Mastering Your Mindset as You Navigate Menopause

I developed this habit of understanding that my brain will think thoughts and I have choices on how I respond to those thoughts. And if I'm well rested I do a better job right. So if my brain is noticing a section of my body it doesn't like, or I'm out exercising and I'm like, oh, how am I ever going to get strong? I feel like I'm just getting weaker. My brain is sending me those messages that the curiosity piece has me ask when is that message coming from? And the compassion piece says oh brain, what do you need today? Is that my brain meeting a break? Or is that my brain trying to expend the least amount of energy because it wants to be lazy?

Hey there, welcome to the Grace Health Podcast, your source for aging strong in your physical, mental and spiritual health. My name is Amy Connell. I'm a weight neutral, certified personal trainer and nutrition coach who loves walks with friends, chocolate and Jesus. Whether you're looking to grow stronger as you age, nourish your body, mind and spirit, or fit all the pieces of your health together to holistically thrive, this is the place for women over 40 and I am here to guide you in the areas I can, and bring on experts in the areas I'm still learning, and, of course, we cover it all in a whole lot of grace. As I am navigating my own way through the perimenopause phase and as I've heard from so many of you, so many who are right there with me or even beyond, I'm realizing how much my thoughts control my attitude. It's just, it's incredible how much power and impact my thoughts have. It's just so much love over everything else. It is so easy to fall into patterns of comparison, even if it's just comparison to the previous me or the need to's or should's. You know what I'm talking about. Surely you do. You'll hear in today's episode how I connected with today's guest and I am so glad that I did. I loved this conversation because Carrie Ann Madden, our guest today, helped me reframe some of the very real challenges that go along with this season. And even if you are a phase or two past where I am, I know many of you are I think you will still appreciate Carrie Ann's wisdom. We talk a lot today about mindset what to do when we just don't have it in us to do our normal workout or what we thought we would be doing and Carrie is just such a lifelong learner and because of that she brought an arsenal of resources and books that she has vetted and she recommends. Let me tell you a bit more about Carrie Ann Madden. She is the creator and owner of KAM Fitness and Nutrition. She is a certified master trainer, which is a big deal in the fitness world. She's also a nutrition coach and certified menopause health and wellness specialist. Carrie had struggled with body image, yo-yo, dieting and exercise for as long as she can remember. After years of trial and error, she decided to get scientific about these challenges and become a fitness professional to share her insights and experience with clients worldwide. I know you're going to love this conversation with Carrie Ann Madden. Carrie Ann, welcome, I'm so glad you're here.

Amy, I'm so glad to see you again.

I know I'm, you know I. So just to bring everybody up to speed, as you know, we fitness professionals have to do continuing education. I was doing mine to make sure that I am up to date and getting my continuing education credits, and because I am in the menopause phase of life, or perimenopause, and my clients are, I took a NASM or NASM menopause, continuing education. I really don't even remember what the name of it was, but you led it and it was so good that I reached out to you on Instagram and I said that was just great information, and so we connected from there. You invited me to your menopause coaches group, which is so good, and I am thrilled that you're here.

Thanks, and I am so glad. And I didn't even know that the National Academy of Sports Medicine had posted that the workshop that I did it was part of a online summit that we had had as an organization and I did it on that day. It appeared on that day but then they pulled it out and they put it in their cadre of continuing education, which made me thrilled, and it was only after you reached out to me that I knew that it was still alive out in the world.

It was still alive and I have to say, as a content creator, good on NASM for repurposing their content and not letting it just have that one place. So I'm really glad that someone had the forethought, foresight, whatever to do that.

And then thank you for joining our menopause coaches group and you had talked about it when you had Amanda Theba on, and I just wanted to say how grateful I was that you joined because just a little aside for your listeners that as and I can only speak to myself and Amy because we're of the same heart on this that there's so much to know about the human body and we just have a real passion for taking the absolute best care of our clients that we can, and it almost feels like it's an ever ending educational journey, because every person is different and so having that space for us as coaches to come together and share, I just am really grateful that you became a part of that.

