What if midlife's gift to you was a way to master the inner strength of a Beautiful Warrior? 

A Beautiful Warrior is a woman, a woman just like you and me, who turns her midlife experiences into powerful tools for transformation, growth, and empowerment. 

She’s a beacon of courage, resilience, and strength, who navigates life's challenges with the grace of a swan and the wisdom of an ancient tree.

And she doesn't just weather the storm, oh no! She dances in the rain. 

She thrives in her journey and uses her wisdom to create her destiny and inspire everyone around her. 

The beauty of a Beautiful Warrior is more than skin-deep.

Don’t you love the word, “radiance”?  It means to “emit light - to glow”.

A woman who is at peace with herself knows who she is and how she will handle whatever comes up in life. She lives out of this boundless depth of compassion and gives off that radiance without even realizing it. 

It comes from her spirit. 

Is this the woman you see when you look in the mirror?

No, not me either. But it’s the woman I see in my future. The one I want to become.

So today, my dear ladies, we're diving into another chapter in our inspiring journey of transformation. 

We're going to learn how to embrace midlife as a Beautiful Warrior by recognizing and embracing our inner strength.

So, grab your favorite drink, find a cozy spot, and let's look at 3 ways you can start to own that inner strength you hold inside.

Recognize the Power Of Experience

Inner strength doesn’t just happen.

It comes from a power that most of us don’t ever consider - the power of experience. 

Look at the path you’ve walked from the start of your life until today.

You’ve lived through experiences unique to you, both good and bad. 

The joys and the pains, the triumphs and the trials fill a treasure chest. These experiences have shaped you into the woman you are today.

The treasure chest is filled with gold coins of joy, deep blue sapphires of challenge, red rubies of fiery perseverance. Priceless jewels that have created rich, vibrant, and one-of-a-kind life.

The power in your midlife comes from harnessing these experiences as the fire of transformation and growth.

Think back to those moments that changed your life and taught you more about yourself than you could have ever learned from a textbook or a seminar. 

These experiences were your classrooms - not your prisons -, and they can continue to be the lessons you can draw on to keep growing you into a woman of wisdom and strength.

Multiple purple amethysts are found in my treasure chest. These are the experiences that resulted in what I call my “fear of not being enough”.  Hard knocks that felt like boulders dropping on me, flattening me for a time.

How did I respond? I did a lot of things that I regret. 

I just wanted to be special. To feel special. To stand out and be told that I was wonderful, amazing, and worth fighting for.

My mom used to tell me stories about me crying at 13 months old standing beside her bed as she nursed my newborn brother. She thought that this is where my feelings of not being important in our family started. It made her sad to look back on that time.

I’m not so sure if she was right. All I know is that this longing to feel loved, to be recognized has been a constant thorn in my side all my life.

But, here’s the thing. I’ve come to appreciate the thorn because feeling its pain is what has driven me to learn to stand strong and be courageous all on my own - even in times when I may I feel unloved.

Feeling not good enough has transformed me.

My thought, “I’m not enough” has become, “It doesn’t matter if I feel ‘not enough’, I have a purpose to live. Something I was made to do and I’m going to grow toward that.”

I learned that God made me for a reason. It’s why I’m here walking on this path I call life and that’s all I need to know.

Instead of looking for the approval of others, I grew into choosing to focus on becoming everything I’m meant to be. A thought like this sets me free to grow even in the middle of painful times in my life. 

What am I meant to learn in this pain? 

How can it train me to become more of who I want to be? 

Beautiful Warrior concept: Life isn’t about what happens to you, it’s about how you respond.

EXERCISE: Spend some time reflecting on your life journey so far. 

Write down three experiences that have had a significant impact on you, and then identify the lessons you've learned from them. 

As you look at these, you’ll see the strength that was forged in these moments. 

You’re not the same woman you were before they happened - and if you let yourself see it, you’ll recognize that you’re stronger, wiser, and more resilient because of it.

2. Embrace Your Courage 

Own your inner strength by embracing your courage. 

 You've faced storms. You fought. You persevered.

 How did you do that? I’ll tell you - you tapped into courage, even if you didn’t realize it. 

 “Courage”, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary is: the mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.

 Courage is doing something even if it scares you.

Taking action, living through a hard time is a testament to the strength inside you. And it also  becomes your guiding light through the journey ahead of you..

Midlife, like any other phase in life such as the teenage years, brings its own unique challenges. 

It may feel overwhelming at times, but this is when you remember. You’re a woman who has bravely, gracefully navigated life's twists and turns before, and you can do so again. 

I’ve talked about Diana Nyad in a past podcast. At the age of 64, she swam from Cuba to Florida, a grueling 110-mile journey through shark-infested waters.

It was not her first, or her second but her fifth attempt, and despite the setbacks, she didn't let her age or past failures deter her. 

 Now, if that doesn't scream “Beautiful Warrior”, I don't know what does!

 We all have this inside us. This inner strength. This courage.

 How do you face being diagnosed with breast cancer?

 How do you face life when the man you thought would love you forever is gone?

 What do you do when the money dries up or the wrong government takes power or your best friend accuses you of something that isn’t true?

 All of these scenarios and thousands more come at us as we walk this path of life. 

 Bombs go off and devastate us.

