How to Find Yourself Again After a “Midlife Crisis” As A Female Entrepreneur With Victoria Lefebre

Ever found yourself feeling like you’re in the midst of a midlife crisis? What if that “midlife crisis” was actually the start of your most powerful life and business transformation yet?

In this episode of The Remote CEO Life Podcast, I’m joined by Victoria Lefebre, certified holistic midlife strategist and international best-selling author, to talk about what really happens during perimenopause and how you can find yourself again after a midlife crisis with confidence and clarity.

With over 25 years in the wellness industry, Victoria shares her journey from burnout to bold reinvention - closing her wellness studio, moving to the Caribbean, and writing her book Chaos, Clarity, and Confidence.

This episode shares some excellent examples of how nervous system regulation is the true foundation of confidence and why so many women feel lost, stuck, or dismissed during this chapter of life.

🎧 In this episode, we discuss:

- How to know if you’re in a midlife crisis or on the edge of personal transformation
- Why confidence in midlife starts with nervous system regulation
- Misconceptions around perimenopause and how to advocate for your body
- The truth about burnout, hormone shifts, and emotional overwhelm
- How to reclaim your voice, your rhythm, and your freedom in entrepreneurship
- The power of taking the leap before clarity comes

Listen now if you're navigating career change, burnout, or just feel like you've lost yourself in a midlife crisis - this conversation is your sign that it's time to reclaim your power.

Connect with Victoria:

📸 Instagram: @victoria_lifestrategist

📘 Book: Chaos, Clarity and Confidence: Finding YOU Again

🎁 Free Guide: Free Midlife Reset

#midlifecrisis #howtofindyourself #confidence #entrepreneurship #perimenopause #nervoussystemregulation #womenshealth #personaldevelopment

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Midlife Strategies
• 3:15 Understanding Perimenopause
• 6:32 The Chaos to Confidence Method
• 11:33 Nervous System Regulation and Confidence
• 21:00 Navigating Perimenopause
• 28:43 Personal Journey and Transformation
• 32:15 Taking Control of Your Chaos
• 35:42 Defining Freedom in Life
• 37:34 Understanding Midlife: Beyond the Crisis
• 37:40 Navigating Midlife: Myths and Realities
• 38:49 Empowerment Through Change: Victoria's Journey

Transcript

Sophie Biggerstaff (00:00)
Is there really such a thing as a midlife crisis or could it just be that you are going through some changes that could give you the most powerful rebirth of your life? Today on the Remotes ceo Life podcast, we're going to explore that subject with my guest Victoria, a certified holistic midlife strategist, international bestselling author, and the creator of the KS to Confidence method. With over 25 years in the wellness space, Victoria helps women navigate the physical, emotional, and spiritual shifts of the midlife so they can release burnout, regulate their hormones naturally,

and reclaim their sense of purpose and confidence. She's not just teaching theory, she's literally lived this. From closing her wellness studio and moving to the Caribbean to completely reinventing her business, Victoria's living proof that the midlife isn't the end and definitely not a crisis. It's the beginning of something far more aligned. In this episode, we unpack nervous system regulation, perimenopause myths, and what it really takes to feel empowered.

as a woman living through her midlife so that you can make changes without feeling like you're having to start your life again and feel really free as a midlife woman. So let's dive into this subject.

Sophie (01:01)
do you want to jump right in with a bit of an introduction to yourself, how you kind of ended up where you are today and you're currently living in Antigua, which is so cool. So also tell us a little bit more about that.

Victoria Life Strategist (01:11)
Absolutely. So I am Victoria. ⁓ I currently am a holistic midlife strategist. So what that means is I help women find strategies in my life that actually work and that fit into your life as opposed to adding to more chaos. I've spent 25 years in the wellness industry. I was a massage therapist, a holistic nutritionist.

Basically, you name it, I had to do certifications for it over the 25 years. So I've got a lot of background. And in the last year, we moved to Antigua. We're living here now. We're originally from Canada. We just wanted to take a massive leap and to do something completely different. My husband and I both retired our careers and we were just like, let's do something different. So when I landed here, I also started writing my book. So I published a international number one bestselling book.

in this past spring. And yeah, just love being able to open the conversation about midlife and to talk about it honestly and openly and bring in as many people into this conversation as possible.

