Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Forget the midlife crisis—how about creating midlife calm? The stress and anxiety of this life stage can be overwhelming, draining your energy, and making it hard to enjoy what should be the best years of your life. This podcast is your guide to easing midlife anxiety and discovering a deeper sense of calm.
Discover how to:
- Be happier, more present, and more effective at home and work.
- Transform stress and anxiety into powerful tools that ignite your inner energy, helping you gain clarity and confidently meet your needs.
- Cultivate calm and enjoyment by creating a positive internal mindset using practical, affordable coping skills to handle life's challenges.
Join MJ Murray Vachon, LCSW, a seasoned therapist with over 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years’ experience as a mental wellness educator as she guides you on a journey to reclaim your inner peace. Learn how to find contentment in the present moment, empowering you to handle the pressures of midlife with a confidence clarity that leads to calm.
Every Monday, MJ delves into the unique challenges of midlife, offering insights and concluding each episode with an "Inner Challenge"—simple, science-backed techniques designed to shift you from feeling overwhelmed to centered. Tune in every Thursday for a brief 5-10 minute "Inner Challenge Tune-Up," where MJ offers easy-to-follow tips to integrate these practices into your daily life.
Let’s evolve from crisis to calm and embrace the incredible journey of midlife. Tired of feeling overwhelmed? Tune into fan-favorite Ep. 63 for a boost! Let anxiety go and embrace your calm!
Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships
Ep. 106 Transform Holiday Stress to Midlife Calm Using This Easy 4 Minute Meditation
How can a quick and easy four-minute meditation help you truly enjoy the holiday season? (Even if you hate to meditate?)
You've stuffed the turkey, cleaned the house, now prepare your mind for the day. Take four minutes to do for your mind what you have done for the holiday. Why shouldn't you enjoy this day!
In this episode you’ll:
1. Learn a simple, four-minute technique to mentally prepare for the holidays.
2. Discover how a quick mindset shift can make your holiday experience more fulfilling.
3. Take away a powerful tool to stay grounded, calm, and connected through the busy season.
Give yourself four minutes to set a calm, joyful tone for the holidays by listening to this episode!
During the hustle and bustle listen to Fan Favorite:
Ep. 99 How Transforming Shoulds Can Instantly Decrease Anxiety & Boost Midlife Calm
****
About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.
Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.
In this episode, I invite you to step away from your holiday preparations and take four minutes to prep your mind. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to share with you my four minute holiday meditation. By the end of the podcast, you'll have a four minute meditation that I invite you to use on those special days in your life. Holidays. birthdays, or those days where you're just so busy that you can't do a longer meditation. On a holiday, where there's a lot that must be done, I want to give you as my gift, this four minute meditation. And guess what? Science has shown that it will reduce your stress. It helps to improve your focus and attention, and more importantly, your intention for the day. Lastly, it increases your mood boost. and enhances your emotional awareness. So think about it. When we have special days in our life, we tend to spend a lot of attention on our clothing, on the food, on the important outside things. So settle back, sit in a chair, and join me for this inside thing, a four minute meditation. Find a comfortable place to sit Sit fairly straight up, ground your feet on the floor, and put your hands in your lap, if you're comfortable, close your eyes, and just follow your breath for about 30 seconds. If your mind drifts off, just bring it gently back to your breath. That is completely normal. Next, I want you to think about the day ahead, and choose a part of the day that you're looking forward to, and I invite you to run a movie of that part of the day in your mind. Try leaning into the positive feeling state associated to the part of the day that you are looking forward to. Next, I invite you to run the movie one more time, but this time, add a little more detail, a little more color, maybe a scented candle, whatever would bring you a sense of pleasure, happiness, and calm. Stay with the movie and make it more vivid for about 30 seconds. For the last time, I invite you to run the movie. Pay special attention to the feelings connected to what your mind is imagining and try to grow them and spread them throughout your whole body. Next, put your hands over your heart, your feet are still grounded on the floor, and for one last round, move your awareness to the pleasurable and good feeling that you have created within you. Breathe into that feeling and allow it to fill your entire heart space and body. As you end the meditation, follow your breath again and just allow your entire body to relax. If your mind drifts off, just bring it gently back to your breath. That is completely normal. Take a cleansing breath and try to anchor yourself in this feeling as you move in to this special day. Thank you so much for having the courage to try this four minute meditation. I wish you the best day. And don't forget, you've probably done a beautiful job figuring out what to cook, what to wear, and cleaning your house. And now you've paid attention to your mind. As the day unfolds, of course it won't match your movie exactly. But what a meditation like this does is it clears out a few things, and it helps us to set an intention for what is the feeling that we want to bring into the day. Have a great holiday, thanks for listening, and I'll be back on Monday with more Creating Midlife Calm.