Revolutionize your Health Through Learning Self Leadership
Welcome to the Satiated Podcast, where we explore physical and emotional hunger, satiation and healing your relationship with your food and body. I'm your host, Stephanie Mara Fox, your Somatic Nutritional Counselor.
For a very long time, I didn't trust myself. I mean, when you've had a history of struggling with food, something that we're taught should be soooo simple, it can kind of put this idea in your head that if you struggle with something so basic, how could you possibly lean and rely on yourself and your body? Diet culture teaches to listen to it and not your body, and then throw a trauma response and all the pressure that is put on women's bodies to look and act a certain way, and feeling like you can be a leader of yourself feels fairly difficult. I know for myself that this all led to a deep disconnection from myself, and I kept trusting everyone else around me to make decisions for me.
When I discovered yoga, rather than utilizing the practice to get to know myself, I kept looking for some guru who could guide me. This is why I'm so passionate now in supporting you in listening to your body, with trusting yourself, and discovering how to make decisions based on your body's feedback. I, of course, learned over time that no one could tell me where to go or what to do. I had to discover that for myself. Through little self-trust exercises, I slowly cultivated more trust within myself and my body. In moments where I still have some doubt, sometimes I'll ask myself, if I completely trusted myself right now, what would I decide? This cuts away all the mental chatter and makes things so clear. Sometimes, it is the sympathetic nervous system that is activated and creating doubt that is coloring the decision making process. When shifting into more of a parasympathetic nervous system place of curiosity, decisions feel much clearer to make.
Learning how to lead yourself can be an important part of food recovery so that you don't feel like you need to rely on a diet, an external expert, or any fad nutritional guidance ever again to tell you what works for your body. Your body becomes the expert that you can be guided by. I chat about self-leadership today with Courtney Townley. Courtney is a health and self-leadership coach, speaker, host of the top-rated Grace & Grit podcast, and the author of The Consistency Code. She helps midlife women to cut through the noise of wellness culture and lead themselves with less overwhelm and more confidence. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan, a Level 2 Precision Nutrition coach, a National Strength and Conditioning Association personal trainer, and a certified life coach via the Life Coaching School. With over three decades in the wellness industry, she’s discovered that deep health isn’t about following someone else’s manual—it’s about writing your own. A sought-after speaker and educator, she blends science with straight talk, helping women navigate behavior change with grace, grit and self-trust. We chat about her 4-part Consistency Code framework, self-leadership, the misconceptions of self-care and wellness, the impact of societal expectations on women, navigating stress, and practical steps toward self-leadership.
There are 10 days left to get my holiday sale of 30% off the Somatic Eating® Intensive! This 2.5 hour class and week of 1:1 Voxer support will support you in discovering and mapping your nervous system's food story and discovering the bodily wisdom of your food behaviors. You can click on the link in the show notes or go to stephaniemara.com/learn to sign up. Now, welcome Courtney!
I am really excited to connect with you today and talk about your new book that's about to come out, and everything that you teach women around consistency and change. And first to just get started for anyone who's new to you and your work, I would love for you just to introduce yourself and how you got into the work and what you're talking about in your book and how you got here today.
Courtney Townley 05:01
Yeah. Well, Stephanie, thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. So yeah, my name is Courtney, and I really, I always say that I came into the world of dancer. I truly did. I think I came dancing out of the womb, but dance was my first love, and I was literally a professional dancer up into my to my mid 20s, and it made a lot of sense when I was transitioning out of the dance world to fall into the fitness world, because it was movement. I was teaching people how to become better movers. And that was well and good. I loved it. But what I realized pretty darn quickly is that people didn't necessarily want to become better movers as much as they wanted to feel better, right? And movement is a part of that, but there was a lot that I was ill equipped to teach them that was also a part of that, like nutrition and getting enough sleep, and the health of their relationships ,and how they were living outside of the gym. I was not at all equipped to have those conversations, partly because of my age and also because of my lack of education. So I went on to learn more. I went through precision nutrition, which is really a lot of nutrition principles rooted in behavior change science. I went on to learn a lot more about lifestyle and how it influences the health of a human. And I traveled into the fat loss world, and that was interesting, because I was there for about a decade, and I helped a lot of people lose a lot of weight. And I also saw this curious pattern start to emerge where people started to return back to their weight that they had left behind. And that just, you know, it's the proverbial onion. You just keep peeling back the layers of what you don't know. And it's like, man, what am I missing? You know, what am I not understanding here? And that sort of sent me down the trail of learning more about the psychology and the nervous system and how hormones are affecting us, especially in midlife, because that's the majority of my clients. And I really came to this place where I was like, Okay, hang on a second, where I'm teaching wellness, as if it's this knowledge base that people are hiring me to package in a program that they can just execute and have their results forevermore. That's what I was doing before. I was giving people a list of rules and regulations to follow, and if they did, they would create an outcome, but they couldn't necessarily sustain the outcome. So what the hell's the point? So I really came to this place which I really feel rooted in now, which is it's really an exercise in self-leadership. It's really developing skill sets to help us navigate a life of transformation, rather than creating the once in a lifetime transformation. And so I mean, talk about a wild journey to get here and doing a lot of things wrong to arrive in this place, but I don't know how I would have learned it any other way.
Stephanie Mara 07:35
Oh, thank you for sharing that first. And I literally just put out a post and I talk about this all the time around how anti-diet, diet culture, whatever culture you're trying to follow, if they are still telling you what to do, how to eat, what to substitute, when to sleep, how to sleep, how much you should eat, any suggestion - it is not teaching you how to I usually just say, like, listen to your own body and hear its messages, but I hear in your language, it's like, how to lead yourself. It's not teaching you that. And I find that is such a missing piece. So I'm, like, thrilled that you're talking about this and I'm not alone in this. Like, wait a second, like…
Courtney Townley 08:17
I'm going to read your post now. I'm excited to.
