Ep 92. Strong, Confident, and Happy

I am Kym Showers, and this is Reinvented After 40, episode number 92: Strong, Confident and Happy.

Hey, friends. Welcome to Reinvented After 40, a podcast for all you women in the second half of life who are ready to take responsibility for your own well-being and create a life you love living.

I’m your host, Kym Showers, and after spending the first 40 years of my life people-pleasing and following all the rules, I was exhausted and ready for a change. I reinvented myself. I stopped outsourcing my happiness. And I’ve been brave enough to live a different kind of life.

I’ll be here each week to help you do the same thing. It’s going to be fun. Let’s go.

Hey, my friends, welcome back to the podcast, episode number 92. We’re moving the needle forward a little bit every day. This is what I tell my clients all the time. We don’t have to go from beginning to goal and be overwhelmed by the vastness of it. We never have to feel that way if we don’t want to because literally you guys, all we have to do is move the needle forward a little bit every single day. It is so much fun to think like this and to live like this. We get every single thing we want. And I call it putting a pebble in the bucket or a marble in the jar.

Every single day, whatever the jar is. So if you’re working on your health, every time you go to the gym and put in a good workout you put a marble in the jar or a pebble in the bucket. And then pretty soon, like me, I just celebrated 200 workouts at Orangetheory and I only started, you guys, now it’s the first week of June. I started last August. So it hasn’t even been a year. I’ve had 200 workouts. I’ve been 200 times to Orangetheory and it would be probably 100 times more. But when I started I joined while I was still swimming three days a week and working out with a trainer.

So then I started Orangetheory to fill in the days. And so I bought the package, that was eight times a month. So in August, eight times a month, September, eight times a month, October eight times and November eight times. And then in December, December 1st, I decided I’m going every day to Orangetheory. Whenever I’m in town I’m going to Orangetheory every single day, I made that commitment to myself. And then I just celebrated 200 times, that’s how it happens, so 200 marbles in that jar.

I mean the difference between my August of 2022 self and my June of 2023 self, a much stronger, happier, confident version of me because I keep putting marbles in the jar every single day. And that jar keeps getting fuller and fuller. So I’m moving the needle forward with my health and then with my business. Look at this, 92 episodes of my podcast. And so many clients, I have so many clients and so many Instagram posts. So just collecting, moving the needle forward , putting marbles in the jar every single day.

And then all of a sudden my business is strong, confident and happy. So it’s just this little, consistent work. And I was thinking about this, I have my clients when they start working with me, I have them pay attention to the top three feelings that they feel every day. It’s important that you know what your kind of baseline mood is every day. So I was thinking this morning when I was thinking about recording this podcast, I was thinking about how this is so incredible. I would genuinely tell you and tell the world for sure, my husband would totally agree with me, and he’s with me, he lives with me.

But my three feelings, my baseline, my three top feelings that I feel on a very consistent basis every single day is strong, confident and happy. Literally that’s who I am basically every single day and I love these three feelings. Isn’t that kind of incredible? Don’t you want to be able to say that about yourself?

And you guys, my clients will go from having their top three feelings be something like, when they start with me, something like, anxious, overwhelmed. And maybe a little bit productive or maybe a little hopeful but usually it’s anxious and overwhelmed or anxious and resentful are usually the top two negative feelings, anxiety, resentment or anxiety and overwhelm. Very common everyday feelings for women in the second half of life. And that’s why you hire a life coach, that’s why my clients hire me, because they don’t want to feel like that anymore.

And I tell them, you absolutely do not have to feel like that anymore and that’s where my genius is. That’s where I can help you, to learn how to feel those feelings first and then notice how they start going away after you’ve actually ran toward them and embraced them, which is the opposite of what we’ve been doing. We usually just push those feelings away and ignore them. And then they just keep coming back with a vengeance. So strong, confident and happy. We can be women who are strong, confident and happy as the baseline every single day, moving forward.

Nothing creates a more productive, enthusiastic, motivated, inspiring life than a woman who knows who she is, who feels so confident in her own skin. So this is the work that we’re very capable of doing in the second half of life. And this is what we all want. So I have a new client because I have a new group that started in May. And she was telling us this week in our group call that she had gone to stay with her kids and her son-in-law is a triathlete. So she went and watched them.

And she said while she was there she was so inspired by all the women, all the people of all shapes and ages and sizes who were participating, who are triathletes, who are participating in this race. So a triathlon, you guys know, is running, swimming, cycling. She was just so inspired by it and then her son-in-law said, “Well, you should do one.” And she said, “Oh, well, I don’t swim, I hate water. I don’t like the water.” This is what her brain has been feeding her on repeat probably her whole life. And she just kind of believed it.

I’m not a triathlete, I don’t swim. And then she said44 then because of this coaching that we’ve been doing and because I tell my clients, question all your thoughts. If you want to do something different, if you want to be a different version of yourself, the dreamiest woman that you can imagine, question all of your thoughts because our brain wants us to not be a triathlete. Our brain doesn’t want us to try new things and to go out and be the highest version of ourself. Our brain wants us to be afraid of the water and wants us to stay anxious and small and afraid.

