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This Is Perimenopause
Menopause isn’t the end, it’s just the beginning. Hosts Michelle and Mikelle are on a mission to help others be better informed than they were when they started their perimenopause journeys. The podcast is a blend of health, education, mindset, and personal growth. Michelle and Mikelle along with their guests are sharing real-life stories and expert advice to help you navigate perimenopause, menopause and beyond.
This Is Perimenopause
Turning Midlife Setbacks into Comebacks with Amy Shoenthal
Ever felt stuck in a rut, unsure how to move forward? Meet Amy Shoenthal, journalist, marketing consultant, and author of the bestselling book The Setback Cycle.
In this episode, Amy shares her personal journey and coaches us through how to turn setbacks into stepping stones.
Career challenges, relationship hurdles, or the onset of perimenopause - Amy's insights and practical advice will help you turn your setback into a comeback.
In this episode, you'll discover:
• The four phases of the setback cycle and how to use them to your advantage
• Why embracing discomfort is crucial for personal growth
• How to identify and befriend your inner critic (hello, Roz!)
• The importance of trusting your gut when something feels off
• The power of community in overcoming obstacles
• Practical exercises to gain clarity on your goals and desires
Remember, you're not stuck – you're just in transition.
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Trust your own experience. If you are struggling with something, there is a good chance someone else is too. You're not alone, and if you feel like something is off, it probably is, and don't ignore it, because I've learned at this point that ignoring physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, discomfort, ignoring it makes it worse. You want to acknowledge that what you are feeling is real, even if people around you try to gaslight you and tell you that you're making things up and you're being dramatic. You're probably not. So trust your own experience, use your voice and ask questions to get the answers that you need.
Mikelle:Welcome to. This is Perimenopause, the podcast where we delve into the transformative journey of perimenopause and beyond. I'm one of your hosts.
Michelle:Michal, and I'm your other host, Michelle and we know firsthand how confusing, overwhelming and downright lonely this phase of life can be.
Mikelle:Join us as we share real-life stories and expert advice to help you navigate this journey and advocate for your best health.
Michelle:We used to think menopause signaled an end, but really it's just the beginning.
Mikelle:Feeling overwhelmed, like you're sleepwalking through life, or just plain stuck Stuck in your marriage, career, taking care of ungrateful teens or aging parents, stuck in this changing body that you don't understand or recognize anymore, then this is the episode for you. Join us as we chat with Amy Schoenthal, the brilliant woman behind the bestseller the Setback Cycle. Amy Schoenthal is an author, journalist, marketing consultant and leadership coach. Her career has seen her collaborate with global giants like Google and Procter Gamble, and she's a prominent voice in publications such as Forbes, women, harvard Business Review and Fast Company. From motherhood penalties to perimenopausal surprises, amy's been there, done that and written a best-selling book on how to turn setbacks into stepping stones. Whether you're facing career challenges, relationship hurdles or the onset of perimenopause, amy's insights and practical tips might just be the kick in the pants you need to turn your setbacks into your greatest comeback story. We're so excited for this conversation, so let's dive in. Amy hi, thank you for joining us today.
Amy:Hi, thank you for having me.
Mikelle:We're so excited this is such a great time to be having this conversation. You know, september is a time of renewal feeling like we can get our ducks in a row and start things again, and so we're so excited to have you and this particular expertise on our show today. Awesome, maybe we'll start just with your story and the inspiration behind this book and you can tell us why we now have this great tool at our disposal.
Amy:Of course. So I've been a journalist for many years and I'm also a marketing consultant and I've worked at many agencies with many clients, so I've really been studying the habits of successful leaders for the past two decades. And when you do something enough and this is again through my work in the corporate world and through my journalism career, which have always coexisted simultaneously I just began to notice a pattern that everyone I interviewed and everyone I like worked with or observed who was fairly successful in some way, they always had some form of setback that propelled them to where they eventually landed. And I kept noticing it and I started to wonder why I kept seeing it, or if others were seeing it, or like if it was just us looking for the drama in the story, like we want the hero to fail and then come back. And I was like I don't know, I feel like it's more than that and I started researching to see if anyone had sort of covered this phenomenon that I couldn't quite put a name on yet, and I found like little bits of it here and there, but I hadn't really seen it articulated in the way. I was noticing it through all my interviews and just experience in the corporate world.
Amy:And finally, I came upon the definition of a setback, and the definition is a reversal or check in progress.
