Ever wonder what people who are rocking their midlife do differently? Ellen Albertson, Ph.D. (aka The Midlife Whisperer) shares:
- The connection between food and your mental state (and how to use that to your advantage).
- Reimagining Midlife.
- Dealing with stress.
- Three ways to become more positive.
- Creating and living a second adulthood.
If you enjoyed this episode with Ellen, you can learn more about her, take the “Raise Your Vibe” quiz, or join her Facebook Group at linktr.ee/themidlifewhisperer .
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Episode Transcription
Note: this was transcribed by AI so please excuse any errors or grammatical weirdness in transcription.
Broc: All right. Well, this is Broc Edwards. And of course the show here is Midlife Mastery. And today we have on Dr. Ellen Albertson and Ellen, I always like to have people, introduce themselves, ’cause they do a better job than I do. I’m not really all that great at introducing people. So what can you tell us? I mean, I know you have a PhD. I know you’re a registered dietician. What, what else do people need to know about you?
Ellen: Well, I just help people at midlife change the trajectory. I think that midlife, it can be the absolute best time of life.
If you really are willing to do some work and make some shifts, if you’re not happy with where you’re at you by training, I’ve been a dietician for 30 years. So I generally help people with their bodies. I’ve been a personal fitness trainer. I help people with their minds, with their psychology and really shifting to a more positive mindset.
I help people with their emotions. I’m a mindful self-compassion teacher as well. I help people with Health people. Spirit. I’m a Reiki master and help people with relationships. So those are kind of the five areas I help people with. And I’ve been kind of doing this work for over a decade. I love coaching. Coaching is all about seeing what makes you tick, what are your strengths?
What’s awesome about you, where do you want to go? And so it’s really, really fun to help people make some major shifts at midlife and really make their next chapter, their best chapter. Well,
Broc: I know on Instagram you go by the handle of the midlife whisperer. So how did you come up with that? What’s that about?
Ellen: Oh, that’s a great question. So I was at a entrepreneurial women’s network meeting in Texas, where you are, in Frisco. And, you know, I was thinking about my brand. I had been, you know, initially when I started coaching, I’d really been working a lot around dieting, weight loss, helping people with their health and wellbeing.
I’ve been a personal fitness trainer and dietician. Board certified health and wellness coach, but I was getting all midlife women. And as I was working with women, there were so many bigger issues than just what to eat, how to move. And so I started really getting deeper into other issues. I got more training as a coach and as a psychologist.
And so I was at this meeting, you know, I’ve been working, I’ve realized I really love working with women in midlife, sort of forties to kind of, you know, early sixties. And that was at the meeting and it just hit me. I’m like, you’re the middle black whisper. I was like, wow. It just sort of popped into my head.
Like the universe is like, here, this is you. And I was shocked that nobody had the moniker. And the funny thing is that there was, I was at this meeting. And so there, there, there was this guy from Dell who was on the side. Stage the middle. I thought of that. And he said something about the jewelry whisper.
Cause there’s a lot of whispers. We know that, you know, the dog whisper, the cat whisper the horse whisper. So it just popped into my head. Nobody had it. And so I grabbed it and got the trademark and it really fit when I say that to people, they kind of get that. Yeah, I understand. There’s cause I’ve got a, sort of a very soft, compassionate way working with people and they’ve got more of a tiger really pushing people and holding them accountable.
So I kind of use both the yin and the yang in my work to really help people shift.
Broc: Well, I’m going to switch gears a little bit there. So I love that, that description, that connection you’re at you’re right. It does kind of people know immediately sort of what, what you’re about. And, but I am really curious, so dietician and a psychologist.
Tell me a little bit about the connection between diet and psychology, mental state, those sorts of things. Yeah,
Ellen: that’s a great question. Well, So part of what people did, a lot of people are emotionally eating. I mean, a lot of people are emotional eaters. What happens is often when we are stressed, we’re struggling.
The mammalian response and people are mammals is to go to something to raise what’s called dopamine. So we’ve got this stress going on. The stress response is cortisol. And so what happens is instead of sort of dealing with the stress and the issues that are stressing you out, we often go to these dopamine squirts.
