The Courageous Middle Podcast

I wonder how often you stop to ask yourself whether what mattered most to you 25 or 30 years ago still matters today. You've lived a lot of life since then. Maybe it's time to check. In this episode, we talk about your values, without a list and without hunting for the perfect word. I share what freedom means to me and why it took me a decade to define it. We look at how values can change over the...

Most of us can name what we'd change about ourselves in a few seconds. How often do we stop and feel grateful for who we are? Lisa shares a personal story about her legs and how she stopped comparing them to everyone else's and started noticing everything they make possible. She talks about why so many women deflect compliments, what it can look like to celebrate your own effort (it might involve...

At 30, Lisa was the woman people called Negative Nelly. At 54, she describes herself very differently, and one daily practice sits near the center of that shift. In this episode, Lisa explains the negativity bias and why the mind keeps replaying the one thing that went wrong. She shares what her gratitude practice looked like in the beginning (a pillow, a blanket and a lot of awkwardness) and how...

You catch your reflection in the window in the morning, just half a second, and before you've decided anything, there's already a thought. That's your judge. We all have one, and it's fairly active in most of us. In this episode, I get curious about that voice. We look at why your brain makes split-second judgments to keep you safe, and why the judge isn't the problem. We talk about the three plac...

I’m too old for that. I should be happy with what I have. Thoughts like these go by so fast that we accept them as true before we even notice. This week, Lisa looks at where those thoughts come from, and why a thought doesn’t have to be true to feel true. It only has to be familiar. She shares a belief she absorbed from Freedom 55 commercials and carried through twenty-five years in corporate, and...

Changing the way you've lived for four or five decades doesn't happen overnight. If it hasn't happened yet, that's not proof you're doing it wrong. In this episode, I talk about why real change takes more repetitions than we expect, and why the unsettled feeling that you should have figured it out by now is not a sign you're failing. I talk about what happens when we compare our day one to somebod...

You've spent years being the dependable one. So when it's time to say no, the words don't come easy, and honestly, it doesn't feel like a communication problem. It feels unsafe. In this episode, Lisa breaks down why people-pleasing at work isn't a personality flaw, it's a pattern built on autopilot, and walks through the exact incremental step she uses with clients to shift it. No dramatic confron...

A woman told Lisa she needed six months to decide what needed to change in her life. Her doctor had already offered help. She said no, because taking it felt like admitting she wasn't as strong as she believed herself to be. This episode is about the quiet belief underneath that no: that needing help means you can't keep going with it all. Lisa unpacks why the nervous system treats asking for help...

“You can have it all” was supposed to be a gift. Somewhere along the way, for Lisa, it quietly became you should be able to do it all. In this episode, Lisa unpacks the should warrior, the invisible weight of being the one everyone counts on, and why just saying no rarely works as a fix on its own. She shares what happened when a post about Gen X women reconsidering their next decade reached thous...

Two women, one gym, 6:30 in the morning, and neither one sounded unhappy about how much they were carrying. That's exactly what caught Lisa's attention. In this episode, Lisa unpacks the real difference between an hour you choose and an hour that simply defaults to whatever is loudest. Two hours that look identical on a calendar but feel completely different in your body. She shares her own years-...

A LinkedIn post about being let go after twenty five years turned into hundreds of messages that all said some version of the same thing: I thought I was the only one. This episode is about why that silence exists, and what actually breaks it. Lisa unpacks why women in midlife are so practiced at carrying on quietly, why being called strong or low maintenance can quietly reinforce that silence, an...

You didn't eat until four in the afternoon yesterday. The day before wasn't much different. Somewhere in the first weeks of a new leadership role, without deciding to, you start running on empty. This episode isn't about the role itself. It's about what you give up trying to prove you deserve it: the lunch you skip, the messages you answer at ten at night, the conversation you haven't had at home...

