Rebranding Middle Age

In this episode, Krista explores high sensitivity and how to recognize and honor your wiring as a highly sensitive person (HSP) in the middle season of life.

Key Topics:

Why HSPs often feel like life requires more effort than it seems to for others.

Common experiences of highly sensitive people that are rarely discussed openly.

The difference between feeling "wrong" and understanding your unique wiring.

How sensory sensitivities, environmental awareness, and emotional boundaries affect daily life.

Key Takeaways:

• If you're highly sensitive, doing life can feel hard and effortful—and that doesn't mean you're "wrong."
• You can learn to honor your wiring and it won't always feel so difficult.
• HSPs need non-negotiable rest, soothing strategies, and permission to "shut off" sometimes.
• Even decades into this work, old judgments can resurface—and that's okay, we're all just practicing.

Additional resources:

Blog post/numinous experiences: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/my-experience-as-an-hsp/

Updated HSP self-assessment: https://hsperson.com/test/highly-sensitive-test/

Autumn Self-Care Guide for Midlife Women: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/autumn-guide/

In this episode, I explore the themes and invitations of autumn, focusing on self-care for women in midlife season of life.

In this episode, you'll discover:

• If you're a highly sensitive person, you may notice that grief and melancholy arise in autumn—even when you haven't experienced an obvious loss. Here's why this happens and what it means
• How you can listen to your difficult emotions as wise messengers rather than problems you need to fix or push away
• Why autumn invites you to strip away, let go, and engage in truth-telling about what no longer serves you
• The reason holding onto old identities and patterns keeps you stuck—and how you can recognize when it's time to release them
• How you can navigate the vulnerable "in-between space" when you've let go of what was but haven't fully stepped into what's next
• If you love rhythm and routine but also have a rebel streak, here's how you can honor both by building intentional breaks into your life
• How you can use this seasonal transition as an opportunity for meaningful self-care and inner exploration

Resources Mentioned:

Free autumn resource with reflection prompts and self-care exercises: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/autumn-guide/

Gretchen Rubin's Four Tendencies quiz: https://gretchenrubin.com/quiz/the-four-tendencies-quiz/

Podcast episode about grief/Samhain: listen on apple podcasts

Agency is your power of choice - your capacity to intentionally influence your life and circumstances. It means you're the author of your life, exercising control over your choices while recognizing you can't control every circumstance or other people's behavior.

Three Key Aspects of Reclaiming Agency:

1. Build Skills and Expand Capacity - Stay open to ongoing learning, discovery, and education. Surround yourself with people doing brave inner work. Acquire new ideas and practices that help you grow beyond your current bubble. Build nervous system regulation skills and healthy patterns.
2. Live on Purpose - Develop strong self-knowledge and self-trust so you can walk out your values and vision. Use your strengths and gifts meaningfully in the world. Become awake to your impact - what you pour into yourself spills over into the world around you.
3. Practice Hope in Action - Take radical ownership of your life without handing your power of choice to others. Hope isn't just a feeling - it's a way of thinking and being that requires action. You have multiple pathways forward; step into the light you have rather than waiting to see the whole path.

Agency is intimately connected to your nervous system capacity. When you're regulated and resourced, you have greater access to choice and can pause between impulse and response. Reclaiming your agency shifts you from surviving to thriving, from autopilot to living on purpose.

• Learn about my cycle of self-awareness + self-compassion + imperfect action = agency in episode 62.
• Learn more about self-awareness in episode 63.
• Learn more about self-compassion in episode 64.
• Learn more about imperfect action in episode 65

Join the Brave + Beautiful Community this Autumn - doors are open! https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/community/

Get the resource to help you practice Imperfect Action: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/how-to-practice-imperfect-action/

Practice Hope-In-Action: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/what-is-hope-and-why-i-practice-hope-in-action/

Building the muscle and practice of imperfect action is essential if you want to craft an intentional, soul-honoring life. This practice helps us show up through fear and feel discomfort but show up fully to life anyway.