Sophie (02:18)
Amazing. And when you're talking about midlife women, can you just give us a breakdown on exactly who you mean by that?

Victoria Life Strategist (02:24)
Yeah, so the misconception is that like midlife women are us older 40 year olds, right? But actually midlife for so many of us starts in our early 30s into our 50s. So there's a whole span in there of perimetapause and symptoms and things that happen that often get attributed to, you're just a burnt out mom or you're just working too hard. So I love to speak to that whole there's a giant group of us between,

mid-30s and early 50s that are just maybe overwhelmed, burnt out, having too much on our plate and trying to navigate what is happening in my life. What is going on here? Why do I feel this way? So yeah, that's us. That's all of us. It's a big, big group of us.

Sophie (03:12)
Yeah, absolutely. And I actually recently learnt quite a lot about the paramenopause actually from another podcast recording that I did. And I was shocked to find out that actually in your early thirties, you can experience paramenopause. And I was like, wow, I had no idea. Like, obviously we're only really talk about the menopause and that happens more so in our fifties. And

Victoria Life Strategist (03:26)
Yeah.

Sophie (03:34)
I was like, wow, okay, like talk to me, tell me a bit more about the perimenopause. And I was just fascinated that so many of the symptoms coincide with just things that we would brush off as like an everyday challenge, like the overwhelm, like the brain fog, like the memory loss, all of these things. And it's very hard to differentiate between, my God, is it perimenopause or am I just experiencing these things? So what are the things that most people come to you at this stage of life that they're struggling with?

Victoria Life Strategist (03:58)
The biggest one, honestly, is the anxiety and the overwhelm. So a lot of the women that come into my programs, that's where they're at. They're just overwhelmed. They have so much anxiety. They've been told, your hormones are probably a little out of whack, but they just don't know, is it because I have a billion things on my plate that this is happening or what is actually happening to me? Why do I feel this way? And ⁓ it can kind of be a lonely, isolating thing.

phase because a lot of times we don't get the support from maybe our healthcare practitioners or our family because we're just being crazy. We're just having anxiety. we get fluffed off a lot. yeah, that's what I find is the anxiety and the overwhelm is definitely the number one thing.

Sophie (04:45)
Yeah, and is that, do you think, mainly triggered by perimenopause or is that lifestyle factors that's causing those things?

Victoria Life Strategist (04:53)
there's like a bazillion factors in that, right? There's definitely the hormones contributing as our estrogen changes and our bodies change. That does stop us from being able to regulate a lot of the anxiety and the cortisol and everything that's happening in our bodies. But so many of these women just have lost themselves. They've taken so much onto their plate, where some of them are full-time moms and full-time career people.

full-time spouses and full-time caregivers, right? We have, a lot of them are in this sandwich generation where we have, we're taking care of our kids and our aging parents and ourselves and our spouses, right? So there's a lot that's thrown on our plates and it's really important to acknowledge that it is both, right? So there are factors that are contributing that you can navigate and kind of

take responsibility for.

Sophie (05:50)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's such a lack of education that we've had in our schooling systems to teach us about the changes that happen in our bodies and the things that we actually need. we go to the doctors and they prescribe us drugs. And actually, most of the time, that's actually not what we need. We need to change our lifestyle factors to actually give us a break from some of these anxieties, overwhelms, and look at what's happening on a day-to-day basis. obviously, sometimes life gets a bit chaotic, right? And you've created, obviously, the chaos confidence method.

Can you talk us through a little bit more about like, what is that method and where does someone, what's the transformation? Where does someone come from? Like when they're in that chaos state to getting into that confidence state.

Victoria Life Strategist (06:30)
Yeah, absolutely. the the chaos of confidence method is a three step method. So we dig in first to the chaos we get real, what is the chaos coming from? Where Where is it in my body? What is happening? Am I dysregulated? Am I not eating properly? Am I not moving my body? Right? We really dig in and find the root cause I'm all about finding where's this coming from the root cause. And so that is step one.

