117 Recommitting to Yourself in Midlife: A Rooted Approach to Intentions

January often arrives with loud messages about fixing, pushing, and starting over.
 This episode offers something quieter.

In this episode of Rooted in Presence, we explore what it means to recommit to yourself in midlife without pressure, urgency, or all-or-nothing thinking.

Rather than setting rigid resolutions, this is an invitation to reflect on:

• how you want to relate to your life
• what no longer wants to be carried forward
• and how intentions can guide your daily choices with compassion and clarity
  
  

We’ll gently unpack the difference between intentions, goals, habits, and presence, and why so many of the changes women struggle to “stick to” are actually skills that need time, attention, and support.

You’ll be guided through reflective questions, a simple integration practice, and a grounded way to hold your intentions without needing to perfect them.

This episode is for you if you’re longing to begin the year feeling anchored rather than driven, and ready to move forward in a way that truly fits your life.

 If you’re ready for personal guidance or would like to book your Embodied Strength Profile, you can reach me at carlykillen.com

Thanks for listening to Rooted In Presence

If you’d like to get in touch with a question about today’s episode or find out how I can support you with coaching, here’s how to reach me:
📧 Email: carlykillenpt@gmail.com
📱 Instagram: @thestrongbonescoach

Do you crave unshakable confidence in your strength from midlife and beyond? Would you love to achieve your goals without sacrificing family time or self-care?

Ready to take your strength to the next level? Start building a stronger body and healthier bones with my Strong Bones Starter Kit; your step-by-step guide to safe and effective strength training at home.
👉 Click here to learn more and access today

🌟 Stay connected and inspired with daily wellness tips on Instagram @thestrongbonescoach.
🌟 For tailored advice or personal queries, email me at carlykillenpt@gmail.com

Thank you for being here, and I look forward to supporting you on your journey to strength, health, and confidence! 💪🦴✨

