the world, at least in the United States, much of the world is still on hustle culture. It's on achievement and productivity, right? And it's on go, go, go, go. You know, you hear these things, and I don't hear them. I'm 48. I don't hear them as much in my age band right now, but I definitely heard it in my 30s, like no, like teams of no sleep. We'll sleep later. We're just on the road to success, we're gonna grow, we're hustling, and we're focused on achievement and titles and money and all of those sort of things. And I've found, at least for me in my life and for many of the women that I've worked with or talked to in the past three years, that that shifts in our 40s, and we no longer have the desire to be those people, or we no longer have the desire to buy into that aspect of culture. We are more concerned with our time and the value of our time and how we get to spend that time.
And I think there's always that piece as well as we get into that, is that we have less time left. So we want to be a little more intentional with the time we do have, because you're
there are seasons where you have to make a living and raise a family and do all the things, and then you kind of come out of that or come to the end of that, and it's like, okay, well, now I actually want to have a quality of life. Not that the other wasn't quality, but you know what I mean. Where we're kind of being a little bit more intentional about having that joy in our lives and not missing all the good stuff because we were too busy to notice it.
Agreed. Agreed. I definitely, you know, my quality of life when I was in that hustle culture was very different. I thought that I was having the quality that I wanted in terms of family time and those experiences, but looking back on it, it seems like I worked more than I did anything. And I didn't necessarily need to, right? Like we were financially secure, but I was I was just caught up in the grind.
That's really common, though, I think, for a lot of people. And um I don't even think it's so much about you know having regret. It's just that our needs change, right? And so at that point in time, maybe that quality of life was was good for you, and now the quality of life just looks different, you know? So for you, um if there's someone listening to this podcast right now that is maybe stuck in a little bit of feeling like she's out of alignment, can you give us some practical step that she could maybe do this week to feel some ease around that? I know you've talked about some really great things, but is there anything else that comes to mind for you?
Absolutely. So I think that if she's feeling like she's out of alignment, something that's a very easy thing to do is to sit down and ask herself what are her priorities, or if she can't decide what her number one priority is this week, then to ask herself what she wants more of this week. And then once she's able to define that, to write down three simple ways that she can feel that in her life immediately and set out to do one of those things every day for the next three days. What she'll experience by the end of that is some relief, some relief from feeling like things are out of alignment or maybe I don't know what to do. And then she'll be re in a state of remembering that she can make small shifts in her life to create change. So starting with just those three simple things, doing them over the next three days, owning and celebrating the fact that she has made those changes in her life, and then being able to just do it again and reapply it going forward. Those things will move her forward and make you feel like you are in alignment again.
I love that. Thank you so much. And it's been such a pleasure to speak with you. Would you like to tell the listeners where they can find you if they would like to work with you and uh give us your website and a few of the places that they can uh connect with you if they would like to?
Absolutely. So I'm Charlene Ridley, and you can find me
at charleneridly.com. You can also find me on social media either on LinkedIn at Charlene Ridley or on Instagram, I am Charlene Ridley, or Facebook Charlene Ridley. And if you're interested in getting in touch with me, please go to either of those sources, reach out to me, and I would love to have a conversation with you and to consider to continue the dialogue. Thank you so much, Marnie.
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