Ep 128. Break the Rules

I am Kym Showers and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 128, Break the Rules.

Welcome to the Reinvented After 40 podcast. I am your host, Kym Showers, and I’m a certified life coach for women in the second half of life. Each week I’ll bring you direct advice and inspiring, practical wisdom to help you live your very best life and create a future you’re absolutely obsessed with. It’s going to be fun, let’s get started.

Hello, my friends out in podcast land. How are you today? It is the day after the Super Bowl, oh my goodness, that was the most exciting game I think I’ve ever watched. Well, the first half was a little frustrating and boring. But the second half was so exciting. And it definitely proved to myself again and again and again how competitive I am on the inside. I’m so competitive, you guys, I was cussing and carrying on and it was just me and Jeff watching the game.

I had to cancel on my kids yesterday because I caught a dang cold and I just didn’t want to give it to them. But mostly I didn’t have the energy to host and I just needed a weekend of downtime. So Jeff and I watched the Super Bowl all by ourselves. And I was cuddled up on the sofa with the fire on and candles going. We had the most beautiful weather this weekend as we still do on Monday, just clear blue skies.

Oh, my gosh, for February, for winter time, if you can live on the Central Coast of California, I highly recommend it. Come live with me on the Central Coast of California. It is just a remarkable place to live. The weather is just 90% of the time just a dream, so perfect and cozy. I just feel so lucky. But anyways, yay. Yay, Taylor’s boyfriend’s team and yay, Kaitlyn and Milo’s team. So my son, Riley’s girlfriend, Kate, and her son Milo, who are just extraordinary people, all three of them actually.

Kaitlyn was born and raised in Kansas City, so she is the OG fan in our family, her and Milo. Milo was actually born and raised in Kansas City for the first few years of his life, and then now they live in Santa Barbara. But they’re actually the ones that kind of got me turned on to Kansas City, put them on my radar. And then I watched the Kelce brothers before Taylor even started dating Travis. I watched the Kelce brothers Netflix special. It was actually on Jason Kelce, not on Travis, but ignore all of this if you’re not even a fan.

I don’t even know that you want to hear this, but I’m telling you anyways because I have a cold and I’m on cold medicine. Anyways, I just kind of through Kate and Milo became fans, but they’re just diehard Kansas City Chief football fans. They go back often to games and Riley’s gone a few times with them and put them on my map. And then, of course, Taylor started dating Travis and then all of a sudden, I’m just a fair weather fan, for sure I’m a fair weather fan.

So right now I’m just having a blast with their love story. I love it. It’s unfolding being told right in front of our eyes in real time and I’m just all in on it. I’ll take all the joy, all the happiness, all the good vibes from all the good people that I can get all of the time. Congratulations, two years in a row, the Chiefs won the Super Bowl. And this year was even more special because of all of us Swifties out here in Swifty land, just loving her happiness and her new love. And I just think they’re both very deserving of it. It’s just fun.

It just adds so much fun and delight to my life. My feed on my Instagram is very Taylor Swift oriented. It’s coach oriented and Taylor Swift oriented. So I’m having the time of my life. I have thoroughly enjoyed that Super Bowl. So that was fun, yesterday. I had a great weekend, just kind of chilling, getting a little bit caught up on things around the house and then just resting.

The reason I’m telling you to break the rules today. This is so important. I think this has been a really fun addition to my wellbeing in the second half of life when I decided I was going to be a rule breaker instead of a rule keeper. So most of my life I’ve been such a good, good girl. I’ve kept all the rules that have been handed down to me. And just because I’m such a people pleaser and really just wanted to feel good on the inside about myself. And if other people were happy with me, then it gave me permission to be happy with me, which you can see from the way that I even describe that, how unhealthy that is.

I just need to be the one who’s happy with me, whether other people are happy with me or not. That’s why I’m telling you to break the rules and why I’m calling this podcast, Break the Rules. It comes out the week after Valentine’s Day. I was going to talk to you about love, but this really is about love. This is about self-love.

And self-love is the definition of true love, because this is what gives us the ability to truly love other people is when we do it from this place of self-love. Where we aren’t trying to get anything back from them because we have already given what we need to ourselves. This is what I’m talking about. This is what it’s all about. Everything keeps coming back to this. It’s full circle. So keeping the rules and being a rule keeper is to our detriment in the second half of life.

And if you’ve always been the good girl, the good Christian, the good wife, the good mother, the good friend, the good daughter. Oh, my gosh, it is keeping you so stuck and so small because there’s too many, and I’m going to call them arbitrary rules. What does being good even mean? It’s arbitrary. It’s subjective. It’s just your own made up beliefs about what good means. I just want you to know that. And so I just decided what has been so helpful for me is, I’ve just decided I am already good. I am good. I am a good person. I have a good heart. I was born good.