So thank you, well, thank you for holding space for that. And you are right, not only with the continuing education. Everybody is different and we're all in these different circumstances and, just as Amanda Thebe talked about on the episode that we had with her, it is unique and there are so many possible symptoms, there are so many possible ways that menopause can hit you. But it's not a checklist of well, bam bam bam, okay, yes, you're in it, or I mean, it's just, it's so, it's complicated and it's hard and it's confusing and it's exhausting and all of that kind of stuff. So I'm glad that you are here today to talk with us, because this perimenopause, menopause, all of that I mean can just throw us for a loop in a million different ways. And I want to talk about our mindset during this. That was one of the great place pieces of education that you provided in that program that I took. So I would love to hear from your perspective as a trainer, as someone who is really has their hands dirty with a lot dirty in a good way, but with a lot of women who are in this phase of life, what are some of the mindsets you see that are kind of holding women back during this transition and I hate to start with a negative question, but I think let's just call it what it is, because sometimes those mindsets can be challenging.

First I want to tell you a little bit about my personal journey with menopause. To kind of segue into that because it illustrates the mindset that I had. So I think at the time this was going back maybe five years, I think I noticed some things in my body changing and I knew the word perimenopause, but the only things that I noticed was I started getting chin hairs. That was about all that I noticed my period stayed the same. Nothing was changing. I said, oh, I must be having fluctuations in hormones for this to start happening. It was common with women in my family that that is one of the signs of getting older was pronounced chin hairs. Then around that time I got a new job and I was really excited about that new job because it was in a very large facility, a fitness facility. I was helping grand open a brand new club for this large chain. And as exciting as it was and it was a big milestone for me because I had worked as an independent contractor for years so having that recognition of a large corporation finding me and recruiting me to come do this, my self-esteem and my mindset were so high, I was so excited and then, as I began the job. It was pretty rigorous. I had to start work not show up at work, but start with clients at 6 am and I worked until 2 pm, which doesn't seem extreme. That's a lot, but I also had a 45 minute commute that was without traffic, no-transcript. I just noticed that I started becoming more anxious. I was not sleeping well and I really chalked it up to stress. With the menopause transition that sometimes things can present as another symptom A lack of sleep stress I decreased the amount of steps I was taking in a day because I was driving so much I had to change my workouts and shift my sleep pattern. So was it stress or was it my body changing, or was it a combination of both? I don't know. But what I do know is that it became really unbearable, to the point where I was starting to experience some anxiety. In the middle of the night I would wake up, the world was ending or I would be driving my car and I would be so terrified that someone was going to hit me or swerve in the road. It never happened, but that if anybody's experienced anxiety before, they'll understand. But it was something completely out of my normal experience. Again, I was just chalking it up to the stressful job. Then, when COVID happened, I was on furlough and I had my job. I still had my job. I was just furloughed from my job. I was still getting paid, but I didn't have to drive all those miles to work. I didn't have the stress of my performance and what I needed to do on a daily basis to run that club. But the anxiety piece was still there. I was still waking up in the middle of the night. I was not sleeping and then the perfect storm. I just started having hot flashes. So then I started saying okay, here we go yeah. I always encourage people to make sure that they get a physical and start talking about these things with their physician. If they don't feel like their regular doctor has enough of an understanding of the transitionary time that it's totally okay to seek out a menopause specialist I think Amanda had talked about this the North American Menopause Society and menopauseorg. Much easier to remember menopauseorg. They have a directory of physicians and nurses who have taken an extra level of certification or education to become more well-versed in the menopause transition. So that was my long-winded answer of telling you where was my mindset at? I was really a lot of self-blaming. It was me not being able to handle stress. I wasn't doing my meditation correctly. I was just in this mindset that it was something that I needed to fix, that it was a character defect in me, that I needed to suck it up and put on my big girl pants and do my job. So I've seen that mindset with other clients because they're often confused about how their body's feeling and we're getting all these messages from media social media and maybe our families of what our regular expectations are and then when we start not feeling good, that kind of messes with how we feel about ourselves. So that's one mindset I've seen. Others is like, well, all right, you know, like I'm just this is what happens in my life and I'm just going to put on weight and I'm going to get slower and, you know, I'm going to just switch to walking and yoga which walking and yoga are awesome but veering towards that slowing down instead of looking at where do I want to be in 20 or 30 years from now and what do I need to do to help ensure that my body ages gracefully and in a way that I want it to. So that's another mindset. I've seen kind of that like oh, it's all over, you know, dried up, washed out and we can get like a kind of like a screw it mentality.

