Lighten Your Midlife Load: 3 Ways to Release Clutter, Pressure, and Energy Drains

Dr. Christine Li [00:00:00]:
Welcome back to the Make Time for Success podcast. This is episode number 245. I have found as a woman in midlife, that this phase of life is really interesting, for lack of a more specific word. It is packed with obligation, with things to do with things to explore, and some complications, too, right? Because if you get to midlife, you've got so many different relationships, a history all your own, and a future that you want to chart. So the reason I put together this episode is to talk about the topic of midlife energy drains. The things that we're kind of tolerating in midlife that we don't really need to, because I really believe that we do deserve to live the rest of our lives vibrantly. And in order to do that, we have to be mindful about what we're tolerating, what we shouldn't be tolerating, and to learn quick and easy ways to shoo the guilt and the negative experiences out of our daily lives. So this episode is for the midlife woman who is just about ready to open the rest of her life up.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:19]:
Let's go listen to this episode together now.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:27]:
Hi, I'm Dr. Christine Li, and I'm a psychiatrist, psychologist, and a procrastination coach. I've helped thousands of people move past procrastination and overwhelm so they could begin working to their potential. In this podcast, you're going to learn powerful strategies for getting your mind, body, and energy to work together so that you can focus on what's really important.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:51]:
And accomplish the goals you want to achieve. When you start living within your full.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:57]:
Power, you're going to see how being.

Dr. Christine Li [00:01:59]:
Productive can be easy and how.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:01]:
How you can create success on demand. Welcome to the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:10]:
Hi there. Today's topic is going to be terrific because we're going to take a look at ways you can lighten the load in midlife. I just love it when we can take a different look on the everyday. And I know I've done that throughout my career. On the topic of procrastination, I think people tend to see procrastination almost as a joke topic. Right. When I mentioned that I'm a procrastination coach, people tend to chuckle. And procrastination is an everyday kind of thing.

Dr. Christine Li [00:02:51]:
Sometimes it's very commonly seen. And I just thought long ago that it was going to be useful to take a different kind of look at the issue, to see it for what it really is, which is a substantial roadblock to people's happiness, to people's productivity and to people's feeling like they can get things done. So today we're going to look at midlife, and midlife is a privilege. And also, I think there are many assumptions made in the phase of midlife. I think we assume, one, that we're all getting older. That's how we got to midlife, but that there's this kind of assumption that we're supposed to do everything that we've been doing up to this point and then some. I think if you've reached midlife or you're past midlife now, you know what I'm talking about. I think, you know how it can feel like you're carrying double the load, maybe triple the load sometimes with caring for your children, with caring for aging and elderly parents, for managing the home, which seems to have more and more stuff in it as the years go on, and then finding that you have little time left over for things like self care, for hobbies, for relaxation, for just tending to you and your own needs.

Dr. Christine Li [00:04:24]:
So I'm going to bring us into this midlife view again. We're going to sharpen our view of what's going on so that we can change the assumptions about what midlife has to be. Instead of feeling like we have to hold up the world every single day, we're going to maybe take a pause, a midlife pause, and see where can we shed some layers, where can we unburden ourselves of some of the stress, where can we edit some of our decisions that have gotten us into a feeling of overwhelm or an overburdened state? I think that's going to be well worth our time. And in this episode, I'm going to go through three big areas that we all have to deal with in midlife and beyond. And we're going to look at these areas to see where we can find more room to maneuver, more room to breathe, more room to have fun? All right, the first large segment that we're going to tackle is one of my favorite areas to talk about. Clutter, physical clutter, and also things that are like clutter, things that represent burdens to us, things that we don't really need, that are excess, that are feeling heavy, and that physical clutter is that stuff in your home that got there innocently. You purchased it, it was gifted to you, it was borrowed, but you no longer use it, you no longer like it, you no longer need it, and you no longer love it. For sure.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:06]:
It's definitely been categorized by you as clutter. And each time you Take a look at that. Physical clutter. Maybe it's a gardening tool, maybe it's a piece of clothing. Each time you look at these items, you have to do a double take. You have to say, oh, I really don't like it. Oh, that really isn't my style. Oh, I really should return it to my neighbor.