Now, who do I want to be? How do I want to think? How do I want to feel every day? How do I want to live my life that feels truest and most authentic to me, to my highest self, to my truest self? I don’t have to be good anymore or try to be good so that the world can view me as good or view me in a way that validates me. I don’t need that anymore because I already am good. You are already good. That’s what I want to tell you.

So let me backup a little bit. So on Sunday, which was yesterday, which I want to tell you, if you’re on Instagram and you follow me on Instagram, I want to tell you something. I’m going to tell you a little secret, which I think I’ve told you before. But I pre-record a lot of things because of my schedule. So I pre-record these podcasts obviously and then I pre-record my videos. If you’re on my email list which I hope you are, if you’re not, you are missing out. Go get on my email list. I pre-record my emails and my videos for my emails.

I pre-record my Instagram videos, you guys. So I usually have two or three ready to go. I pre-record them for the day. So sometimes they are exactly on that morning, but most of the time they are pre-recorded. I work ahead of time. This is the best way to do it. If you have several ways of putting out content like I do. So even that’s kind of breaking the rules. But yesterday I had pre-recorded, I think I did them on Friday for the weekend, for Friday, Saturday and Sunday or maybe I did them Thursday. See, I can’t even remember.

But I’m so glad I did because I got sick. I started feeling really bad on Friday and Saturday and yesterday. And I ended up getting on antibiotics because of it. But I have a sinus infection, which you can hear, and I have a little bronchitis which you can’t hear, which I hope you don’t hear on this recording. But I pre-recorded a video for Instagram that I put out yesterday on Sunday, on Super Bowl Sunday. And I talked about breaking the rules. And one of my friends that follow me on Instagram said, “Can you give us some examples of how you break the rules or what that looks like?”

And then I thought, oh, my gosh, I’m just going to talk to you on my podcast about what this looks like for me. So I’m not saying, break the rules and get put in jail. I’m not saying break the laws. I’m talking about these self-imposed rules that we have in our head that we have been dragging with us in our head and trying to abide by for the last 40 years, 50 years, 60 years. That might be what our parents told us when they were raising us.

And you guys let me tell you, these thoughts that our parents gave us when they were raising us, these rules. We’ve abided by them through adulthood, which is, I think, kind of ridiculous. I want us to get in the habit of questioning all of these beliefs and these rules and these thoughts that are keeping us so small and keeping us almost resentful and keeping us from living out into our fullest selves, into our happiest selves, absolutely thriving in our life. So maybe traditions or maybe religious guidelines.

So for example, when I turned 50 and I think I’ve told you about this on my podcast a couple of different times. I had been literally going to church every week for my entire life and loving it, love, love, loved it. But loved it because I was on this mission to be the best Christian woman, the best Christian wife, the best Christian mom, the best Christian friend, really pleasing to God. Literally this is what I thought until I started seeing things differently.

It took me a while to get brave enough to admit that what I used to believe I just didn’t believe it anymore. And it was so hard to admit, and it was so painful, but I left the church. I stopped going to church when I was 50 years old. It was crazy. It was maybe when I was around 48, 49, 50. I can’t remember the exact year. But I do remember the exact moment, I was sitting in church and every pastor I had ever had, had been a middle aged white man. And every word that they would speak from the pulpit, I believed, I took as the truth.

And then in my late 40s, I started not believing them anymore. I was like, “That’s not true.” I started seeing things differently. I was like, “Well, that’s not even true.” So I just broke my own rules. I sat in church and the pastor was talking about how ‘Catholics’ didn’t believe the truth, and then how the gay community were sinners. And I was like, “Well, this is dumb. Why are we even talking about this in church and the pulpit? None of this is true.” And I decided, and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. I was like, “Oh, my gosh, I’ve got to go. I can’t do this again, this isn’t even true. I’ve got to figure something else out.”

So I left and I haven’t been back since, and I’m 63 years old, so I broke the rules. And I found God even bigger and better outside of going to church every Sunday and outside being a ‘good Christian girl’. I broke my own rules. And listen, I was brave enough to do that. Oh, my gosh, so many people that I was in ‘community’ with, I haven’t heard from them since. So it was just, you have to break the rules to find your truest self, to figure out who you are and who you want to become in the second half of life.

It’ll be the best thing you’ve ever done is, figure out what rules you’re imposing on yourself, limiting thoughts. Thoughts that aren’t even true about yourself, doubting your goodness, doubting who you are and what you’re capable of. Those are the rules I’m talking about. Maybe changing your agreements that you’ve made even with your husband or your partner or with your kids that you used to go along with that you just don’t even want to do anymore. Those are the rules I’m talking about. Break those rules that are not serving you.