This is what our brain wants us to do because our brains think that everything’s dangerous and we just need to stay alive, that’s all we need to do. But now, now we question all of it and she did and so I’m so proud of her, it’s so exciting. This is such a fun story. She goes, “What if I could learn how to swim? What if I wasn’t afraid of the water? I don’t want to be afraid of the water anymore. What if I could learn how to swim?” You know what she did, she came home because her kids live out of town.

She came home and she found a swim instructor and she signed up for swim lessons and she’s in her 50s. You guys, she is also committed to doing a sprint triathlon. And I can’t remember if she told me in the next six months or the next year. I don’t even know if there’s a timeline. But she said it out loud and when we say things out loud, especially in our coaching group, that means we are going to do it because we’ve just put everyone on notice and we’re all interested in what her plans are and we’re here cheering her on and we know that she can do it.

And she really wants to do it. So she’s taking swim lessons. She’s going to start training for this sprint triathlon. And I told her for my 50th birthday I did a sprint triathlon. And it was so much fun. And I’m so proud of myself that I did it. I haven’t done one since then I don’t think, but it doesn’t even matter. I just wanted to try it that one time and I did it. So that’s just a really inspirational story. She wants to build her business. She wants to get a stronger body. She wants to become a happier version of herself, a more confident version of herself.

So she’s taking the first steps, which is questioning our limiting thoughts in our head, Our brain just limits us. And this is the thing, you guys, you will never, if you believe your limiting thoughts or if you cling to them, if you’re in the habit of arguing for your limitations, yeah, I’m not a swimmer, I am scared to death of water. I am terrified, I could never do that. That’s what we call arguing for your limiting beliefs. I promise you, you will not grow into a confident, strong, happy woman on a daily basis if you continue to argue for your beliefs, for your limiting beliefs.

So many people do that and so many people do it without even knowing they’re doing it. So many women in the second half of life do it without even knowing they’re doing it. I just want you to be aware of when you’re doing it. So awareness is always the first step. We just have to get some awareness around why we’re stuck and why we’re not doing what we want to do. It’s because we’re clinging to our limiting beliefs. And even we cling to our self-doubtful thoughts which is so silly of us to do that. It doesn’t make any sense because it doesn’t serve us at all.

So it doesn’t make any sense why we would argue for the things that we doubt that we can do, why we dig our heels in and just commit to that. When actually we can question all of it, say, “Well, maybe I do want to do that.” I’ve even been thinking about, remember I told you how my nephew’s taking flying lessons? Well, that opened up my idea. Oh my gosh, I could take flying lessons if I wanted to. And then my brain’s like, “Remember, you’re afraid of heights.” And then I was like, “Well, I don’t want to be afraid of heights.”

What if I decide I don’t want to be afraid of heights and this is the way to face my fear of heights is to take flying lessons? So I’m even thinking about that now which is kind of fun and pretty miraculous. But I want to keep moving forward. I want to continue to be the strong, confident, happy version of myself on a daily basis and I also am working so much on my resourcefulness and my resiliency. So I love those two words too. So I think about how resourceful I’ve become in my life and how resilient I have become because I’m not counting on my circumstances to provide anything for me.

I’m counting on me to provide everything for me. And I was thinking about this example too, this popped up in my head this week. I have this friend and she’s been my friend forever. She’s a little bit younger than me, maybe 10 years younger than me. And her and I went to church together forever. And she’s just a very brilliant, beautiful one of a kind, kind of person. Love her so much. She has exquisite taste but she drives really cool cars. She lives in very cool houses too.

She has just great design taste and just great taste all around. So I’ve always admired her taste. And I’ve always admired the way that she lives. She’s very no nonsense, very non-dramatic. And she’s had a really positive impact on my life. And in fact I saw her a few months ago in Newport. And I got to tell her that. I told her that because I hadn’t seen her in a long time. And I just said, “I want you to know, you’ve had a very positive influence on my life. You have always been an example of what’s possible for me.”

So I was so glad that I got to tell her that because that’s the truth. But what I want to tell you today is that she just drives these beautiful cars. Well, I am a car girl and I have always been a car girl. And there’s been a little part of me I think that believed that I shouldn’t be a car girl, cars are shallow, let’s just call it shallow like we do. So I kind of tried to put that I’m a car girl like on the back burner, I’m not going to admit. I’m not going to think about it anymore. I’m not going to allow myself to be a car girl.

Because I married a guy who’s not a car guy. He’s just not a car guy. He just doesn’t care about that kind of stuff, which is great and fine, but I’m a car girl, you guys. One time Carrie told me, she goes, “Well, my husband’s a car guy, so that’s why I get to drive all these cars.” And I was like, dang, I wish Jeff was a car guy. But you know what, I changed my whole mind. I was like, “Jeff, doesn’t have to be a car guy for me to get to drive my dream cars.” I am the car girl. I can figure out how to get the cars I want to drive them.