Amy:So it's when you're on a path and you're moving forward and then you're unexpectedly bumped backwards. So it doesn't always so a setback doesn't always fall into the category of failure or making a mistake or trauma, like. Those are things that those are categories we understand. But, like, a setback isn't always a mistake, it's not always your fault. You know, sometimes there are factors beyond your control or you had. You know, it's just like an unfortunate series of circumstances that led you to some sort of setback. I felt like the word setback really encompassed everything I was seeing, from the smaller setbacks that really added up to propel people to where they are today, and then obviously, the bigger, more dramatic, life-changing ones. And once I started exploring the concept of setbacks and talking to people about it and interviewing not only founders and leaders but experts and psychologists and a neuroscientist, that's when I really felt like I could come up with a framework that not only articulated what I was seeing but guided people through their own inevitable setbacks.
Michelle:I love that, and you had a story in at the beginning of the book. I believe you called it the motherhood penalty. Yes, I thought that was a fascinating story. I'd love if you could share that too, please.
Amy:Sure.
Amy:So the motherhood penalty is a term I did not coin, that I believe was Claire Kane Miller, or maybe she's the one who just wrote about it for the first time in the New York Times and I feel, like 2006 or something, it was like a long time ago and it basically the motherhood penalty is the phenomenon that mothers in the workforce experience, obviously discrimination, but also wage reductions and a lack of opportunity for promotions and advancement, whereas men, when they become parents, they're seen as even stronger and more like, more of a high performer and more worthy of a promotion because they've taken on this additional role that is seen as endearing and additive, where when a mother becomes a mother or a woman becomes a mother, the role is seen as a distraction.
Amy:And so the motherhood penalty is a term that was coined, you know, 20 somewhat years ago to describe the phenomenon and it really, I think, applies more to the loss of wages that a mother experiences. And I think applies more to the loss of wages that a mother experiences and I think it significantly decreases, like the loss of wages is more significant with every child you have. But that's what the motherhood penalty is. It exists, obviously, the concept of you know who's doing more care in the home, who's doing more of the emotional and mental and like domestic load the unpaid work has. I think that conversation has really bubbled up in the last few years and a lot of really smart people are talking about that and trying to find solutions for that and at least shining a light on, you know, recognizing that even when both parents you know in a heterosexual partnership, if both parents are working, the burden of the domestic labor and the caregiving still falls generally to the woman.
Michelle:Well, it's true, and even there I remember listening. I think it was probably on a podcast, but the woman was saying like so even if you split up the roles evenly, and your husband does a grocery shopping, and that's great and he's supportive and he's helping you, but there's still that oh wait, looking in the fridge, we're running low on mayonnaise and Molly won't eat her sandwich if there's no mayonnaise. There's all these other little bits that get to that shopping list before he can even go to the grocery store. There's been a million things that moms have had to think about and it's it weighs on our mind all the time.
Amy:Right, but that's also leadership. You're the household CEO. You're thinking of all the things before they happen. You're forecasting what's going to happen next. You're problem solving, you're project managing. Yeah, of course you can delegate, and the husband, the father, can go out and buy the mayonnaise. Sure, that's delegating, but you're essentially the household CEO.
Michelle:I love that. That's a positive spin on it, for sure.
Amy:It's true, I mean, it's absolutely true if you think about it. And so it's unfortunate that women get penalized for this. And so when I became pregnant, I was aware of all of this and I was like, okay, I am gonna just totally buck this trend and I am gonna still succeed and thrive in the workforce even though I'm having a child. And I was like very vocal about it. I was like this is gonna be fine. I work in a really supportive workplace. I did you know everyone, everyone tried their best to be as supportive as possible.
Amy:I think the problem is not a lot of people are equipped with the tools that they need to really support mothers as women, as they become mothers. You know it's like, ok, everyone's focused on the maternity leave and you know making sure that there's coverage and making sure that the job's there when they get back. You know that's like the big conversation, but the bigger conversation that isn't really happening, that that needs to happen. And the thing that happened to me was, when the mother returns, even if the job was still there, what does the job look like? Do you still have the same responsibility that you had when you left? Do you have more? Do you have less Really, what is happening and who is deciding what the returning employee is going to work on, is going to do? What kind of a return do they want? Do they want exactly the same responsibility? Do they want to ease in slowly? Do they want to like dive right in, because they're like a lot of us, like me, you're home with an infant for a couple months like you kind of want to dive back in, you want to use the part of your brain that you hadn't used in a few months, and so I think it just it needs to be a collaboration. It is really, you know, depending on the resources and the business and what's needed for the company, it should at least be a conversation of here's what we need. What can you do, what do you want to do? How can we like figure this out together?
Amy:For me, there was no conversation. It was your replacements did a great job. I had two replacements which I felt like really good about. I sought them out. I wanted really talented people. I cared deeply about my accounts. They were amazing. They jumped right in, they did a great job and when I came back, they wanted to continue the work and I feel like there could have been a bigger conversation between all of us, and my manager was basically like, let them continue.
