Ep 523: Midlife crisis or an awakening?

Is it a midlife crisis, or are you awakening to your true self? In this episode, we explore the surprising link between abandoning activities that bring you joy and the onset of chronic illness. We’ll dive into common misconceptions about the drive to shake up your life to find happiness, and I’ll offer actionable tips to sidestep the pitfalls of fear, procrastination, and external validation.

Resources From The Show:

• Visit Dr. Jannine Krause’s Website for more insights on health and wellness.

Tune in to embrace the awakening, avoid common pitfalls, and rediscover your joy in midlife!

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Podcast Transcript

2:07 – Repetitive conditions

3:26 – Midlife awakening

10:00 – Fears

13:08 – The best prescription 

14:40 – Talking yourself out of things

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[Preview] If there were no rules, if there were no amount of limitation financially, what would you

do to get you to feel alive?

I mean that deep, vibrant aliveness.

What would you do to bring yourself back alive again?

What kind of things would you do to get that adrenaline going or just bring up great amounts

What would you do?

Welcome to the HealthFix Podcast, where health junkies get their weekly fix of tips, tools,

and techniques to have limitless energy, sharp minds, and fit, physiques for life.

[Intro] Hey, Health Junkies.

On this episode of The Health Fix Podcast, you get me, Dr. Jannine Krause.

And in today’s podcast, we’re going to be talking about the midlife crisis, or as I like

to call it the midlife awakening. Now I’m seeing it in my own self, I’m seeing it in my clients,

and I think it has something to do with hormone shifts. But I also think there is a big

thing that that that all of us come to realize at some point. And it’s, am I doing all the things

that bring me joy. Now, midlife crisis has been given kind of a bad rap because if you

look at the movies, you see the guy, which usually don’t see women having midlife crisis

is, but you see the guy who goes and gets the sports car and then he leaves his wife

and he goes for the younger gal that’s like 20 years younger than that. Now, there’s a

whole lot wrapped up in that. But the reason I bring that example up is because it’s what we’ve

been conditioned to think about what happens midlife when we actually want to do the things

we want to do or we want to get back to the things that brought us joy. Or we want to make sure that

we have lived out the dream, right? Now, when I look at chronic health conditions that do not resolve

or just repetitive conditions. They keep coming back. They’ll go away, but they come back.

One of the hallmarks of them is looking at when did you stop doing something that brought you joy

and how close to the timeframe of when you got sick. A lot of times within the year of someone

getting sick or having their conditions start, there was some significant either health stressor

or loss of a person or loss of something or something was left behind. Meaning maybe you got

busy at work and you left behind your daily walks or your dog passed and you didn’t get

outside as much. There’s so many different ways to look at this and I really highly, highly recommend

taking a look back at. If you’ve got an agging symptom and you’re like, “Man, I cannot get rid

of this thing,” when did it show up? And what were you doing consistently before it showed up that

that you stop doing.

Sometimes this takes some questioning.

And so throughout this podcast,

I’m gonna go through it a little bit as to

what you could be questioning yourself about.

Now my husband and I had a lovely conversation

this last weekend about midlife crisis,

aka awakening.

My husband and I are very active people.

We met in Colorado.

We kind of kick ourselves in the butt for leaving there,

but we have had a beautiful journey

of going to Tacoma and meeting such lovely people

to the point where I can’t give up my practice there

because they are the best people ever.

Now here’s the thing.

What my husband brought up was kind of a thing

that I hear in my clients too,

is this I need something to make me feel alive.

I need something just some hobby, some experience,

a lot of people go skydiving.

A lot of people will start biking or skiing

things of that nature. Some people get the sports car and drive fast. Some people go to

different places to drive Indy cars to test them out, just to get that rush. Whatever it may be,

something that’s going to make you feel alive, there’s nothing wrong with that. And I don’t think

we need to call it a midlife crisis. I think we’re provoked by this because maybe our hormones are

feeling like they’re going down a little bit. Maybe our DHEA, which goes up when we’re stressed,

or we need more DHEA boosted, we need to challenge our nervous system in a good way,

in a happy way, in a happy stress way. I don’t know. The point is, is you want to be thinking about,

okay, what is it that brings you joy? What is it that keeps you feeling alive? And in my husband’s

case, I’m going to use his story. I’ll probably weave in a little bit of mine, but you guys already

heard mine. So his is that he loves skiing loves the adrenaline rush.

Before we left Colorado, he was mountain bike racing. He had an

accident, which took him out of being able to compete as a

pro mountain biker. So now he’s looking for that rush, right?