I can start a business and make my own car money if I want to. I’m the car girl, I get to be a car girl. I get to drive whatever car I want to drive. I get to provide that for myself. I am so capable of giving myself what I want, all of my dreams. I don’t have to be married to the guy that has the same dreams as me to make sure I get all my dreams. I get to create all my dreams and still be married to the guy I want to be married to. Do you see the difference in the thinking? I wasn’t awake and aware to what I was believing. I thought maybe I had to have married a car guy to get to drive all the cool cars that I want to drive.

But then I decided, no, wait, I am the car guy. I’m the car girl. I get to create the cars for me. Do you see the indifference? This is a very powerful, confident, happy way to live in the second half of life. And my clients are doing this for themselves. They’re like, “Wait a minute, if this is what I want, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is wanting or what anyone else is thinking about or how anyone else is living or their opinions of this. This is what I want. This is what I am here to create for myself and for my life. I get to do that.”

So I’m going to take ownership of that. I am going to take responsibility for that. I’m going to create what I have to create to make sure I get every single thing I want. You guys, I’m not even talking about all materialistic things. We love materialistic things and it’s okay to say it. I just think we need to normalize all of it and it’s okay to like material things and to like beautiful homes and beautiful clothes and beautiful cars. It’s okay. It’s just who we are as humans.

So I’m a car girl. I’m going to keep figuring out how to drive the cars that I want to drive and I have zero shame about it. I am actually very proud of it. But I just want you to know the shift in my thinking about everything that I want to create for myself moving forward and everything that my clients want to create for themselves moving forward. This is how I coach. I just open all the portals for everyone to get to dream big and create whatever they want and to become strong, courageous, competent, confident, happy, engaging, resilient and resourceful women.

That’s who we are. Let’s normalize all of that in the second half of life. We have so much potential, you guys, I can see it in all of us. And so my job is to bring it out in you. And my job for me as your coach is to be the example of all of it. So the more confident, the stronger I become, the more brave I become, the more I expand my abilities, my competencies, the more chances I take on myself, I get to just show you what is possible for you. That is so fun and exciting. I am living my dream life right now and having the time of my life right now.

I have so much to look forward to but right now, you guys, nothing could even compare to it. Up until now this is my dream life. I am living everything that I could ever hope or wish for. And I want you to be able to say the same thing about you. So I’m making you your offer, you guys, my August group is filling up. I want you to get in it. It is going to be a very dynamic group, you’re going to love it, I promise you. And then my next retreat is already moving and popping and shaking and it’s going to be obviously the best one ever. It is going to be so good.

And every retreat right now, I have the idea it’s going to be different than the one before. So all my retreats are not going to look or feel or even have the same topic as the one before. So you can keep working with me and every retreat’s going to be different, which is so fun because every six months I’m going to be a different version of myself. And I want you to know that you can be that too because we’re just starting, you guys. We’re just taking off. I’m 62 years old. I have a good 40 years left in me.

And I cannot wait to see what I create, all these new ideas and challenges, I just I’m like, “Let’s go create that, that sounds like fun.” So I want you to start thinking, borrow any of these thoughts that you want to borrow. I want you to know, right now you are living your dream life. You’re just in your own way. You’re believing your limiting thoughts. I want you to embrace the idea that you are a woman who’s strong and confident and happy right now. What does that look like? What does that feel like? How do you have to show up to be her right now?

To follow through on the things that you really are committed to, that you say you want but for some reason you’re clinging to your limitations. And I want to know, if you want to swim, if you want to do a sprint triathlon, go start taking swim lessons. Find swim lessons in your town, make an appointment and go set a time and get going, put the marble in the jar and start filling up that jar. If you want a super strong fun body that you’re so proud of and clothes that fit so well that you feel gorgeous in, strong and confident and happy in.

I feel so strong, confident and happy in my clothes every day and I’ve been showing you that on Instagram. So just marbles in the jar moving the needle forward every single day. What are the buckets you’re filling up? What are your values? What is important to you? Your habits will show that, the number of pebbles in the bucket are going to show if that’s really what you value. If you’re working on it a little bit every single day, that’s all we have to do. We all want to be strong, confident, happy women. There’s no doubt in my mind, that’s what we want and I’ve coached long enough to know that for sure.

So I just have all the recipes, I have all the tools. I am an example of it and I want you to come work with me so that you can change your life forever. My groups are so dynamic and so powerful and so fun and so real and so honest. And we get down to work right off the bat. You get 25 weeks with me. No one else coaches but me, it’s me coaching you. And then you get to come to the retreat and spend two and a half days with the best women on the planet, learning, growing, finding some maybe new friends, new community, be inspired, motivated to become your very best you. I mean what could be better than that?

Okay, thanks for showing up today. I love you so much and I will see you next Thursday.

Thanks for listening to Reinvented After 40. If you want more information or resources from the podcast, please visit KymShowersLifeCoach.com.