FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®: MINDSET, COMMUNITY, & SOAKING IN THE WISDOM OF MIDLIFE

In this special guest episode, I'm joined by Jade Hwang. She's a business owner, martial artist, and a source of positive inspiration.

Jade shares her journey from growing up in the world of martial arts to moving across the country to open a martial-arts-inspired kickboxing studio. Tune in to hear Jade's take on a positive mindset, community, and what she's most looking forward to as she steps further into midlife.

📍 Connect with Jade:
🌐 Website: https://www.kbxphx.com/  or  https://www.masterjade.org/
📸 Instagram:  @kbxphx  or  @themasterjade

📣 Want to hear Part 2 of my chat with Jade?
Join my ELEVATE Membership to hear Jade talk about big goals, your why, and seeking harmony over balance. 

Email me at karli@flipsideofmidlife.com for a promo code to get your first month of ELEVATE for only $10 ( Exclusively for women in midlife and beyond. New members only.)

✨ Don’t forget to subscribe/follow for more inspiring content on navigating midlife and beyond!

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Transcript

FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®: MINDSET, COMMUNITY, & SOAKING IN THE WISDOM OF MIDLIFE

Karli: I welcome everyone back to the FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®, and this is another guest episode. I'm very happy to have with me here today, the Master Jade Hwang. She is a KBX instructor, business owner. I'm very excited for her to speak to us today and for you to get a taste of her positive mindset.
So before we go any further, Hi, Jade, how are you?

Jade: Hello, Karli. I am fantastic. Thank you so much for having me.

Karli: You are very welcome. So a little background. I have been going to Jade's Kickboxing Studio, KBXPHX, for almost two years now. April will be two years. And I was looking for a different kind of activity to relieve stress and to have a full-body workout.

And I got so lucky walking into this gym. I felt Jade's positivity and her positive mindset. I just really get the best energy from her. So I wanted her to show up here for you today. So Jade, tell us a little bit of your story.
How did you get here? Why do you do what you do? Tell me all about it.

Jade: Oh, amazing. Well, thank you for that introduction, Karli. You bring great energy, so I love that.

I am a sort of lifelong martial artist, definitely against my will a bit. My parents put me in it. Not something I naturally would have enjoyed, but my parents basically made me stick with it for all the benefits that they felt that I was getting out of it. Confidence and focus and discipline and the self-defense side of it and the physical fitness side of it. All these benefits, they felt like I really needed it.

So it was torture for me. It was not this, you know, Oh yes, I'm super into this. I really want to be going and doing this. This was like tears. It was tears. It was kind of a battle starting when I was like probably four or five years old, all the way up for many, many years.

Eventually, you hang with it long enough by the time I got to be about 12 or so, I got my black belt.

So that was like a pretty big milestone. And then once that happened, some feeling of achievement really like set in. And I felt like, okay, well I'm a black belt now. It's hard to get a black belt. It's very hard to get a black belt. They say it's only like two to five percent of all people that start a martial art ever actually achieve the rank of black belt.

And this is back in the eighties. The eighties and nineties when there was no kids programs, Little Dragons, junior black belts. No, this was like straight from the Korean military into my life with my pigtails. So to get a black belt was a pretty big accomplishment.

And I'm not sure I knew it at the time, but I certainly felt a lot of pride in that. And then I was able to move forward. So then from there, I had a lot of opportunities. I was able to be part of our national team and competed, several times on our U S national team at world championships and overseas.

Also went on to be like a normal college student and did sports in college as well. But always kept coming back to martial arts. Even though I just really always resisted it. And didn't think it was my thing. I kept coming back to it.

People were always really super interested in that, you know, in that side of my life, there was always something else going on, but people are always really interested in the martial arts side of things.

So, long story short, I'm thinking I'm carrying on my life after college. I ended up working as a sports trainer for many years in Philadelphia, but even those people just were really interested in my martial arts background.

So I ended up teaching martial arts to pro athletes and kind of got my foot in the door. I was working as a trainer. That's what I wanted to be doing. But it kept bringing me back to martial arts.

I created my own way, you know, I've been born into a certain way, but I was kind of like, let me expand this into other realms of life.

So it started with pro athletes and training them. But then I also had opportunity to really work in more of a traditional gym setting and have an impact on everyday people's lives. And that was very powerful.

And after working many years in those settings, I really started to feel like, Hey, I could like do this sort of my own way. Like I've got ideas and things I want to implement. And that brought me to opening KBX.

So I kind of rallied some of my friends, some of my martial arts crew, right? Like we're a very tight-knit group of people. Um, and one of my longtime friends who was a former teammate of mine, his name is John, him and I decided together to open KBX.