Stephanie Mara 08:19
This is not working for anybody, because it's not sustainable if you don't know how to tune in and listen to yourself.
Courtney Townley 08:27
And it really the wellness industry, I think, largely, has trained us and conditioned us to outsource the decisions for our life. Someone else knows better about my body, about my life, about my diet, about everything, and we have lost the art of insourcing. I'm really interested in the deep health, not the superficial health, like the really deep cell to soul health is what I'm interested in helping people attain. And that requires a whole lot of insourcing, like really asking yourself a lot of good questions, not just about what you're doing, but why you're doing it. You know, and just kind of meeting yourself in that place with a lot of compassion and consideration and curiosity, rather than the judgment and the beratement and kind of the bully. The mean girl, as I like to call her.
Stephanie Mara 09:10
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, I always say, like, we can't hate ourselves into change.
Courtney Townley 09:15
No. You can't hate your way healthy.
Stephanie Mara 09:17
Yeah, exactly. It just perpetuates a cycle of feeling like you're trying to force and coerce yourself into change without maybe even understanding like you're referencing, why do I even want this change? What do I expect this change to do? And then even when it doesn't do that, it's like, there can be great disappointment. And then it's like, why isn't this happening faster? And this self-judgment. And then it's like the coping mechanism that was maybe there. I know we talk a lot about food here. Sometimes food coping mechanisms, they come right back in because you feel horrible from all the judgment and criticism and pressure, and so, yeah, the food is going to support you in feeling really good. It just then it becomes a cycle where you feel like you're stuck and can never get out.
Courtney Townley 10:02
Yeah, and we're the ones creating the stuckness in some way, because we're, you know, I hear the term that gets thrown around a lot in wellness is the self-sabotage. And the thing that I often remind my clients is I'm not a really big fan of the word.
Stephanie Mara 10:15
Me neither.
Courtney Townley 10:15
Okay, great, because…
Stephanie Mara 10:17
I'm like, please get rid of the whole idea of self-sabotage. I'm totally on the same page with you.
Courtney Townley 10:22
Yeah. Like, I mean, literally anyone listening, I would just encourage you to look up the definition, because it's like intentionally harming yourself. And I've never worked with a woman - ever - in 30 years, who was intentionally trying to harm herself. What is true is women are running the well dry because of the way they're living and the amount of stress. And some of that stress could be stuff we're carrying from the past, right? It's not everything that's just happening today, but our systems are so burnt out. Our nervous system, as you well know, is so hungry for that decompression and that safety, that we're looking for ways to self-soothe. And that's what it is. The thing that we're calling self-sabotage is actually self-soothing and man, that's such a graceful perspective, and one that kind of allows us to greet ourselves in that space of looking at some behaviors that we're not so proud of.
Stephanie Mara 11:10
Yeah, I'm on the same page with you, again, that we have to start to see that any pattern or habit that we're criticizing, I always like to kind of provide the lens of rather than I'm doing this to myself. How am I doing this for myself? Because yeah, there's some part of you, or your nervous system or your brain or your neurotransmitters, or who knows what, that is getting something out of what you're doing. And I agree with you that when we start viewing our behaviors from that more compassionate lens, it actually, I find, turns down the internal pressure and intensity around what we're even experiencing in the pattern where more of that curiosity is available. Because when you're just feeling so much sensation, it's like hard to then meet yourself with a lot of like, compassion and connection, but it's like, this is so intense, I don't know how to be with this or connect with this or move through this.
Courtney Townley 12:08
It's so true. It's so true. And the judgment, like you said, just makes it worse. It's one of my favorite sayings, is that you can't be curious and judgmental at the same time.
Stephanie Mara 12:18
Yeah.
Courtney Townley 12:18
You know and meeting ourselves with curiosity is such a foreign concept when you've spent a life berating yourself. But I would just offer a listener that you know just the phrase, isn't it interesting? Isn't it interesting that at the end of every day I want to pour wine or I want to eat a bunch of salty, crappy food that I know isn't great for my body? It is interesting. And when I look at it through that lens, the interesting part pulls me into looking at it a little closer. Like, why is it interesting? What is this about? But you're right, like, until we're in that space of being able to sort of offload some stress, it's really hard for our brain to even go there.
Stephanie Mara 12:54
Yeah, so I'm curious, because how you started was potentially feeling like you're going along this journey, and you're realizing something's missing here, and I'm wondering what you started to discover in learning new things and maybe going on different avenues.
Courtney Townley 13:10
Well, I think again, because of my age and also my inexperience, I did happen in the wellness and the fitness industry to be working with, largely with the midlife population, when I was pretty young, because they could afford trainers, and they were kind of at a place where they were hitting their head against the brick wall, and they were, you know, really ready to get some help. And I hate to admit this, but I've already shared, you know, all of my a lot of mistakes with you. But another thing that I think happened is a lot of people were hiring me because I was the Fit-looking trainer, because I was, you know, my body was my greatest marketing card, but I was not healthy. I was taking two to three hour naps every afternoon because I was so exhausted. My joints hurt more than I knew they should. I had horrible PMS. I was a reactive mess. Like nobody in my orbit was safe, right? Because I was just constantly reacting to life around me. So there was that disconnect that I'm being hired to represent this image of health, but I also know deep in my core that I'm not healthy. There was that, but there was also this consistent flow of clients that were coming in to fix their body, because the body was the problem, so they though. But what became so apparent... Well, first of all, we know, you and I know, and I think a lot of your listeners are probably on this page too, your body's not the problem.
Stephanie Mara 14:24
Yeah.