So dopamine is the neurotransmitter of reward. We feel good. It’s usually I think of it as sex, drugs, rock and roll food shopping, gambling gaming, those types of things, which are really designed to raise the level of dopamine in the brain. So what happens is a lot of people go to food to feel better.
And so where the psychology comes in is really helping people to first understand that is that you don’t have to go to the dopamine or maybe you’re going to do something else that lights that dopamine up. You can also go to this other chemical called oxytocin, which is the mammalian chemical of Karen connection.
What that does is it it sort of shuts down, cools out that cortisol. That’s happening. And what it does too, is it helps to stop you from going to that dopamine. So I’ve found that you know, a lot of my work is being a food psychologist and really helping people understand, like, why are you having that threesome with Ben and Jerry’s right. You know, that you shouldn’t be doing that, but yet it’s 11 o’clock and you’re still going for that carton or that bag of chips. What’s going on with that and really helping people understand what they need to do to change because so, so often my clients really know what they should be eating, but they’re not doing it.
So we really work with helping people understand eating when you are hungry. So, you know, when you eat, when you’re hungry, you stop when you’re full. But if you eat because you’re lonely, You’re tired. You’re angry, you’re anxious, you’re bored. You’re stressed. You just going to keep eating. So that’s where the psychology piece really comes in there to help people make the behavior change, but also to deal with their emotional wellbeing so that they don’t need to reach for food to feel better.
Broc: Well, what about the flip side of that? Because that’s one step too, to get away from, from the emotional eating, of course, how can we use food to create more of a, a positive or energized mental state?
Ellen: Oh, that’s a great question. There’s a lot of research being done right now on looking at, I guess there’s a sort of psycho nutrition is kind of a new area where they’re actually looking at using food from you know, a pharmacy perspective.
There’s this whole area of culinary medicine to looking at food as medicine. So. When we eat primarily plant foods, the whole base, whole food plant-based diet. So lots of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts. I’m not saying you have to go all out vegan, but you know, basing your, your diet around plant foods.
What a couple of things happen. There’s a lot of wonderful nutrients and neuro and, and also phytochemicals in the plant foods that actually can. Support your brain health. The other thing that happens is that there is a connection between the gut and the brain. So we make our serotonin, which is our neuro-transmitter of that keeps us calm in our gut.
And so when you eat those plant-based foods, you change the the microbiome, which is this part of this it’s. It’s also the bacteria and the microorganisms that live in your body, and a lot of them are living in your intestines. And so when you eat the right way, lots of plant foods, you’re feeding those healthy bacteria.
And that actually has an impact on your mental health as well as your immune system. So there are a lot of ways to feel better psychological. And on the flip side, too, when you’re eating a lot of sugar or leading a lot of processed food, also sometimes having alcohol that can really be a downer for your mental health.
Broc: So how do our needs change, change as we age? So we hit midlife. ‘Cause I just think about what I could eat when I was, you know, in college versus what I can eat now and how it affects me and my mental state, my body and everything are there, are there, I know every person’s different, you know, we’re all different, but are there any kind of general things that we need to just think about as we, you know, kind of enter this midlife stage?
Ellen: Yeah, absolutely. Well, you know, we, we need a little bit less calories. So what happens is, as we age, we do lose muscle mass. And of course you can slow down the loss of muscle mass by exercising by particularly by, you know, lifting weights, strength, training, as well as getting cardio. So you can slow down that process from usually it’s average is about am I think about 8% every decade, but you can slow that down to about 2% by getting regular physical exercise.
And then the other thing is generally I recommend that my clients, you don’t need to go carb free and go crazy Quito, but to watch out on the carbs, that’s the thing that I find the, especially the process carbs are the biggest issue. And then the other thing that I find with people is it’s stress plays a huge role.
So when we are stressed out again, we produce that chemical called cortisol, which rubs up our appetite and also revs up the deposition of fat around your midsection, which is the fact that you don’t want it’s the fat that actually is active, that can contribute to some chronic diseases. So you got to eat a little bit less, particularly around the carbs and the refined carbs.
