What if the reason your business feel harder than it should right now has nothing to do with strategy and everything to do with your body? If you’re an over 50 woman who’s been pushing through exhaustion, ignoring your body’s signals, and wondering why your creativity has evaporated… this episode was made for you.
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In this solo edition of Design Your Life, Your Way, I get real about the undeniable connection between physical health, emotional resilience, and business success for midlife women. Drawing from my own recent season of sugar crashes, creative drought, and grief-carried back pain, I state what so many of us have normalized: depletion is not a bad of honor, and it was never part of the plan. Through my signature L.O.V.E. Method, you’ll come to see how health is not another thing to optimize, but it’s an act of self-trust, spiritual alignment, and sovereign self-love.
In this episode, you’ll discover:
- Why your physical health is not separate from your business success — and how depletion quietly erodes your decision-making, creativity, and confidence.
- The three most common mistakes women over 50 make around health (and how to recognize them before your body screams instead of whispers).
- How the L.O.V.E. Method — Let Go, Open, Value, Embrace — applies directly to how you care for your body and honor your energy.
- Simple, brave next steps you can take today — not someday — to begin rebuilding your physical and creative vitality.
- How grief lives in the body, and why honoring what you’ve lost is sometimes the most important business decision you can make.
You’ll walk away from this episode with a few honest questions to sit with, one brave step to take this week, and — if you need it most — a light language transmission to receive healing at the level where words can’t quite reach.
Resources & links mentioned:
- Good Grief Women’s Retreat – a loving, supported space for women ready to honor what they’ve been carrying: goodgriefretreat.net
- Previous episode on setting boundaries: Boundaries are Self-Care: How to Stop People Pleasing in Midlife
- Previous episode on mindful habits: Midlife Habits That Stick: Start Small, Stay Consistent
- Business Coach Vicki Ibaugh’s LinkedIn profile: linkedin.com/in/vicki-ibaugh/
Design Your Life, Your Way – next steps:
- Learn more about working with Gloria Grace Rand: gloriagracerand.com
- Take the free Personal Power Archetype Quiz to discover your unique strengths and start designing your next chapter: bit.ly/PersonalPowerQuiz
- If this episode spoke to you, leave us a review.
- Follow/subscribe to the podcast so you never miss an episode.
- Share this conversation with a woman in your life who’s been running on empty. She needs to hear this.
- Connect with me on LinkedIn @GloriaGraceRand to continue the conversation about midlife, meaning, and living on purpose.
TRANSCRIPT – Your Body is Talking – Are You Hearing What It Needs? (Women 50+)
What If It’s Not Your Strategy? Introducing the Mind-Body-Business Connection
Got a question for you today. What if the reason your business feels harder than it should has nothing to do with strategy? And what if your body has been trying to tell you something, but your mind just keeps brushing it aside? Well, today we are going to be talking about the mind, body, business connection and why your physical health may be affecting your focus, your confidence, your energy level and success more than you realize.
So here’s the deal. First off, I want to welcome you to Design Your Life, Your Way. I Am Gloria Grace. And if you’re like me, if you’re a woman over 50, you know, you probably are carrying a lot, you know. Excuse me one sec.
Sorry about that. Had a cough. Didn’t want to have that on camera or, well, on the audio. Anyway, as I said, if you’re like me, many women over 50 are carrying a lot. You know, especially if you’re a business owner as well.
Why Women Over 50 Can’t Afford to Separate Health from Business
You’re juggling all the demands of business. And then if you’ a parent or a spouse or a caregiver or you’ve got pets, you know, whatever it is, you’ve got a lot of responsibilities. And oftentimes we’ve been trained to put others first instead of focusing on our own needs.
And sometimes we might tend to separate health from business even though they really are deeply connected. Because let’s face it, if success is built on depletion, your energy, your physical health, whatever, your emotional depletion, all, all of that, if you’re. That’s not true success. That’s what I’m trying to say. It’s not true success.
So here’s the deal. See, you can have. You can have a beautiful mission and you can have a powerful message. But if your body is exhausted or inflamed or you’re not getting the right nourishment or you’re constantly stressed out, it just becomes so much harder to show up consistently and joyfully. And especially if you are a business owner, I’m sure that most likely you started this business because you had something to give.
And especially if maybe you had a 9 to 5 job and now you pivoted and you decided to have a business. I’m sure it’s because you felt that this was a way for you to really express yourself and express joy.
Gloria’s Personal Story: Grief, Back Pain & the Body’s Wisdom
But when your health isn’t there, it really becomes hard to do that. And I know for me, I’ve had this happen a couple times. Once was that I can really remember. Where it really, really affected me was after my sister had passed, I started having Major back issues. I mean, and I’ve dealt with back problems since I was a teenager.