Amy:And I was sort of like shoved in a corner and I don't. He didn't mean it, you know what I mean. He was just like thinking about the business and thinking all right, things are going well, let's just keep things going as they were. But when I returned, you know that didn't feel good, but because I was so kind of like caught off guard by it, I kept silent. And I think if I had been more vocal in that moment, or if I had recognized it myself in that moment, other people would have been like oh shoot, like we don't want that for you, let's figure this out together. But I didn't say anything. I was self-conscious, I didn't want to be a squeaky wheel or like bother anyone, and I, you know, I was worried about keeping my job. So I just like didn't say anything and I was agreeable and cooperative and all the things that we're trained to do as women.
Mikelle:I think the wording you used in the book was that you had slept, slept, walked into your own setback in the context of that scenario. Is that correct?
Amy:So when I was doing research for the book and really trying to figure out what the setback cycle could look like and again, this was inspired by the stories of other people what happened was I was interviewing a psychologist. Her name is Michelle Casarella, she's brilliant. I was talking to her about the phases. I said do you think these feel right, based on your academic experience, based on the patients that you see, do these phases feel right? And she said I feel like there's a little bit more in the beginning, when some people don't even realize they're walking into a setback and they're just sort of like floating along and like moving forward by inertia instead of by making a conscious choice. And when she said that, I was like oh, that's me, that is me. And what I realized in that moment was, yes, it was me. And she had really like unlocked that, I guess like me, identifying what my own experience was.
Amy:But as I continued doing research, I realized that that is the experience of so many people and it's not all. A lot of it is because, like me, we're afraid to speak up or rock the boat or do anything that might jeopardize our career or standing, but a lot of it is also just like comfort. We like comfort, we don't like change. And a lot of people will stay in a relationship, in a job, even if it's not serving them anymore. But unfortunately, what most people don't realize is that not making a decision is making an active decision. If you think about it, people are further away from their goal or maybe they're further away from a situation, a relationship, a different job, a different career if they continue floating along, because eventually you're going to be faced with the fact that you need to make a change. So you might as well make a change earlier. That versus later. The more you kind of coast, the harder it is to make that change. Uh, the longer you wait.
Mikelle:Well, and I think a lot of us, uh, talk from Michelle and I, if I may, michelle, you know, I think we were, I know we were, we were coasting, we were, we were going through the motions, we were living life. We you know careers, kids, family relationships, and then perimenopause kind of slammed us into a wall and you know it was a forced pause, no pun intended, to step up. Wait a minute, what is going on? But I think there's another aspect which you described which is also you can end up there and maybe you're not slammed into a wall, but like things are just not good, like you're going through the motions but it's not your best life and you I think everybody kind of knows that feeling but doesn't quite know what to do with it other than to just keep moving forward. So this book is, I think, a really powerful tool from both of those different perspectives right?
Amy:Thank you, yeah, I hope so. I really hope so, but yes, it is. Again, everything in the book is really just touching on a universal experience that we will all have in some form. Obviously it's going to be different depending on the person in the situation, but it is a universal experience, and each kind of like section of the book gently guides you through how to navigate each of the phases of the setback cycle so that you can understand what you're going through and hopefully, have the tools to work through it, as you said.
Mikelle:So maybe, before we get into the steps and the tool specifically, we can talk a little bit about, you know, thinking about some or many of our listeners who are in that crunch of life right Peak career, raising kids, maybe looking after aging parents. Symptoms are setting in. They don't really know what's going on. Trouble finding a doctor or nurse practitioner or someone who can listen and help. How do you go about recognizing you're in a setback?
Amy:Absolutely so. First of all, I want to ask you guys because I'm in the very beginning of perimenopause.
Amy:I'm almost 41 and I'm starting to have the symptoms and I just made an appointment, actually with my regular doctor, who I you know, but I'm like should I be going to her or should I be seeking out someone who specializes in this? And like, like I said, it's it's kind of like when I started writing the setback cycle or I entered into maternity leave. It's like I'm having these conversations, there's information everywhere, and yet, when it comes to navigating my own journey, like'm not sure if I'm doing the right thing and it's still very hard to find. And I live in New York City. Like if there's a doctor that specializes in menopause, she's here, but like where is she? Like I don't know. So I'm, I'm, so I have questions for you guys about that We'll get to this for sure.
Mikelle:We've got, we've got advice, suggestions.