So you’ve got to make the quality of your diet better, but I think you just have to Decide that, you know, if you want to have a great midlife, you’ve got to take care of your body. And, you know, we, we’ve got so much great science where people can live, you know, into my, my folks or my dad’s 90, my mom’s 89 and they’re, they’re still rocking it.
They still feel good. They can do their walks every day. They’re super sharp, but the way we treat our bodies has a huge impact on the quality of our midlife.
Broc: So you’ve got kind of a double or triple whammy going there. So we, we get stressed. Cortisol goes up. We get hungrier. So we eat more and we retain more of what we eat as fat that’s nature being kind of brutal to us there.
Ellen: Well, it’s actually because if you think about the fact that human beings evolved hundreds of thousands of years ago, if you’re stressed out, there’s some danger in your path and it makes sense to lay down body fat because there might be a family around the corner, but these days we have thousands and thousands of more calories than we need.
I mean, there’s a, you know, a seven 11 around every quarter. Grocery stores cut 60,000 skews. So we don’t have that issue anymore. So we’re living in bodies that were designed to be optimized, you know, hundreds of thousands of years ago.
Broc: Now that does make sense. Cause I have heard that in, you know, for our ancestors, the only long-term stress was famine, every other stress was very short term, very intense, but short-term either got away from the tiger.
You didn’t.
Ellen: Yeah, absolutely. So, and that’s, that’s another problem that we have is that we don’t have these acute short-term stresses. We are stressed every day. You know, your boss tells you off your stress. Do you have a fight with your partner or your kids? You’re stressed, you know, you’re, you’re in. You know, somebody cuts you off on the road.
You’re stressed that we have all of these points in our day where we’re constantly bombarded and we’re stressed out. So you have to kind of train your mind to, you know, slough things off and also not take life so seriously and find moments of your in your day to recharge and stay calmer.
Broc: So one of the things you mentioned already was, you know, we can change your diet a little bit.
So we’re, we’re not ingesting things that increase our cortisol levels, or we would tend to hang on to kind of the, you know, sugar processed, carbs, alcohol, those sorts of things. So we can change up your diet a little bit to help there on the flip side of it. What are some things we can do just to deal with stress in a, in a better way.
Ellen: Yeah. So that’s a great question. So, I mean, certainly again, exercise is huge. So exercise is a great way to kind of burn off that cortisol. And it’s also a great way to keep your mental health sharp. I think another thing to do is to breathe. So the quickest way to turn your what’s called your parasympathetic nervous system.
So that’s the fight or flight nervous system. That cortisol where cortisol is generated when you do deep breathing, even, you know, just 30 seconds a minute, particularly if you are breathing in for four. Exhaling for about eight. So your exhalation is longer than your inhalation that can really help with stress.
Also lots of you know, body, mind, techniques, meditation, yoga, Xi, gong, all of those things really make a difference. Being out in nature is huge. So when you’re taking a walk, if you are out and you’re like on a landscape that can really help, I think, leaving your cell phone. At home is huge. Cause it’s that, that constant like pinging and checking your email are even leaving your S your cell phone, turning it off when you’re home lightening up playing, having more fun.
You know, if you’re at midlife looking at like, what did I like to do as a kid? So I have a lot of my clients are doing things like coloring learning things, dancing, playing instruments, things where you’re using different parts of your brain that really can. Distract you from that stress or other things that soothe you listen to music can be really powerful.
So just experimenting and seeing what stresses you out, seeing a coach who can help you with your stress or getting some therapy can also be really, really helpful. So there are lots of ways and what’s key is just finding a couple that really work for you.
Broc: Well, it’s funny. As soon as you said it, I immediately started taking much deeper, slower breath.
And I wonder how many people listening immediately did that as well. As I noticed your speech pattern also slowed down, so it kind of. Naturally mimicked or inspired, you know, kind of taking that longer, deeper breath amongst everything else that you suggested there. Anyway, that, sorry, that way just kind of struck me because I caught myself doing it as like, Oh yeah, I need to breathe.
Ellen: Well, it’s good. I have a lot of my clients just to set something on their phone or their computer that reminds them every hour to breeze. So then I’ll often start a session. We’ll just take one breath just to enjoy the breath, just taking a second breath. Just being in your body and then just taking one more breath and just smiling.