So I’m going to tell you something that I’ve told you over and over, but you are the most important person in your life, you have to be. You have to be the boss. You have to have more love for yourself than you have for anyone else in your life. You have to be the most important person in all of your relationships. You are the most important person in your marriage.

You are the most important person in your relationship with your kids as the mother, you are the most important person. but they are not here to acknowledge that. They are not here to take care of you, that is 100% your job. Do you see that? So even these thoughts that I’m offering you, saying them out loud might even sound a little scandalous to you. Do you see how breaking the rules feels? A little scandalous, you’re out in the wilderness, people are going to judge you, people are going to criticize you. And I’m all in on that.

And I think that is what set me free is, I’m okay with that, they’re supposed to. I understand that. I used to judge people all the time for ‘leaving the church’ or for leaving their husband or going to work full-time. Or I even broke the rules 10/12 years ago when I said I want my own bedroom. I no longer want to sleep with my husband because I do not get sleep. That’s a rule I’m telling you to break. If you are not getting your sleep, break the rule, get your own bedroom, get your own bathroom.

Take what is yours so that you can get your sleep. You can be your highest self. You can have lots of space to grow and to think thoughts on purpose that might even feel like you’re going against what the group think is. You should go against what the group think is. You should be out in the wilderness all on your own and feel confident. I want you to do that. It is the place to be. It is the funnest place to be in the second half of life. We need you to be there.

We need you to explore who you really truly are, no longer playing by anyone else’s rules and actually cleaning out your brain and learning how to question all the things that your brain is offering you every day, that feel terrible to you, that feel like this can’t be it. There’s got to be more than this. And I’m here to always week after week assure you, yes, there is more than this for you, my friend, I promise you.

A lot of my clients feel unworthy to go and get what they want. They feel like maybe they don’t deserve it. And I want to tell you, that has been such a profound, exciting, useful shift in my thinking about myself. I know 100%, 1,000% I’m worthy of every single thing I want on every level. I know I’m worthy of it and I know I deserve it and as do you. So that is what has set me free so much to go and get what I want.

And I’ve changed my agreements with my husband, which you guys know that, and he’s all in on it. He’s okay with it. He’s on board. And it’s just this process of being honest, of speaking up. I just have learned to say yes when I mean yes and no when I mean no. And you know what has gotten so much easier is, because I’ve learned how to know what I want. So I’ve spent the last 12 years learning how to know what I want. What do I want? What do I want? What do I want? I keep answering that question.

And I’m not worrying about managing anyone else’s emotions. And I think that is such a key to being a woman in the second half of life who is willing to break the rules to get what she wants. So we’re not worrying about how anyone else is going to feel about it because we trust ourselves enough. I trust myself enough to know that I am kind, I’m generous. I have just in me, innately, I have everyone’s wellbeing in mind in every decision I make. And I know that when I choose what I want, it is absolutely the best thing for all the people I love the most.

And eventually the best thing for the world, that’s how I’m contributing goodness to the world, is being my highest self, my truest self. Breaking all my self-imposed rules, the rules that have been handed down to me throughout the ages as a 62 year old woman, I feel like we just confine ourselves in our own cages of limiting thoughts and beliefs and rules that we, being the good girls, that we’ve always been taught to be, have abided by. So we’re no longer going to do that.

We’re breaking free from all of that for our own sake, for our family’s sake, for the world’s sake. I promise you, my friend, it’s the best way to live. We’re willing to make people mad. We’re willing to disappoint people. This is just no longer a problem. We’re willing to break the rules, any and all rules that are no longer serving us. So I just want to pass on this freedom to you, this powerful way of being to you, my friend. Trust yourself, love yourself, show yourself the utmost respect. Hold yourself in the highest regard. Treat yourself as the queen that you are.

Break all the rules and be kind and generous to yourself first because you already are her. Don’t doubt that you’ve always been her. You already are her. So I could go on and on about breaking the rules. I love breaking the rules. It has literally set me free, figuratively and literally in my everyday life. I just say what I want and I get what I want and I just love my life. It is so fun being me and I want you to be able to say the same thing.

Alright, my friend, I hope you had the best Valentine’s Day. Love is the key, self-love is everything, self-love makes loving the world so easy. It is just an automatic result of building this relationship with yourself that is just generated every day by love. That’s the engine, love is the engine all of the time. So in the month of love, I want to remind you of that. And all of this comes from my love for you, my love for myself, my love for the world, and my love for this podcast. I love this podcast so very much. Have the very best week and break all the rules and I will talk to you next Thursday.

If you love this podcast, I invite you to come work with me. Go to kymshowerslifecoach.com, sign up for my next group and retreat, and let’s create your dream life together.