Courtney Townley 14:25
Right? The body's never been the problem. The problem is our inputs and our stress load and our resilience and our capacity for stress. I didn't know any of that at that age, but witnessing a lot of the challenges that these women were facing outside of the gym. You know, broken marriages, jobs they hated, lots of self-loathing. It started to become very apparent to me that those were some very real problems. And so if we could start directing a woman to unpacking some of that stress, maybe she would start treating herself a little differently. And that is what I started to see happening, and that just gave me more and more evidence to follow those breadcrumbs, like, Oh, there's something here, right? It's not what's happening in the gym, it's what's happening in these other 23 hours that they're outside this space.
Stephanie Mara 15:10
Yes, 100% What I see in the same realm of like, food recovery is kind of the same thing of, it is not about the food behavior. It is about what the food behavior is doing for you, what it is protecting you from, what it is supporting you with. And so, yes, I completely agree that once we start to as we're talking about, meet that with a lot of like, curiosity. Be like, Huh, what is this doing for me? Like, what is this protecting me from? That - I have seen this a lot, that when you start it could be setting boundaries or speaking up for yourself more with food, but it also could be like, You know what, I really want to speak up for myself at my work. Like I've been holding back my voice, and I don't want to do that anymore. That suddenly you're feeling less of an urge to binge eat when you get home every day from work. Or, you know, I could go on to like, a million different like scenarios of like, you start, you know, speaking up your truth to your main relationships, and then suddenly you don't feel like you need to be restricting so that you numb out from yourself or binge eating, because you need to shove everything down that you're feeling. It's like, Oh, once I start addressing what the food behavior is helping me with, I don't need the food behavior anymore.
Courtney Townley 16:25
Because I'm also willing to look at other solutions, right? Because I know that's not working for me. So it's interesting, because again, it like when I was in that space of fat loss for and that was a decade of my career, it was very much about the calorie load, the macros, the amount of exercise, the interval training. It was very prescriptive, and for a particular result, it worked for a period of time. But where the space I'm in now, the equation that I use for health, it's so simplistic, and it is this: we have to reduce unnecessary stress in our life. And unnecessary stress are the things that aren't really giving you any benefit, like they might be even just like briefly giving you a little benefit in the moment, like drinking that glass of wine tonight might give you that little bit of self-soothing, but there's a pretty big consequence to pay tomorrow morning, so I would put that in the unnecessary stress category. But also not setting boundaries, having a lot of negative self-narrative, not liking who you are or the life you're living, like all of that is a lot of unnecessary stress. So we have to unpack that, but we also need to simultaneously be building skill sets that expand our capacity to tolerate stress, the things that help to expand our life, like learning new skills, learning how to set boundaries, having hard conversations, going after the jobs we really want, right? That's a level of stress, but it gives you so much nutrition and value on the other side. And so that's really the equation I operate from as a health coach. I say health and self-leadership coach, but that's the work that I do, is, where do you want to start unpacking some unnecessary stress? And where might we need to start leaning into some intentional stress?
Stephanie Mara 18:09
Yeah, I love that reframe, because I feel like a lot of people sometimes are come to me and are kind of confused, of like, well, this is stressful, so is that bad for me? And so it's like, No, not necessarily so. Especially because - so when we are both in just you're talking about the nervous system, both in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, at the same time, that is a state of play. We are safely mobilized. And so what I hear in that is like, how do we create more of safe play for yourself, where it's like, yeah, you're gonna get a little bit of sympathetic activation. That's not bad, but it's like, am I enjoying this? Is this feeling like I'm in a flow of some sort, and that some of these other maybe coping mechanisms that we have that are kind of like soothing in the moment. They lead to maybe, like, more stress that kind of feels like it keeps us more in, like, what I'm hearing in a survival state, like long term. Where it's like, yeah, I could have that glass of wine, but then it disrupts my sleep, and then I'm not sleeping well, and then I wake up not feeling good, and then I don't want to move my body. It's like one tiny moment that maybe makes you feel good in the moment, but it kind of snowballs in an entirely different way.
Courtney Townley 19:29
Yeah, it's also like we're, I think, with a lot of vices to self-soothe, we're artificially altering our chemistry to get the effect. But it's not really doing that deeper work. And so of course, you know that becomes problematic. But I love what you said there about the being in the two states at the same time and finding kind of that flow state. And can you lean into to challenge and maybe discomfort while still enjoying yourself? I'm sure you've heard of the book Emotional Agility by Susan David?
Stephanie Mara 19:57
Yes.
Courtney Townley 19:58
Yeah, okay, it's one I always recommend to clients, but the reason I'm bringing it up here is because she calls what we're talking about here kind of your state of whelm. You don't want to be in a place of overwhelm, where you're in that fight or flight freeze state, you know, just shutting down, or just, you know, pushing so hard you're on the edge of breakdown. But you also don't want to be under-challenged, because nothing good happens there when you're not challenged as a human on some level. And so where is that place with whatever you're committed to right now, in terms of whatever you're working on to improve your health? Are you in your state of whelm? Or are you underwhelmed or overwhelmed? I just think that's such a great clarifying question that's easy for me to wrap my head around. So I always offer it when I'm having these conversations.
Stephanie Mara 20:37
Yeah, what I hear in that is also like, are you keeping inside your window of tolerance? And like, when we are hitting just the tip of it, like we're not going beyond it, but it's like, okay, we want to grow, like you've been talking about, and I talk about as well here, of like, growing your capacity to be with it. But that's not always pushing yourself beyond, like, what you can handle.
Courtney Townley 21:01
Yes, exactly. It's knowing when to push and it's also knowing when to pull back a little bit, because if you keep pushing as hard as you are, you're going to break. My business is grace and grit exactly for that reason, right? I've seen women use this concept of grace to the point of rationalizing why they shouldn't have to do any work. And I've also worked with a whole lot of women who use grit to the point of self-destruction. And it's like, well, living on the ends of the spectrum isn't usually the healthiest place to be, and there's lots of options in the middle, like the window of tolerance, right? The state of whelm, like being in that place, let's find that.