We got some friends on board. So people you know, Joe, Kelly, Billy, all martial artists. Kind of gathered them all up and we said, Hey, we wanna do this thing and we want to really introduce martial arts. Give people like me who wouldn't have been martial artists. I am not going on my own free will to a martial arts school and getting in the ring and getting punched in the face and like doing all of that.

Normal people don't. You got to go to work. Like you need to have your podcast, you need to go meet with clients or whatever you're doing. You can't have a black eye or whatever. Right? That's a lot to ask of somebody.

There's all these amazing benefits, all this stuff that we can pull from it. So I really wanted to create a way, a community, a way that people could really benefit from all of this knowledge and wisdom and what I took through my journey.

But then also you have people like Billy here who are also lifelong martial artists born into it where it's in his blood. He just loves it. He was born that way and he does his thing, too.

But there's a lot of us, the rest of us, who need to be introduced to this type of lifestyle and way of living and caring yourself that's a little bit more user-friendly, a little bit more welcoming, a little bit easier to digest bit by bit.

So that's how I got to where we are now, is really taking the time to say, how do I want my martial arts journey to be different from, what my parents was, my father's, my instructors? What did I actually take out of all those years that I can share with others?

It's just super rewarding to be able to do that because you have a really strong, big impact on people's lives. beyond what we do in martial arts and teaching the martial art, but really have an impact on how people live their life and how they can live it more fully and more confidently and that's really, really powerful.

Karli: I think it is so interesting that you resisted for so long. I had no idea about that.

Mindset is really what you were just alluding to.

I think that's something that I really resonated with coming into KBX. It wasn't about competing with anyone else. It was about doing what you can do. You definitely have a system where it meets you where you are, but the workouts never get any easier because you just continue to progress and it still is challenging. But you always, always have an intention at every workout. You weave mindset into what we're doing during a particular class.

Talk to me a little bit about that because that resistance you're explaining to me doesn't sound like you've always had a positive mindset about what you were doing, especially when you were young, perhaps. But, how do you think that came to fruition?

And then let's as you're talking about that, what advice do you have for women in midlife and beyond who might be listening when it comes to establishing and developing a positive mindset?

Jade: Well, you know, it is a practiced, it's practiced, right? It's like your brain is a muscle. It needs training. It needs practice, just like anything else that we do.

So, so much of martial arts training, and then what we incorporate here, is about your like mind-body connection. You need to overcome what's going on in your mind to be able to move forward in, you know, really in anything, right? Whether it's physical, physically martial arts, or it's in your personal life, your professional life, you're working on a project, you're working towards a goal.

Physically, your body can endure a lot, a lot more than we really ever push ourselves to do. People that we see that are Navy SEALs and accomplish all these big things, or martial artists that get in there and do all this stuff, they are regular people. They are just like you and me, they're built of the same stuff, but they have trained not only their body, but their mind to be able to overcome so much.

And it's not just athletes, right? It's all different people. So when I was young and I was in this situation where, I mean, I'm crying, right? Like literally crying in class, crying to go, begging not to have to go.

This is all up here. I'm fine. I don't have a stomach ache. I'm not sick. there's no problem here. There's no actual problem. The problem is simply only here. Me being able to, as a five, six, seven, eight-year-old kid, being able to overcome my fear. It's scary. You're in a room with like 40 other people.

Everybody's yelling and kicking and you might get kicked, and if you mess up, you're going to get yelled at for that. It's terrifying. It's absolutely terrifying. But you have to overcome those things too if you want to succeed, right? You have to overcome fear, if you want to succeed, your own fear of, failure, your own fear of any shortcomings, your just fear of getting hit, whatever, all these things.

So you train all of that. And that is the main thing that martial arts gave me, you know, was this practice of overcoming, setting goals incrementally. So you're like long term and short term and sticking with it and knowing that there are going to be many failures along the way if you ever actually want to achieve anything. Anything that you have not done already is when you come with some bumps in the road.

I'm still doing it. I'm still practicing this. This is not like an end. I'm not finished with that. You are still constantly going through those steps.

For me, I had low confidence. If I would go to a tournament and I didn't win, or even if I did win, but I didn't like what I did, I would just immediately think like, Oh, I stink. I'm not worthy of them. I'm not good enough. You go through all that battle.

And that carries with you. A little bit of a perfectionist as well on top of all this. So, for a perfectionist to also then be in an art and a sport that is highly criticized, we think of art as being something that can be interpreted. And, I feel, I think martial arts in that way, but that's not the bulk of it. Especially how I was raised. It's like, your foot's got to be at this angle. If it's not, it's minus points, you know, you're wrong, fail, you know, you stink. Like there is a lot of that. There's a lot of like demand.