It’s instant. Stress relief.
Broc: That’s awesome. I love it. That’s like 20, 30 seconds right there. And your mental state changes immediately. At least mine just did. So I could feel myself kind of relaxing, slowing down here. And well let me shift gears a little bit, cause we’ve, we’ve already covered a tremendous amount amount of ground here.
When we think about just, you know, taking care of our body, better eating in ways that don’t stress our body out there. And Well, I used to, to get rid of stress, to deal with the other side of it. But before we started recording, you had mentioned the phrase the second adulthood, and I really wanted to ask you about that.
So for you, what is second adulthood?
Ellen: Yeah. So I think about second adulthood is sort of midlife. So sort of your kind of forties, late forties, early fifties through sixties as this chunk that you have. To really reinvent yourself if you’re not happy with the trajectory that you’re on. So I feel like we’ve got this sort of, you know, I think of early adulthood in childhood is up to about 30.
And I also like to think of it. I’m kind of an enjoy looking at astrology. So we have the sort of Saturn return period, which is a 28 to 30 year period. So we’ve got this first period from sort of zero to 30 and that’s kind of like our childhood and adult. And then we have the second adulthood, which is sort of.
30 to kind of mid, late sixties, which you can start changing your second adult and then you’ve got your sort of mid or early fifties all the way into two when you’re in the geriatric phase. So we’ve got this really nice chunky twenty-five. 30 year, period, even 40 for some people where you can really take a look at what do they learned in this first adulthood sort of this, you know, 25 or 30 plus period of time.
What do I want to change? What I want to shift, maybe even looking back to your childhood and what naturally, where your gifts. So we’ve got this really beautiful period to really have a good time and enjoy our life to the fullest. We don’t have as many of the. The structures that tell us who to be. So I’d be, I know if like current myself, my, you know, my twenties and thirties were so much about like, what is gonna, what looks good in society’s eyes or my culture’s eyes or my parents’ eyes.
And I kind of created this life for myself from sort of 29 30 till about. But to my early mid fifties, where I was kind of living someone else’s idea of what was okay. And it wasn’t working for me. So I blew up my life a little bit and left a marriage that wasn’t working for me, spend a little time in kind of a Chrysalis period.
And now I’m really in that very groovy second adulthood where I’m living life on my terms and really enjoying my life to the fullest.
Broc: You know, we, we build up our life builds up over time and a cruise me that for a lot of us, we don’t even realize that we have this option to pause and rethink and reinvent.
You know, it’s kind of like, well, we ended up here, life’s passed us by, we’ll just keep going down this path. And yet, you know, as you mentioned, you blew up your life and, but in a very positive way, so. You know, a lot of people actually come to think of it, just thinking, as I’m talking here, you know, they hit the midlife crisis and blow up their life, but not in a positive way, you know, they, they make bad choices.
They, they do things that they probably shouldn’t do. W, what does that go to? Is that, is that the same inspiration? Just really trying to re-imagine our life, but taking a negative route versus a positive route, or am I off track here? Yeah, I
Ellen: think that part of what happens is there’s your soul, your spirit desires, some kind of change.
And sometimes people do. I mean, I don’t know if my, my changes were all, all positive. It was kind of very much like a. Chrysalis stage where things were kind of goofy. And I was trying to figure things out. So sometimes we do make mistakes or we, you know, experiment and we do different things. But I think that there is this, you know, you, you start to understand that there is more time behind me than in front of me.
You start to realize that I’m running out of time. And then you also start to see that you’re not really in alignment with your passion and your purpose in life. I was talking to someone today and she’s like, I’m just not. Living my purpose is this idea in, in Japanese called eeky guy. I don’t know if you’ve come across this idea about living, according to your values, figuring out who the heck am I, what do I want to, I get this from clients a lot.
Like, I don’t know who I want to be. When I grow up, you kind of wake up one day and you realize like I’ve built this life. It’s kind of like, I’ve, I’ve clawed my way up this ladder of success, but it’s against the wrong building. And so you have to sort of do a lot of excavating to figure out, okay, what do, what do I really want this building to look like?