Stephanie Mara 21:36
Yeah. And I just want to go back for a minute of really appreciating you, of being honest around like, when I looked the way that society has told me to look, I was actually not healthy. And I just want to share in that experience of, you know, when I kind of, I always look back on these pictures when I was, like, deeply, heavily, like, I love yoga. Everyone knows that here. I practice yoga a lot still. And my days where I was, like, practicing it every day, and I was teaching yoga like someone could look at me and say, like, Oh, wow. Like, she really looks like a westernized version that's been, you know, yoga has been co-opted, of a Yogi body, but like, I was the deepest, thickest into binge and restrict cycle and not taking care of myself, and exhausted and tired and like all the things that you listed. And so I think that when we're talking about health, we, I know it's kind of cliche, but we have to get away from the idea that it looks a certain way and that it is coming back to how do you feel? Because if you feel horrible in your body, that is not health, and those patterns aren't going to lead to the way that you want to feel in your body either.
Courtney Townley 22:52
I love that Stephanie that's so well said. It's one of the ways that I like to think about it is, you know, just asking my client, like, how much life do you feel like you have in your life right now? Like, how excited are you to get out of the bed in the morning? Because I worked, I've worked with a lot of athletes over the years, and I still work with a lot of coaches and trainers. And there is a cost, as you well know, to having that level of fitness, and that cost is often we're not having family meals. We are giving up, you know, our other passions and pursuits to make time for more yoga or more fitness or more, you know, strict eating. There's a lot that goes alongside of it. And, you know, I'm a big believer that that health is is really a return to wholeness. And we are so much more than our physical bodies. Humans are very multifaceted. And so I always say, like your body, looking at your body and judging you based on your physicality, around what your health is, is like looking at your social media account and thinking, I understand your life. It tells me nothing.
Stephanie Mara 23:38
Yeah, yeah.
Courtney Townley 23:38
And so I want to know, are you excited to get out of bed? What is the health of your relationships, you know, with other people, with nature, with play, with time, with yourself, like these are all things that are just as important to acknowledge as are you taking care of, you know, your physical needs.
Stephanie Mara 24:15
Yeah, completely agree, because you can be doing what might feel like the external like what everyone else has told you, what you should be doing, and feel horrible.
Courtney Townley 24:27
Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 24:27
Feel like there's no life in what you're doing. And I've seen that so much in people who are like but I'm meditating and I'm journaling and I'm biohacking, and I'm doing the red light therapy, and I'm, you know, taking vacations and like they're doing all the things that they think that they should be doing. And again, everyone knows here, you know, if you're listening, like so much compassion, and there's nothing wrong with like, any of these things, like, they're all wonderful and great. I think it's more like, how does it feel in your body? And I kind of bring that in a lot of it goes the same thing with like somatics is also getting misinterpreted so much these days, because it's become a buzzword. And people are like, Well, what's just the right somatic practice that I need to practice right now? And it's like, no, like the work of somatics is to connect with your body, to tune in, to be like, Well, what's the movement or the impulse that my body needs to do right now? And that's going to look different every time, and so that, you know, that's what I hear you describing, is it's like, we have to come back into like, Okay, yeah, sure, I could be eating a smoothie for breakfast every morning, and if it makes me feel cold and tired and low energy, like, is that actually the healthiest thing for me to be doing?
Courtney Townley 25:37
I love that you're mentioning that because it's, I think it's that rigidity that self-care is supposed to always look the same way that is so self-destructive. And even looking at athletes the way that they train, it's not the same all year. They have to oscillate like the nervous system a little bit, right? They go through periods of intensity and periods of rest and recovery, because that's how they can sustain it. And I think that one of the things I try to really encourage my clients to understand is that self-care is not always going to look the same, because life doesn't always look the same. Your stress load is not always the same. And look if I got a terrible night of sleep last night, and I'm dealing with some marital issues, and I have a full day of clients, and I've, you know, just been really stressed. You know, doing a really intense workout program is probably not the best choice for me today, especially being in perimenopause, right? Because it's all of these things combined that are pushing me right at that edge of my capacity. And if I'm not careful, I'm going to, you know, flip off the cliff. And so I do. I love what you're saying there about that, because I think that that hugely lands. I also want to share this because I think you've alluded to it a few times. But, in the start of my book, I opened the book with a story of how I started to kind of pivot away from fat loss and all this very prescriptive wellness advice. And one of the really awakening moments for me was I had just had my son, and I was a brand new mom. And I always say some women waltz into motherhood, and I kind of like face-planted into it. It was not a pretty transition, and I was wrestling on every level: mentally, emotionally and definitely physically. I had to have a blood transfusion, lots of things. Anyway, what happens after the birth of a child is people come to your home because they want to see the baby. And the consistent comment I got from every person who walked in that door was, Wow, Courtney, you lost the baby weight so fast. Not how are you doing as a new mom? What you know? What I mean, people did offer help, but I don't think people even knew how to really recognize what was going on, because we're so conditioned to judge women based on their physicality. So what that - I lost the baby weight because I was basically in the ICU, you know? Like, is that health and the fact that I am struggling to even take care of this little, tiny, seven pound gelatinous blob? Like, is anyone concerned about that? And that really, it frustrated me so much that I think that it was in aftermath of that that I was like, Okay, hold on a second. Like the way that we are going about talking about women's health is so misguided. And then, of course, I was working with a lot of midlife women at the time that were also demonstrating that, you know, the what we had been conditioned to believe was not working for us. And so it was just all of that that kind of pushed me out of that space.
Stephanie Mara 28:23
Yeah, thanks for sharing that so honestly. And it is really unfortunate that like that is the only thing that people come in and comment on and see is like, what is tangible?