And we talk about going skiing in Colorado, we talked about going

skiing when we even lived in Wisconsin, when we lived in

Washington, but traffic got in the way life got in the way. So I

I want you to ponder like, okay, do you have these ideas?

Do you have these things you’re interested in,

but things are getting in the way, whether it’s work,

whether it’s kids, whether it’s other commitments?

And then you kind of push it off because you’re like,

it’s just not convenient.

So my husband said to me,

well, I figured out something that was convenient.

So I won’t push it away.

Our backyard is a cornfield.

It’s very large.

While we don’t own our backyard,

our neighbor has said we could ski back there,

we could do whatever.

like, well, I could kite ski back there. He’s kite boarded before. So I’m like, cool. And then he

was like, but what if I get hurt? So here comes that fear, right? We start off with the idea.

And then we think about, well, it’s just not convenient right now. We can almost talk ourselves

out of these things. And then he goes, but what if I get hurt? I’m like, so what if you get hurt?

You’ve done hurt pretty significantly before.

I mean, here’s the thing.

Are you happy doing it?

Yeah?

Are you… is the idea of it thrilling to you?

Yeah?

Then freaking do it.

I mean, I’m a daughter of a race car driver.

My dad, he knew the risks.

I mean, he was racing before they had roll cages, right?

People died in the ’50s when you were racing.

It’s not like what it is today.

It’s so dialed in today and people still die.

But my dad loved those rushes, right?

And he was like, “Screw the fear.

I’m doing this anyway.”

And he still raced into his 70s.

Talk about just doing it, right?

Just doing things to the T.

Now, when did he start getting sick

when he left some of that stuff go

when he let go of his racing crew?

So that’s pretty significant.

Now my husband,

had the injury, now where he’s recovered, and he just wasn’t feeling himself.

He was feeling down, kind of depressed.

In fact, I would say he would agree that he was depressed.

And now that he’s got this idea, he’s kind of like, “I want to try this, please do it.”

But we have fears, right?

We have fears getting hurt, but we have fears of what will other people say.

Say you want to buy a fancy sports car, or you want to buy a Corvette or whatever it may

be.

What are people going to say?

Who cares? Who cares?

Because this midlife awakening is you, your soul, your body, saying, “I need more.”

And I think we hold ourselves back from that more.

For fears, for convenience, and then last but not least, waiting for the right time.

This is a biggie.

And I know I’m guilty of this one.

I’m guilty of this one.

It took me 17 years to sail.

I just sailed this last summer.

It was the most amazing thing ever.

I can’t tell you how cool the adrenaline rush is.

When that boat’s keeled over to the side,

it feels like your foot’s going to dip into the water

as you’re just cutting through the water

and the winds got you going.

It’s awesome.

But I waited 17 years to do it

because I was like, “Oh, time’s not right.

Oh, I don’t have enough time to commit to it.”

Now I’m like, I will do anything to say.

I want you guys to have that same kind of feeling.

I want you to be thinking about how good is this for your health.

I’m not going to lie.

I prior to committing to sailing, I was starting to feel a little bit like

my life, you know, I love Wisconsin, but it’s not Colorado.

It’s not Washington state.

If you’ve ever been to either one of them, they’re beautiful, incredible states,

especially in the mountainous area.

And Wisconsin has a lot of corn fields and it’s flat.

Well, it’s not entirely true.

We do have some hills.

But the point is, is depending on your lifestyle and what you’re looking for,

you might have hit a rut.

Let’s say I was in a rut.

Okay.

Let.

Yes, I was.

So how does this tie in to midlife crisis?

How does this tie into midlife awakening?

I’m 46 years old at the time of this recording.

I’m thinking, OK, I’ve got four years and I’m gonna be 50.

I do want to live over 100.

So OK, I’m not quite at midlife maybe.

But I’ve got these things.

I’ve got this drive.

I’ve got this like inner knowing that I want something more.

I want to do something different.

Do you have that?

Are you feeling that?

Feeling that and not taking action on it can be hard on you.

And you might be thinking the fears, right?

Like what will people say of my dreams?

What will people say about X, Y, and Z, don’t tell them?

Don’t tell them, just do it.

Because if you tell them they’re going to create more fear and

move all the way for this and wait for that in your head.

My husband kept saying, well, wait till we can we can do the kite

skiing together.

I’m like, I don’t want to do you do it.

I’ll watch you.

Maybe I’ll get inspired, but I want to sail.

Right? So it’s thinking about these things.

And here’s the other thing, just saying that.

You don’t have to do what your partner wants to do.

You can support each other in it.

He and I can ski downhill together.

There’s compatible where we can do all the other things.

He can kite ski.

