Messy Midlife: It’s Not A Crisis, It’s A Calling to Connect
Messy Midlife: It's Not A Crisis, It's A Calling To Connect. The podcast for men and women 35 to 65 navigating the messy middle years. Hosted by Jody Brooks, a UK-based Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach and midlife transition specialist, Messy Midlife is where the complicated, courageous, and sometimes chaotic middle of life gets talked about honestly. Through candid conversations and practical coaching insights, Jody explores identity and reinvention, self-trust, core values, morning awareness practice, midlife habits, burnout recovery, and what to do when the version of you that got you here no longer fits. This is a midlife podcast for grown ups asking bigger questions. Who am I now. What matters next. How do I rebuild without burning everything down. If you are feeling loss of identity, fear of the future, overwhelm, anxiety, or a quiet sense that you have lost yourself somewhere along the way, you are in the right place. Each week you get two solo coaching episodes and one guest conversation. Expect real stories about burnout, addiction recovery, perimenopause, menopause, career pivots, empty nest, divorce, grief, and finding purpose after 40. Alongside experts on positive psychology, resilience, workplace wellbeing, mental health, and authentic living. No clinical language. No perfect answers. Just honest conversations for anyone in the messy middle of life. Jody's work is rooted in his Nine Principles of Authentic Living: Awareness, Understanding, Trust, Honesty, Empowerment, Nurture, Transformation, Integrity, and Compassion. Each season of the podcast explores one principle in depth, so you can follow the show as a full personal development journey or drop in for the episodes that speak to where you are right now. If you love Mel Robbins, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, Jay Shetty, Brendon Burchard, Johann Hari, Dan Harris, Louise Hay, or James Clear, this podcast belongs in your library. Warm, non-judgmental, and grounded in lived experience, Messy Midlife sits at the intersection of life coaching, midlife reinvention, and self-discovery. New episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Follow the show for honest stories, useful tools, and a reminder that what feels like a crisis is actually a call to reconnect with yourself. F ind Jody: www.authenticcoaching.me Instagram: @messymidlife_podcast and @the_authenticcoach Website: www.messymidlifepodcast.world Messy Midlife is hosted by Jody Arran Brooks, Jay Shetty Certified Life Coach, midlife transition specialist, and school governor based in St Leonards-on-Sea, England.
Episodes
Step into the messy middle of midlife and discover why it’s not a crisis, it’s a calling to connect.
In this short trailer, you’ll hear what Messy Midlife is all about, who it’s for, and how it can support you if you’re feeling lost, overwhelmed, or unsure what’s next.
I’m Jody, a midlife coach and fellow messy human, and in each episode I’ll share real stories, honest...
The Moment I Knew Something Had To Change: Why Midlife Isn't A Crisis S1 EP1
Messy Midlife: It's Not A Crisis, It's A Calling To Connect
Midlife upheaval doesn’t have to be a crisis — it can be the moment you finally wake up. In this first episode of Messy Midlife, Jody Brooks shares the story of the “toilet cubicle breakdown” that changed everything and begins the convers...
Midlife Burnout and the Nervous System: Learning to Lead Differently S1 EP2
Midlife burnout can change everything — your energy, memory, relationships, leadership, and the way you show up at home. In this episode of Messy Midlife, Jody Brooks speaks with Hannah Kerman, founder of Brain Shift, about what it means to operate with your nervous system, not your ego.
Hannah shares how years of overwork, busyness, a...
Midlife Anxiety and Overwhelm: What Self-Awareness Is Really Telling You S1 EP3
Midlife anxiety and overwhelm can feel like failure, but they may actually be signs that your life is asking for attention. In this episode of Messy Midlife, Jody Brooks explores self-awareness as the first Principle of Authentic Living and the place where real change begins.
If you’re 35 to 65 and feeling exhausted, discon...
Midlife Awareness: Navigating Disconnection to Connection S1 EP4
Something is off, and you can't quite put your finger on it. You're functioning, you're keeping it together, but underneath it all, you feel numb, irritable, exhausted, and a little lost. Sound familiar? You're not falling apart. You're waking up.
In this episode of Messy Midlife, Jody gets honest about what happened after episode three, because the to...
Why Midlife Anxiety and Overwhelm Make Habits So Hard to Stick To S1 EP5
If you’ve been struggling with midlife anxiety, overwhelm, low motivation, or the feeling that you keep trying and failing at change, this episode is for you. In this conversation, Jody Brooks speaks with Roger Webb about why habits are so hard to stick to, why willpower and discipline are often overrated, and how the real block is usual...
Midlife Awareness: Navigating Disconnection to Connection
Something is off, and you can't quite put your finger on it. You're functioning, you're keeping it together, but underneath it all, you feel numb, irritable, exhausted, and a little lost. Sound familiar? You're not falling apart. You're waking up.