Courtney Townley 28:34
Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 28:35
It's like, well, I can just see your body and you've lost weight, and because weight loss has been so connected to health, which we talk a lot about here, of like, nuh uh. And that it's like, Oh, you must be doing so well because you've lost the weight. You must just be thriving in motherhood and not even questioning, like, this person could be really struggling, like, why did she lose that weight that fast? Like, something might be going on here. And so I hear you, there's, like, a lot of frustration in what we're taught and how we're socialized, especially as women, or women identifying to be like, Oh, this is how I'm supposed to, like, express myself in the world, or this is how I'm supposed to even show up for another woman in the world.
Courtney Townley 29:24
Yeah, that word expression, I think, is everything, because I truly, I operate from the place that deep health is truly being an authentic and fully expressed human, whatever that means for you. And you cannot do that work when you are berating yourself and constantly self-soothing with things that artificially alter your chemistry, and you hide from the work of your life. And so what does it mean for you to be fully expressed? And that's really like, what are the things that are on your heart that you keep not pursuing, because the result of that is what I call. Integrity pain. I've used this phrase forever in my work, but integrity pain is really I feel like the problem I help my clients solve, which is that very real internal friction of living life misaligned from what we actually want. And when we let that internal friction build and persist for too long, it literally develops into disease and dysfunction. And so how do we soften? We all have integrity, pain, all of us, and most of us, have lots of forms of it, not just one, but many forms. And it's not about eradicating all of it or eradicating it all overnight. It's it's just being willing to stand in the arena with it and be like, yeah, these are some places and spaces that are feeling misaligned right now, and what might I do to just realign myself a little better in that space?
Stephanie Mara 30:49
Yeah, so you talk about self-leadership, and I'm wondering, like, what that means. And like, how does someone do that? A lot of what we're talking about today is that we have to learn how to come back into connection with ourselves and trust ourselves and be guided based off of what we feel like is best for us, so we're living in alignment so that we are thriving and healthy and doing all the things that we want and need to do in the world. And so I'm wondering like, yeah, how does oneself lead oneself?
Courtney Townley 31:18
Well, I think that, I think number one, the definition of self-leadership that I like to operate from is like really having, like taking that time to do some introspection, to get clarity on how you want to be showing up in the world. Like, what version of yourself do you want most fully expressed? I think that's important work to do. And the self-leadership comes in when we develop the skill sets that allow us to manage our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, to move in that direction. And it really is a direction, because we get misaligned from the direction all the time. And self-leadership is, Can I just stay awake to the truth of what I'm doing and how I'm showing up? And when I notice that I'm a little lost in the woods or very lost in the woods, do I have the skills to gently pivot back? And pivoting back, we make it so complicated. You know, we really do. The thing that I like to tell a lot of my clients is, or ask them, is, what is one small decision you could make, literally right now? In fact, I would just challenge all the listeners to do that - that would move you a little bit more in the direction of health. Is it having a snack? Is it making a phone call? Is it changing your shirt because it's been itching you all day? Like, I mean, these sound like silly things, but more and more of those decisions are going to compound to helping us travel in a more sure-footed way in the direction we intended to go. So when I think of self-leadership, I really kind of break it into four buckets of skill sets. The first bucket is self-awareness. We can't ever change what we don't see. So this is the self-awareness, the naming and noticing of emotions, starting to become more aware of the patterns of thinking, noticing your behaviors without the judgment. All of that falls under self-awareness. A second bucket of skills is the practice of organization, because the brain is very taxed living in the modern world, there's a lot of decisions we're making all the time. Plus a lot of us are living with dysregulated nervous systems, so our prefrontal cortex is not doing its best work. And so when we take a little time to pre-decide how we're going to show up tomorrow, around food, around time, around the things that we truly care about, it just makes it a little easier for the brain tomorrow to say, Yeah, let's do that, rather than scrambling to keep up all the time. And I also, I think it really honors your nervous system, because you can actually start to organize your life in a way that that helps to oscillate with periods of intensity in the day and periods of recovery, rather than living like that, which most of us tend to do. That third bucket of skill sets is the practice of follow-through, which is probably the bucket I coach on the most. You can have the best plan in the world and not follow through with any of it. And so again, like we've talked about nervous and I know this is a big part of your work, nervous system. So yes, of course, that's so relevant here, because you're never going to follow through if you don't feel safe, if you can't actually think proactively, if you're always in reaction mode. So that is 101, once we can kind of get the nervous system into a safe space, we also have to take radical responsibility for parenting our brain, like managing our mindset so we're not creating unnecessary stress, and we're talking ourselves into the work, rather than out of it. And we also have to be willing to expand, learn skills to help us expand our emotional capacity, right? Like our ability to feel the whole gamut of human emotion, because you're supposed to feel it all. It's not all fun, but there's nothing wrong that you're feeling all of it.
Stephanie Mara 34:40
Absolutely.
Courtney Townley 34:41
And then the final bucket of skill sets is the practice of realignment, because that's the Lost in the woods piece. I constantly say life is going to throw a lot of curve balls, and some days it's going to throw 40 curve balls at you in one day. And what are the practices that you have to quickly realign with the direction you intended to travel in? And a lot of women just don't have those skills. They don't have little things that they can do to say, Oh yeah, that's where I meant to go. It's kind of like taking a wrong turn to the grocery store. You know, we just on the next street, we just take the next left. And I think when we have more skills that help us to realign faster, it can really be that easy. Obviously, there's some life events. There are certainly curve balls that really derail us. And so the grace-filled thing is to honor that self-care looks different in those situations. So those are the four buckets of self-leadership I teach under.