I will say that's probably the hardest step because we really have to get honest with ourselves and oftentimes we don't want to, right? So that's step one. And then we move into clarity. This is where we start to uncover what we need. So a really great example, I have one of the ladies I'm working with, she was feeling so overwhelmed. She felt like she had no joy left in her life, just...

doing all the time, never actually enjoying. So we got to the root cause of some stuff in the clarity, then when we are in the chaos, we moved into clarity, we do this exercise called the clarity compass in that phase. And I said to her, what's one thing that you really love? She's like, I love ice cream. I'm like, okay, why do you love ice cream? She's like, well, it's delicious. Like who doesn't love ice cream? I'm like, but why do you love ice cream? And we kept digging.

And we found out that the reason why she loves ice cream because when she was a child, once a month, her parents would take her and her sibling to a little ice cream shop on a Sunday afternoon. They would have the most fun. They would run around and play and eat ice cream. And it was the most amazing thing. And so she had this moment of clarity that, my God, I have lost play in my life. I need play. If I had play, I would feel so much better. So

That's kind of how the clarity unravels. just, we dig into who we really are and who we've lost maybe in the chaos of life. And then we move into the confidence. And this is where the massive transformations happen. We really work on stepping into your power, into setting boundaries, saying no, when you want to say no. We work...

on changing and shifting the conversations that we have with ourselves away from, you I'm not good enough, I can't do this and really using our mindset tools to feel so much better in our body and in our spirit. So it's a really beautiful process. It kind of is like a rebirthing of this person, but at the same time, it's just, you're just bringing out and remembering who you are.

before all the chaos hit you. So that's the yeah.

Sophie (09:10)
Yeah, beautiful.

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Like I always say, actually, to even to my clients, like you have to, even if you're thinking about what business to start or what you're passionate about, the best thing you can do is go back to what you were passionate about and loved as a child. And I can almost 90 % of the time guarantee you that there will be some resonance in your life right now and the reasons why you like certain things or things that you might want to reinstate in your life. Like if you, for example, I loved dancing as a kid. Like that was one of my biggest things. I went to dance class.

really loved performing in front of people. And I've not done that for a good like 20 years at this point. And I'm like, how can I reinstate dancing in my life in a way that feels good for me now? Because I know that I found so much joy with that when I was a child. How can I reinstate that joy as an adult? And I think we get so sucked in as adults into this world where we're all just trying to do our best, right? We're all just trying to survive. We're all like, if you've got kids, keep them alive as well.

Victoria Life Strategist (09:52)
Thank

Sophie (10:05)
So it's just like we are constantly just in a bit of a survival state because that's just how society has pushed us to. We forget about the joyful things. We forget about the things we love doing. We forget about things taking time to play. And the other part is we don't let ourselves take that time because we are conditioned to believe that we have to work hard to earn the time off and that we should be spending five days a week at work and then two days of rest. But then most of the time that work.

Victoria Life Strategist (10:05)
Yes. ⁓

Sophie (10:31)
flows through into the rest time. So then when on earth are we meant to rest? And then the whole cycle repeats. So I think so much of society is just stuck in this hamster wheel, which they can't get off because it's constantly like, we see rest as a reward. We see joy as a reward when actually it needs to be integrated into our everyday lives. And I think it's so important and it's something that I'm trying to make a really conscious effort to do. And I think so much so many more people should make a more conscious effort to do because the world would be a way happier place if we did.

Victoria Life Strategist (11:00)
Yes, yeah, exactly. We lose that, right? And we get caught up in adulting and I think adulting is overrated myself.

Sophie (11:10)
I agree, I concur. It's definitely overrated, take me back to simpler times. But one of the things that I read is that you really focus on like nervous system regulation, which is, you believe is the true core foundation for confidence. So tell me a little bit more from a practical standpoint about the nervous system and why that would impact confidence so that somebody can take back more control over their lives.

Victoria Life Strategist (11:17)
Yes.