Yeah, I hear you saying Well, we also get that message.

Some people get that message from society or our families. Like you're supposed to slow down, you're supposed to retire, you're supposed to get a comfort height potty, when that's a little higher, so you don't have to get into a squat, or I want to live on one level, I don't want to have to do stairs. So there's legitimate reasons for doing those things. But I think that sometimes that mindset creeps up, for a variety of different reasons, of I'm just like you know, here's it, I'm old, there's nothing I can do. And then there's another mindset that I see that's like all right, I've, I've been driven all my life. All the things that I've been doing haven't worked. There's got to be an answer for me and I'm going to go after it and try to find it. And I don't. I don't know. I know you've. I started listening to a book that you recommended, the book Hope. So I'm, I'm currently listening to Hope you had mentioned that on a podcast, a really long time ago.

prevails by Dr Michelle Bank Bankson.

I wish I had brought. It's an audio book so I don't have a physical copy to hold up, but I started listening to a book based on something I heard you say one time. And one thing that that I found with this particular mindset is this other book called Mindset by Dr Carol Dweck, and she talks about two different types of mindsets. One is a fixed mindset and that's I'll give you a good example, me, for example. I'm terrible at math. I'm always bad at math. I have math phobias. I'm never going to be good at math. Did you hear? There's no change there? The carry is going to be bad at math until the day she dies. That's a fixed mindset versus a growth mindset would be. There's something in my life that I'm struggling with. There must be an answer out there. I have the capacity, with the right resources, to be able to make traction on change. So that's a growth mindset, that's a I'm not there yet, but there's still hope for me and the fixed mindset is so maybe I need a math tutor is what my growth mindset? So someone who has a majority growth mindset can have a fixed mindset about some things or a growth mindset about other things. So it's not this black and white.

Those are good. I just want to recap this. You talked about like kind of the self blame and questioning mindset, the screw it, and then what I wrote down is like self advocacy, like okay, I'm going to learn and I'm going to figure this out, and then we can kind of have a combination of that fixed in the growth mindset. So, carrie, you know you're as a trainer, as someone who helps women move, and I know you're a huge advocate of strength training and PS ladies, strength training with heavy weights, not the light ones, when possible. I want to kind of take this from somewhat from a fitness perspective, but also you can take it wherever your heart leads you. But like some of the changes that we need to allow ourself to make and we can kind of look at that from either the self advocacy or that growth mindset that you're just talking about of like, okay, this is different and these are the changes that it's okay if I make.

So when you sent me some questions ahead of time. So I was thinking about this a little bit and I want to encourage people and when I work with people, the first thing when they want to change something, we sit down and we do some goal setting and we look at what I call deep health, the six pillars of deep health, and it's just a framework that I learned from a company or an educational company called Precision Nutrition, where I have a master health coach certification and instead of just looking at what am I doing for exercise the physical aspect of my life and what am I doing for nutrition, which is still the physical aspect of my life, when I'm taking into my body, we look at six other pillars and I had to read Can you name those?

Yeah, I wanna say, can you name those, cause I know people are gonna wanna and I'm real curious to see how these line up with the book that I just wrote for young women.

