Midlife Confidence Lab (formerly Edge of Real)

#14. Big News: Edge of Real is becoming Midlife Confidence Lab

Kristin Hamilton | Personal Growth Coach Season 1 Episode 14

Today we share a decisive shift - Edge of Real is becoming Midlife Confidence Lab - to best support women in a midlife transformation to move from self-reflection to embodied, practical confidence. The heart stays the same: honest stories, truth-telling, and those moments of knowing you are seen.

We walk through the why behind the rename and how it helps the right listeners find us. Midlife signals who we serve. Confidence names the skill most women ask for. Lab sets the tone: low-risk tests, iterative learning, and real-world tools for decision-making when certainty is scarce. You’ll hear how growth in coaching and speaking opened new doors, why performative confidence falls flat, and what durable self-trust looks like when careers shift, kids launch, relationships evolve, and your identity asks for a roomier definition.

Expect continuity where it matters - same host, same Tuesday cadence, same feed - and upgrades where we collectively desire more. We outline what’s changing with the title and cover art, why past episodes remain intact, and how our content will go deeper into the how: rebuilding self-trust after doubt, choosing well when fear is loud, and expanding your comfort zone instead of abandoning it. You’ll get fresh journal prompts and decide on one bold, doable action to schedule this week, plus a clear invitation to stop waiting for perfect and to start before you know the endgame.

If the idea of claiming your voice and acting on your inner knowing resonates, press play and join us in the Lab. Your next experiment starts now.

🦋 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.