Amy:I know Suggestions, I know you do, excellent. So that's a very specific, I guess, setback. If it is a setback, which it can be, but if you zoom out and you think of all the different types of setbacks you can have again relationships, career, physical, biological, all the things. What you want to do is almost do an audit of your day, your week, your month and like try to figure out what's going on and how you're feeling about it. So one of the exercises I have in the book, especially for the first phase of the setback cycle, which is just establish. You need to establish if you're in a setback so that you don't continue sleepwalking through it, so that you can wake yourself up. And in order to wake yourself up, I have something called the alarm clock checklist and if you go through the checklist and you answer the questions, in a certain way it's going to signal to you that you are sleepwalking through a setback and you do need to wake yourself up. And two of the questions that I ask in this exercise are what are you energized by and what are you disengaged with? Those are two of the questions that are in the alarm clock checklist and I recommend people go through it every day, or like three days a week, some regular amount of time where you are like asking yourself these questions about the day ahead of you and then do it for a month, do it for two months, do it. You know enough so that you get a good amount of data and then look back at your answers and think about how you felt on specific days, you know. Were you more energized on the days that you spent with family? Were you more disengaged on the days that you had a meeting with your boss or had to go do a presentation in front of a certain client?
Amy:Find the patterns Doesn't always have to be about people. It's more about the activities that you have on any given day and going through it and doing an audit so that, if there's something that's off, you have enough information after answering these questions that you start to realize like, oh, okay. Or or I mean like it's not just about what you're disengaged with or what you're upset about, it's about the stuff that's energizing you and thinking like, oh, how can I do more of that? Like how can I bring more of that into my day or into my overall life or world? You know what I mean and so really so much of it, so much of recognizing if you're in a setback is like really tracking your mood, and tracking you know what's happening in your life and writing it down because you can have a sense about something. But once you really really mine the data you'll, you'll be able to see it much more clearly.
Michelle:Well, and and for all of our listeners who are already have been recommended to track their cycles, this would be great Another add-on as well to see if there's changes in their cycle that are also impacting these energy levels.
Amy:I love a journal and like I have this really cool one. It has like a track your energy levels today and you can see like low to high. I guess I was like very high this isn't today, but I had like a lot of energy that day. You know, how much sleep did you get last night? What are your daily intentions? Not just your to-do list, but like what are your intentions? What do you want to? What do you want today? And then just like how do you feel? And then it.
Amy:So that's the morning, and then in the evening it says like okay, like where were moments of connection? How was today? What are you grateful for? And even though it sounds a little woo woo, it actually is so helpful to track these things the way you would track, you know, numbers on a spreadsheet for your like your business, like your, your revenue and your profits and things like that. Um, tracking your moods and tracking your energy, like your revenue and your profits and things like that. Tracking your moods and tracking your energy levels and your activities is really, really, really helpful.
Michelle:Oh, I agree, and even just the more the gratitude thing, the more you appreciate and recognize and take that pause to say this is wonderful, the more you see of that Like, the more you-. Exactly the more that you appreciate those little things and what am.
Amy:I grateful for for the last 30 days. Oh, it's this one theme that keeps coming up For me. I feel like my daughter always is coming up. I'm grateful for the afternoon I spent with my daughter and I'm just like, okay, I need to find more ways to build my business around being able to spend more time with my daughter, and that's probably the case for a lot of people. You know what I mean.
Michelle:Yeah, I love that Fabulous. Yeah, amy, this feels like a great spot to get into the four stages in your book. Can you break it down for us?
Amy:please, of course. So the four stages of the setback cycle, also called the four E's there's you start with established, which we kind of talked about. That's, if you don't have one of the big, dramatic, life-altering, earth-shattering setbacks and you have one of the more subtle ones, or you're not sure if you're in one, you need to go through a whole phase to establish it, and the alarm clock checklist is such a big part of that. So that's phase one. Phase two is embrace. So once you've named that you're in this moment, what do you do about it? When I say embrace, I don't mean enjoy, I mean embrace the reality, because what's the big saying? The only way out is through.
Amy:I hate the embrace phase, I hate it. It is the worst phase because this is where you kind of have to like, sit with your negative emotions, feel your feelings, do all the introspection, and so it's really, really hard, especially when you've just recognized that you're in a setback, whether that setback is your own fault, whether you realize you're just coasting, you're being a little lazy, you know that there's more out there for you and you want to go, you know, check it out, and you're kind of at this point where you just feel stuck. It's really hard to try to get to the bottom of why you feel that way. It's really hard. I really recommend in this phase going to other people, talking to them about how you're feeling, what you're doing. I feel like the most exercises I have are probably in the embrace phase because I personally need a lot of guidance through this phase.