I know and I can't wait to. I've been excited to hear about you talking about it on the podcast. So the first one is physical, like we said, and that's something that we often think about because we're so tied to moving and feeding ourselves. So physical is the first. The second is emotional and some of us may be in tune with that, like, how are our emotions affecting our day and our choices? Environmental does our environment support? Do we have the resources that we need to gain traction on the life that we want? So, in our environment, if we don't have the resources we like to be outdoors, in nature, but we live downtown in a city those aspects may challenge our goals. The fourth one is relational. How are the people around me, whether it's at work or at home or in my social life? How are they helping, support, nurture and encourage, or are they a roadblock in my quest to achieve what I want to with my life? And then there's the existential, and you talk a lot about this on the Grace Help Podcast, because there is this dimension to our lives that is beyond what we feel here and it's a little bit different than the emotional. So that's the existential. That's five. Now we're on to six mental Like what are the tools that we have to navigate stress? What are the resources that we have to help us, whether it's a great self-help book or whether it's a therapist or a best friend like, how do we navigate that mental piece of our life? So those are the aspects I like to. When someone wants to make change, I'll encourage them to start small and with the thing that they feel would be the easiest to gain traction on.

Yeah, love it. Thank you for sharing those six and yeah, I feel like I hit most of those. I don't talk a lot about the environmental and this could be an entirely new podcast in general but the socioeconomic influences that we have and just the ability. It's so easy for me to say, go outside and go take a walk, because I live in a safe neighborhood with sidewalks and not everybody has that. So I think that that's a great. I'm glad you pointed that out and I just want to take the space to say, yes, that is a true challenge and issue for so many Americans and that's really beyond what is even controllable for them in some areas. So I love those six ones. Very good, very good. Okay, let's talk to the women who and I'm getting kind of personal here like this is hi, hello, it's me who has consistently exercised her whole life. She's just not feeling herself. She's having a hard time doing the thing. I mean and it's so funny because I created these, I prepped this, like you said, I give you the questions and I am in a phase right as we speak. Actually, yesterday I thought you know what? I'm either walking or yoga this week, because I do not feel like myself. I mean something is going on and I don't know what it is and it's frustrating because, of course, kind of going back to that mindset that we were talking about earlier, like but this is what I do, I do hit workouts, I do strength, and so there's a lot of self-talk for me in there. Anyway, so now we're getting into an individual therapy session, but so speak to me or anyone else who may be like what is going on with me and my body?

and my mind.

I'm supposed to do this. I like doing this. This makes me feel good normally, but right now I just feel like crap. So what kind of guidance would you give to that?

And I feel like Amanda touched on this as well. So if you haven't, if you're watching Amy and I right now or listening to us, go back and listen to that podcast, because there were so many gems from Amanda. But when I'm helping someone like you, amy, is that we look at it each day as a personal trainer, and I want to acknowledge that it is a luxury item for most people to have a personal trainer, that having a plan and having someone who is outside of the decision-making but who has a deep understanding of the day-to-day ups and downs of being in the menopause transition is extremely helpful. However, not everybody has that ability to have that resource, so what I encourage people to do is either start using an app or a notebook with a piece of paper and become curious and compassionate to yourself every single day. So the first question and start writing these things down, date it. Here's how I'm feeling today. I just don't feel like doing it. I made a plan, whether a coach made it for you or you made it for yourself. Today is supposed to be my hit day and I am just not feeling my hit. So I want to move, because I know that moving makes me feel better. So I'm going to try a 20% effort of my hip exercise, like I'm talking if you were trying to do a jump squat. You're not even leaving the ground. You're like threatening to do a jump squat 10 times If you were supposed to do a burpee. You are like doing a step back burpee and you're just reaching up to the sky. You're not jumping and taking just maybe one or two rounds. Do you need more of a warmup and is it just that brain fog piece? Or and this is the hard part this is where having the journal is really helpful, because if you do gain that momentum and you start doing the more effortful 100% of your hit. You answered your question All right, it was just a little bit of a mind. I'm going like this because I'm thinking it's a double edged sword. So on one side of the sword, one side of the side is I need a rest day, I need a mobility day, I need to do yoga, I need to walk, and then sometimes it's I just need to get out of my own way and do what I had planned. And so if we start to create a catalog for ourselves or a little journal for ourselves that, like that day I tried the hit and I couldn't move the next day. Whoa, then we know the answer it should have been yoga. And I hate the word should, because I always say to my clients try not to should all over yourself, because the decisions that we make on a daily basis are not gonna make or break our entire health goal. I mean, yes, there's always an exception, right? If I, like you know, drink a whole bottle of wine and then had a bottle of whiskey after that, that would have some really deep, I would be in the hospital and I would probably be dead Like that. My, but the majority of the decisions I'm not talking about anything crazy. If you chose to do the hit and you didn't feel well, then you would know oh, the next time I kind of feel like this in the morning, I'm gonna try the yogans then, or I'm gonna see how was my sleep last night. So starting to just become curious of why we feel that way. And then what are the things that make us feel better? And start making a list, like the last time I felt like this I'm gonna try that strategy again because it worked last time, instead of feeling like we have to find the answer that's gonna solve every single time.