Yeah, absolutely. So our nervous system, you kind of have to understand it's two parts, right? We have the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system. One is responsible for fight or flight. So our adrenaline side and the other side is responsible for our rest and digest side. We want them to have balance. We want them to be on and off at different times. Obviously, we need fight or flight.

⁓ when we're in a situation of emergency, we don't want to be like super chill and be like, it's all right. You we want to be able to get up and go. But what happens is we spend so much time in the fight or flight system that it doesn't get turned off. So we are completely dysregulated in our nervous system. That whole, like you said, like we're going and going Saturday and Sunday, we have booked off for rest and yet.

We're working, we're doing, we're pushing, right? We're never turning that system off. So I like to look at that and see what system is running you right now? Which part of your nervous system is in charge 90 % of the time? And I see women that they don't sleep because they have insomnia. Well, insomnia is often a sign that your fight or flight is stuck in the on mode.

So how can we start to turn that off, right? It's not as simple as, I'm just gonna do a meditation and then ⁓ I'm gonna be perfect. I'm gonna go to sleep. I'm gonna have rest and digest. It's gonna be activated. This is a really deep dive into why is my nervous system stuck in the on, right? What is running me? Am I always afraid that I have to chase the money? That's a big one that I see.

If I'm not working all the time, I'm not going to get paid and I have to pay the bills. I have to take care of the kids. I have to take care of the house. So we get, we're in fear all the time. So we used a lot of tools like our EFT tapping. use our meditation. We use movement. This is a very underrated one. So many people think they need to like absolutely stop and take a meditation in order to switch, but sometimes you need to go and

Sweat it out. I call my morning workouts my sacred sweat because I am sweating out You know the crap that is on my mind and in my body So when we're using these nervous system regulating tools we have to find the ones that are working for you in that moment, right and start to switch and create a balance create routines that allow you to Understand I'm in fight-or-flight right now. How do I bring myself out?

Because you can, you can absolutely turn it off. And how do you set up a routine at the end of the day so that when you go to bed, you're switching into that rest and digest, your body is getting that calm, quiet it needs for bed, right? there's a lot ⁓ more to it, but basically that's what we're looking at is where are you, what are you stuck in? Are you fighting everybody or are you able to turn that off?

Sophie (14:38)
Yeah, I cannot stress how important nervous system regulation is and how important nervous system work is in understanding the nervous system. I personally have lived in a state of chronic stress for a very, very long time, and it has caused havoc with my body. And only now am I understanding how much it has impacted me. I've understood the nervous system for the past, I'd say about three or four years, and I've been doing a lot of work to try and regulate mine.

I can now still see the impacts that that chronic stress and the anxiety has had on my body and it's caused me so many different health problems and I still, even though I have all of these practices in place, I have the routines in place, my nervous system is still dysregulated because it's been living in a chronic state of stress for such a long time. doesn't, I would say right now my life is the calmest it's been in years, but yeah, I'm full of anxiety because my nervous system, it doesn't feel safe in a state of calm because I've always operated in chaos.

So I'm finding, even though I have all the tools and I've got all of the things, I actually find it really hard to regulate my nervous system at the moment because I'm having to, going back what you said around having that self awareness piece, every single time I feel this anxiety, I have to talk myself down back to the self awareness piece. Cause I know that I'm just making this anxiety up at this point because there is nothing in my life right now that should be causing me anxiety. It is the calmest literally it's ever been.

Victoria Life Strategist (15:55)
Yeah.

Sophie (16:02)
And I'm having to be like, right, are self-sabotaging at this point, that you're causing yourself anxiety because your nervous system doesn't know how to just be calm and just be and just sit and do nothing because I've always been in a constant state of go, go, go. So I really, really want to stress that everything you're saying is so important. And I fully agree with you that it will take you to a place of confidence if you can nail it, if you can get to a point where you...

have the routines in place, if you have the systems and the toolbox. And it's not to say your nervous system is gonna be calm at all times, that's unrealistic to say, but if you have the toolbox, you can bring it back down to a neutral level way, way quicker, way, quicker.