Stephanie Mara 35:30
I love all of them. Think that's so great. And it is a lot of things that I wish some of these things, like imagining who we want to be in the world, and then how do we start enacting that behavioral change? This should be taught so much younger. Of just like, you know, we ask kids, what do you want to be when you grow up? Like, I have no idea, but who do you want to be in the world? That's something that you can cultivate very, very, very young. Of like, Oh, how do you want to show up for your friends at, like, preschool tomorrow? Yeah, you want to share your cookies? Totally, go share your cookies. Like, those things that you're talking about. I agree with you. We are not taught that, and even I love that you're bringing in also, like, how do we pivot? Because I find that even in all of the popularity of the nervous system work, it feels like it's something that would take forever, but really, what I have found is the more that you feel safely connected to yourself, and the more you're able to track how you are throughout the day, that it's like, Oh, just a deep breath. That was all I needed. I just needed to close my eyes and take a deep breath, or I just needed to stick my head out the window and, like, breathe some fresh air. I just needed to, like, take a moment to close my eyes and go in my bedroom, maybe hide under the covers for a second. Like, it isn't actually anything that is super, super big, but when you know what your pivot points are, or your realignments tools that it's like, Oh, like, I am starting to get disconnected. I'm starting to get activated or triggered. I'm going into these more, you know, sympathetic nervous system states, okay, I'm tracking that. I need a moment to practice these things and how quickly actually, it can shift things and reground you where you get to move forward. But I find that taking those pauses enough throughout the day, like, that's what we are not taught. Of like, how do I slow down enough when I'm in, go, go, go, go, go, go, go mode to be able to check in so that I take those moments to realign?
Courtney Townley 37:40
Yeah, that's all it's so it's so good. The thing I really hear in that, especially what you said there at the end, is that we, we do just get a little distracted from our capacity to pivot. I shouldn't say even a little. We get very and then, of course, we're reaching for that outsourcing for someone else to tell us how to pivot back, which, you know works on occasion, but it's not going to work in a sustainable way. And that it really is the gentle micro moves and practicing more and more of those over time that eventually you do start to trust yourself. And the thing that comes to mind a lot for me, because you're right, like nervous system work is being so diluted and my biohacked, and all the things I see it too. And the other thing that I hear a lot is this whole concept of self-love, which, if you've spent your life not loving yourself, that is a wildly foreign concept. And so okay, then we can maybe knock it down to self-respect. Well, what is self-respect? Well, self-respect is just consideration. And everything I heard you just say there, it's all consideration. Just putting your hand on your heart throughout the day to say, Hey, Stephanie, how you doing? And not giving the surface level answer, but it's like the good friend that's like, she won't accept the initial answer. She's like, No, how you really do it? And what might you need in this moment, just to be able to breathe, to be able to take a load off? And maybe it is just stepping outside for five minutes, telling someone you'll get back to them in an hour, asking someone else to cook dinner, right? It's just pollinating those little things that are actually an extension of consideration for yourself. That's what self-respect is.
Stephanie Mara 39:17
Do you find that that's what supported you? Because it is really hard to step out of diet culture, and I'm wondering even what that was like for you. Of coming from well, I look the way I'm supposed to look, but I certainly don't feel like I'm loving or respecting myself or this body. And I want to just maybe bring in for a moment how hard it is to actually transition out all of this, because you're transitioning out in a culture that is still going to tell you that this is the path. You need to do all of these things that disconnect you from yourself and just do it, because then you'll fit in, and people will treat you with more respect, or you won't have to deal with fat phobia or weight stigma or any of those things in the world, like, just keep doing the things that you're doing to look a certain way. And so it is really hard to say, like, I'm gonna not participate in this anymore.
Courtney Townley 40:10
So there's a big difference I have found in my own journey between doing something to prove my worth and doing something to own my worth. And self-care, more often these days, is the latter. It's because I want to feel good, and I have things I want to share with the world, and I want to be a great mom, and I need a certain level of energy and vitality to be able to do that. But I'm not going to lie that I don't still have a vanity bone, right? And that I don't still get caught up in that dogma of what health looks like. I will share with you that I often talk about deepening health as an exercise in expansion. We have to expand the way we think about health. We have to expand the way that we have, you know, practice self-leadership skills all the things. But sometimes we also have to expand our physical beingness and at my leanest when I was, you know, the personal trainer deep in the fat throws a fat loss. I mean, I don't even know what my body fat percentage was, but it was terrifyingly low, and I live my life now 25 pounds heavier than I did in that stage of my life, and you couldn't give me enough money to go back to living that way.
Stephanie Mara 41:22
Same, absolutely.
Courtney Townley 41:26
And it wasn't. It's kind of like what you were saying with like, like, it was nervous system health. It's, it's we can offer the nervous system little - we can pollinate it with little moments of reprieve throughout the day. And the more often we do that, over time, it really starts to help to regulate us better, and it heals over time. And I feel like that's very true with my journey with my own body image and my own understanding of health and what health really even means to me. It doesn't mean a body fat percentage. Like obviously, I want my biochemistry to be functioning at a level that keeps me healthy, and there are certain things I'm just not willing to sacrifice at this stage of my life, because I've learned too much about what that sacrifice really is, and I just don't want to pay that price anymore. And so if that costs me a 20-pound weight gain, okay. I know that I make it sound so simple. I know it's not simple, but I think it is just a slow journey of just reckoning with yourself about you know, I can. I used to go to the gym twice a day. I used to count every bite of food that went into my mouth. I ignored my husband, I ignored my kid, right? Because I had to, in a way, to be performing at that level. And now recognizing the cost, because I did it in a way that obviously wasn't healthy, and I paid a price that I didn't want to have to pay, and now I can do better. And also this, to me, is also the gift of midlife, because you also don't have the capacity that you once did to tolerate stress, and because you're losing progesterone and estrogen, which help us to mitigate cortisol. And so I think the gift in that is you have less tolerance for your own BS. I mean, for other people's too. You really have to stand in the in the arena with yourself and take a good look and just say, What role am I playing here in terms of contributing to this hardship? Even if that's chemical hardship, right? Like not sleeping at night and being reactive and maybe gaining a little bit of weight. Like, where is my role with that? Because I am contributing to that in some way. Sometimes I like my reasons. Sometimes, often I don't.