Find me on Instagram @MidlifeConfidenceLab

📌 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. Today I have something a little different to share with you. If you've been with me for a while, you know that Edge of Real has always been about rediscovery, waking up in midlife, peeling back the layers of shoulds and finding your way back to who you really are. And I want to start by saying this: that message isn't going anywhere, but it is evolving. This is an exciting day for me. We are going to be shifting the edge of Real Podcast just a little bit, but I think in a way that is absolutely the best next step for this show. Lately, I have been feeling this pull to move from reflection into embodiment, from asking, who am I? to declaring this is who I am. So I am following that nudge. Edge of Real is becoming Midlife Confidence Lab. So what that's going to look like is this. Starting next week in your podcast feed, you will not see the title Edge of Real. You will see the title Midlife Confidence Lab. When I started Edge of Real, it was all about peeling back the illusions, the paper dolls, the performative layers, the people pleasing, the questioning. And that's still part of the work. But now the women I talk to, and honestly, the woman I've become are ready for more. We're ready for confidence that's not performative. Confidence is not about faking it, but about trusting ourselves. That's what Midlife Confidence Lab is: a space for experimentation, evolution, and embodying confidence. I am really excited about this. And I'm going to talk through here in this episode what this is going to look like, what you can expect, and also about how we got here, what I've learned, and how I came to this decision. First of all, let's talk about why this pivot. Why have I made this choice? I have grown so much in the time since I first conceived of this podcast. And I know from all of the DMs and the comments and the emails that I get from listeners that you all are growing as well. And I feel like we're all ready to take the next step. Even if you're a new listener or just starting to listen to the show, or if you're just catching this perhaps after the change is already made, I still believe that everyone is ready to evolve in a time that is comfortable for them. And I want to be there to help you through that evolution. All of the episodes of Edge of Reel will still be there. They aren't going anywhere, and you can still go back and listen or relisten. But I want this podcast to be able to reflect my growth and your growth. And I want to be able to serve you where you're at. I am so grateful for you, and I'm so grateful for the work that we've already done together thus far. And I'm so excited for this expansion for myself and for you. I'm excited to be able to serve you and work with you in the most expansive ways. And I think this is really going to speak to that. So, why the name Midlife Confidence Lab? I want to be sure that we are reaching the audience I feel I can be the most helpful with. So I felt that it was important to have midlife in the title. This way, women who are seeking the type of help and conversations we have in this podcast will be able to find us more easily. Confidence is one of the top items that people come to me feeling they are lacking. So while confidence will by no means be the only topic we discuss, I do feel that it's one of the main pillars within my coaching practice, my expertise, and this podcast. And the lab part, I believe, covers the idea that all of life is experimentation and growth and success and failure all rolled into one. And what better place to do that than in a lab? There are women who I want to be able to share this information and these stories with, but they're not finding our community here because it hasn't been clear from the title what it is we discuss here. As I'm learning the reach and the impact of the stories and the information that I'm sharing here, I'm seeing the importance of expanding the information even further so as to be able to expand the reach and impact of what we are doing in our community here. When I started this podcast a few months back, I feel like I was limited in what I even knew. And the expansion and growth that I've seen, both personally and within my coaching practice, have grown in ways that I couldn't even have conceived of six months ago. There are things that I'm doing, opportunities that I'm getting that I didn't even know would be possible for me, or that I would be in this place just a few months later. And it's really important to me to honor that growth, to honor what I'm capable of, so that I can continue to go do the big things that I was meant to do. And so I can model that and bring my knowledge and experiences forward to your lives to help promote your growth and expansion as well. So you can continue to have the support and guidance that I can provide while you go do the big things that you were meant to do. So what's changing? So the show title is going to change. Again, we are now becoming Midlife Confidence Lab. So when you come to this podcast feed, this very same podcast feed, starting with next week's episode on Tuesday, November 18th, 2025, you will see that it's now a podcast called Midlife Confidence Lab. I will still be releasing episodes on Tuesday mornings. And like I said, all of the past episodes will still be there. But that title is going to change just because that's how the technology works. If I change the title moving forward, it retroactively changes the title of past episodes. The cover picture will also be changing. So it will look entirely different. But please rest assured that the vibe and the content of the content, the meat of the content, will continue to be aligned with how it's always been. And again, this cover art will be changing for all the past episodes. If you listen to say episode five of the Edge of Real podcast, even though the title will now be Midlife Confidence Lab and the cover will look different, that episode will be exactly the same episode that you know. But what I really want you to know is the voice, the heart, the mission, it's all still here. We're just stepping into the next phase together. I am so excited about continuing to create the same content in the same format, but to add to it that level of expansion and experimentation that feels a step above. So what is not changing? The first thing that is not changing is me. I am still the host. I am still putting together the content for each episode. I am still committed to being as real, honest, inspiring, educational, and motivating as I have always been. You'll still hear everything you love about Edge of Real. The stories, the thought-provoking questions, the truth-telling, the moments of, oh shit, that's me too. But now we'll go a step further into the how. How to rebuild self-trust after years of self-doubt, how to make decisions when your confidence feels shaky, how to create joy and aliveness again, not by stepping out of your comfort zone, but by expanding it. How to find your courage to change even when no one else understands why you're doing it. Because confidence, real confidence, is about being willing, willing to listen to yourself, willing to honor what you know, willing to keep showing up, even when you don't have it all figured out yet. Another thing that's not changing is where you're gonna come to listen. You're still gonna come right here to this same podcast feed. If you follow