Three Key Principles of Imperfect Action:

1. Small Steps Create Big Change - One tiny seed planted and watered consistently can bear beautiful fruit over time. Lower the bar and celebrate small wins. Practice "more than zero" when life gets messy. Plan for life's messiness by creating simple, portable versions of your goals.
2. We Find Our Way in Action, Not Before - Movement and vulnerability are required for transformation. You don't need to see the whole path ahead - just take the next step. Show up afraid, messy, and vulnerable. Don't hold too tightly to precise outcomes; you control your choices, not results.
3. A Kinder Way of Being - Honor your wiring and capacity instead of trying to fit an ill-fitting mold. Learn to stretch (not stress) and work with your natural rhythms. Move at a sustainable pace that supports healthy aging and seasonal living.

A commitment to imperfect action teaches you to be proud of continuing to show up in ways that are truly life-giving, creating space for presence, delight, and joy amid the messiness of life.

• Learn about my cycle of self-awareness + self-compassion + imperfect action = agency in episode 62.
• Learn more about self-awareness in episode 63.
• Learn more about self-compassion in episode 64.
• Learn more about imperfect action in episode 65
• Learn more about reclaiming your agency in episode 66

Join the Brave + Beautiful Community this Autumn - doors are open! https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/community/

If you join by September 19th (for a year) you will also get the Life Visioning Course for free! https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/guided-life-visioning-process/

Get the resource to help you practice Imperfect Action: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/how-to-practice-imperfect-action/

Self-awareness without self-compassion can lead to shame and despair. Self-compassion is one of the most impactful practices you can develop - it will permeate every corner of your life and create lasting positive change.

The Three Components of Self-Compassion:

1. Mindfulness - Not everything needs to be fixed; most things just need to be witnessed. You can hold multiple emotions at once (grief AND joy). Learn to acknowledge difficult feelings without letting them hijack your entire day.
2. Self-Kindness - Shame, judgment, and bullying yourself will never lead to positive change. Only when compassion and curiosity are present can people truly change. Treat yourself like someone you love.
3. Common Humanity - You are not bad, wrong, or broken - you're simply human in a messy world. Everyone has struggles and growth opportunities. When you love yourself in your messiness, it becomes easier to witness others' full humanity.

Self-compassion creates the safety needed for growth and change. It's about creating internal conditions where transformation becomes possible, not lowering standards or avoiding accountability.

• Learn about my cycle of self-awareness + self-compassion + imperfect action = agency in episode 62.
• Learn more about self-awareness in episode 63.
• Learn more about self-compassion in episode 64.
• Learn more about imperfect action in episode 65
• Learn more about reclaiming your agency in episode 66

Join the Brave + Beautiful Community this Autumn - doors are open! https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/community/

If you join by September 19th (for a year) you will also get the Life Visioning Course for free! https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/guided-life-visioning-process/

Self-awareness is the "birthplace of change" - you can't change what you can't identify or name. Think of it as a lantern illuminating the next few steps, not the entire path. It works hand-in-hand with mindfulness and self-compassion.

Three Ways Self-Awareness Serves You:

1. Building a friendship with yourself - Getting to know your personality, identity, and authentic self beyond conditioning
2. Awakening to current patterns - Recognizing unconscious behaviors, triggers, and capacity limits
3. Identifying and pursuing true desires - Moving past surface wants to discover what you genuinely need

Self-awareness isn't about fixing yourself - it's about building a compassionate relationship with who you are while creating space for growth and change. Remember: you're not in competition with anyone, and life isn't a race.

• Learn about my cycle of self-awareness + self-compassion + imperfect action = agency in episode 62.
• Learn more about self-awareness in episode 63.
• Learn more about self-compassion in episode 64.
• Learn more about imperfect action in episode 65
• Learn more about reclaiming your agency in episode 66

The Life Visioning Course: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/guided-life-visioning-process/

The Feel More Empowered Workshop $7: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/feel-more-empowered/

The Hope Map Assessment: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/take-the-hope-map-assessment/

In this episode I share about the 3 layers of my Hope Map Graphic/my work:

1. Outer, seasonal living layer

2. Yellow macro view of core concepts. To go one layer deeper, take the Hope Map Assessment: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/take-the-hope-map-assessment/

3. Inner Cycle of Self-Awareness + Self-Compassion + Imperfect Action = Reclaim Your Agency

Then (at 17:20) I walk you through the inner cycle and explain how to begin applying it to your life starting today.

The next four episodes will take you deeper into the "Inner Cycle." You'll learn more about HOW to practice each step as well as what supports the practice and what hinders it.