And how do I shift my vibration? And that’s a lot of the work I do with people. Like I have a quiz it’s called raise your vibe quiz and you can take it and see with body mind, heart. Spirit in relationships. What needs to shift in your life can really evaluate where you’re at and decide what do I want to work on?
I think if you do that in a more organized, succinct fashion, you can kind of avoid that blowing up your life, but it, but it’s hard because the brain isn’t interested in you being self actualized or having a passion and a purpose is only interested in keeping you safe. So to get a divorce, To shift careers, you know, type, have another client she’s selling everything.
She hasn’t, she’s buying a boat and selling the Mediterranean Bravo. Right. I have another client who moved to Australia. You know, she moved from new England to Australia. I had another client who rediscovered her passion for the circus, but that’s scary. And it takes a lot of Moxie to sort of step outside your comfort zone and say, you know what, I want to do something bold with my life.
And so that’s really what the second adult. And if you’re not happy is about is, is making some big shifts in your life.
Broc: Yeah, absolutely. Cause when you talk about the climbing the ladder, but discovering the ladders against the wrong wall, but we’re very familiar with that wall, whether we like it or not, we know what to expect from, from that wall.
So what’s the process or how do you coach people when they think maybe they’re against the wrong wall, they should be, you know, moving the ladder somewhere else, but you know, they’ve invested a lifetime in that wall, in that ladder. So how do you start stepping away? How do you start rethinking and exploring.
Yeah,
Ellen: that’s such a great question. Well, there’s a couple of things that I do with clients. So. We do a real inventory. So first it’s really about knowing yourself. So taking a look at, what did you love doing as a kid? What were you curious about? What was that adult? That when you looked at them and you said, I really want to do that, and what was it about that that you liked to do?
And you don’t necessarily have to blow everything up. You might just decide that I want to create a new hobby. I want to do something on the side, or I want to volunteer. So start getting curious, starting, and I do a lot of strength, testings. So I’m really looking at what are your strengths? What are you naturally good at?
What is your genius zone? I do a lot of like design. So figuring out like, really, what is your purpose? Why are you here? Another thing that I do, which really worked for me was I do something called finding your destination vibration. So remembering a time in your life where you were really happy, where you were, you had an emotional moment.
Experience, that felt really good. And so for me, it was a time when I was probably about eight really involved dance. And then there was a time in my twenties before I got married, where I was just still felt authentic. I felt good. I was doing a lot of things that really resonated with me. And so I have people start to visualize that time and see if you can super impose it on your president on your future.
So doing a lot of. You know, visual doing vision boarding or just visualizing the sort of destination vibration. And then, and then also just taking baby steps. So if you’re curious about a different career going on some informational interviews or reading some books about doing this thing so that, you know, that’s the sort of the way that we shipped to sort of in terms of career and fun and what you’re doing, relationships are a little different often with relationships.
I have people prototype so really to, to seriously think about. Can I make the relationship better? What could I do to make my marriage better? And then what would it look like for me to be on my own to sort of start thinking about working at on both ends? So we do a lot of experimenting and what generally happens is it’s kind of like a little magical energy when energy shifts.
So, you know, law of attraction is it’s all about you attract the energy that you’re giving up. As you giving out, as you raise your vibe, as you get more positive, as you start feeling better physiologically. As your level of energy moves, as you do also develop a lot of self compassion, self love for yourself.
You start to attract opportunities and you see things in your life differently, and things start to shift.
I
Broc: I want to Touch on that a little bit and take that a little bit deeper, but I want to approach it from a different angle here a little bit. So I’m going to ask you just from your experience from the people that you’ve worked with, what are some of the key differences that you’ve seen between the people who are just completely rocking their midlife and those who maybe aren’t.
Ellen: This that’s a good question. It authenticity, you know, it’s like for me, I was a caged tiger. Tiger is a cut of my power animal. So what I see with people is, are you being authentic? Are you, you know, just being a people pleaser and then get yourself in a pretzel for everybody else. It’s I don’t know how it is with men, but women tend to be people-pleasers.
So you’re always putting everybody else first. So self-care. You know, self-actualization, isn’t selfish. I mean, you get to live your life and like be the author of your existence. The whole idea of authenticity, the root of it is author. So the people who are rocking their midlife are people who are really in alignment with what they’re here to do.