Victoria Life Strategist (16:42)
I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions too is that, she's confident. So she never has to deal with any of it, right? And it's so false. I am the calmest, most confident person I've ever been in my entire life. And yet, you know, even just before this podcast coming on to record, I've recorded like a bazillion podcasts and I'm still like, my God, it or not screw up like.

I got nervous and anxiety and I had to use my own tools. I did some tapping, I did some meditation, you know, to set up and to come on. And so that's a huge misconception. you'll get to the point where you're totally confident and you won't have to worry. No, we're still human beings, right? We still have that ingrained system in our bodies and it's there for a purpose. I like to really look at it and I I label my fight or flight system.

I call her Sally. She's kind of crazy. She goes a little ape crazy sometimes. And I'm like, okay, Sally, we need to just calm. It's okay. There's nothing coming at us. There's nothing gonna kill us. So it's okay. And I found, ⁓ and you know, I do this exercise with a lot of my clients as well. Just having her be somebody else and not being us all the time helps to recognize, okay,

It's okay, like take a deep breath, right? You can talk to her like your bestie and not feel like it's you that's, I'm the problem. She's having an issue right now. Yeah, so, yeah.

Sophie (18:11)
I love that. I love that reframe

where you can talk to her as if she's a third party being because actually we are normally so much nicer to somebody else than we are to ourselves, right? So if you can segment it and decompartmentalize her, it's going to be so much easier to talk yourself out of that. I even had it, I was just in a yoga class earlier on today and my brain was chaos and I was like, why are you like, we are literally, the ocean is in front of me. I am laying in a posture.

Victoria Life Strategist (18:16)
Yeah.

Sophie (18:38)
to release all of the emotions. There is no reason whatsoever for my brain to be active right now. And I had to really just tune back into my breath and get back into my body and just start. I could just catch the thoughts and I could feel it in my head. My head was busy and I was like, right, okay, you just need to stop. I just kept being like, you are calm, I am calm, I am calm, like affirming myself. And as soon as you catch it, as soon as you acknowledge it, as soon as you...

Victoria Life Strategist (18:42)
Yes.

Sophie (19:07)
bring it back down a few steps, it goes. It wasn't there by the end of the session. I felt super, super relaxed actually by the end of the session, but I really started to notice it. And I think it really does come from that place of self-awareness when you can catch that. it's, I've done a lot of mindfulness, the pastner style trainings. And a big part of that is being able to catch your thoughts before it takes over, right? So I love your strategy there of like looking at that thought objectively and saying, okay, Sally.

Victoria Life Strategist (19:25)
Yeah.

Sophie (19:36)
Let's put you aside for a second. Maybe we come back to it later.

Victoria Life Strategist (19:40)
Yeah, exactly. It just gives you a different

perspective so that you're not you're not in it, right? ⁓ When we're in the chaos We feel like I feel like it's like a tornado right you're in it. It's swirling It's pulling you in all directions but when you can kind of take a step out and Label it and put it out there for to be something else Outside of you then you can ground yourself and you can stand firm in your boundaries in your mind frame and you can look at it and say

Yeah, that is chaos over there, but I'm here. so that, you know, Sally can have her moment and I'm okay. Yeah.

Sophie (20:17)
Yeah,

makes perfect sense. I can imagine, obviously you mentioned earlier about perimenopause and like I said, it can kind of start early thirties and then goes on until I, from what I understand, like into your fifties. So talk to me a little bit about, about perimenopause and like, obviously this, this stage of life, normally as you go into thirties can be really confusing anyway, because you've had a certain identity in your twenties. Normally you've grown up a bit and you've shifted and you're maybe in your like second life phase, second career or whatever.

when you go into your thirties. So life's already confusing enough and then you might have kids, you might have different friends doing different things, like people traveling, like so many people are in different stages of life, right? So it's already a bit complicated. Add on perimenopause, what's that extra layer of complication all about? So talk to me a little bit about perimenopause and what are some of the misconceptions about this phase of life and then how do you actually help women through that stage?