• Learn more about self-awareness in episode 63.
• Learn more about self-compassion in episode 64.
• Learn more about imperfect action in episode 65
• Learn more about reclaiming your agency in episode 66



The Life Visioning Course (save $100): https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/guided-life-visioning-process/

Join the Brave + Beautiful Community waitlist: https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/community/

My hope for you is that you would love yourself so deeply... that you would be so filled up that you would overflow into the world around you.

In this final episode of year two, I'm getting vulnerable about my own journey with receiving. From childhood patterns of never asking for anything to recent struggles with buying myself cute hand towels without guilt, I share the messy reality of learning to receive goodness.

During my recent summer visioning time, I heard this piece of intuitive wisdom: "Krista, you can't lead where you're not willing to go yourself." This got me reflecting on where I still have blocks to receiving - whether it's compliments, help, pleasure, or even allowing myself to want things.

I explore why receiving feels so challenging for many of us, the connection between receiving and true compassion, and why reciprocity matters. Real compassion is bidirectional - it ebbs and flows. What we pour in is what we leak out.

I share practical ideas like keeping a "receive list" and the importance of examining our beliefs about worthiness. Are you allowed to want? Are you allowed to need?

Thank you for being here. I look forward to starting year three with you!

Let's Connect:

FB: https://www.facebook.com/alifeinprogressca and https://www.facebook.com/rebrandingmiddleage/

IG: https://www.instagram.com/a_life_in_progress/

NEW / FREE: (Mostly) monthly Hope Map Conversations to help you live joyfully in a messy world: Hope Map Conversations: Live Joyfully in a Messy world | A Life In Progress

Today's guest, Whitney Fleming, is a writer, social media consultant, mother and advocate. She owns the blog Parenting Teens and Tweens and is the voice behind the popular social media account @WhitneyFlemingWrites.

Writer and social media consultant Whitney Fleming opens up about launching three daughters into the world, navigating perimenopause, and finding herself again after feeling like "a shadow of herself" for years.

We talk about...

• The emotional "push and pull" of watching kids become independent
• Reframing "empty nest" as kids "sitting on the branch"
• The importance of finding healthcare providers who actually listen
• Why women must advocate fiercely for proper testing and care
• Protecting time for internal processing and mental clarity
• The importance of letting kids fail and learn natural consequences
• Modeling self-care and personal growth for your children

Connect with Whitney

• parentingteensandtweens.com
• https://www.facebook.com/whitneyflemingwrites

Connect with Krista

• https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/monday-morning-hope-map/
• https://www.alifeinprogress.ca/work-with-me/

Where we focus we aim. And where we aim, we will arrive/experience. This is where our energy, attention, and important resources go. Where is 80% of your focus directed? And is this taking you in a direction that you truly want for your life?

I'm resharing this episode because the question "how will I know that I have lived well" is one of the key questions I ask myself (in the WHY section) of my Life Visioning Process.

Join me for my Life Visioning Course: The Life Visioning Course: Handcraft A Soul-Honouring Life | A Life In Progress

Living an examined life - one in which I ask myself interesting and sometimes challenging, brave questions and then take action, or practice hope-in-action, toward a life and world I truly want to live in - is one of my commitments to myself. It is also something I guide other women in, inside my Brave + Beautiful Community.

Join the Brave + Beautiful Community (summer session begins on July 14th): Join the Brave + Beautiful Community For Midlife Women | A Life In Progress

In this episode I talk about walking out our Core Values. Two ways I can help you identify and learn to live your values "on purpose":

The Core Values Workshop (included in the Life Visioning Course): Core values Workshop

The Life Visioning Course: The Life Visioning Course: Handcraft A Soul-Honouring Life | A Life In Progress

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More than ever we need to take radical responsibility for our lives. For who and how we choose to be in the world, for the world we help create, for how we care for our mind-emotion-body health, and so on. May you have the courage to live a life that is true to yourself.

I've supported thousands of women in this work. Join me inside the Brave + Beautiful Community: Join the Brave + Beautiful Community For Midlife Women | A Life In Progress.

Book a free chat with Krista: https://calendly.com/alifeinprogress/25min

Or for (mostly) weekly encouragement, sign up for my Hope Map: Sign Up For The Monday Morning Hope Map | A Life In Progress