Amy:And there's a part where I talk about the stress response and how some people think it's fight or flight and those are your only two options. But what really happens is you either fight, flight or freeze. And the embrace phase is where a lot of us just sort of freeze and we don't know whether to fight or flight, whether to move forward or continue on the journey. You know, continue on the journey that we're on or pivot and find somewhere else to go, like it's very hard. And so I have an exercise called thaw yourself out if you feel like you're in that freeze, and it's a series of questions that you can ask which, again, just kind of guides you through this whole introspective moment which helps get you again. We're just like collecting data. That's what we're doing. We need the information so that we can move forward. This part is really uncomfortable. But again, I have a lot of neuroscience that proves this. But it's in the discomfort where the transformation happens, so you kind of have to go through it.
Mikelle:Is this the phase where you talk about the dangers of rumination, or is that? Yep and I think I love, I think one of the tools here. Correct me if I may have this wrong, but it's named the asshole in your head. Yeah, is that in? Yeah, and oh my god, I have the. The asshole that lives in my head is epic she has a name.
Amy:Yeah, what's her name?
Mikelle:um, celeste, oh, no offense to any of the celestes out there, but wow, like so, so hard and so easy to, as you said, said we love comfort, we don't like change, right, for whatever reason, we all have this negative voice that's like hyper-programmed and so hard to, I guess, objectively look at what's going on.
Amy:Yeah, exactly.
Michelle:Well, I think, Amy, you say befriend the asshole in your head, but then know how to tell them to quiet down.
Amy:That's exactly. It's more like acknowledge that they're there, because if you just try to ignore them they'll get louder. Yeah, because the asshole in your head is really loud. But I think that's the point of me naming the chapter that and kind of saying it so bluntly in this way is that you have to remember that that inner critic, that voice in your head, that is not you, those are just thoughts.
Amy:And the reason I say you should name it and give it a personality and give it a voice and really like, get as descriptive and specific as possible about who this inner critic is that lives inside you Mine is Roz, by the way and like, if you really really identify it in a strong way, then you are more able to recognize when those thoughts come in that are just thoughts that are being spoken by your inner critic and you can more easily recognize that these are thoughts, not facts. These are thoughts. This is not your identity. This is a moment where Roz is getting loud and we're going to listen to her and see if she has anything you know useful to say, but then we're going to just recognize that this voice is coming from someone else, not from the true you. It's just like a voice in your head, and this is an exercise that a lot of psychologists recommend to really help people distinguish from the two.
Michelle:Yeah, I've done. I don't know that I have a name, but mom and dad. No, I'm just joking. Sorry, that was.
Amy:A lot of people do like. A lot of people do that.
Michelle:I'm just joking, or maybe not. Okay, embrace.
Mikelle:Embrace Super hard. Sorry, I totally derailed this thing.
Amy:No, that's okay. There's a lot. There's a lot of work that goes into embrace and it's the hardest and it's the one we need, I think, the most guidance in, to be honest, or at least that's how I need the most guidance. No, I would agree, but once you go through embrace, you get to move to phase three of the setback cycle, which is explore, and and I think explore is the most fun phase because this is where we get to play. We don't have to commit to anything. We don't have, to like, define exactly what we're going to do next. We just get to play and we get to explore, and so this is where we really want to cultivate our curiosity and try to think of, like, what more we could possibly do, whether it's, you know, something really big, like moving to a new industry or taking on a new role at work.
Amy:Or something really big like moving to a new industry or taking on a new role at work, or something really small, like just exploring a hobby and going to take a dance class, cause you like dancing when you were younger, you know, we we always think like, oh, that's such a frivolous waste of time, anything that involves play and anything that's like I believe they're called third spaces, which is a space that's not home and not work, but it is just like a place for you to enjoy yourself or be social or rely on your community or meet up with community. I feel like we've had a real loss of those third spaces because people are just so focused on home and work and we feel like we don't have time for the third space. But I think in the explore phase it is really important for you to find that third space, and one of the big. So there's the curiosity piece of the exploration, but then there's also the community piece, and relying on your community is such a big way of working through a setback. You know, think of how we, how we celebrate the biggest milestones in our career.
Amy:Or you know you celebrate a wedding, but then also think about what happens when someone dies and what happened. You know you have a funeral and then people come to your house like community gets you through everything, the highs and the lows, and so you need there's a whole chapter on community because it's such an important part, especially of the explore phase. Another part of explore is figuring out your superpower and figuring out how to merge your passion, with your strength, and we can't always see our superpowers ourselves, and the best way to really help clarify what your unique superpower is is to turn to your community to help you figure that out, to help you. You know cause they, like your friends, can see you as a superhero way more easily than you can, than you can see yourself.