And so every once in a while, it’s like my back would go out and I would have to go to a chiropractor and get myself back in alignment. Well, this time I went to a chiropractor, but it was. It still wasn’t doing any good. And even though this was my regular, you know, person, it just wasn’t working. And then I finally sought out and help from another different type of trying to remember what was her title.
It was some sort of specialist, really dealing with things. And she helped me finally to. To start getting some relief.
And while I was going through this, it was really hard to show up in my business because when you’re in pain, it’s tough.
When Sugar Kills Creativity: A Recent Rock Bottom
And sometimes it’s also not just pain that can mess us up. Sometimes it’s how we’re feeding ourselves. And I. I confess that over the last last few months now, really since, well, since November, I would say of last year, I’ve been sort of experimenting with indulging a little bit in foods that maybe aren’t the healthiest for me. And then I would kind of say, okay, now I got to go back to eating better again. And.
But I wound up adding some weight back onto my body of all the lovely weight that I had taken off. And I’ve just been bouncing around. And last week was sort of my rock bottom where I’ve been eating. I had been eating sugar, and it was just really messing up my creativity. I didn’t feel like writing social media posts and I didn’t feel like engaging in, you know, with my community.
And it’s just. It was just really sapped my creativity. In fact, frankly, I should have, could have, would have preferred to have recorded this podcast last week, in fact, but I just wasn’t up for it because I had this. I had the theme, this topic picked out last week, but I just wasn’t ready to do it. And now I need to get it done this week because I.
Because it’s. It’s due. So it’s like. And. And what I finally did, though, this week is that I took myself in hand and I did.
I did about a day and a half worth of fast just to kind of clear out some of the crap, shall we say, that I’ve been eating. And now that since I broke the fast, I’ve been eating healthy foods again and I’m feeling like myself again.
And so I’m able to get this podcast episode recorded today. Because of that, in fact, I did a lot of prep work for it and coming up with a couple new things I’m going to be throwing in here today that I think is going to make the podcast even better going forward.
How Your Physical Health Directly Impacts Business Performance
So let’s dive in a little deeper here and why this is. It’s so important to pay attention to how, how you’re feeling emotionally, physically, mentally in order to have your business be as successful as you’d like it to be. So for one thing, your energy level really affects execution. And like I said, my energy level was like in the toilet, shall we say, recently. So, you know, if you’re tired, if you’re depleted, if you’re overstimulated, if you’re physically uncomfortable, or if you’ve been consuming too much sugar like I was, then your decision making suffers, your follow through suffers, your visibility feels heavier.
Like I said, you, I wasn’t, I, I wasn’t engaging as much as I should have. And creativity drops.
Physical Stress, Emotional Resilience & Why Boundaries Get Harder
And then what can happen also is that then your physical stress can also affect your emotional resilience. And I don’t know if you’ve ever felt this. You know, when your nervous system gets overloaded, suddenly everything feels more urgent. Rejection feels a lot more personal too. Boundaries are harder to set up.
And you know, your confidence gets shaky. And if you are having issues with boundaries, there was a previous episode, I talked about this recently. So if you need some tips on how to set up boundaries for yourself. But it’s definitely harder to set up boundaries when you’re not feeling good.
Health Habits as Self-Trust: Honoring Your Body Strengthens Your Leadership
And health habits shape self trust. And when we’re talking about health, I’m going to have a drink of water because I keep wanting to cough for some strange reason. So every time you honor your body, you’re reinforcing your worthiness. You know, you, you strengthen self leadership and you become more available for that aligned action.
So the goal here is not to become, you don’t want to become more productive at the expense of your well being. The goal is really to become more aligned.
And that’s, this is my whole thing, this is what I preach, is really the importance of this. Because when you are aligned with your purpose, when your body, your mind, your emotions are all running great, that’s when you can get into the flow and that’s what then allows you to grow your business more effectively.
3 Mistakes Women Over 50 Make Around Health (And How to Shift Them)
Mistake #1: Treating Health as Optional Until Things Get Bad
So I put together a couple little mistakes here. Not little mistakes, they are mistakes. So I’ve just got my notes here. I want to make sure I can, I can read them a little Bit. So here’s what.
Women over 50 often get wrong, you know, not every woman over 50, but, you know, there are many, and even me. Like I said, sometimes I do this too. So. So learn from me, you know, learn from my mistakes. So if you.
You want to get a piece of paper maybe and take some notes, you can come back and listen to this again. But. But yeah, pay attention to this. Okay, so mistake number one is treating health as optional until things get bad. No, no, no, no, no.