Dr. Christine Li [00:06:32]:
That kind of inner dialogue is just draining, it's heavy, it's burdensome. And, and you know, what happens is our physical clutter then becomes our emotional clutter. And because I'm a psychologist and because I'm curious about the way these things happen, I've always marveled at how much emotional clutter sometimes we tolerate and put up with. It's the emotional clutter of feeling guilty for having more than we need or more than we should have in our homes. It's feeling embarrassed that we haven't done any more with our space, that we haven't cleaned it up, that it's not really presentable for guests that happen to drop on by. It is feeling like we are overwhelmed by the stuff in our house, by the fact that we're over committed perhaps in our schedule. And, and this cluster of feelings, these negative feelings tend to be burdensome to our spirit, to our energy, to our ability to feel motivated to do our regular tasks of every day, get through the job, tend to the family, tend to obligations. So my suggestion here is to really check what are your habits regarding your stuff, regarding the commitments you're making regarding your schedule, and take a good hard look at it and say to yourself, I can make the changes that I want to make.

Dr. Christine Li [00:08:10]:
The decluttering that you've been meaning to get to, you can put that in your schedule. The saying no to people and practicing that at a higher level and saying no more frequently, you can do that too. Picking up something that will help you to unburden things is also a good habit to start. So that might be picking up the habit of asking for help, of borrowing some of your kids time so that you don't have to do all the heavy lifting or the planning or the tidying by yourself. You really aren't alone in this journey. And part of midlife's wonders, I think part of the beauty of midlife is really re recognizing that is really saying I have a voice, I have the need, I have the people around me that can help me out so that we can all get through this together and get through this without exhaustion, resentment, or any other negative experiences happening in our precious homes. So regarding segment one, your physical clutter and your unnecessary burdens. Check what's going on.

Dr. Christine Li [00:09:25]:
Do an assessment, maybe take some notes about things that are really priority for you to get out of your home, to rearrange, to gift to somebody else. It doesn't matter. Start with one drawer, one closet, one something so that you can feel like you've created some new energy in your life so that you're saying yes to yourself and your own needs instead of just worrying about what everybody else needs from you. All right, the second segment I'd like to focus on here is your sense of your own expectations about yourself. What are your beliefs about what you're supposed to be doing? What are your beliefs about the roles you're supposed to be fulfilling? Have these beliefs gotten really heavy? Have they gotten really unmanageable? Have they just multiplied in number? Right. Sometimes we volunteer for one thing, then all of a sudden we're involved in three other things. And I think midlife women walk around carrying this invisible heavy weight. It's the weight that they feel, but that it's not really seen by others.

Dr. Christine Li [00:10:38]:
On the outside. It may be the role of I'm the perfect mother, or I'm the perfect neighbor, or I'm the perfect employee. Keeping to those kinds of expectations can be really impossible because as you've heard me probably talk about in the past, perfect is just kind of this strangling kind of term because you never feel like you're safe when you're aiming for perfect. You always feel like the next thing that you perform or create or do do is going to be a failure, and then you'll be in trouble again. So let's just lighten the load here and say, you know what? I'm no longer going to insist that everything in the house looks perfect or that my every meal is created perfectly. Certainly mine aren't. And you could just chuckle more. You could decide, I'm going to make this more fun instead of more perfect.

Dr. Christine Li [00:11:37]:
I'm going to make this more easy instead of more stressful. And you're going to find, you know what your beliefs and your desires actually rule the situation. That actually your desires and your intentions set how these situations go. So if you're looking for more lightness, decide it's going to be okay. I'm going to drop these old expectations of myself. I'm going to see what is really needed in reality. I'm going to step down from that pedestal that I might have been on somehow over the years, and I'm going to check in with reality. I'm going to Check in.