Michelle:Absolutely. Yeah, I did really like that part too.
Amy:So that's phase three. And once you get through phase three and you kind of like dip your toe in a lot of different spaces and you foster curiosity and you do that learning and you really identify what your passion is, that's when you move to phase four, which is the final phase of the setback cycle and that is emerge. And emerge is glorious. It's rife with its own obstacles, for sure, because all the planning and the you know exploration and the introspection, like you've done a lot, you've spent a lot of energy working through this, through this setback whether it was a small one or a big one you're tired.
Amy:By emerge, you might be like, okay, I know what I have to do. I'm going to go start my business and quit my corporate job or I'm going to leave this relationship and like those all the best plans, you know exactly what your path forward is. You have all the clarity in the world, but actually taking that first step forward is hard, it can be really hard. Taking that first step forward is hard, it can be really hard, really, really hard. So I feel like the first part of Emerge is me acknowledging that and like preparing you for that, because it's not like, oh, you know what to do, we just move forward, at the end, like no, it's still hard. We have to go back to some of the things we didn't embrace and think about why this is so hard, what we're scared of. And then you know, once we kind of remove any remaining obstacles or step over those extra barriers, you move forward. You eventually do it. I mean, who wants to go through this whole cycle and do all this work and retreat right back to phase?
Michelle:one, although there probably is a few, like a little bit of like two steps forward, one step back. That happens, oh yeah, for sure, for sure, yeah. And you never know what life is going to throw at you. So you might be ready to jump through your fear, and then life says, oh no, I got something fun in store for you right now Totally.
Amy:And there's one thing in Emerge I recommend doing some scenario planning, like instead of just thinking, okay, this is what I'm going to do, that's plan A, and so many times none of us think past plan A, right? So I say okay to go to plan B, think it through, really play it out and then go to plan C, like, really really lay it out, so that you feel just a little more in control of the future that you're setting up for yourself.
Michelle:I love that because I feel like that's a big part, just a part of that fear is the unknown right. And so if you've got a few and I don't know if it's the worst case scenario for C, but if you've got, like okay, here's what plan A, plan B, plan C, it just eliminates the unknown. Like, okay, here's what plan A, plan B, plan C, like it just eliminates the unknown right, it's less fear, it's easier to move forward when you kind of know that you've got something in your back pocket at least for me anyway.
Amy:Even if this plan you know scenario C isn't ideal, just the exercise of mapping it out is a tool to make you feel like you have more control, and that's a great way to combat the anxiety that you have.
Michelle:Well, and it's great too, because I know some people say, well, why would you need a plan B and C Like that? Just you're setting yourself up for defeat. But no, you're saying you're getting yourself more prepared. You're getting yourself more prepared, Exactly, Exactly. I love that. It's a great way of looking at it.
Amy:It helps you take that step forward into plan A. It really does, because you're like, okay, if I fail, this is what happens and hopefully you don't have to execute plan B and C, but it's nice to have them, like you said, good to have in your back pocket. Yeah, I like that, amy. I absolutely loved the have to be exercise in the emerge section of the book. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, this is just another planning tool for you to use if you are trying to visualize your next steps, because a lot of us are like well, I don't know, what I've been doing is okay, why would I do something different? And when you think about what you're doing day to day, if it ladders up to, like, a larger vision, the have-do-be method is a way for you to like really craft that vision and decide if what you're doing every day right now is laddering up to that vision. And so it's very simple.
Amy:All you have to do is pick some future moment in time. It has to be far enough away that it's like a long-term goal. It could be a year from now, it could be five years from now and you ask yourself three questions At this future point in time. What do I want to have? Be really specific, not just like a new purse. What do I want to have? Do you want to have a house? Do you want to have I don't know like a family? Do you want to have a partner? Do you want to have independence? Do you want to have a million dollars? Like, what do you want to have In this future moment in time? What do you want to do? Like, what do you want to be doing? How do you want to be spending your time?
Amy:And B, who do you want to be? What do you want people to say? When you know someone asks, like, who is that person? You know? What is your qualifier outside of your family role and your work role? And so really, really go through this exercise and spend like a good 10, 15 minutes writing out your answers. Have do be Again, it's the same thing I've been saying just collecting information and doing a little bit of introspection and self-analysis, but with, like, a lens toward the future. It's very powerful, it's very clarifying and I would say, do it every so often, every few months, every year, every six months, something like that so that cause your answers might change. But if you do this exercise, you'll really get a sense of like okay, this is who I want to be, this is what I want to be doing in five years. Like am I working towards?