 Boulders drop on us crushing us for a time.

 People throw their rocks of expectation and criticism at us.

 How will you get through it?

 In his book, “Courage Is Calling”, Ryan Holiday says,

”It is natural to feel fear, the Stoics believed, but it cannot rule you. Courage, then, is the ability to rise above fear, to do what’s right, to do what’s needed, to do what is true.”

 It’s knowing that there are 50% good feelings in this world but there also 50% bad feelings. Often the balance swings over to more than 50% bad feelings.

 Courage is being willing to feel what’s uncomfortable. To look what’s hard in the face and do:

…what’s right, 

…what’s needed and 

 …what’s true in spite of feeling afraid.

 Here's your mission, should you choose to accept it - practice courage daily. 

When you face an intimidating situation and it creates uncomfortable emotions, don’t run. Don’t turn to chocolate or numbing TV or to a glass of wine so you can avoid those uncomfortable feelings.

Instead, channel your inner Diana Nyad. Remember how many bombs you’ve survived and lived to talk about. Plunge head first into those shark-infested waters.

Do what’s right, what’s needed and what’s true.

Your courage muscle will grow stronger with every workout. And that’s growing your inner strength.

3. Radiate Your Beauty

 And finally, own your inner strength by discovering that it’s the truest sense of your beauty. 

 You, Beautiful Warrior, are radiant. Remember the definition of “radiance”  - to “emit light - to glow?”

 Your physical appearance has little to do with beauty. When you light up your spirit, you are beautiful. 

 Your spirit lights up when you aren’t merely enduring your journey, but thriving within it. 

 Your spirit lights up when you live out of a wisdom that shapes your destiny and inspires others. 

 You live, you learn, you love, and in the process, you emanate a beauty that goes far beyond what the eye can see.

 Your spirit lights up when you’re using the gifts you’ve been given. Your gifts bring you joy. Even when life is bleak and hard, they are your safe place inside.  

Anne Frank survived the intense fear and deprivation she experienced when hiding from the Nazi’s by disapperaring into her gifts. Her vision of someday being a journalist kept her believing in herself and in her future.

 Every day, she wrote in her diary, filling it with her thoughts and feelings about what was going on around her. Writing was her passion and it filled up her soul.

 Writing lit up her spirit. She found her joy in the middle of a difficult situation doing what she loved to do.Being who she was at her core.

 And, eventually, without her knowing, her words have lit up the hearts of millions. 

 You have a radiance that is the core of who you are. When others are touched by that radiance, most often without you even knowing, they feel your beauty. And are inspired.

 Inspired simply because you’re being who you are.

 I find this so fascinating. Your radiance can be described in a simple “word”. Think this through with me right now.

 What do you love to do?

 What work do you do that doesn’t seem like work?

 Fill in these blanks:

• I’m at my best when ____________. 
• I’m connecting.
• I’m designing.
• I’m cooking.
• I’m creating.

• When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is ______________.
• You may be having a deep conversation with someone.
• You may be designing a new dress.
• You may be trying out a new recipe.
• You may be creating the plan for a new workshop

• When I’m doing this, the thing I love most about it is ___________.
• I feel as if I’m helping someone understand themself.
• I’m creating something new.
• I’m bringing joy to people who love to eat.
• I’m connecting the dots, and organizing something.

 Try to find a word that encapsulates what you are doing into one simple phrase such as:

• I inspire
• I create
• I feed the hungry
• I bring order from chaos

 This becomes how you light up your spirit and how you light up the world. 

• Writing
• Painting
• Sewing
• Teaching
• Caring for the elderly
• Filling a need in a business
• Building
• Welcoming people into your home

 This is you in all your uniqueness. This is you braving the unexpected in this world by using your gift to inspire you. No one can take this away from you. It’s your radiance. 

This is you as a Beautiful Warrior.

Bonus Action Step: Start each day with a warrior affirmation in front of the mirror. As you tell yourself, "I am a Beautiful Warrior," you might just find your morning face staring back at you in surprise!

  Feel the words resonate within you, and let this affirmation guide your actions throughout the day. Every day, take some time to enjoy what it is you love to do.

 As you’re taking that time, tell yourself angina, “I am a Beautiful Warrior” and add, “This is what I’m meant to bring to the world.”

The Way of the Beautiful Warrior

I love looking at life through the eyes of the Beautiful Warrior - exploring all the ways that I can show up in courage and strength, inner strength, no matter what life throws at me.

 The way of the Beautiful Warrior is this:

 Recognize the power of experience.

 Embrace your courage.

 Radiate your spirit’s beauty.

 You, my friend, are not just strong, you are a spectacular firework of strength, wisdom, and beauty. 

 It's not about the wrinkles on our skin but about the glow from our hearts.  Midlife, my dear friends, can be a time of upheaval, doubt, and pain. 

 The changes in our bodies, shifts in our roles, and challenges in our relationships can feel like daunting waves crashing against us. 

 But remember, you don't just survive these waves - you ride them! You jump in like Diana Nyad, even if they hold the threat of sharks. You never give up.

 You harness their energy and use them to propel you further into resilience, transformation, inspiration, and inner beauty.

 Remember, you are powerful, you are brave, you are beautiful - you are a Beautiful Warrior!