And then there there’s some people who, you know, who are on that path. You know, from there, from the time they’re young, all the way, you know, till the point that they, that they leave the planet. But for the people who Rocky midlife, it’s really being in alignment with what you’re here to do, what your, you know, your gifts are, what your talents are, what you love to do, what your genius zone is.
And also just being a little, a fearless. So I think the thing that really holds people back is fear is people are comfortably uncomfortable. It’s like when you have a bird, you open up the cage, it doesn’t leave the cage because it’s safe in the cage. And so the people who are really rocking midlife or people who are really living in accordance with who they are on the deepest level,
Broc: So with that, you mentioned comes fear because it’s doing something different.
It’s pushing your comfort zone, it’s trying something new or trying something different. And so one of the things that you’ve been touching on is just, you know, you mentioned destination vibration, raising your vibe. You mentioned you have a quiz on, I want to ask you a little bit about that in a little bit, but so how do we stay positive?
How do we keep our energy high and kind of. Attract that, that optimism and that the opportunities that come from it when we are facing that fear and trying not to get bogged down into the what ifs and could BS. Yeah.
Ellen: So there’s lots of ways to do that. What’s so exciting about this whole field of positive psychology is that there are a lot of books and a lot of techniques, but I’ll give you three techniques.
I mean, part of it is learning how to master your mind and how to also connect with your heart and your intuition, you know, in our culture. We’re so intellectually driven that we don’t. We don’t connect with our intuitive noting in our heart. The three ways that you can turn a more positive are first of all, gratitude.
So just taking time every day to be grateful for, let’s say 10 things in your life is using your fingers and saying, you know, I’m grateful. I have a roof over my head. I have electricity. I have the internet. I have people that I love. I’m healthy. I have. Food to eat. I like what I do. You know, a spring is coming.
I’ve got great kids in my, like, whatever it is, you can’t be angry and negative and sad when you’re being grateful. The brain can’t do both at the same time. So yeah. Working on a gratitude practice is really powerful. Another thing that’s super powerful is savoring. The good, so negative emotions are like Velcro.
When something negative happens to us, it sticks and positive emotions are like Teflon. They slide off. So what we have to do is it’s called the negativity bias. So, what we have to do is we have to expand on the positive thing. So when something good happens. So like, you know, your, your kid comes home and something great happened to them at school, or maybe you got a promotion or you know, something, you went to the doctor and had a positive physical, whatever happens, you savor it.
You pause and you expand and you saver. And this Barbara Fredrickson has a lot of really interesting research around around the, the ratio of positive to negative emotions. When we have more positive emotions and negative emotions we broaden and build, we’re able to see good things and attract again, sort of this law of attraction with true psychological science behind it is that we’re we broaden and build a horizon.
Savoring the good. And then the final piece I’ll say is appreciating yourself really appreciating that you are wonderful, that you have talents, that you have gifts. And this isn’t about being conceited. There’s this element in self-compassion called common humanity that we, that says that we’re, we’re all part of this human tribe.
And we all have things that are awesome about us and we’re all here for a reason. And so appreciating yourself. Appreciating all you do for yourself. Like if you’ve gotten out of bed this morning and you fed yourself and bathe yourself and clothe yourself will appreciate, and that you’re taking care of yourself.
So savoring the good gratitude and self appreciation are just three of many ways to, you can really train your mind to be more positive. And it really does work. I’ve saved someone who had a clinical depression. It doesn’t have it anymore. You can train your brain with this thing called neuroplasticity, where you can train your brain and change that wiring so that you are happier and more positive.
Broc: Nice. I, I like that. I mean, it’s three things. That’s easy enough to remember it. It’s simple, it’s practical, it’s straightforward. And I’ve never heard the phrase savoring the good before. So I really liked that. Well, let me ask you, you had mentioned that kind of the raising the vibe quiz. So first off, where can people find it and then what can they expect it to tell them?
Ellen: So they can find it at disco to raise your vibe, quiz.com. Just raise your vibe quiz or calm, it’ll pop right up. It’s totally free. And so it has these five sections that I’ve talked about in terms of the areas that I feel are really important to raise. So it’s first body, so it asks four or five questions in each of the categories.