Please don’t do this. Because you know what? Your body will whisper before it screams. It really will. You’ll.
You know, because I know for me, it’s like sometimes I’ll get like these little. Before my back goes out. It’s like I might get this little twinge and go, oh.
And when that happens, what I recommend when you do have, like, a little, you know, maybe something feels a little off is, is get curious and say, hmm, body, what are you trying to tell me? And, and really get. Get still and, and. And see if you can figure it out. See if you can say, okay, what’s going on?
You know, what’s going on with me? And we’ll get, we’ll get more into that in a little bit, so stick around.
Mistake #2: Thinking Burnout Is Only a Time Management Problem
So that’s. That’s mistake number one. So number two is thinking that burnout is a time management issue only because actually there’s a lot more things that can go into causing burnout. Often it could be just poor sleep. You know, maybe you’re.
What is it? Burning. Burning the midnight oil, as they say, and you’re staying up too late.
Maybe you’re. Yeah, you know, spending too much time on social media right before you go to bed, or, you know, we’re doing too much screen time before you go to bed. That doesn’t help. You’ve got maybe some unresolved stress over maybe something that’s going on either in your business or maybe in your personal life. You’re not eating consistently.
Well, as I mentioned, I was been going, you know, kind of back and forth. I’d eat well for a few days, and then maybe on the weekends I would indulge. And so, you know, being consistent is what really matters. Grief, you know, grief. Grief really can.
Grief can lead to burnout when you ignore it. You know, if you, if you are pushing through, maybe you’ve gone through a. A relationship change, you know, either. Either you’ve gotten divorced or separated or, or your spouse has passed, but, you know, you’ve got to keep the business going. And so you keep going and you’re not allowing yourself time to grieve that loss, then eventually your body is going to tell you, hey, you need to stop because you need to give yourself that gift to grieve.
Sometimes it can be caused by inflammation, lack of movement. And you know, if you’re not, if you’re just sitting at your desk all day and you’re not getting out, getting any exercise, that’s not, that’s a recipe for disaster. And it doesn’t have to be, you know, going to the gym for 30 minutes either. It could be something as simple as just going for a walk.
And then also burnout can be caused by over giving. That’s where those boundaries come in again. You know, when you are serving from an empty cup, eventually, you know, or, or if you’re, you’re serving from, as your cup keeps depleting, depleting, you know, eventually it’s going to be empty. That’s what I really want to say and that, you know, if you keep doing for others, doing for the family, doing for your clients and not taking any time for yourself, then, yeah, you’re gonna, you’re gonna burn out and then your health can suffer.
Mistake #3: Believing That Pushing Harder Is the Answer
So, which leads me to mistake number three, which is very close to number two, is that believing that pushing harder is the answer, because really it’s not.
And I’m just thinking, I’ve got a good friend of mine who is also a business coach. Her name is Vicki Ibaugh. Check her out. I know she’s on LinkedIn. She says these lovely Tuesday Teach me Tuesday videos.
And I know she has talked about this before, about sometimes doing less actually allows you to do more. I think I’ve said this on the podcast too, but it really is amazing when you can lighten up your schedule.
It creates room to breathe,
It’s so much nicer when you can just take that break, when you can maybe cut a few things out of your schedule instead, because it really does. It just gives your brain space to come up with ideas. It really does. It’s so much better.
Reconnecting with Your Body Through the L.O.V.E. Method
So I want you to think about this. That so many women have really learned to disconnect from their bodies to survive, but thriving both in life and in business really asks for reconnection. So I want to invite you to look at this from the love lens. Now for those of you who may be new to design your life to the podcast or don’t know about me. Love is an acronym and so it’s something I’ll call the love method, something I wrote about in my book.
L — Let Go and Let God: Releasing Beliefs About Productivity and Worth
And the L in love stands for let go and let God. So what I invite you to do is to think about what beliefs do you have right now that you need to release around this idea of productivity and self worth or even pushing through. So, you know, maybe it, maybe you have a belief that, that maybe even isn’t it yours? You know, sometimes these are beliefs that we’ve picked up in childhood, you know, like rest is lazy, you know, or more than even that is that you need to work hard for your money. Right?
Yeah, you need to work hard for your money. Well, maybe not. Maybe you need to work smarter for the money instead.
Maybe it’s looking at reframing something around.
I have to earn the right to slow down because again, we live in this hustle culture of ours that feels that, you know, you’ve gotta, you gotta compete and you’ve gotta just go, go, go all the time. So maybe think about really taking a look at that and asking yourself, is that really what I want to believe? Maybe yes, maybe no. Now the O in love stands for open your heart to receive.