And I think, remembering that it's a trend. I love thinking about our health kind of like the stock market. You know, like the stock market has good days and bad days and ups and downs and you can look at it within one day and generally there's huge variations and then you back up a week. But if you back up 10 years, 20 years, something like that, you're going to see a trend that it is higher than it was, and so I think that that's a for me. This is me putting my finance degree to work, but it's remembering that it's the trend we're searching for. It's that like annualized return, if you will, and not so much what it is within one particular day or even week.

And that's something that I like to talk to my clients about too. Not just you know where we want to be in the short term, but one thing that I love that Dr Andrew Huberman and Dr Peter, Tia they have two very wonderful podcasts. One's called the Huberman Lab, the other is called the Drive, and they are both one's an MD, the other is a PhD researcher, professor at a college, and the two of them while I would love to have them have some more female experts on there and talk about how the things that they pronounce, how they apply to women in our age demographic, that's a little aside. Yes, I know.

Because most research is done on men in their 20s. Yes, I agree, but they're great researchers.

They're great researchers so I don't. So when you listen to them, if you're like, how come they said to do this and what I read about menopause said to do something different. Listen to it in open mind. You've got your curious and compassion journal going so you can write things down in it. And one of the things that I love that they talk about is what do you want to be able to do when you're much older? Like, say, I want to live till I'm 90 years old. I would like to and different than I, want to live till I'm 100 and try to get to as old as I can. It's looking at it from a functionality standpoint. What do I want to be able to do? Well, personally and for a woman and for a lot of my clients and I have clients that are older than I am one of our goals is to be able to get up and down off the ground, even if it's only one time a day, just that one time that you need to either call for help or get back up and brush yourself off and not have to, you know, hit a medic alert bracelet or wait for hours until someone finds you. So that's one of our goals. My other is to be able to move my joints in some normal ranges of motion to the best of my ability. I also want to sleep well. A lot of my clients want to sleep well. So we have these goals that I'd like to be able to continue doing those things. Some of my clients participate in sport, like they may do. This past weekend. We have something called the Jimmy Fund and they raise money for cancer and it's a 26.2 mile walk and people can do it as part of a team or they can do the whole thing themselves. I have clients that are doing that in their 60s and they want to still do it when they're in their 90s. So, looking at that later point, what do I want to be doing in that last decade, projected decade of my life? What do I need to be doing now in these decades of my life that will help me stay there? Because we know, despite all the great things that we're doing, our muscle is going to start to decline. So it can start to decline like this or it can start to decline like that. So what we do today is going to really enable us to have a much slower decline than if we had the give up mindset that we talked about earlier and Dr Peter Atia's new book. I believe it was in his book Outlive Outlive it's a very good book and he talks about if you wanted to carry your groceries, say, each grocery bag weighs five pounds. If you wanted to carry your own groceries into the house or from the car to the house when you're in your 90s, how heavy should you be practicing right now? And he had a certain percentage. I've got to go back and listen and say, all right, I'm making this up. This wasn't in the book. So, just as an example, if you haven't heard of farmers' carries, amy and I can tell you about it. It's basically just holding two weights in your hands and going for a walk, not around the block, but so many feet, with really great posture, and doing that as part of your workout, but with something that's maybe five times what you want to do when you're 80. And you'll have to listen to the book because I can't remember what exactly he said. Well, you should walk around with two 25-pound ones if you want to do something like. That was his example. That's how we can plan for that instead of a steep decline, aging healthfully and gracefully so. That's the things that I often talk to my clients about when they're wanting to make change, and how do we get started on that?