Victoria Life Strategist (21:11)
Yeah, that's such a great question because I mean, it shows up as so many different things for so many different women. But to acknowledge that it's hitting us right at that time when, you know, life is asking us to be super adults. We can't be, you know, partying and having this crazy 20s anymore. We're in our 30s. We're trying to figure out who am I? What do want to be? Is this the career I really want to step into?

There's so many things. A lot of women in that phase are thinking, am I gonna have a partner? Am I gonna have kids? Like what is happening? And then we have perimetopause that like throws her hat in the ring. And so this can show up in a lot of different ways. Like I said, there's millions of symptoms and things like anxiety. That is a really big thing that often gets pushed aside. There's anxiety, there's heart palpitations. There's this feeling of dread.

depression can come in. There's, you know, shifts in your cycle, when your period is showing up, how it's showing up. A lot of women at this phase actually get misdiagnosed with things like PCOS and endometriosis because your cycle and your hormones are shifting and if they're not, if you're not regulated, if your body is not calm and able to go through your hormone cycles properly,

so many are being sent, you know, put on birth control. Myself, I actually hit perimetopause when I was 32 and 40. How old am I? 44 now. Seems like three lifetimes ago, but I went to the doctor and I was like, something is really wrong. had PCOS. I had been diagnosed with PCOS and endometriosis when I was 14. I hit 32 and I was like,

I was hemorrhaging, I was exhausted, I was having heart palpitations, my anxiety was through the roof. There's so many issues that I was facing that I had no idea what they were. And my doctor was like, ⁓ it's just your endometriosis acting up. We're gonna give you an IUD. So they did that to stop my cycle. But then when they took it out, within, I don't know, maybe three months of it being out, everything came back about 10 fold.

And that's when I started to really dig in and like, what is happening? This is not normal. So there's a lot, there's a lot that can happen. And I think so many of us are just kind of gaslit into believing that it's something else. it can be like one of the weirdest symptoms is frozen shoulder. I worked as an RMT for massage therapist for 25 years. I treated hundreds, hundreds of middle-aged women

with the frozen shoulder, like beat the living crap out of their shoulders only to then realize later on in life that that's a hormonal imbalance symptom. And I had no idea.

Sophie (23:55)
Wow.

Tell me a bit about Frozen shoulder. I'm not familiar with it. So what can we anticipate if that happens?

Victoria Life Strategist (24:02)
It literally

feels like your shoulder is frozen, right? Like you don't have mobility. It can feel like the chest is really tight into the front of the shoulder. It just feels like there is something stuck in there. Like it is frozen. It won't move. It can feel like knots and tension and pain. It's usually extremely painful. Anytime you try to reach overhead, it's like your arm gets stuck.

There's a lot of theories as to why that's such a common symptom, but I have not yet come across one that's actually been solidly proven, but it just seems to be a weird symptom that shows up. And it is part of the package for some reason. Like, yay, another weird thing. But when you're in that phase, the biggest thing, like I got to come back to nervous system regulation, right? Your nervous system is regulating those hormones.

And it's normal for these hormones to shift and change in that perimenopause. But if you're living in constant state of high cortisol, that's a huge buzzword right now. Like everybody's talking about it. just take this and your cortisol will go away. No, that's not how it works. You have to regulate it from the inside out. So that is really where I focus is let's get to the root cause. Let's get that cortisol under control. Let's get the nervous system under control.

and let's nourish your body, mind and spirit in a way that it can show up properly for you. Yeah.

Sophie (25:29)
Yeah,

it's really important to get to the root cause of something because exactly what you just said, we're gas lit. We are given masks or band-aids, you like to call it like that, to deal with the surface level symptoms. are very rarely, unless you push your doctor, push your doctor, push your doctor and get extra tests, are investigated for the root cause of the symptom. I can speak for myself with so many health issues that I have had and none of them were looked into on a

deep basis. I'm not bashing doctors at all. Obviously they do the best, mostly unfunded, all of the things people can't even afford health care in certain countries. And it's people do what they have to do to fix their problem right on a surface based level. But that problem is going to keep coming back until you fix the root cause of the problem is is just so important. And nervous system regulation, like you say, is

is at the core of everything and if we can calm our nervous system it makes everything else calm basically so super super super important

Victoria Life Strategist (26:30)
Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie (26:34)
So you obviously have already lived through the perimenopause phase and you've also made some big life shifts yourself. You've written a book, you've moved to the Caribbean and you've kind of reinvented your business in your midlife stages. So what kind of led to all of those things? Like what was your journey like with this midlife experience?