I will cross-country ski and watch and be happy as a clam.

But I think that’s another issue.

Like you sometimes feel like you have to do what your partner wants to do.

And no.

This is your own joy.

And maybe I’ll have a podcast next year where I said I tried the kite skiing and I loved it.

Maybe I will.

But you don’t have to.

That’s what I’m trying to say.

I think too many couples think they have to do things together.

Like they both take up golfing.

And maybe one doesn’t really love the golfing.

I mean, I’ve kind of heard the story before in my office.

And say the wife doesn’t love golfing.

The husband does and she wants to do something different.

But she feels the fear to tell him, I don’t really like golfing.

I want to do something different.

What does this do to your health?

This can be very constricting, right?

And I talk a lot about circulation.

What opens up our circulation?

Doing things we love.

Because the Chinese medicine theories are

if you don’t do something you love, you’re not happy.

It’s going to constrict.

Your body’s going to constrict.

Why? Because fight our flight.

When we’re in fight or flight,

because we are not happy, we’re going to tense up.

We’re going to see something that doesn’t make us happy as a threat.

I don’t want that for you.

you don’t want that for yourself.

And as I look at the trajectory of how people get sick,

I’m clearly seeing the connections to when you’re doing

something you don’t want to do for long, long periods of time,

when you’re not living up to the person you want to be,

and when you let go of something that brought you joy,

there tends to be a trajectory of illness happening

around that timeframe or maybe a year or two after.

So if nothing else, I hope that this podcast

has you thinking about what kind of things

have I had on say my bucket list or my list

or what kind of things have I had

that I wanted to get back to and I haven’t yet.

And when did you leave these things before

if you were doing them before?

And is it connected to any chronic issue

that you may have maybe?

I have found hands down the best prescription that I’ve ever given anyone out there is to

play and have fun and connect back with the things they want to do.

Now maybe you might be thinking, well, Doc, I can’t go back to playing like I used to.

Maybe there’s an injury that’s significant.

My husband had a very serious injury with his leg and it was hard to recover from mountain

bike racing.

I bet for him, if I would have said this to him, like, “Hey, let’s just get you back

on the bike.

Let’s just let’s get you going,” you know, to try to help with the pain and things of that

nature.

He probably would have been like, “Yeah, I mean, I tried and he did, but if I could have

kept forcing it, that was not the way to go.”

He had to find other things that gave him the same adrenaline rush.

Thank goodness we have skiing.

Thank goodness there’s other things.

But what my point is here is I want you to be thinking about this.

Maybe life’s trajectory has got you where you can’t do certain things.

But what else could you find that would be similar and give you a rush?

And what could you explore and what are you thinking about?

are there are things in your mind right now that you’re like, I really wish I could do that. Oh, I really

wish that this could happen. But you have fears, right? You’re going to try to talk yourself out of it. And

like I said, if you’ve told anyone else, their fears are going to get stuck in your head too. Two, you might be

thinking about convenience. It’s really hard to get up to, you know, for me, my next one

is heli skiing. It’s really kind of hard to get up to British Columbia. It takes time.

Money, effort. It’s not convenient. I’ll wait a little longer, which is the waiting. I’ll

put it off. But what could you do instead? Like I understand like heli skiing is not cheap.

What could you do instead that was similar?

Could you skin up a mountain?

Could you get a snowmobile?

Yeah, you could do a lot of other things to get that same rush.

Now I realize that not everybody who listens to this podcast is a skier, but, and is not

going to be thinking like me in terms of these kind of things.

But the point is, is how could you think outside of the box to do something that you

want to do?

What could you do?

That’s your midlife awakening look like.

I challenge you to journal on it a little bit.

And of course I strategically put this podcast

right after a holiday because, well,

you might be driving, you might have some free time right now

and you might be thinking, what could I do?

What kind of things could I do to bring me joy?

Have me feeling alive,

just feeling my body again, feeling in the moment,

feeling present.

What kind of things might help you come alive?

Now, I hope you got to thinking about these things.

And I really hope that this podcast inspires you

to take some action or at least dabble in something

to help you come alive for your midlife awakening.

I’d love to hear what kind of things that you came up with.

By all means, hit me up, send me a message.

You can always do that at info@doctor spelled out j-k-r-a-u-s-e.com.

I’d love to hear what’s going on.

I do check all my emails and respond.

So please share what may have come up

from this podcast.

I’d love to hear from you guys.

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Have a great day. Whatever you’re doing. [Outro] Hey fellow health junkie. Thanks for listening

to the Health Fix Podcast. If you enjoy tuning in, please help support me to get the word

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again for listening.

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