Michelle:that what I'm doing today. Is it helping me get there? That's what I loved about it, and it was great to do it like right now in September, but also I've kind of diarized it to do at the end of December. So it's I feel like that's also another great time before the new year to kind of think about like what do I want and am I taking the right steps to get there? I want to be retired with like $50 million in my bank account. So that's where we're headed, mikkel.
Mikelle:Well, good, you keep manifesting that for us, michelle. Thank you. Thank you when you were talking about Amy. Why would I want to do something different? It made me think about our listeners who are so overwhelmed right now and can't even imagine like. They know they need to do something different, but they can't imagine how they would find the time to do that or the space to do that, and so I'm wondering what advice you have for them. And part of what I'm tweaking to here is the part in the book where you talk about consistency as a superpower.
Amy:It really is. I have two answers for you. Number one is if you have a really big goal and it seems so far away that you're just so overwhelmed at the thought of doing anything to work towards it, break that big goal down into small steps. So for me, when I was working at a marketing agency, I had this big goal of running my own business. I wanted to start consulting, I wanted to work for myself and I wanted to spend. You know, I wanted to have more control of how I spent my day. So I gave myself goals every month. Like every month, I had to accomplish one thing like one month, I'm going to form my LLC. The next month, I'm going to open my business bank account and get a business credit card. Like. These are small things and I gave myself plenty of time to do it because they were such attainable goals.
Amy:And with the very limited amount of free time I had because I was working full time, being a parent, writing a book, like I couldn't really get a lot done and I wasn't trying to overwhelm myself more than I already had done so. But I knew that my eventual goal was running my business and at that moment I was fully employed and taking home a paycheck and I knew that I could spend resources. You have to pay money to form your LLC. You have to pay money to reserve a Squarespace domain and I hired a designer to help me make my website. And so I made all these investments but I focused on one thing every month and I remember the website was one of the last things that every month, and I remember like the website was one of the last things that I had and I was like, okay, I have my LLC, I have my business bank account, I have all my you know invoicing processes set up, I have my website, I have all the foundational elements of starting my business. I don't, I'm not starting from scratch elements of starting my business. I don't, I'm not starting from scratch.
Amy:And eventually and I was, you know, planning to do this at some point eventually I was laid off and I had all this ready. You know what I mean. Two months after I was laid off, I got two big clients and I was working again. You know what I mean. So it's I really, really planned ahead and that was me kind of creating my own backup plan, because I think I knew I would probably eventually get laid off Because remember I was I didn't have as much responsibility after maternity leave. So I was like, okay, I'm getting paid this big salary but I'm not doing a whole lot of work. I feel like the math is off here and I was trying to like get more business and do more stuff, but I knew this was eventually going to be the reality and so I planned for it and there it was when I got laid off. So it's a great story.
Mikelle:So, amy, talking about how you navigated that career transition and you had the foresight and the willingness to understand or accept what was probably going to happen, many of our listeners, I think, are considering career transitions right. They're in that phase of life where that's often something that comes up. How would you recommend our listeners use the setback cycle to start navigating that process? Let's just assume they're right at the beginning and not quite sure. What are a few key things that you would recommend?
Amy:If you have a copy of the book, flip to the back and go start filling out the exercises. I have created a workbook for you to use. A lot of people know they need a change but they don't know exactly what they wanna do, and a lot of the exercises will help you get clarity on what you wanna do. That's one of the biggest takeaways of the setback cycle to use what you've learned and to use your setback to give you clarity on your path forward. And if you go through the workbook at the end and you fill out that, you really take time to fill out these exercises and some of them, yes, you'll want to incorporate into your daily or every couple of days journaling habits. You want to do that to get the clarity on how to move forward and what to do next, even the piece of advice I gave on just slowly setting the foundation for what you need.
Amy:You have to know what you're working towards before you start taking those steps. I had clarity on what I wanted and I wasn't sure if or when it was going to happen, but I felt like I could spend a few minutes a day, a little bit of effort here and there. I could carve that out of my busy life to start plotting the foundation of what I thought I might want to do, and, lo and behold, it became my safety net and it's what I'm doing today. So you usually know what you want, and this is just a way to really like give you the clarity you need and also like the permission you need to move forward.
Mikelle:Yeah, I think that's going to be an effective tool for a lot of people to also navigate perimenopause. So, whether you're just starting out, like yourself, and unsure what the steps are, we have a recommended 10 steps that we can share with you. But I think also for listeners who are highly symptomatic and really struggling and they don't know where to turn to going through this process can be really beneficial. Also, I think there's something magical about giving yourself the grace to understand okay, I'm going to try to get a doctor, but it might not work on the first go and reframing your thinking in this setback cycle manner just gives everyone the ability, I think, to be more optimistic or more persistent than they would be otherwise.