So, you know, how’s your diet, how’s your sleep? How are you moving your body? Are you exercising? How’s your stress? And ask questions about your mind and positivity. That’s the questions about your emotions? How how’s your relationship with yourself? It asks questions about your spirit. And when we talk about spirituality, it’s really about finding purpose and meaning in your life.
You know, it’s kinda the way you feel that you’re a joyful and excited to get out of bed in the morning because they’re connected with a higher purpose and then relationships. Cause it is truly, that is. You know, we, we, there’s a lot about law of attraction, but if you’re surrounding yourself with negative people, you’ve got negative people in your life.
If you’re married to somebody who’s negative, it’s very, very hard to shift your vibe. So then the last piece is about relationships. So what we’ll do is it will ask you questions in each of those five categories. It will give you a score for all your whole vibration, and it’ll give you a score in each of those categories.
And then it gives you a little place to do a little reflection, because I think when you’re doing the quiz, it takes about two minutes. It, you know, a lot of things may come up and usually when people take the quiz, they get some ideas about things that they can start shifting right away. And there’s also an opportunity.
If you want to meet with me, get some more insight. And of course I have programs to help people, both. Short-term creating a roadmap to help you shift your vibe as well as longer-term programs, where we can shift your vibe over a period of time.
Broc: Well, when people start changing. So, you know, you start going through this and you mentioned that or others in our lives.
So they are used to us. They, they they’ve come to be used to us in a certain way. And then when we start changing ourselves and moving ourselves, I mean, that changes the relationship. Someone, you know, someone else’s showing up essentially. So how can we help? How can we help others come along with us?
Ellen: That’s a great question. Well, the first thing is we have to, it’s kind of like when you are on an airplane, you’ve got to put your oxygen mask on yourself first. Or if, you know, if somebody is going to save somebody who’s drowning, you don’t, you don’t reach in and pull them out. You use some kind of flotation device in between you and the person.
So you have to work on yourself first and your own strength. And when you do that, your vibration will attract other people. But on the flip side, what happens too, is that when you elevate your own vibe, everything that’s out of alignment leaves your life. So I’ve found, you know, when I left my marriage, my friends set change.
It was hard. Most of my friends that I had during my marriage sided with my ex-husband. So I did lose friends. My family sided with me, you know, my, my parents and siblings and things, but yeah. Things do leave your life. But then the other thing that’s curious too, is people will start to see the difference in you.
So you might have friends, coworkers, family, who start to see that, how you’re smiling more, you seem more energetic, you seem way happier. What are you doing in your life? So I think that. The people who that people will come into your life, who you can shift it, help shift and change. Cause we’re all, as you know, rom does says we’re all leading each other home.
So there’ll be people in your life who you can help change. And then there’ll be people in your life who don’t want to change. I mean, the, one of the main reasons that people don’t change is a lot of people would rather be right than happy.
Broc: Say more to that, if you would.
Ellen: Well, a lot of people up there that I know them, they’re much more interested than being right and always, you know, and not saying, you know, I’ve made a mistake, we learn through our mistakes.
And so if you’re always have to be right, and you’re not willing to admit when you. Fail. When you make a mistake, you don’t learn and grow. And there’s a lot of people who would rather be right all the time and say, you know what? I need to shift this, this isn’t working for me, who a lot of people Mo a lot of people aren’t willing to admit that they need to change or that they even want to change because they want to be right.
Like, I want to feel okay where I am right now. That’s something I see, you know, to some extent with way where people don’t want to admit. That are diet. They don’t want to admit that they need to change. They don’t want to do the work. So they just sort of ignore people, ignore problems, but people would rather ignore it or say that they’re right.
Then say, you know what? I need to really do some soul searching and make some changes in my life. If I want to be happy or how you want to be healthy.
Broc: Yeah, that that’s so, so interesting. Cause cause you think you, you, if you asked anyone, Hey, do you want to be happy? The answer would be of course, yes. Why wouldn’t I want to be happy and yet many of us are apparently making the choice that, well, yeah, happiness is good, but you know, rightness is better.