For twenty-five years, Lisa was known as the girl who worked for the telecom company. Then the company was gone, and so was the version of her that everyone recognized. In this episode, Lisa unpacks what happens when your sense of self gets built around a job title, a company, a role you're known for. She talks about why she wouldn't leave her corporate career without a severance package, the thre...

I used to believe that being tired meant I was valuable. It took years before I had a word for what was actually happening underneath. In this episode, Lisa shares her burnout experience and what was really happening underneath the facts. She walks through the quiet, physical signs of burnout that rarely look dramatic, why a two-week vacation only touches the surface, and the small, unglamorous pr...

You've rescheduled your whole day to avoid it. You've told yourself it just isn't the right time. This week, we're not talking about the conversation itself; we're talking about everything you do instead. Coach Lisa unpacks why conflict is almost never about the surface thing; the dishes, the deadline, the tone of a message and almost always about a value quietly being stepped on. She walks throug...

You've done this before. You get excited about something, and somehow, a few days later, it quietly disappears. This week, we're looking at why that happens, and it has nothing to do with how badly you wanted it. We get into SPF (safe, predictable, familiar) and why your comfort zone is built entirely from proof rather than truth. We look at why your subconscious mind and nervous system are consta...

“I just think maybe we should revisit the timeline.” Say that sentence out loud. Now say it again without the first four words - We should revisit the timeline. Same thought. Completely different weight. In this episode, Lisa breaks down the small, automatic words so many of us insert before we've finished a sentence, words like think, maybe, and sorry, and why they show up most in the exact momen...

In midlife, your body is changing, so is everything else, all at once. This episode is about learning to tell the difference between the change you choose and the change that chooses you. In this episode, Lisa unpacks why menopause was never meant to be called the end, what a program on perimenopause taught her about estrogen and grace, and the real difference between chosen change and unchosen ch...

You're not behind because you're doing it wrong. You're behind because everything on your list looks the same. In this episode, Lisa Blanchet gets into the thing underneath the to-do list, the cognitive spiral that happens when your brain tries to hold everything at once and can't distinguish what actually matters today. If you've ever ended a full, productive day and still felt like you didn't ge...

On his 18th birthday, my son's school communication app revoked my access. No warning. No transition. Just: you no longer belong here. And while that sounds like a small, practical thing, it didn't feel small at all. In this episode, I'm sharing what that moment stirred up, and why I think it matters, not just for me, but for anyone navigating a season where something is quietly closing before the...

What if trusting yourself didn't require a dramatic decision or a complete life overhaul? What if it started with just noticing? In this episode, Lisa introduces the Courage Circle, a simple three-part practice grounded in awareness, curiosity, and choice. It's not a to-do list item. It's a way of being. A lens you can bring to any moment, any decision, any whisper that surfaces when life gets qui...

We’ve been told that change happens in a moment, a leap, a lightning bolt, a breaking point that clarifies everything. And sometimes it does. But most of the time, that’s not the whole story. In this episode, Lisa gets honest about what choosing yourself actually looks like from the inside. Not the dramatic version. The real one: slow, quiet, built out of small moments of awareness long before any...

You know something no longer fits. So why is it so hard to move on? In this episode, Lisa Blanchet names what's actually underneath that question, and it's not a lack of courage. Most women who stay in jobs, relationships, or roles that no longer feel like theirs don't stay because they don't know. They stay because they were deeply conditioned to keep going, to be dependable, to hold everything t...

In her mid-forties, after leaving a 25-year career, Lisa sat across from her first coach and couldn't answer a simple question: " What do you love to do?" She didn't know. And she beat herself up about it for a long time. This episode is for the woman who is in the middle of something she can't quite name yet. The one who thought the answers would arrive faster. Who feels the doubt and the curiosi...

How many hats are you wearing right now? And more importantly, did you choose them, or were they placed on your head by someone who believed in you, needed you, or simply assumed you'd figure it out? In this episode, I share a story from my own career, a hat that slowly cost me more than I was willing to admit. Not because the people around me were wrong. But because the hat was never mine to begi...