But you get used to it, you overcome it, you learn how to do better. But for me, a lot of it was really practical in thinking, okay, What's the problem that I'm facing? What am I trying to deal with and overcome?

All right. Well, let me look at my past. Historically speaking, when I've been faced with X, Y, and Z challenge, I have been able to figure out a way to overcome this thing, even though I'm scared. And I'm scared of what? I'm scared I'm going to fail.
Well, so what. How many times has that really happened? How many times has this worst-case situation actually come to fruition? So rarely! I can probably think of almost no times, actually, that the absolute worst thing that I was thinking could happen actually happened.

Maybe the most that I ever dealt with that was we opened KBX about five or six months before COVID. So late 2019. I've moved my family across country, East Coast to Arizona to open this thing, this dream that I've got going. Everybody's quit their jobs. Here we go.

We get up, we get going. This is October 2019. And then in March 2020, we show up one day and it's like, you need to be closed by 8 PM tonight with no real plan about what's going to happen moving forward. That was about the worst, right?

That's like about as worse as it could get. You don't think when you're like thinking of all the things that could happen when you are opening a business that a global pandemic, which most severely hit food service and gyms is going to just like, shut you down or, or try, right?

Well, here we are, right? Now it's, it's five years later and here we are, we're doing great. So guess what? Turns out if you want to rattle me, you're going to have to do better than a global pandemic. To me, that's like, Oh, that's no problem. Sure. Come for me.

We're in the middle of getting displaced once again. We are going to have to move our studio again. This will be the second time then in five years that we've had to move our studio. Well, I would say a previous version of me would have been a lot more upset by that. Today's post-pandemic Jade is saying, okay, whatever. We'll find a place. We'll figure it out. We're going to rally.

I'm not maybe naturally as positive as I come across to people. I think people think I'm just this positive, you know. No. I'm hard on myself. I demand a lot. I'm a worrier. I'm worried about all kinds of things all the time. It's almost insufferable at times.

But actually I'm also very practical and I just think, oh, okay, well, if I were a betting person, you're going to be just fine. why not just start there? Why not just start believing that? And then we'll just carry on from there and save ourselves the energy of all the like negativity.

It's just, I don't have time for it. I don't, I need to get from, I am, I don't have time to wallow in this. I don't want to spend my energy and time there. I want to spend my time and energy over here where we're doing the fun thing, where we're finding a new studio. We're figuring out what our studio looks like after COVID. We're planning a big move. I want to get to there. I don't really want to waste my time here. That part's not fun.

Karli: You bring up a couple of really good points that a lot of us deal with, I think, especially women in midlife and beyond is we don't always remember to look back when we're in a challenging time.

We don't always remember to look back and think of all the things we've already been through that we've gotten through. We forget how strong we are and we don't necessarily hold on to that like we should. We've got a lot of wisdom. We've got a lot of life experience. And just what you were saying right there, a previous version of you might've been, whimpering in a corner but here you are and you're like, bring it on.

Jade: Exactly. You know, something so small. It's like, I was just reading through the questions before we had this conversation today. One like little story that just popped into my head, and I haven't thought about it in years, is when I was in college, I was doing a study abroad and my luggage got lost in some transit between somewhere and somewhere.

And I carried on and I was crying to my mother on the phone and I'm, you know, I'm down in Trinidad and I'm just bawling on the phone because my stuff is all gone and like whatever. It all showed up eventually. But I think like my phone bill was like $500. My mom's like, geez, I could have just bought you all new stuff. But I'm just so distraught.

And my parents felt horrible for me. You know, I'm like in this country by myself. I don't have any stuff. Now if that happened, I don't think I would care at all. I don't think it would, I'd be like, Oh, okay, well, okay. Like, you know, we're just going to go get some new things and then like, wait until the luggage shows up or doesn't whatever.

I can't even imagine that would rattle me at all. But something like that then really like kind of took me, you know, cause it just feels like, Oh, my stuff, what am I going to do? I have no money. I don't have any like, pajamas, you know, you just think it's all horrible. But you get stronger. And, you know, unfortunately, or fortunately, whichever way you want to look at this, the way you get better at life and navigating these things is by experiencing them.

So you do have to kind of look at all those things as just sort of this opportunity to get better and stronger and practice a little bit more at life. Because, you know, it can also be a real shock to your system if you've been going a little too smoothly for a while, and then something gets thrown at you. You're almost not equipped in the same way.