And getting bogged down in that and missing out on the happiness. So, you know, we have covered a lot today. Ellen talked about a lot, a lot of different topics, all, all, all tying back together on just really kind of elevating our midlife. What haven’t we covered?
Ellen: Wow, we did. We, we did cover a lot. I, I don’t know.
I think we’ve, we’ve covered. I would say we didn’t cover it relationship chips much, but I would say in my own life, that midlife romance is fantastic. So if you’re out there and you’re kind of like, Oh my gosh, I’m in a relationship that isn’t working for me, my partner doesn’t want to change. I don’t like the trajectory as someone who, you know, Several hundred years, a hundred days ago, I met an amazing man and I’m engaged and I’m super happy about it.
Midlife love is wonderful because you don’t have it’s much lighter. You don’t have the we’re going to have kids and where are we going to live? And you’ve, you’ve kind of worked through your stuff and if you’ve come into your own and you’re really comfortable in your own stuff, The skin, the relationships very different.
There’s not this codependency. It’s much more about, I really know myself. My partner really knows himself and we come together complementing each other and just really having a great time and supporting each other. So it’s a very different vibe. So I guess just saying that you’re thinking like, Oh my gosh, I’m not going to meet somebody and who, you know, who’s going to want me at midlife.
There’s a lot of single people. I mean the divorce rate is like 50%, so there’s lots of people out there and midlife love is wonderful. Now I’m not a romance coach myself, although I do a little bit of that with my clients, but there’s great ones out there. And so it really can be such a beautiful, exciting time in your life.
Particularly if you keep yourself healthy and well you can have a beautiful, you know, second adulthood.
Broc: Well, that seems like I think we’ve covered them. We’ve come right back to the theme of having an amazing second adulthood. So I, I love that. So Ellen, thank you so much for being on today.
This is I say, well straightforward and very practical advice and I was like that because then I can use, yeah.
Ellen: So what was your biggest takeaway from today?
Broc: My biggest takeaway, I, you know, I love the idea of savoring, the good, I really do. Because I can get I can, I can defer my, my good savoring, if that makes sense.
You know, like, ah, it’s not big enough. I won’t worry about that. Now. I’ve got other things to focus on and and I found, and I’m much better at this than I used to be, but. Still need to keep improving there that, you know, you can keep doing that and then realize that you’re really just not enjoying your life much amazing things can be happening, but you’re delaying that appreciating the good things.
Cause I gotta wait to see how this one plays out or, you know, well, I mean, that was good, but the next thing will be bigger. And so that’s what I’ll really celebrate. That’s what I’ll really appreciate my life. And you know, so just a reminder that. Yeah, it’s easy to not focus on the amazing things that are happening.
And just the way, I don’t know if it’s the way we’re wired or the way society is set up or all the things going on, we can only focus on so much at a time, but it is good to step back and pause
Ellen: and there’s, you know, if you’re alive and breathing, there’s way more going right than not. And just being alive as a gas.
It’s just amazing. When you think about the chances of you existing at all. It’s a miracle. And so I guess when you have that miracle mindset, it makes a huge difference. I’m glad that you’re going to take the savoring piece. So that’s huge. Yeah.
Broc: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. I mean, I mean, I liked the rest of it too, but I say that that phrase savoring for some reason, just really, really resonates with me.
Ellen: Awesome. And you can read Richie Hanson is the psychologist who coined that. And then the Velcro and Teflon is his too. So he’s got a great book out called Buddha’s brain, which you might want to check out, which he’s got a number of books that, where he talks about this idea of savoring, the good,
Broc: Wow. Very cool. Well, I, again, thank you so much for being on today and Oh, I didn’t even ask. I mean, we talked about the quiz, but where can people find you if they want to find out more about you?
Ellen: Thanks for asking. Just Google me just Dr. Ellen Albertson or the midlife whisper. So I’m on Instagram.
That’s how we connected on Instagram, on the midlife whisper at the midlifewhisperer.com and I’m on Facebook at Dr. Ellen’s Masterminds. If you Google me, I’ll pop up all over the place and happy to help you. If you are struggling at midlife, there is a slew of midlife coaches out there find somebody who you resonate with and that let them help you make your next chapter, your best chapter.