EP19: A Right-Sized Definition Of Wellness After Midlife with Amy Schmidt

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Hey Fearless Friends, it's Amy and welcome back to the Right Size Life.
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I've been thinking a lot lately about what it actually means to age well.
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And I don't mean how we look when we age, although I'm going to talk about that today too.
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I mean the bigger question of what it looks like to take care of ourselves as we move through different seasons of our lives, because I'm realizing more and more that wellness is so much bigger than the things we tend to put into that category.
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We talk about exercise and nutrition and sleep.
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We talk about supplements and hydration and skincare.
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And yes, all of those things matter to me, probably more now than they ever have.
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But when I think about creating a right-sized life, I'm thinking about the whole person.
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I'm thinking about our bodies and our health.
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But I'm also thinking about the relationships we're carrying, the energy we're giving away, the spaces we're living in, the expectations we're still trying to meet, the way we speak to ourselves, and whether we've actually made room in our lives for the person we're becoming.
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Because wellness isn't just about adding years to our lives, it's about creating a life we have the capacity and the desire to fully live.
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And that feels like a very different conversation.
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One of the questions I come back to again and again in my own life and throughout creating the right size life is incredibly simple.
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Does this still fit?
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And lately I've been asking that question about wellness too.
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Does the definition of wellness I had in my 30s still fit me today?
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Does the way I once thought about my body still fit?
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Does my old definition of beauty fit?
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Do all of my relationships fit in the same way they once did?
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Does the way I've structured my home support who I am now?
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And maybe the most important question of all, am I creating room for who I'm becoming, or am I spending all of my energy trying to maintain who I've always been?
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Those are very different ways to live.
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Wellness isn't about getting the old you back.
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I think for many women, there is this subtle message that the goal of midlife and beyond wellness is somehow to get back to who we used to be.
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Get your old body back or get your old energy back.
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Get your metabolism back.
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Get your younger skin back.
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Get back into those genes.
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And I don't know about you, but I'm really not interested in spending the next chapter of my life trying to get back to a previous one.
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I loved many things about the woman I was at 30 and 40 and 50.
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And she's raising three kids and navigating moves and building a family.
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She had a tremendous amount of energy, although I'm not sure she appreciated it at the time.
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She was figuring things out, making mistakes, trying again, taking care of a lot of people, and becoming the woman I am now.
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I'm grateful for her, but I don't want to be her again.
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I want to take really good care of the woman I am today.
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And that shift has changed the way I think about wellness.
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I'm much less interested in a number on a scale than I am in strength.
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I'm interested in flexibility and balance and energy.
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I'm interested in sleeping well.
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I'm interested in being able to travel and walk through a city all day and get on the floor someday with grandchildren, and most importantly, get back up.
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I'm interested in resilience because life will continue to surprise us.
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And I want to have some reserves when it does.
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So wellness for me has become less about appearance and much more about capacity.
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Can this body support the life I'm asking it to live?
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And that question has become especially meaningful to me because I've had moments when my health forced me to stop and pay attention.
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Those moments have reminded me that we can spend years creating this beautiful next chapter, more freedom, more travel, more connection, more purpose.
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But if we aren't caring for the body that's going to carry us through it, we're missing an important piece of the equation.
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And then there's beauty.
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There's another part of this conversation that feels particularly for full circle for me right now, because my own relationship with skincare really began with my mom.
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My mom loved skincare and she had beautiful skin.
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She was curious about it in a way that makes me smile now when I think about it.
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She was always reading an article about a new ingredient or discovering some product she thought I needed to know about.
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And she'd send me things to read or little samples she wanted me to try.
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Whenever I came home to visit, there would inevitably be a washcloth waiting for me and some new product she discovered.
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And my mom was always talking about collagen, even way back when.
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Always.
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I probably only half listened at the time because that's what we do with our moms sometimes.
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We assume they'll always be there to tell us again.
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But now, all these years later, I understand, I understand that those little rituals, I understand them differently.
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I don't think my mom was obsessed with trying to stay young.
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I think she was curious about taking care of herself.
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She wanted to understand what she was using and why, and she enjoyed the ritual, and she passed some of the curiosity along to me without either of us realizing it.
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That's why this new chapter of my wellness journey feels so personal.
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I've been using Make Wellness Peptides, Natural Peptides consistently for more than 18 months, and now Make is moving into beauty with products that bring together precision natural peptides, naturally sourced and derived ingredients, and an inside-out, outside-in approach to beauty and wellness.
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When I first started learning about what they were creating, I immediately thought of my mom.
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I could almost hear her saying, okay, but what's in it?
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What does it do?
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And do you have a sample for me?
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And yes, mom, there's collagen involved.
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Talk about a full circle moment.
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But here's what interests me even more than a new skincare product: the idea that beauty doesn't have to be separate from wellness.
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For me, skincare doesn't have to come from a place of criticizing what I see in the mirror.
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It can simply be another way I take care of myself.
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I can appreciate the space and still want to care for my skin.
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I can embrace aging and still love a great product.
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I can celebrate the years represented in the mirror without believing I have to surrender my curiosity about how I feel or how I look.
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Those things can exist together.
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I don't want to chase younger.
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I want to support healthier.
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And that is a much more right-sized definition of beauty for me.
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But wellness also lives in our relationships.
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Here's where I think the conversation gets more interesting, because we rarely put relationships into the wellness category.
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But we should.
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Think about how differently you feel after spending an hour with someone who knows you, sees you, makes you laugh, and allows you to completely be yourself.
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Now think about how you feel after spending time in a relationship where you're constantly monitoring yourself, overexplaining, performing, fixing, rescuing, or trying to keep someone else happy.
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Our relationships affect our wellness.
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And one of the things I've had to learn in this season is that relationships can be right-sized too.