Amy:And more patient. Yeah, it's not fun to have to be patient, but I think, knowing that you might have to go to more than one doctor, even like I said at the beginning, you know I scheduled my doctor's appointment to start talking about what I can do at the beginning of this perimenopause journey. You know, this is the woman who delivered my baby. I don't know if she's the right person. I love her, I adore her. I don't know, and so I'm like going in with that mentality of like this is step one. It's probably not step, you know the end.
Mikelle:Yeah, there's going to probably be more work on your part, and that's okay.
Amy:That's right and I'm going to take my time and I'm and I want to say like I feel, like I'm getting in front of it from the beginning of this journey, like I've written so much about menopause and perimenopause and I've started having conversations with people who are around my age, like early forties, and are starting to have symptoms, where everyone's like no, it's too early for menopause it's too early, and I'm like I don't think it is. I mean, it's like yes, like menopause, sure, but not peri. Like we're at the beginning, beginning. We're going to be in this space for seven, eight years, but let's see what we can do. Let's see what we can do to make it a little more comfortable. And why not start at the beginning? I made one doctor's appointment, that's all I did.
Michelle:Well, that's amazing. It's a great first step.
Amy:I don't know what happens next, but I'm going to figure it out now instead of waiting for things to get really bad that, like you said, like so many listeners, it really interferes with your day, your life. I'm in the information collecting journey. I'm going to go to her. I'm going to say here are my symptoms, here's what I'm dealing with. I know what this is. I know it's getting worse. What do I do? I love it If I get answers. I get answers. If I have to go somewhere else to get different answers, I will.
Mikelle:Amazing, you're way ahead of the game.
Michelle:Amy, as we're wrapping up, what is the one thing you would love every woman who's stuck in a rut and struggling to find a way forward? What would you like them to know?
Amy:Trust your own experience. If you are struggling with something, there is a good chance someone else is too. You're not alone and if you feel like something is off, it probably is and don't ignore it. I have made that mistake far more times than I can count. I've made that mistake in really big ways not using my voice, not trusting that my own experience was real, thinking I was being too dramatic, thinking that if I vocalized my concerns I would be seen as difficult. Lo and behold, had I voiced my concerns earlier, I think I'd be in a different place.
Amy:And so when I say things like journal to figure out where you are today, so that you can kind of like get a head start on where you need to go, maybe the fact that I'm taking this moment in time that I recognize as a natural phase of my own biology. But I'm trying to get ahead of it. It's because I'm trusting my experience. I know what's happening. I'm not ignoring it because I've learned at this point that ignoring physical symptoms, emotional symptoms, discomfort, ignoring it makes it worse. Kicking the can down the road makes it worse. You want to get ahead of it. You want to acknowledge that what you are feeling is real, even if people around you try to gaslight you and tell you that you're making things up and you're being dramatic, you're probably not, so trust your own experience. Use your voice and ask questions to get the answers that you need, that's powerful.
Michelle:Thank you, my gosh, thank you.
Mikelle:Thank you, amy. It's been lovely to spend this time with you and we love the book. It is such a great tool and resource and it's and it's what what's. One of the many things that's so great about it is you can pick up one small thing. You don't have to do everything in the book or go through. You know all of the steps and the process, so it's really easy to start. To just start, yeah.
Amy:You can totally read this book out of order. Go to the part that you feel like you need most.
Michelle:I kind of went right to the exercises. I had a weekend alone and I just went like I'm just going to dive in here for a bit and spend some time. It was amazing.
Amy:Yeah, I know a business owner who said I'm going to take the questions at the back of the book and I'm going to use them to make my business plan. Like she said, I'm going to use the setback cycle like for as my business, not as me as a person. And she did that and that was like her planning tool. So I think people can really take it and use it for whatever you need.
Michelle:That's cool. I love that. Thanks, amy, anytime. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for listening to the show. If you like what you hear, please take a moment to rate and subscribe to our podcast. When you do this, it helps to raise our podcast profile so more women can find us and get a little better understanding of what to expect in perimenopause.
Mikelle:We also read all the reviews the good, the bad and the ugly to help us continuously improve our show. We would love to hear from you. You can connect with us through the podcast, on social media or through our website. Our information, as well as links and details from our conversation today, can be found in the show notes. This podcast is for general information only. It's designed to educate, inspire and support you on your personal journey through perimenopause. The information and opinions on this podcast are not intended to be a substitution for primary care diagnosis or treatment. The information on this podcast does not replace professional healthcare advice. The use of the information discussed is at the sole discretion of the listener. If you are suffering from symptoms or have questions, please consult a qualified healthcare practitioner.