Transcript

0:46

Hello and welcome back to Rooted in Presence, the second episode of 2026. And if you are joining for the first time, welcome. And of course, if you are a regular listener, welcome back. Thank you for staying with me. Now, how are you all doing this? At this point in the year? We've just about done our first week. Yay. Now, if you're feeling a little bit less, yay, and perhaps you're already feeling like you're behind or there's something you should be getting on with already, so. You might even find yourself questioning January as a whole already wondering whether you should feel more motivated, more focused, more on it by now. Well, if that is you, you're not alone, and perhaps you might be feeling this even more so if you've gone back to work this week, even though you probably feel like you could just do with, well, the rest of the month off Well. This isn't that unusual? It is still winter after all, and I hear this every year. I'm even feeling it myself. It's that quiet internal tension between I want something to be different and I don't quite know how to move yet. So this episode is for that in-between space. Not the dramatic fresh start and not the total rejection of change either, but that space, that place where something is stirring and asking to be met with a little bit more care over urgency because January. Finds us in a threshold behind us. We have the reflection of the air past and ahead of us, full of possibility, and the discomfort comes when we try to cross that threshold too fast. Culturally, as I mentioned in my last episode, we are encouraged to take that leap to make decisions, declare our intentions to act immediately. But the body doesn't always work like that, especially as we reach midlife. Change rarely arrives as a sudden burst of clarity. More often it shows up as, as a quiet noticing as we go about the work of our day-to-day lives. It brings us a sense that something doesn't quite fit anymore. Perhaps fatigue with old patterns. A desire to relate to yourself differently, and that's where I like to begin, not with pressure, but with presence. Not by asking, what should I do this year? But how do I want to be with myself as I move forward? From here, intentions become something you inhabit, not something you perform. So instead of restart energy, I want to offer recommitment energy. So less about this. Who do I need to become and more? How do I want to relate to my life from here? So let's look at intentions. The rooted in presence way. So this is the part that changes everything. It's definitely a turnaround on how I used to do things in many years past, but I like to slow things down. So let's differentiate a few things that I feel often get tangled. So intentions from my perspective are more about how you want to relate to your life, perhaps more the quality of your presence rather than the quantity of things that you were doing. Goals, on the other hand, for me. These are more things that you want to move toward. They're more directional, perhaps more tangible, quite often measurable. Now, habits, these are what supports that movement. Small actions that can make the goal a little bit more likely. And of course, we have our rituals that keep those helpful habits feel a bit more sparkly. And then we have presence, and this is how you stay connected along the way. It's what keeps you from turning your life into a performance or a punishment. So you might set an intention along the lines of meeting yourself with more honesty. You might choose to move with steadiness instead of urgency. You may prefer nourishment or punishments. Or focus on treating your body more like a home rather than a project, and then goals can sit underneath that. For example, if your intention is nourishment over punishment, a goal might be something like to build steadier energy to feel stronger. These are things that we can measure. We might decide to rate them. We might see evidence of strength in the gym as we lift heavier weights, for example, and perhaps some habits might look like a protein anchor at breakfast strength training twice a week, a five minute wind down before bed, or a mid-afternoon pause so you don't crash into chaos at the end of each day. But none of that works long term if presence isn't part of the process, because habits without presence can become another way to just control yourself. And when we focus on presence, we might ask ourselves questions like, is this supporting me today? Does this feel aligned with my values? And is this coming from a place of care or a place of fear or comparison or more shoulds. And this is more of a rooted way. And also I want to share with you a question that I think is even more powerful than goal setting and not, what should I stop doing? But what feels heavy to keep carrying, it's not just about self-improvement, it's creating space for yourself. And this hits much more deeply in midlife, doesn't it?'cause midlife has a way of making things feel intolerable. Not because you're failing, but because your system is wiser. Yes, we might have a little less estrogen onboard, which can act as a lovely buffer between what we want and what we feel we should do. But as that starts to wane, so does our patience for things that we've probably been putting up with for far too long. So you might reflect on how you've been speaking to yourself, where you might have been rushing when your body is asking for a slower pace. The times you've said yes out of habit rather than truth, and those times you've outsourced your worth to productivity or maybe even those times where you've been waiting to feel ready before you would even let yourself begin. And this matters because when we tried to pile something new onto a life that's already over full, it doesn't stick. Sometimes the most loving change you can make is not adding more. It is loosening your grip on what's been draining you. So this is where I like to remember a line from a book that I really enjoy by James Clear. Atomic habits, and he says, every action you take is a vote for who you're becoming. So that's not a once a year vote. It's a daily one. And I really enjoy this reframe. It's not a failed intention, but what am I voting for today? It's not a must or a should. It's what am I voting for today? Because recommitment doesn't look like perfection. It's an act of return when we recommit to ourselves, to our goals, our intentions, to the life that we want to live, it can look like returning to the breath after snapping at yourself, choosing that walk instead of scrolling on social media, eating in a way that supports your energy rather than feeling like strict control. And of course, being able to lean into rest when it's needed without feeling the need to justify it. And when you do need to start again, doing so without drama. And this is why I don't teach people to stay on track. I teach them how to come back again and again because that is presence. So if you have a moment, if it's safe to do so, maybe take a short pause with me here, a little noticing. So if you're able to soften your gaze or close your eyes, that might really help you here or simply continue to listen and let this land where it wants to. So taking one steady breath through your nose and a nice slow breath out, and give yourself some time with these questions. What feels worth carrying forward from last year? Perhaps something you learned a strength, you earned a truth you can trust, and taking a breath. Then ask yourself, what am I ready to loosen my grip on? Not in a forceful way. No shame or blame, just an honest question and taking a breath with that. And the last question you might want to consider. What kind of energy do I want to bring into today? Not the whole year, just today. How do I want to meet myself today? One more breath, and when you're ready, come back. I hope that supported you. This is something you can tune into at any point in the day, but I quite like a little daily practice myself. Now if you want another simple practice to integrate into your real life, there's one here that I really love. Now, often at the start of my day, I like to pull a flower card. They're really simple. They just have one word on them since they also have a little phrase. But it's super simple. It's not like going through a whole Oracle deck or anything. So if the card resonates with me, I hold it lightly. I keep it at the top of the pack. So I'm not remembering it as a rule or trying to wrangle it into my day somehow, but it sits there a bit like a thread, and I just go about my day. Normally I go live my day, but at the end of the day I have a little check-in and I just like to see and sit with that card again and think, did this show up? Did I live this phrase in any small way or did it just pass by unnoticed? And the point of this is not to have a particular outcome. It's not about making sure it happened. The outcome isn't the point. The attention is, it's a way of bringing yourself back to presence. And if you like novelty and want to really feel like you are staying with your own intentions, you might decide to write a handful of values or words on slips of paper. And it might be words like steadiness, courage, nourishment, truth, rest, play boundaries, pick whatever resonates with you, and once you've stuck them in the jar, just pull one out each morning and perhaps that's what you can return to in the evening and see how it showed up for you or how it didn't show up. Again, it's not about having a certain outcome, it's just a gentle way to. Build presence back into your day without turning your whole life into homework. So as we bring this to a close, I just want to remind you that as we move through January, just remember you don't need to change everything. You don't need to rush who you're becoming and you're allowed to let this be a season of rooting. And if you'd like support to clarify what's happening in your body, your patterns, your life, and what a grounded next step could look like, you can book in a Clarity call by my website or join me on one of my 90 minutes embodied strength profile sessions so you can know. What the next step is that you need to take something you can truly trust. So that's it for this week. So until next time, may you meet yourself with Compassion, walk with Presence. And remember, you already carry everything you need.