Stephanie Mara 43:34
Yeah, you know what I hear in that is something that I explore with a lot of those that I work with, is before we can change a pattern, sometimes we just have to observe the pattern. So what I hear in that is kind of what you were describing, and I went through something similar, of I had to observe my patterns to be like, Okay, well, I'm not gonna judge that I just binged. Did it give me what I was looking for? Like, how do I feel now? Well, I feel really uncomfortable in my body. I chose to binge over spending time with my now husband. We were dating at the time, but like, I can't be present with anyone else. And it was like, okay, so this is not giving me the relaxation, the connection that I really wanted and was looking for. And so I find that just first cultivating, like you said the beginning is just like we become aware. Is like we have to become aware first of take away the judgment, the guilt, the shame of this is wrong. This is bad. I have to fix this. I have to get rid of this. And it's like, Okay, well, is this actually giving me what I'm looking for long-term? And what I hear both of us kind of discovered, is like, No, this actually, like, I'm not, like, creating great relationships. I'm not showing up in the world the way I want to. I don't like the way that I'm showing up with other people or for myself. And I find that just from that place of like, Okay, yeah, this is maybe making me feel okay in the moment, being able to lean on this, but if I want to start being the person I want to be in the world, I also have to start choosing the actions that support me in feeling the way I want to feel. And so yeah, there is a big difference between like, I'm doing this because someone told me to, and you may end up doing the same thing, but that's because what I find is you are more embodied to be like, Oh, I actually like lifting weights, not because I should, because I really enjoy doing this, and so I'm going to keep doing it, but maybe not as much as I was doing it, because, like, that doesn't feel good.
Courtney Townley 45:30
Yeah, it's that permission to evolve and change which man we have a hard time, I think, sometimes giving ourselves permission to do and also recognizing that I do know more than I've given myself credit for. And I was putting all of this power in the experts hands, right? Telling me how much to work out and all the things. And here's the thing, I've worked with incredible coaches and mentors over the years, and they had a very specific zone of genius, and absolutely they could give me protocols and plans to create that result I was seeking. The problem is, which I now very much understand, is they didn't understand the wholeness of my life. Only I understand that. So how that advice fits into the wholeness of my life is really my responsibility. And you know, when we're younger, or when we lived in a culture that's just constantly conditioning us to look away from ourselves, it's really easy to just not honor our own knowing, and that gets us into a whole lot of trouble. Yeah, it's important work. The piece about self-awareness, it's, I love how you said it, because I say something similar all the time. I say when I teach self-awareness practices, I'm like, Look, it's not gonna feel good, right? Self-awareness is not a feel good exercise.
Stephanie Mara 45:33
No, it's not.
Courtney Townley 46:06
It's kind of like going into my kid's room when he was younger and he cleaned his room. But you really you open the closet and look under the bed, and it's just jam full of crap, you know? And it's like, Okay, that is not cleaning your room. And I feel like that's kind of what we do with our lives. We just stuff the real problems in the closet and under the bed and under the rug so we don't have to look at it. But that's not solving the issue, and it's creating a lot of issues. Like, I always joke the things I have found in my son's room are pretty terrifying, but just expect that as you start dipping your toe in that water of self-awareness, whether you're more curious about emotions or the reasons you self-soothe with things that probably aren't all that healthy for you, like can you be in that space with the discomfort in order to come out the other side a little bit more knowledgeable and with more skill sets to help you contend with those things? And that's what self-awareness allows you to do, which is why it's so important. But it usually doesn't feel good initially.
Stephanie Mara 47:56
Yeah, I completely agree with you that a lot of this work is growing this capacity that we're talking about to be with discomfort. Not to the point where it's overwhelming, like you said earlier, but to the point of like, Okay, this is really uncomfortable, and can I stay with this for a little bit longer? And when I even say a little bit longer, I'm talking about, like, a minute. Like, you don't have to try to try to stay with something for like, 30 minutes and then, like, Oh my gosh, I'm so overwhelmed sitting with this sadness or anger or whatever it is. It's just, can I sit with this for one second longer and know that it is okay that I'm having a human experience right now feeling what I'm feeling? And so, yeah, I agree with you. Cultivating awareness is both such a gift, because it starts to realign us to ourselves and what we want for ourselves and what resonates with us. But it also is going to bring up a lot of discomfort. But I would even add that that discomfort is already there to begin with, which is why the coping mechanisms are happening. So really, it's just you finally may be coming face to face with the discomfort.
Courtney Townley 49:01
You're spot on. There's going to be discomfort either way. There's comfort of choosing to stay unaware and doing the, you know, self-soothing behaviors and the things that are throwing you off-kilter. Or there's the discomfort of leaning into the actual change. And there's actually benefit on the other side of that. There's not benefit with the first one, except very temporarily. And so you're right. It's that just that, that capacity to be with discomfort and also understanding, I think too, that my ability to be with discomfort looks different every day. Again, because my resource availability is different every day when I haven't eaten well and I'm not sleeping well, and I have a lot of stress that I'm carrying, I probably am going to be a little more resistant to allowing the discomfort that I'm feeling, but that too offers me a level of grace, right and ease, just acknowledging that, Hey, you know today I don't have a lot of capacity, and that's okay.
Stephanie Mara 49:53
Yeah, I find that so powerful, just to be able to kind of rate your capacity and just be like, Okay, I'm at a two today, so it's pretty low. So me yesterday at a seven is not going to be me today at a two. So I kind of have to reassess what is available and what I can do today that is possible for me based off of where I'm at today, not who I was yesterday.