O — Open Your Heart to Receive: Asking for Support, Rest & Nourishment
So this could be where you spend some time asking yourself, how can I receive support? How can I ask for and then open myself up to rest or to receive better nourishment? And maybe it means getting buy in from the people that you live with. Perhaps again, going back to those boundaries, check out that episode. I’ll have the link to that in the show notes.
I think that’ll be helpful for you, I’m sure. So I’ll put a link to that in the show notes because when you can set boundaries, that is a really good way to be able to help you to get that support and the rest and nourishment that you need.
V — Value Your Uniqueness: Honoring Your Body’s Own Rhythms
And the V, this is one of my favorites is value your uniqueness. So this really is about learning to honor your body’s own rhythms. Because there are some people, for example, there are some people who like to get up early in the morning and do their most creative work or maybe the things that they need to get done then. And then there are people who are night owls and they like to stay up late and do stuff. So figure out, you know, who are you, who are you, how are you?
How are you wired? You know, when do you best function and honor that? Because if you are Someone who works best in the morning, but you find yourself staying up too late trying to get stuff done.
That’s not a good recipe and that’s probably when you’re going to wind up burning out. So instead, make sure that you are tackling like maybe either the most time consuming projects or the things that take the most brain power. Yeah, I guess, you know, make sure that you’re doing those at the time when your body is. It’s. It’s most conducive.
Yes, I think. I think that’s the word I’m looking for for your body. So make sure that you’re doing that. Honor yourself, not somebody else’s idea of how you’re supposed to get stuff done.
E — Embrace Your Divinity: Your Body Is Not Separate from Your Spirit
And then the E in love stands for embrace your divinity. So this is really acknowledging that your body is not separate from your spirit and when you care for it, that is an act of self love. And now this is my belief. I believe that we are all spiritual beings living a human existence and that we are all divine. So consider that.
And I know some people have that word divinity conjures specific religious ideas. But if that speaks to you, fine. But if not, just figure out another way to maybe you connect to nature. So embrace your humanness then and really honor that.
That we’re not machines, even though AI is threatening to take us over. Don’t let it. I’m reading an interesting book right now as an aside here, but I. I don’t have the title of it off my hand. Oh, I think it’s about.
No, I don’t want to say it’s the New Human, but something. Anyway, I’m going to talk about it on a future episode once I finish it. So I’m not done with it yet, but anyway. All right. Okay.
I’m going to honor my body’s health and take another sip of water here for a second.
Your Next Brave Step: Practical Ways to Begin Rebuilding Your Vitality
Okay. All right. So what could be your next brave step to take this week?
Hopefully, hopefully you’ve come to see that really taking care of your. Taking care of your physical health is important to have all parts of your life work more smoothly. So you could start by noticing one physical signal that you’ve possibly been ignoring. So perhaps ask yourself, where am I tired? What hurts?
When do I feel most drained?
What am I using to numb instead of nourish? And it could be anything from food. In my case, could be alcohol. Maybe it’s social media, maybe it’s binging on Netflix.
You know, if you find yourself spending too much time doing those things, you know, maybe that’s something to start paying attention to. And then when you do choose one health supporting habit to start doing today, not even this week, but just start doing it today. And again, it’s another thing I’ve talked about in a recent episode where we talked about mindful habits. So it could be something simple like maybe starting to go to bed. You might want to start going to bed 30 minutes earlier, but I’ve read where it’s good to work up to that.
So maybe you start by just going to bed 10 minutes earlier and then 20 minutes and then 30 minutes. But our bodies don’t always like those kind of abrupt changes because if you suddenly go to bed 30 minutes earlier, your brain is probably still on like, no, I’m still working, this isn’t bedtime. So it’s important to gradually, gradually move into that. Maybe it’s starting to go for a walk and instead not go for walk for a mile, but start with a 10 minute walk and do that every day for a week. And then the next week you can do 20 minutes and build up.
I’m going to be doing that because I’m going to start training soon to do a 10k race and then a half marathon this fall. So I’m going to have to start working up to that. I’m not going to go out and try to do six miles when I haven’t done that in a very long time, certainly not running it. It’s not going to happen. I have to work up to it gradually, get the muscles used to it.
Maybe it is, you know, drink more water like I’m doing. Or maybe, maybe you’ve been putting off that physical exam at the doctors, you might want to consider scheduling that and pause before doom scrolling. That would be a good thing to do too. And then finally, whatever you decide to do, whatever habit you set up, tie that to your business purpose. So if you decide to go for a walk, for example, you know you’re not just taking the walk for your body, you’re taking it so that you can think clearly and speak powerfully and replenish your cup so that you’re serving from a full cup again.