looking at that that marginal decade, as Dr Atia calls it- the other thing that comes to mind with that is Steven Covey's like begin with the end in mind, which sounds a bit morbid, like okay, our end, what do we want it to look like? But when you were talking about living to your 90s, I have a great uncle who lived until he was 92 and a half. He was a member of the downtown YMCA in Tulsa, oklahoma, for 55 years. And Carrie Ann, when I tell you that man was so strong, he wasn't like big, but he just I mean he continued going to that gym forever and it really he really declined like the last maybe year. I mean it was a very and it really wasn't even that bad. I mean, even when he was in hospice he was still there, like his body just was vibrant until the end, which is what we want. We want what we want. But, like you said, if that's where we want to be, we can't just decide to start in that last decade. It's having that mindset and I want to go back to something that you talked about earlier that I really I don't want to gloss over when you said do you need a rest day or do you need to get out of your own way? Because I do think that is something that deserves a fair assessment from our innermost selves of like am I just in my own way? Do I need to do the 20% of a workout? I love that guidance because it may be that once we get going, we're like, oh, I can do this. It was just my brain which, again, since we're talking about menopause, like that's a real thing, and so maybe letting our bodies guide us in that, whichever way it is, and I will still say, like this week I'm just taking everything down and I might be in my own way and I don't care, because I need a break.

And that's where the compassion piece comes in. It's not about, like I know I'm supposed to be lifting those heavy weights today or I'm supposed to be jumping, because my bones are gonna get brittle if I don't. It's about becoming a better friend to ourselves and a good listener of what our body, but also our brain, is telling us. I developed this habit, I think, during that time of understanding that my brain will think thoughts and I have choices on how I respond to those thoughts. And if I'm well rested, I do a better job, right? So if my brain is noticing a section of my body, it doesn't like or is I'm out exercising and I'm like?

oh, how am I?

ever going to get stronger. I feel like I'm just getting weaker. If my brain is sending me those messages that the curiosity piece has me ask where is that message coming from? And the compassion piece says oh brain. I know it sounds a little silly but I'll talk to my brain and the third person to say brain. So what do you need today? Like, clearly, that part of my brain that could be my sympathetic nervous system is riled up. That's my. It's the get things done system, but it's also the panic system and being able to be curious about where a thought of like I just don't have it today. So is that my brain needing a break or is that my brain trying to expend the least amount of energy because it wants to be lazy? And I don't think that there's a wrong answer in that. If you have a week of rest and tap into that parasympathetic nervous system, I usually look at how long do I try to stay in that versus get back to the things that I know that are going to keep me on that trajectory of and I wanted to clarify it a few minutes ago. Yes, we all want to be like your grandfather or your uncle that was, you know, your great uncle. But we all know that we don't I mean, unless I know there's DNA tests that can tell us you know potential trajectories of our lives. We don't know.

We don't know if a car is going to come out of nowhere.

We don't know if we're going to develop dementia. We may not know those things. But, like we talked about the stock market, I don't gamble, but I also like to think about the odds. Like, if I want the odds to be in my favor, then I'm going to. You know, just look at all right, how long have I had this like rest week going on? Has it been three weeks? Maybe I need to, but maybe I don't. Maybe something's wrong and I need to go to the doctor.

So that's-, no, that's a good point. I mean, as you know, faith guides my steps and look, I mean God's got a plan for us and you know we just need to be able to be vibrant and functional enough to do whatever it is that he's wanting us to do for his plan and his purpose for us, and not inhibit that. So, yes, I'm with you. Like we never know when God's going to call us home for sure. But, yeah, so that's a really good point, Because there's some things that we have control over and there's some things we don't, but that we do. Let's try and invest that time and energy into being vibrant and functional. I want to shift gears just a little bit. I know you are a lifelong learner and you are a researcher. I'm wondering if you have any books or products that you recommend for women who are wanting to learn more, or maybe just you know we all have our little tools right, Our tools to help menopause, If you want to share any of those, just because we sometimes we need a lot. We need a lot more than a hammer sometimes.