Right before COVID, we were driving home from the old studio. Joe and Kelly and I used to drive in and out together because it was like about 20 minutes from us. And we were just doing awesome. Signing up new people and the new studio was doing great, and we're just so pumped because here we are, we've made this big move and we're just killing it and we're just excited. And I said to them, I said in the car that day, and I, and I just never forget the conversation, it was like it was yesterday. I said, just enjoy every second of this. Because it's not always going to be like this. Life is not always like this. Business is not always like this. Things are just not always going to be like this. So just like soak it up. Yes. Every new person, every new like workout that we do, every bit of it, this excitement, just soak it in, enjoy it, appreciate it, and hold onto it.

Because I kid you not, it was two weeks later that we like, that all that happened. But we held on to that feeling for like four years. We just held on to like we knew it. We knew it in our bones. We knew we could get there again. We knew how fun that was. We knew it. So you hang on to it but you can only hang on to that if you enjoyed it in the first place if you were there to appreciate it and know that hey, yes, this was a big deal, this was hard, but look how it was worth it. That's the only way you can kind of stay positive is if you actually took the time to enjoy it and appreciate it when it was good in the first place.

Karli: I love that because if you can find the lessons in the tough times, as you spoke about, but also celebrating your success and your wins along the way and the beautiful things that are happening, it is easier to create that shift in your mindset.

I also want to go back because you mentioned you don't think of yourself as positive as maybe you come across to others. I think all of us deal with that internal struggle of that imposter syndrome or I'm not good enough or I don't deserve this and you know coming to midlife and beyond and when we're coming up on it, maybe if you have children coming up on an empty nest and your whole identity feels like it's been wrapped up in raising your family for years, taking care of others for years and that can be a really tough time as well.

However, if you're able to see on the other side of that and how now you have this space to take care of you and to put yourself first, those are beautiful things. Living, like you said, in the moment helps you develop a positive mindset because you can see the lessons in the tough times and you can see the beauty in the really good times too.

I want to talk about Movement and Mindset. So this is a collaboration that Jade and I are just starting, and we've had one workshop so far. We are going to be doing monthly workshops called Movement and Mindset.

I want to hear, Jade, from your perspective, why you think women in midlife and beyond should attend and how they can benefit from coming to one of those workshops here in Phoenix.

Jade: Well, I think it's a really wonderful time to be able to connect with other women who are going through this phase of their lives. And what we learned from our first workshop was that the group being, women in midlife and beyond, we're all in different phases of that as well, right?

Some of the women are in their young to mid-forties, and other women are probably in their sixties and beyond, right? Even that is sort of like different phases of midlife. When speaking with the women that had done it, I think they really appreciated being amongst other women who are in this phase that have had a lot of life experience.

We've gone through a lot of things. We have so much passion and enthusiasm and inner strength and all these things. And maybe sometimes we need to find a safe place to be able to express ourselves and let it out and feel empowered and seen and all of that. Because we get so used to being caretakers and partners and, you know, working and doing all these different things. We just forget who we even are sometimes. We just become who everybody else needs us to be, right? It's like we're somewhere between like a taxi driver and a chef and a CEO and a, you name it, right? Like all of the many hats that we're all wearing.

And at some point, it would be nice if somebody would just like look at you and say, whoever you are, wherever you are right now, that is enough. You are enough exactly as you are right now. You don't need to be this for somebody else or that, or, you know, you don't need to be any other expectation other than where you are right now.

And that permission is pretty powerful. We all need that. We do not allow ourselves this. And this is a very safe space for women to be who they are and where they're at, where we don't necessarily always feel very seen and cared for or important as we go into midlife.

As far as our workshop and how we managed it was, was really nice because it was a way for us to really take that mind-body connection a step further. We're always working on that and that's always part of it, but we were able to really hone in on a theme.

And we do it in class, that's for everybody, right? So you could be anywhere from, you know, a young adult just starting off in life, men, women, you know, any and all, that is the power of martial arts.

But we want to kind of narrow this down and say, Hey, this is what maybe you are now experiencing. It's for you. Maybe it's not about leveling up, so to speak, but it's about like really finding yourself or prioritizing yourself or those types of dynamics. So I think the women really felt comfortable and safe and seen within another group of peers. And that's just fun. You know, that's just a fun place to be.

So I really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to our next session. I'm looking forward to be able to dive deeper into the themes and the issues that matter most to us and to these women so that we can really really cater directly to them. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it.

Karli: I think the community piece is so important. I know it's challenging to make friends. It's challenging for me to meet other women in this phase of life, and I know from the group events that I host that I am not the only one in that boat.