Victoria Life Strategist (26:56)
Honestly, I had a total breakdown rock bottom moment and I was crashing out big time. I was exhausted. I was working like 60 hours a week in a very physically demanding job and couldn't pay the bills. It was just everything. My relationships were falling apart, my friendships, my family. I have three grown boys and at the time they were teenagers and just so it was everything was piling on.

And I actually, the moment was so clear to me. I talk about this in my book. got, I was having one of those mornings, you know, like when you wake up in the morning and like nothing is going right. And it's like, you haven't even gotten out of your bedroom yet and the whole world has already fallen in on you. That was one of the days. So I'd gotten up late, I jump in the shower, everybody had used the hot water. So I'm having a cold shower. I go to get out of the shower.

All the towels are gone. The only one that's left is like a hand towel that's like this big. And I'm standing in front of the mirror, drying myself off. And I just happened to look at myself in the eyes and I was like, who is that person? She's like, who is she? I had hip hair, metapause. I gained 40 pounds in less than a month. It just, I packed on so much inflammation and weight.

and my eyes were dark, I was completely exhausted, I was overwhelmed by everything. And it was in that moment that I looked at myself and I thought, if you keep going like this, you're not going to make 45. Like, this is crazy what you're doing to yourself. And I, you know, it's kind of funny because I have all the knowledge on what I should be doing, yet I'm not doing it for myself. So that was the moment where I was like, screw this.

This life is not the life I want to live. I do not want to be trapped in this anymore. I felt overwhelmed by everything. And that's when we just decided we're shifting, we're moving, we're getting out of this chaos. How do we put things in place that we can, you know, a year from now, I don't want to be in this situation anymore. And that was my rock bottom moment. And I just became determined that I was never going to look at myself in the mirror and see

that face ever again. I was not doing it and I had to move forward.

Sophie (29:14)
Yeah, I think, unfortunately, so many people let it get to the rock bottom moment before making the change, right? And I think it's if you can put the working before you get to that moment within the first signs when you start getting those like self awareness, England's the things that you might want to change the things that are causing you stress causing you the high cost so causing the inflammation, if you can change them, the earlier the better right? It's I always say it's about prevention, not cure. And

Yeah, I think well done for recognising that and unfortunately, it had to take you to a rock bottom moment. look at what then you've been able to achieve. You've been able to move abroad and write a book and do all the things that you probably wanted to do back then, but never had maybe the confidence to go and do them. So I think that's that's amazing. And what do you now suggest when somebody comes to you, a new client of yours who are juggling the work, juggling the family, juggling their own challenging situations in their life?

What's the number one first step that you normally do with them to get them going through your chaos to confidence programme?

Victoria Life Strategist (30:20)
The first step is getting honest with your chaos. You have to be honest with it. Are you creating it? Obviously there's always going to be chaos, right? We live in a world where there's always going to be stuff that needs to get done. There's always going to be chaos around us. But getting to that honest point where you look at your life and you look at what is this?

and do I want to keep going? Right? So that is the number one thing. You have to be honest with the chaos in your life. You won't make any progress unless you start from honesty in that space.

Sophie (31:00)
Yeah, and how do you get someone to start looking at that and being honest because I think it's one thing saying it, it's harder doing it.