And I'm always listening to a podcast or I'm listening. I mostly listen to nonfiction books. When I read a fiction book at night, it's to help me, like get my brain to calm down and get ready for sleep. That's part of my sleep ritual. I love Demanda Thieves book. I didn't pay me to say that, it's so much fun to listen to. I don't even think I own like the physical copy of it. I'm looking at all my books that are up here because she reads it and it's just such a joy. Or a British person reads it. So there's the accent and it's just and you know from hearing her on the podcast that she is a hoot. She's just so much fun to listen to and talk to. So I love that book. If you want just kind of like a general overview, if you've always been pretty routine about exercising, you consider yourself an active person, then I highly recommend the book Next Level by Dr Stacy Sims and Celine Yeager. That is really geared towards the active menopausal person. They talk a lot about the science and covers just about every aspect of that. So they also have a podcast. Or Celine Yeager has a podcast called Hit Play, not Pause. I really, really enjoy, and they have a Facebook group if you want to connect with other people. The book Mindset by Carol Dweck I mentioned that a little bit earlier. Atomic Habits it's written by James Clear. So if somebody's like I just can't get out of my own way, how do I get started with goal setting? How do I gain a little traction? Those are my top favorites, but I gear my way towards reading more research backed, not that it's research and high level, but more that there's been multiple studies done on the material that they're presenting in the book versus some I've read. That will give some suggestions that I think if someone is really suffering that they might not get the resources they need because a book might present this as the only way. So I like something that has research, but also, like Amanda and I and you both said that every person is different and just because one thing worked for me or for Amy or for any of the other guests, doesn't mean that it's gonna be the thing that's gonna help you. But you are worthy. You're so worthy of finding the answers that you need. So those are some of my resources and like how I kind of pick them out.

Those are great. And as far as the habits, one too, I credit Atomic Habits actually to helping me write my first book, because it was the habit stacking. It was the slow, just consistent habits. The other one too that I just listened it's a great listen is John A Keff's book. All it Takes Is a Goal.

Hey, I have read another John A Keff book, but not that one. I'm gonna write it down.

Okay, it's his latest one. Listen to it because, number one, he provides like 10 extra stories that are on the audio version that are not in the real version and as he's reading it, he is masterful at being very conversational with it and so it doesn't feel like it's monotone. He's engaging. There's not as much research as is in Atomic Habits, but again there's nothing new under the sun, like there's a lot of stuff out there and so it's. You know it can reach someone in a different way than another book on habits, but that's a great one as well John A Keff's All it Takes Is a Goal, and I just thought of one more and I have to look it up because I tried to before we started recording.

I was telling Amy about this book that I read, that I'm reading, and it's based on a hope researcher. Actually it's called Hope Rising how the science of hope can change your life. So if you're feeling like really discouraged that authors present the case that hope is a skill it isn't just you are or you aren't kind of like mindset. The growth mindset says we can develop and this book is I'm still in like maybe the first three hours of a long book, so I don't have all the answers yet but I'm really loving it because it talks about the science and how, in giving examples of how we might become more resilient and more hopeful. And when we're more hopeful then it's a little bit easier to take action on those goals that we have.

Yeah, so true. The mindset aspect of it is so important, and sometimes you were talking earlier about the things that we say to ourselves, and in my new book for young women called your Core Strength, I named that the inner mean girl. We've all I think everybody has seen mean girl in the movie Lindsay Lohan, and it's so funny because, as my children went through high school my youngest is a senior in high school right now, but my oldest one in particular he was like that movie is dead on. I'm like I know this is and Tina Fey knows these things, honey, but I call it the inner mean girl, and so, as you were talking, it's a good reminder to choosing how we respond to that inner mean girl and even though she pipes up, we can just like any other mean girl sitting in history class. We can choose how we respond to her as well. Yeah, okay, speaking of books, by the way, you have a new e-book coming out and I would love for you to share that with people, because I just think it sounds like such a wonderful resource that I would love for people to grab if it sounds like it's something that could help them.

