Midlife Confidence Lab (formerly Edge of Real)

#11. Feeling Fully Alive Again: Reclaiming Freedom, Joy, and Choice in Midlife

• Kristin Hamilton | Personal Growth Coach • Season 1 • Episode 11

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What does it really mean to feel alive again - to wake up each day knowing you have the power to choose how you show up, what you want, and who you want to be? In this episode of Edge of Real, Kristin explores the exhilarating freedom that comes when you start living life on your own terms.

From breaking old patterns to embracing your desires, this soulful conversation dives into what it means to live in full spectrum - to reconnect with your autonomy, your joy, and your sense of self after years of putting others first. Kristin shares insights on self-trust, honoring your truth, and speaking kindly to yourself as you step into the most authentic, alive version of who you are.

Whether you’re redefining your life after divorce, rediscovering your passions, or simply ready to feel fully alive again, this episode offers inspiration and grounded practices to help you live your days with more purpose, pride, and power.

🦋 Would you like help walking through these steps, or with accountability, or deeper dives into these topics? Interested in learning more about working 1:1 with me to transform your life in your rediscovery? Schedule a free Discovery call with me here: https://stan.store/MidlifeConfidenceLab

🎧 Follow Midlife Confidence Lab on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. And share this episode with a friend who you would like to help.

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📌 Leave a review, then email us a screenshot at midlifeconfidencelab@gmail.com and we will send you a beautiful free digital journal to help you work through some of your thoughts and get some clarity about what you truly want out of your life.

🎵 Theme Music: Home by Vlad Gluschenko @vladest_art — Home

License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

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Kristin:

You're listening to Edge of Real, a podcast for women rediscovering who they really are, beyond rules, roles, timelines, and expectations. I'm your host, Kristin Hamilton, and I am so glad you're here for this conversation about feeling truly alive. Hello, my friends. So I moved house over the weekend and I am still recovering. My very busy with college daughter and some absolutely amazing friends helped, and honestly, they made it happen. They had my back, and I feel so much gratitude and love. Moving sucks no matter what. And these wonderful people made it actually fun while working their tails off. I completely love my new home and I feel so abundant and just completely in love with my life. So that's really gotten me thinking a lot about what it actually means to feel alive, not just existing, but living. And I'm not talking about the adrenaline kind of alive, not the, I'm so busy, look at me doing all the things kind of alive, but the kind of aliveness that comes from being fully yourself. Where you wake up and say, I get to choose how I show up in the world and in my life today. So that's what we're going to talk about today. What does it really mean to feel alive again? To wake up every day knowing you have the power to choose how you show up, what you want, and who you want to be, what it means to live in full spectrum, to be awake and present and connected and free, to be the woman who lives her life by choice, not by habit or fear or obligation, but with intention and choice and claim to that life. So when I first started living on my own, I was terrified. I met my ex-husband my first year of college, and then I lived in the dorms for all four years, and then we got married the year after I graduated. I had never been an adult on my own until I was 43 years old. And then raising my kids on my own. Well, I know I've talked a lot about this in previous episodes about some of the things that I struggled with at that time. But both of my kids are now adults and living their own lives in their own spaces. So what I didn't expect in regards to living on my own was the depth of freedom that it would bring. Every decision from what I want to eat to what I want to spend my time doing in the evenings is now a reflection of me. Asking myself all the questions of who do I want to be? Where do I want to be? How do I want to live? What do I want to do? What do I want to eat? All the questions and decisions that show me that I am living in freedom and that my life is 100% my choice. How just incredibly alive that makes me feel. The transformation and the growth of living on my own, of exploring things that are just for me, and of following through on certain dreams that I've had for a long time that I previously had not followed through on. And that's when I fully realized I have autonomy. I get to decide how I want to show up each and every day. So some mornings I will pause before I even get out of bed and just ask myself, what's the vibe today? Do I want to feel grounded or playful or magnetic or soft? And then I embody that vibe. I choose. Because that's what being alive feels like to me. Choice. Consciously and purposefully choosing how I want to move through my day rather than reacting to it. And that is not just mindset work, that is an energetic alignment. It's living manifestation in full color and full bloom. It's being the version of me who already knows that I'm free. And I have realized that desire is a compass. When you start to reconnect with your own desires, something shifts. And I'm not talking about the ones handed to you that were actually someone else's desires, not the ones that were expected of you. Definitely not the ones you think you should have, but your true desires. The ones that sometimes you don't even let yourself want. The ones that are there when you feel good and when you let yourself dream just a little. Desire is aliveness. It's something that says, I'm still here, I still want things and I still dream. So many women I work with in midlife have forgotten how to want things for themselves. They can easily tell you what everyone else wants and needs, what their kids need for tomorrow morning, what their husband needs for his work trip next week, what their friends want, what the kid's teacher wants, what their boss wants or needs. But when I ask, what do you want? they go quiet. And when you start following your desire, something miraculous happens. Your nervous system begins to come into regulation. And it feels safe to be you again. It recognizes your alignment and feels this kind of settling in. And that's how we return to alignment by listening to what calls us and allowing ourselves to follow it. And that is following our desires. So you are listening right now, but I want you to take a moment today to get quiet and ask yourself, what do I truly desire? Not because it's practical or expected, but because it makes me feel alive. So for a really long time, I lived with a fear of disappointing people. I wanted everyone to like me, to be proud of me, to approve of what I was doing and who I was. But somewhere along the way, I realized I was disappointing myself. So now my goal every day is to make me proud, to follow through on what I say I'll do, to hold myself in integrity because I matter to me. So there's this saying that I love, and I don't even remember where I first heard it. But it's basically be such a good person that if someone said something bad about you, no one would believe it. And I love this, so I offer it to you, but I also offer you a reframe of it. I want to be such a good person that I believe in me, that I trust my own character and integrity, even when no one else is watching, because I want to be proud of myself every day. I've always had the fear of disappointing other people and letting other people down. But now I realize it's so important to me to not disappoint myself and to be proud of myself, to be the kind of person that I am proud of. And that I believe is what self-pride feels like. It's that deep aliveness that comes from being at peace with yourself. So I believe that becoming isn't only about adding layers to yourself. Sometimes it's about peeling them back. And we can add, sure, but we also want to take away, we want to unbecome the version that was, well, for me, a people pleaser that was always wondering what people thought and who was watching, and re-become the version who frankly doesn't give a shit because I am totally good with myself. And feeling alive doesn't mean that everything's perfect. In fact, the moments that I felt most awake were often the moments I was doing the hardest work, the shadow work, the healing, the uncomfortable truth-telling within myself. You have to be brave enough to ask the hard questions and really, really, truly listen to the answers within yourself. Doing the hard things to heal made me step into a new version of myself. And this in turn has given me so much freedom and joy and pleasure in myself and in my life. I've been willing to look at the dark sides of myself, at my shadows, and confront them or embrace them or work through them or banish them or even love them. Because when you face your darkness, the shame, the self-doubt, the grief, you make space for more light. Because that messiness that I went through is a part of my story. I don't want to forget about it. It's like my stretch marks and my scars. They heal and grow over and are messy, but they're stronger. And that is me. The path that you have walked matters. And what you've been through is now your wisdom. So you're not pretending it's not there. You're saying, I can hold this, I can feel this, and I can hold the light too. It's the yin and the yang. And that to me is wholeness. That is aliveness. And I've learned that the body and your nervous system knows when you're avoiding yourself. It tightens and holds on to things, it holds onto those pains for pure life. And when you finally say, okay, I'm willing to feel this, the body can exhale. If you want more on this, go back and re-listen to episode seven, where I talked about living in alignment and I talked a lot about how your nervous system works and all the kind of ins and outs of that. And I gave you some somatic practices. So when you face those shadows, this is where the energy starts to flow again. And that is the moment you come back to life. So next time you feel something heavy rise up, whether it's anger or sadness or shame or anything, pause and ask, where do I feel this in my body? And instead of resisting it, breathe into it. Let it move, let it teach you, let it then release. So one of the things that breaks my heart as a coach is when I ask women to tell me something they love about themselves, and they can't. They can tell me all the things they don't like. They can tell me a whole long list of those. And when they finally do think of one good thing about themselves, it's often in relation to someone else. I'm a good mom. I'm a good wife. I'm a good worker. I'm a good friend. And that's a beautiful place to start. That's wonderful that they can feel that within themselves. But that's not the end. And eventually it becomes: I'm a kind person, I'm creative, I'm radiant, I'm worthy just because I am. So I make it a practice not to speak unkindly to myself. Of course, the thoughts still pop up. Uh, you're not enough. You should be farther along. That was a stupid thing to say. But I don't give those thoughts space to take root or grow. I flip them around and remind myself, I am doing beautifully. I am amazing. I am actually a special snowflake. In fact, I am pretty damn special. When you love something, you treat it well. And I decided to treat myself like someone I love because I do. When you give yourself graciousness and love, it naturally spills outward. You become softer with others, you love more freely, you live more in joy. It's this continuation and it becomes this gorgeous circle. Your love for yourself, your love for others, your love for yourself, your love for others, and add in your love for life, and it makes you just a more loving person. It's about choosing yourself over and over again because by loving yourself, you exude that love and acceptance and aliveness, and everyone around you feels it. You radiate love and you feel alive. So today I want you to ask yourself: what does feeling fully alive mean to me? Where am I living small out of habit or fear? What's one small choice I can make today that reminds me this life is mine? Because this right now is your life. And if there are parts of it you are unhappy or dissatisfied with, the only one who can change that is you. Real change comes from embodiment of who you want to be. And I want you to not only understand these shifts, but actually live them. You can learn to love and trust yourself again because every moment is a chance to live it in full color. So be proud of yourself, be kind to yourself, and most importantly, make the choice to be alive with yourself. If this episode resonated, I would love to hear what part landed most for you. You can share it on Instagram and tag me at edge of rail podcast. I know that you know someone who would benefit from this conversation. So do something kind today and share this with them. So until next time, stay open, stay curious, and keep feeling into what living in full spectrum means to you. And remember, you're not lost. You're on the edge of something real. Love you. Bye-bye. If what we talked about today feels close to home, if you're tired of dimming yourself down, second guessing every decision, or feeling like you've lost track of who you really are, I want you to know you don't have to figure it out alone. This is exactly the work I do with women in my one-to-one coaching experience. Together, we talk through what's keeping you stuck, reconnect you with the truest version of yourself, and create simple, empowering steps that help you move forward with clarity, confidence, and a clear path. Knowing the steps is one thing, but actually walking them out is another. That's where coaching becomes so powerful. I'll be there to help you stay accountable, to support you when old habits try to pull you back and to keep you moving forward even when the path feels foggy. Sometimes we all need a guide, someone who can hold the mirror, remind us who we are, and walk alongside us until we're steady in that truth ourselves. If you've been listening and thinking, yes, that is what I need, I'd love to invite you to book a free discovery call with me through the link in the show notes. I'd love to meet you and walk this path of rediscovery with you. Because the edge isn't the end, it's the becoming.

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Kristin Hamilton

Host