this podcast, Midlife Confidence Lab will still pop up in your feed. In fact, if you don't follow, go ahead and click subscribe or follow right now so that it will just automatically show up for you and you won't have to search for it at all. When you open up the podcast, there will usually be either a check mark or something that says follow or subscribe at the top. Go ahead and tap that now so that this will always just show up for you. Another thing that's not changing is that this will still be confident primarily for midlife women. So I'm going to assume that it will still be entirely applicable to you. One other important thing that I want to discuss a little bit here is that when I started this podcast a few months ago, I didn't know exactly where it was going. I didn't know where it would take me. And honestly, I still don't. I assume we're just going to continue to grow and that my coaching practice will continue to grow, and that my speaking engagements will continue to grow, and that my knowledge and the way that I'm able to share that with women will continue to grow. I guess what I'm trying to say is that you don't always have to know where you're going in order to start. Sometimes just taking a huge bold step without knowing exactly where you're going to end up is the most incredible thing you can do for your life and your expansion. So you don't have to know where you're going in order to start. When you're making a change or a shift or doing something new, it's okay to be bold without knowledge of what the end result will be, or even necessarily what you want the end result to be. When I started this podcast, I knew I wanted it to be about women. I knew I wanted it to be about women in midlife, women who have gone through changes and have been through things in their lives and are strong and capable and perhaps feel like they don't know themselves anymore. I knew that I wanted to be there for and with these women. I knew that I wanted to be real and to show women that it's okay to be visible, to be authentic and to be vulnerable, to be bold, and to essentially reject the status quo. And as I've done that work, so many things have come my way that have quite frankly blown my mind. I had no idea the growth, expansion, and opportunities that I was opening up for myself by deciding to start the Edge of Real podcast. My capacity to see what is possible for me has completely exploded. I gave myself permission to just try something out. And I urge you strongly to give yourself that same permission. You have no idea where it might take you and how you can change your world dramatically. There are so many things that have come my way that I didn't even know to hope for when I started just a few months ago. Not that I didn't have dreams or thoughts floating in the back of my mind, but I could never, truly never have conceived that it would take me to where I am now. So let yourself take action, even if you don't know what the outcome will be in a year or six months or even three months. Let yourself take action that isn't perfect. Let yourself take action that you might need to drastically pivot on in three months' time. It's okay. Let yourself listen inside and give yourself permission to follow through on actions, even if you know you can't execute it perfectly at this exact time. It's okay to figure it out as you go. It's okay to start a podcast with a name that you think is really pretty cool, and then change the name and the direction a few months later. It's okay to be imperfect. Evolving this podcast to go more into expansion and experimentation with taking action toward creating a better life through Midlife Competence Lab will expand my ability to be working with the women who are doing the things where I want to be helping. It puts me in a better position to be in the spaces where I want to be leading trainings and speaking and offering my services. And that's really essential for me and for my work and my level of joy within the work that I do. I also have learned throughout the last couple months to follow my intuition even more than I already did. There are so many times throughout the last several months that I have really gotten quiet and listened within and followed my intuition, and that has served me so, so well to really and truly trust myself. I want you to know that you know. Give yourself permission to follow that knowing that you feel within yourself. I really want you to experience the impact of that. And the more you do, the louder that intuition will become. And it will really help with decision making and action taking. You already know what the next right step is. And it's so easy to just ask a bunch of people and to get other people's advice and to see what other people are doing and follow what other people say or do. But that's the easy way out. That's the default mode. That's staying small. And we don't play that game anymore. You know how much I believe in having guides in your life. It's an entirely empowering thing to have those guides while you also trust yourself and what you know. Thank you for allowing me to explain my reasoning and to share my excitement over my expansion with you. Now, I want you to still feel, even with this kind of different episode, like you've gotten that active participation and action steps that you've come to know from my episodes to help you expand and move forward and grow. So our journal prompts this week are number one, what are some things you've learned about yourself through listening to the episodes in this podcast? Number two, what are some things that you have put into action as a result of things you've heard on this podcast? Number three, what are some things you want to put into action but haven't taken that step yet? When are you gonna do that? And how will you keep yourself accountable for doing that? And I would love for you to reach out and tell me some of your answers to these questions. So the action step for all of us is to find one big thing that we've been thinking about that we know will provide us growth and expansion and do it. I want you to know, and I hope you don't take this lightly because I most definitely don't. I want you to know that I am so deeply honored to be in your ear every week. I hope you know that when I sit down to record each episode, I am thinking about speaking to one person. I'm thinking about speaking to you. You are the person I think about. I think about my voice being in your ear and my words being in your head. I think about what I want to give you and share with you. And I take that responsibility very, very seriously. My desire to bring value to your life is immense. So thank you for making me a part of your life, just as you have become a part of mine. I am forever thinking about what I can bring to you and what I can create next for you. Please continue to share the show with all of the women in your life. Our community has grown to include almost 20 different countries and nearly every state in the US already. That just blows my mind. Thank you to everyone who has reached out to me. I really, really look forward to spending time with you each week. I appreciate you and I wildly adore you. So until next week, please remember to start, even if it's imperfectly, to allow yourself to continue to expand, and that you are strong and capable and powerful. 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 buggy. 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