When What You’re Carrying Is Grief: The Good Grief Women’s Retreat
Now, sometimes the next brave step isn’t doing more on your own, though sometimes it’s letting yourself be held. And if what’s been coming up for you today during this episode feels different, deeper than stress or fatigue, if it feels like grief, I want to gently let you know that registration is closing soon for my upcoming Good Grief women’s retreat. And because as I mentioned when I was sharing at the beginning of the episode today, if you came in late and go back in and watch it or listen to it, Grief affects more than your emotions. It can really impact your energy, your nervous system, your focus, your body, frankly. I mean, I really believe that the back problems I was having because I hadn’t bent any weird way or picked up something overly heavy, it was grief.
I was carrying it in my back. So this retreat that we’re offering, and it’s not just me, I’ve got a couple other lovely ladies who are joining me. It’s a loving, supportive space for women who are ready to honor what they’ve been carrying and allow healing to begin in a deeper way. So if that speaks to you, I’d love for you to learn more about it. I’ll have the link to that in the show, in the show notes.
Light Language Transmission: Releasing Stress, Reconnecting with Your Body’s Wisdom
And with that, I think what I also want to do today is move us into a light language transmission. Because this is something that I like to share on these episodes and especially because sometimes what grief, stress, or exhaustion need most is not more figuring out, but more receiving. So, see, you can get to practice the O and open your heart to receive right now. And light language is one of the healing modalities I’m going to be offering at the Good Grief retreat, too. So this is my invitation to you now to simply breathe, to soften and.
And receive. And what I’m going to do is I’m setting an intention that what you’re going to hear today will support you in releasing stress, to reconnect with your body’s innate wisdom and open you up to greater vitality, clarity, and aligned success. So if. If you’re listening to this right now, where you are driving a car, I would encourage you to pause and come back because it’s better to receive this transmission when you can be just in a nice quiet place, maybe even put some headphones on so that you’re not disturbed and just allow whatever comes through. You know, I may, I may speak, I may sing.
Allow it to speak to your heart, because it’s not going to be necessarily anything that your mind is going to be able to translate. Sometimes it’s possible, but I’m not promising that. Okay? So I’m presuming that if you were driving, you’ve, you’ve. You’ve taken a break and now you’re ready to hear this.
So just take a breath, get grounded. If you want, you can even close your eyes and just allow the message to come through for you today. Whatever ultimately I ask that whatever comes through is for your soul’s highest good and the highest good of all.
[Light Language Transmission]
I invite you right now to just notice what you feel.
Closing: Your Body Is the Path — Honor It
See, did anything maybe soften or open up for you or come into your awareness as well, because.
Your body is not in the way, it might even be showing you a path toward a more loving and sustainable way of living and working. So honor that. Honor that, you know, we’ve been given these tremendous, tremendous bodies. I mean, if you think about it, and in fact, I was just remembering something actually. This is kind of, kind of good.
I was watching an episode of the Madison the other night, and one of the characters was talking about that she’s so glad that breathing is automatic because the emotions that she was feeling at the time, if it wasn’t, she might forget to breathe. And isn’t that amazing that our breathing comes automatically? And we can also choose sometimes how we want to breathe. You know, sometimes when you are stressed, you tend to breathe from your chest and you can, you know, it can get tight, but when you’re relaxed and you can make an effort to breathe from the diaphragm, from, you know, below in your belly, and really take those deep breaths out and then inhale, it’s so much better for you. So much.
So when you honor your physical health, you don’t just feel better. You also can lead, decide, and serve from a more aligned place.
I hope, I hope this really spoke to you today. And yeah, I really hope it did, and that you are. You’re gonna take care of yourself. Because you know what? There’s only one you in this whole amazing world.
That’s why it’s so important to value your uniqueness. You’re the only one of you. Even if you have an identical twin, if you’re a wonderful person out there who is lucky enough to have that, you know, you and your identical twin are still not identical because you all have. You each have your own thoughts, you each have your own feelings, and that’s great.
So, yeah, I just. Just take care of yourself. And especially if you do. If you are a business owner, you know, your. Your clients depend on you, your customers depend on you, your employees depend on you.
And if you’re not taking care of yourself and then you get, you know, something happens then that’s going to affect your business. So I want you to be successful in all aspects of your life so that you can design your life your way. And being healthy is going to help you to do that. So I hope you will join us next week where I’ll be sharing more tips on how to design your life your way. And.
And until then, just remember that your life is asking to be lived more fully. So allow that to happen.
Namaste.