In this episode of Messy Midlife, Jody gets honest about what happened after episode three, because the toilet cu...
How to Start Your Day Without Losing Yourself: The Morning Awareness Practice
- Quick question: what does your Morning actually look like?
Not the aspirational version. The real one. The alarm, the scroll, the rush, the commute. Before you've had a single chance to hear your own voice, the world has already taken over.
In this episode, Jody explores why the Morning is one of the most powerful and underused mom...
In this Midweek Deep Dive, Jody Brooks sits down with author and former US Navy veteran Kristof Morrow to explore how awareness, trauma and creativity intertwine in messy midlife. Kristof’s journey spans childhood abuse, violent addiction in the family, his own alcoholism, Tourette's, chronic illness, immigration, divorce and a long period of despair. He shares how a single phone call in Canada, tellin...
Why You Feel Empty at the End of the Day And What to Do Tonight: Evening Awareness Practice
You've been in the day. You've lived it, responded to it, felt it, even if you didn't stop to name any of it.
Now it's quieter. And this is the moment to look back with Kindness.
In this closing episode of Awareness Week, Jody introduces the first two levels of awareness: noticing what you are doing and what you are feeling. T...
Practical coaching for midlife reinvention.
There is a particular kind of tiredness that has nothing to do with sleep. You know the one. You have had your eight hours. You have ticked every box. And yet something in you is still exhausted. Not your body. Something deeper.
In Episode 10 of Messy Midlife, Jody Brooks goes one layer deeper into the awareness principle. If Episode 9 helped you name what you are do...
A Guide for Midlife Leaders Who Know Something Has to Change
What do you do when you've climbed the ladder, ticked all the boxes, and still feel empty — or worse, completely burnt out? In this powerful episode, Jody talks with Nicole Anderson, leadership and career transition expert and Partner at the Kayla Group, about what it really means to transition rather than change jobs.
Nicole shares her own messy mid...
Practical coaching for midlife reinvention.
Twelve episodes ago, Jody stepped onto a bus she had never consciously chosen. Today we close the first principle of Messy Midlife with the whole of that journey gathered up in one place.
Episode 12 is the season close. Jody walks back through every episode of Season 1, the toilet cubicle moment in EP1, Hanna Curman's messy middle in EP2, the iceberg in EP3, the fraying ro...
This morning awareness practice gives you three simple questions to ask before the day takes over — stopping midlife autopilot before it starts.
Have you ever snapped at someone you love, agreed to something you knew wasn't right for you, or shrunk yourself in a room where you should have taken up more space, and then stood there afterwards asking, why did I just do that? That single question is the opening m...
What do you do when the identity you have carried for twenty-one years is about to end, and the next chapter is a completely blank page? Most people wait until the page is thrust into their hands. Dr William Thomas started writing on it years before.
William spent twenty-one years as a United States Air Force officer. In 2007, he was deployed to Afghanistan and, at forty-two, watching much younger soldiers run arou...
This is the episode where the sea mist clears. Not because you have suddenly worked everything out, but because you have spent a week noticing the runaway bus, meeting an extraordinary man on Wednesday who built a new identity on purpose, and now you are ready to look, gently, at the map that has been driving you.
Jody closes Week One of Season 2 the way she always closes a week, by pulling the thread. She take...
Have you ever driven home from work, turning one moment over and over, asking, why did I do the exact thing I swore this morning I would not do? You saw it coming. You promised yourself. And you did it anyway. If you know that private sense of failing to be a better version of yourself, this episode is especially for you.
Week Two of Season 2 opens the part of the Understanding Principle that Jody Brooks ca...
What happens when the very qualities everyone praises you for are the same ones quietly taking you to the floor? This week's guest lived exactly that, and her story is Week Two of the Understanding season in living colour.
Catherine Crestani is an author, a Brainz magazine executive contributor, a former speech therapist and an inner authority guide who helps women reconnect with themselves after burnout, heartbrea...
If your reactions in midlife feel disproportionate or out of control, you're not broken — you're following an old map.
Friday is where we let the week settle. In this closer to Week Two, The Blocks, Jody Brooks gathers everything up- Catherine Crestani's story from Wednesday, the prediction machine from Monday, and one more careful step down into his own- and hands you a single image to carry it all. This wor...
Midlife Reactions and Repeat Habits, a Morning Awareness Practice
Midlife reactions and repeat habits
You are not falling apart; you are waking up. If you keep noticing the same reaction showing up in your life- the sharp word, the need to control the room, the urge to disappear- it usually is not a fresh problem. It is an old file, filed away decades ago, still quietly running the show without you ever ...
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