Courtney Townley 50:17
I don't know about you, but like my closest friends, when they're really vulnerable with me, I fall deeper in love with them, right? When they just come to you and they're like, you know, I am not in a great season right now, like, I've been having a tough year, and this is why, and I'm and... And I just think that when we also extend ourselves that level of vulnerability with you know what, Courtney, it's, there's just, there's a lot going on right now, and you know, this is what you're doing well. These are the things that you should really, sort of, you know, commend yourself for, recognize, because we're not so good at that part. There's always stuff we're doing well. And these are a few areas where maybe you need to ask for some help, right? Or maybe there's something you can do to take a load off, or maybe there's just something that you need to do to realign yourself, to make this easier. Like a lot of things I hear from my clients, two things actually, that I hear a lot is that when they don't even have a minute to themselves at the start of the day, to kind of put their own head on straight before they go out and try to save the world, the day doesn't usually roll awesomely well, right? So that, to me, is like a really easy anchor point for a lot of people, is I just need to start my day, even if it's just even if it's just with a minute of intention. A minute of reminding myself of how awesome I am. Like, I don't know what it is for you, but just that moment of intentionality. And the other thing I hear a lot is when we have not made any decisions in advance, like we haven't really put into any consideration into how we're going to spend our resources for the day, that can really quickly misalign us, too when we get out of that practice. And so just realigning with those two things can often just offer a lot of ease and relief.
Stephanie Mara 51:53
Yeah, that's such a perfect segue. I usually like to wrap up with a baby step, which that was one.
Courtney Townley 52:00
Yes! Yeah.
Stephanie Mara 52:00
But I'm curious, you know, because there's so many suggestions out there, and we're having a really powerful conversation here about self-leadership. And I'm wondering it could be what you just mentioned. You mentioned a lot of things today, but I'm wondering what comes forth to you have, like a baby step that someone can start to maybe practice or lean into if they're wanting to start to discover how to self -lead.
Courtney Townley 52:23
Yeah, I would say, can I give two?
Stephanie Mara 52:25
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Courtney Townley 52:26
Okay. So the first thing is, and this is kind of an extension of what we were just talking about, but just keeping a victory log, because I just find, especially with women, we're very self-deprecating. We tend to focus on all the hardship, the things we need to fix, the things we need to do, but we don't really spend a lot of time on kind of the bright spots of the day. And the bright spots aren't necessarily epic things, like, sometimes they will be, but sometimes it's just, you know what? I washed the dishes right after I cooked dinner tonight, and that was amazing! Like, it can be simple things, but writing a few of those things in your victory log every night and making sure you make the commitment that they're never the same things makes you look a little deeper. But the other thing that I think is a great starting point, it's going to sound like over overly simplistic, but I think it's so important, is to really clarify for yourself, what does health truly mean to you at this age and stage of your life? Not what it meant to you 10 years ago or even five years ago, or what somebody told you it means. But what does it mean to you and how aligned do you feel with that definition right now? Again, because I think when women, when I ask that question to my clients, and I really kind of poke for with some follow-up questions, the deeper reason for pursuing health is rarely about their bodies. It's about what they want to do. It's what about what they want to express. It's about how they want to feel. And so asking yourself that and giving yourself kind of permission to maybe just riff on it on a piece of paper for maybe 10 or 20 minutes and just see what's underneath the surface level answer, you know, or the initial response of how you want to answer. Because there is - there, I think there's some, definitely some deeper truths there that are far more motivating and exciting will call you into the work in a really kind of fun way, versus making it about something that was never really all that important to you to begin with.
Stephanie Mara 54:16
I love that question, even as you were asking it, I was reflecting on, Yeah, my definition of health in my, like, early 20s or even as a teenager, was very different than how I would define what health is now and what I even want health for myself in the future. That's a really powerful question.
Courtney Townley 54:39
Yeah, and because I think sometimes we're operating on autopilot based on this old belief system. And it's like, Well, okay, let's question the belief system so we can create a new owner's manual, right for how we're going to operate moving forward. And you're not going to do it perfectly. You're going to catch yourself going back to old ways all the time. But at least if you kind of have that as a GPS, like, No, remember, this is what it's about, this is what it's about, then we can reorient.
Stephanie Mara 55:03
Well, I just am so glad that you were here today sharing all of your wisdom. I loved this conversation, and I'm curious how everyone can keep in touch with you and your work and your book.
Courtney Townley 55:15
Yeah. I mean, the best place to find me is my website: graceandgrit.com, and the book, which comes out on November 5, is The Consistency Code: A Midlife Woman's Guide to Deep Health and Happiness, and it's so much of what we talked about here. It's really, I feel like a culmination of a 30 year career, and just a beautiful invitation to women and a reminder that it doesn't have to be so hard we've made it so hard, and it's not your fault. There's lots of reasons that we've kind of been shaped this way, but it's up to us to start changing the conversation. And more than anything, that's what I hope this book does. I hope it just helps to continue to shift the conversation. And it was also written for book clubs. It was written for women to gather and start having these conversations in community, because that's the only way this stuff's going to change. So, yeah, The Consistency Code. You know, I highly encourage everyone to go out and get it, because I'm excited about it. And if you like what you heard here today, it's an extension of that.
Stephanie Mara 56:08
Awesome. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes, and just thank you so much again for being here.
Courtney Townley 56:13
Thank you for having me. I loved it.
Stephanie Mara 56:16
Yeah, well, to everyone listening, reach out anytime. Let me know your insights from this episode, support@stephaniemara.com and I hope you all have a safety-producing and satiating rest of your day. Bye!
Keep in touch with Courtney:
Websites: www.graceandgrit.com
www.theconsistencycode.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracegrit/
Book: The Consistency Code: https://amzn.to/3Kia4EM