Yeah, it really is a primer or a toolkit for people who are really curious about the menopause transition, wondering if they're starting to go through it or what it might be like going through it. And then giving some strategies and resources on how to begin to feel better if you're not feeling well, but how to prepare and get the resources gathered that you might need. That will help you transition with a little bit more positivity and hope.

And it's only.

It's 15 pages. It's not an exhaustive resource. So if you're already really well-versed, it would just be a nice reminder of the things that you wanna look for and some of the strategies that you could take. But for those listeners, if you are really befuddled by what's going on with your body or curious about what's gonna happen, that's a great resource.

Okay, I have a couple of questions that I ask all my guests. Number one is I love learning about people's tattoos because I have found that when people choose to put something on their body for the rest of their life, they often have a meaning behind it. So I was wondering, if you have a tattoo, if you'd be willing to share what it is and the meaning behind it. And if you don't, but you had to get one, what would it be and where would it go?

Oh, you know, I don't have a tattoo and for the whole reason that you just said, to have it on my body for my whole entire life, because I think, as I've evolved and grown over the years and be like, well, if I got that tattoo, I don't know if I would be enjoying it right now, but I had to write down what I thought. So I really loved when Amanda was talking about she tried to get a tattoo around her ribcage. So that's where I think I would put it, because I would be a little bit shy about showing it to everybody, but I've seen other people have it, so maybe it would be better on my wrist. But begin again, like I love that saying begin again. So when we feel like we've come to a roadblock or we've fallen down and it feels really hard to get up, that there's always a beginning, that we can gather resources and gather support around us and just begin again. That's beautiful. I'm not gonna get it, though, but I'm too afraid of the needle, like it was bad enough to get my ears pierced.

Okay, and tell people how they can connect with you.

Sure well on at Carrie Ann Madden that Instagram, linkedin, facebook, and so how you spell that is like the County of Kerry and Ireland, k-e-r-r-y and A-N-N without an E, and then Madden M-A-D-D-E-N. And no, I'm not related to the coach I don't get to go to Super Bowls every year, nor the man who makes the shoes or any of that.

That's my husband's last name, so Carrie Ann Madden.

And then I have a blog that is. I wouldn't say it's defunct, but many years ago I went through pelvic organ prolapse and went through physical therapy and surgery and I started to catalog that on CarrieAnnMaddencom. So if you go there it says to stay in touch with me, go find me on social media. But if you're going through that and you wanna read a little bit about pelvic organ prolapse journey, that's a place. And then I do have a website that's K-A-M my new initials, k-a-m fitnessandnutritioncom. So I'm developing a program for people who have heard they're supposed to be doing exercise, and it has a progressive program through it, from starting from I am sitting on the couch all the way up to learning to lift those heavier weights that are suggested. But it's infused with resources and tips and guidance for managing symptomology during the menopause transition. So it's pretty cool.

But that's TBD. I'm super excited Congratulations on that, and I know that you have done so much research and you are so well educated and a wonderful person to create that, so I look forward to that. One final question what is the one simple thing you would like us to remember about our conversation today, big or small? One simple thing.

Just I wanna go back to that curiosity and compassion I think that those have been the biggest helps for me and my clients is to become curious about our mindsets and just the way that we're approaching this stage in our life. And where can we have compassion while we're trying to gain traction on the changes that we wanna make?

Fantastic. Okay, that is all for today. Go out there and have a graced day. Thanks for listening today. If this episode was valuable to you, could you do one of two things that are enormously valuable to me but super simple for you? Number one just share this with a friend. Super simple. Number two provide a rating and review. Particularly if you listen in Apple Podcasts. This is super valuable for me. Also, if you haven't yet subscribed to my monthly journal, why not? I send it out twice a month and it is a private fun space for me to share some of my favorite foods and recipes, movements, books, sermons and more. You never know what you're gonna get, but I promise it will add value to your day. You can sign up at gracedhealthcom slash monthly dash updates and, of course, the link is in the show notes. Thanks again for listening and I'll see you next time. Patreoncom.