Dr. Christine Li [00:12:17]:
What does my home need? What does my body need? What does my schedule need? What does my family need? What do my friends need? But I'm going to be real about my own limits, my own boundaries, my own wishes. And then when you mix things up in that way, you no longer are talking about perfection. You're talking about the right answer for you. You're talking about acting in alignment with your own energy, the amount of time you have in the day and what you really want to see happen in your life. It's actually a big lift. So not only does it lighten the physical load and the emotional load and the schedule load, you end up feeling like you're a lighter being. Like, it gives you a real lift. So assess what roles you want to stay in, which roles really fit you, and then discard the others, pass them on to somebody else.

Dr. Christine Li [00:13:15]:
You're getting older, you're getting busier, and you want to preserve some bandwidth for yourself. You want to decide, yes, I'm choosing this and I'm discarding this. You really do get to say these things. So create a little bit of a permission slip for yourself to just experiment for a little while until things settle into their new configuration with your roles and your expectations of yourself. The final segment I'd like to talk about are the energy drains that have followed you into midlife that you've kind of stopped noticing or really paying attention to. And these energy drains are really burdensome and costly to you in midlife. So these are things like old routines, habits with maybe your smartphone, things like that, things that take up your time and your energy, but they're not really bringing you the information, the experience, the life enhancements that you're looking for, like things like surfing the web without end or doom scrolling, as they call it, can really be a negative in our lives. I think we all have experienced that at this point where you're missing out on sleep or you're missing out on interactions with family members and real people like your family members.

Dr. Christine Li [00:14:47]:
And it may be time right now, if you're feeling stressed or overwhelmed or like you have no boundaries with anybody lately to just say, you know, what habits can I pause? What can I reassess? What can I edit out? Can I spend a half a day not even touching my phone? You can use that as an experiment and I think it'll become like an experience. I always find kind of comically that when my phone dies, when the battery just gives out, I sometimes feel like that's one of the happiest moments of my day, right, where I just get a break that I didn't even plan because my phone just needs to be charged, that I need some separate time from technology. Maybe you do too. So one idea that I have for you about assessing these energy drains is to do a 24 hour check of what you're doing with your time. What habits are involved? What are the habits that you'd like to kick out of your life? What are the habits you'd like to invite in and try? Perhaps getting eight hours of sleep? Perhaps fueling your body with beautiful whole foods? Perhaps it's really getting to the gym more than you have been. Whatever it is, make sure you're focusing on you. I think that's the whole point of this particular episode. You it's saying that midlife, though an extremely busy and full time in our lives, does not have to be a horror.

Dr. Christine Li [00:16:25]:
It doesn't have to be stress inducing, illness inducing, fatigue inducing. You really can retain this feeling of joy and a feeling of life lightness. I promise you it is possible. It does take this intentionality, but you certainly have that capacity within you. You've built this beautiful life. Let's continue to make sure it stays beautiful, that you stay well, that you stay energetic and vibrant and vital and aware of what you need, and aware that you have the power to put that into play every single day. All right. I thank you so much for using your time in midlife and beyond to spend some time with me every week on the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:17:14]:
I love creating this material to just remind you that you have a say, that you have the ability to change any and all habits that you have all this freedom to enjoy. So let's go grab some of that joy back for ourselves. If you would like the free download that accompanies this episode so that you can do some habit assessments and schedule assessments and role assessments, that would be terrific. Just go to maketimeforsuccess podcast.com/midlife. Again, it's maketimeforsuccesspodcast.com/midlife. You'll grab that worksheet and then be able to reflect on everything that we've just talked about. All right, I'll see you next week. Look forward to being here again.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:08]:
Thank you for listening to this episode of the Make Time for Success podcast.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:13]:
If you enjoyed what you've heard, you.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:15]:
Can subscribe to make sure you get notified of upcoming episodes. You can also Visit our website maketime4successpodcast.com for past episodes, show notes and all the resources we mention on the show. Feel free to connect with me over on Instagram too. You can find me there under the name Procrastination Coach. Send me a DM and let me know what your thoughts are about the.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:39]:
Episodes you've been listening to.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:41]:
And let me know any topics that you might like me to talk about on the show. I'd love to hear all about how you're making time for success.

Dr. Christine Li [00:18:49]:
Talk to you soon.