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That doesn't mean cutting people out of our lives because they've had a bad day or deciding that everyone who challenges us is toxic.
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I actually think we become a little too quick sometimes to use language like that.
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Right-sizing a relationship is much more nuanced.
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It's recognizing that relationships have seasons.
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Some people are meant to sit very close to us in one season and may naturally move a little further out in another.
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Some friendships can go months without contact.
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And the minute you're together, you're right back where you left off.
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Some relationships need more attention because we've been so busy that we've neglected someone who actually matters deeply to us.
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And sometimes we realize we've been maintaining a relationship almost entirely out of history or obligation.
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That's when I think we need to get curious rather than judgmental.
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Who allows me to be fully myself?
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Where is their mutual effort?
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Who do I want to make more room for?
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And maybe even where do I need to change my expectations rather than change the person?
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I've reached a point in my life where I don't need hundreds of people around me to feel connected.
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I value depth differently now.
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I value the people with whom I can sit in the quiet, the people who celebrate the good things without competition, the people who show up when life gets messy, and the people who allow me to evolve rather than expecting me to remain the same woman they've always known.
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That to me is wellness too.
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Because taking care of yourself isn't about what you consume, it's also about what and who you continually give your energy to.
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The two-room roll.
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This brings me to one of my favorite strategies in creating the right size life.
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The two-room roll.
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I think we all need two rooms in our lives.
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Now, before you start telling me you don't have two spare rooms in your house, I'm not talking literally.
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A room can be a corner, a chair, a desk, a notebook, a block of time, or even an emotional space that you've intentionally protected.
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But the idea is this we need one room for who we are today, and one room for who we're becoming.
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The first room says, this is my life right now, and I'm going to care for it.
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This body, these relationships, this home, this season, this woman.
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I'm not going to spend all my time wishing she were younger or different or somewhere else.
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I'm going to support her.
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That's the room of acceptance and care.
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But then we need another room.
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The second room.
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It asks, who am I becoming?
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What am I curious about?
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What do I want to learn?
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What part of myself hasn't had enough room yet?
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Maybe it's the woman who wants to write.
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Maybe it's the woman who wants to become physically stronger.
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Maybe it's the woman who wants to travel alone.
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Maybe it's the woman who wants to start something new professionally.
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Maybe it's the woman who wants to create art or learn pickleball or finally become comfortable walking into a room where she doesn't know anyone.
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We spend so many years building rooms for other people.
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Our kids have their rooms.
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Our careers take up space.
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Our responsibilities take up space.
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And somewhere along the way, particularly for women, we can forget that our becoming needs space too.
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That's why the two-room rule isn't really about decorating.
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It's about permission.
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One space says, I value who I am.
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The other says, I'm excited about who I'm becoming.
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And I think we need both to be well.
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What are you doing for your future self?
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That's why one of my favorite questions and my energy audit is what did I do today for my future self?
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I love that question because it changes wellness from something we do because we're dissatisfied with ourselves into something we do because we value ourselves.
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My future self needs me to move today.
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She needs me to drink the water.
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She needs me to make the doctor's appointment.
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She needs me to sleep.
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She needs me to build muscle.
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She needs me to take care of my skin.
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She needs me to invest in the friendships that matter.
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She may need me to say no.
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She may need me to try something new.
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And some days she needs me to sit down and recover instead of proving how much I can accomplish.
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But those little choices don't always give us an immediate result.
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But that's the point.
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We're building reserves.
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Physical reserves, emotional reserves, relational reserves.
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And maybe even reserves of curiosity and joy.
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That's what I want my wellness practice to give me.
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Not another impossible standard to meet, but more capacity to live.
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So here's what I want you to think about this week.
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Instead of asking yourself, how can I look younger?
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Or how do I get back to who I used to be?
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I want you to ask something very different.
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How do I want to feel as I get older?
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Maybe your word is strong.
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Maybe it's vibrant.
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Maybe it's connected.
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Maybe it's peaceful?
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Maybe it's curious.
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Or maybe it's confident.
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Maybe it's radiant.
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And then ask yourself, does the way I'm living today support that woman?
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Do your wellness have it support her?
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Do your relationships support her?
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Does the way you speak to yourself support her?
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Does your physical environment have any room for her?
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And have you created even one little corner, literal or otherwise, for her to begin showing up?
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Because that's really what right sizing is.
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It's not shrinking your life.
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It's not giving everything away.
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And it certainly isn't trying to become less.
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It's intentionally creating a life that fits who you are now while leaving enough room for who you're still becoming.
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And as I think about my mom, those little samples, the washcloth waiting for me, and all of those conversations about collagen, I understand something now that I couldn't have understood then.
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Maybe she wasn't teaching me how to fight aging.
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Maybe she was teaching me to stay curious about caring for myself as I aged.
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And there's a difference.
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So yes, mom, you were right about the collagen.
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But you were also right about something much, much bigger.
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Taking care of ourselves matters.
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Not because we're trying to hold on to who we were, but because there's still so much ahead of us that deserves the strongest, healthiest, most connected, and most curious version of who we are now.
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So this week, fearless friends, find your two rooms.
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Take care of the woman who's here.
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Make some room for the woman who's coming.
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Pay attention to the people who help you feel most like yourself.
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And do one thing today that your future self will someday be very glad you did.
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Because a right-sized life isn't about having less.
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It's about having what fits and having enough strength, energy, connection, and curiosity to fully live it.
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Thanks for sending spending these few minutes with me today.
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If this episode made you think about wellness differently, send it to a friend you want beside you in this next chapter.
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And then ask her the question I'm leaving you with today.
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Who are you becoming?
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And are you making enough room for her?
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I'll see you next time on the Right Sized Life.