Victoria Life Strategist (31:07)
Oh,

100%. It definitely is harder doing it. One of the biggest things that we look at is our time management. So, you know, that's one thing I would, but I don't have time to add. don't have time to add. Sure, you probably don't have time to add, but you have time to shift, right? So maybe, maybe you're one of those people like I was where at the end of my day, I would rather disassociate and watch a bazillion, you know, reels on Instagram.

then do something for myself. And so I had to be honest, this doom scroll is messing with my brain. I'm looking at all these perfect people having this perfect life and thinking, God, I'll never live that life, right? So I had to realize I can shift that time instead of spending 20 minutes or an hour, whatever I was spending, what can I do? Even if I just take two minutes of that before I pick up my phone, can I take two minutes?

Journal. Do a quick meditation. Go for a walk. When I lived in Canada, I had a walking pad because, you know, half the year is so cold you can't go outside. So I would get on my walking pad and walk for, you know, five minutes before I picked up my phone. And I think, you know, we don't realize because we're so overwhelmed by the chaos, we don't realize that we actually have more space in our life for ourselves than we give ourselves credit for.

Sophie (32:33)
It's about shifting your priorities, isn't it? Rather than doing the numbing activities, doing something more productive with your time. And a lot of people won't do that because of the fear of change and things like that. yeah, there's always time. There is always time. We can use it as our biggest excuse, I think, as like a human race. We're like, we're running out of time. we don't have time to do this. ⁓ no, can't start a business, got no time. can't do this after a run of work, got no time. But actually, yes, you do have time. It's about shifting your priorities and making the time for it.

Victoria Life Strategist (32:56)
Thank

Sophie (33:01)
It's definitely, obviously everyone has different circumstances, but there will be, I can guarantee it, even if you are the busiest person in the world, you are scrolling on your phone at some point in that day and you do not need to be scrolling on their phone. You can go and do the meditation, start the business, do whatever it is that you are desiring to do to make yourself feel better eventually and live a happier life, ultimately is the goal.

Victoria Life Strategist (33:25)
Yeah, yep, 100%.

Sophie (33:26)
Yeah,

makes a lot of sense. Well, thank you so much. That was super insightful. Before we wrap up, I always like to ask, what does freedom mean to you and how can you inspire our listeners to live a more freedom focused life?

Victoria Life Strategist (33:41)
I love that question because you know what's freedom to me may not be freedom to somebody else, but my freedom was taking control of my life. So for me it was my time, my energy and my space are mine and that was freedom to me once I was able to step into that.

I felt so free. To me, that is the ultimate. My time is mine, my space is mine, and I am in control of it. And yeah, that's my freedom. And I just think, if there's people out there that are thinking, I don't have freedom, I don't have time, I don't have any of that kind of stuff, like we said, you do, you definitely do, and you just start small. How can I take a couple minutes for myself, right?

Yes, I retired my career and I moved the world. I moved across the world, but you don't have to make those big steps. You can start so much smaller and just take back your time. Instead of working over your lunch, take your freedom moment in your own lunch and make these small steps.

Sophie (34:49)
Exactly, I think that's why I like to ask that question honestly because everyone does have a different version of freedom. Freedom does not look the same for everybody and it helps to hear, I guess, like at some point someone is going to listen to that and resonate with it and be like I want back control of my time. I don't want to work over lunch break and if that just helps inspire somebody to take back control of their life and do the things that they want to do and get that time back they then might feel bit more inspired to.

take the actions to do so. So thanks so much for sharing that. That was amazing. And thanks so much for coming on today and chatting to me about the midlife. If anyone wants to connect with you, work with you, where can they find you?

Victoria Life Strategist (35:26)
The easiest place to find me is Instagram. So it's at Victoria underscore life strategist or through my website. ⁓ I have a weekly newsletter so you can sign up for that there. My website is [chaosclarityandconfidence.com](http://chaosclarityandconfidence.com/).

Sophie (35:41)
Amazing. And what's the book called? It's out right now to buy, right?

Victoria Life Strategist (35:44)
Yeah, it's out on

Amazon on all platforms. So it's Chaos, Clarity and Confidence, Finding You Again. So there's the book, it's on paper and Kindle. And then I also have a companion journal if you're someone that likes to dig deeper and to do journaling and that kind of stuff. There's a companion journal for the book as well.

Sophie (36:03)
Amazing, beautiful. Thank you so much.