To be able to foster that community at KBX on a more micro level than what is normally a part of the big community that you've developed there, and that goes along with what I'm doing too, in my business. The ELEVATE membership that I have, this is a community that I'm building and it's not just here in Phoenix. This is an opportunity to come into a membership where it's exclusively a membership for women in midlife and beyond. And to be there, to be able to connect with them as well as walk away with personal growth tools, things that resonate with you. It's a really amazing place to be and I hope that you listening will check out my ELEVATE membership.

Actually, one of the benefits of being in my ELEVATE membership is that you have exclusive access to part two of my conversations with my amazing podcast guests. So you're listening to part one right now with Master Jade Hwang, and she is going to be diving deeper into some more midlife-related things, goal setting, and, some of her big dreams and goals that she has coming up in her life that she is starting to work on.

So if you want to know more about those things and to get access to the personal growth tools that I develop for you on a monthly basis and to connect with other women in our community connection space, please go to flipsideofmidlife.com, go to the ELEVATE Membership page and check out that membership.

You can get $15 off your first month, so $10 for your first month if you go to the link in the show notes and transcript and connect there. (email karli@flipsideofmidlife.com to request your promo code!)

Okay, Jade, I want to go a little deeper into KBX and how women can experience KBX for themselves.

Jade: Oh, well, you have a variety of ways to be able to give KBX a try. I first want to say that all of our classes are geared towards all levels. So I think one of the biggest hurdles for people is to even just get started with something like this is really thinking like, Oh, do we need to have experience for this? Or I need to be in shape before I like go and start a workout. Well, that's not how that works. That is not the expectation that we have, right?

So that is an expectation or belief that people sort of have about what it is like to go to a gym and have to start a new fitness program, is that they're just I'm so out of shape, I'm not even worth it to be able to go to the gym and get in shape.

And that is just as far from the actual truth or at least the message that we are sending is not that at all. We are going to meet people wherever they're at, all ages, all levels, all experience or not experience levels all good. So that is important for people to know.

Anybody here in the area, we always like to offer a free class for people to just come and try it. So when they do that, they can just go to our website, kbxphx.com, and they can see our schedule. They can see a little bit more about us and get a free pass, a free class pass, and just try a workout.

When people come in, they will come into class about 15 or 20 minutes before the actual start of class. And one of our very expert instructors will take them through an intro lesson where will get all of the things that they're going to need for a class. So they're getting all the breakdown, the self-defense pieces of it.

What are the names of these techniques and how do we do them? How do we create some power with it? What's the proper way to breathe? How do we engage our whole body? Like starting with, right, we've already talked about the mind-body connection, but you're going to be using everything from your mind to your eyes, to your breathing, to your arms, to your core, to your legs, everything it's top to bottom.

So we're going to show you how to do all of that in a way that's not so intimidating, right? You just come in and there's already 20 people in this room and you need to hop in there and like get in line. That's going to be a bit of a challenge. So we like to give our new people a little bit of one-on-one time, or maybe it's two or three people at a time, but a small group where you can just be with the instructor, ask your questions, and get those nerves out.

Everybody is nervous. We're nervous. We're nervous when new people come in. We want to do a great job. We want to make sure that, we make you feel comfortable. We're nervous too. So of course you're nervous. You're going to a new place. You're starting a new thing. You're meeting a bunch of people.
You probably have no idea what's coming your way or what to expect. So we try to take that time. And I think that really helps people just automatically feel welcomed into the community. So, In person people, that's no problem. You just come in, you give it a try, and we are here to help.

For people who are a little bit farther away, and this is one of the bright sides of COVID, as a result of COVID, we ended up with an online program.

So we offer a live stream of all of our classes, so we actually ended up with members all over the country, all over the world, people in Canada, Australia, and all over the United States, you know, so friends and family can join us from everywhere. So you can do a live stream or you can also do our classes on demand where you can just essentially get all that instruction, but you can just hit play and do it at a time and a place that's convenient for you.

And we have all types of online programs that both are in studio and people around the world can implement on their own. Like our 21-day kickstart. It just helps guide you through and gives you sort of a plan for how do we really start to tackle our health and wellness. People need some guidance on that.

There's so much information out there. Like, what am I supposed to do? What's the new fad? What's the new trend? We're not based in any fad or trend, right? Like that's not it. Martial arts is a life, is a long tradition, a hundreds of thousands of years long tradition. And all of our principles and concepts are meant for lifelong wellness, whether you're doing physical kicking and punching or not.

It's about moving your body, maintain that mind body connection. properly hydrating. Something so simple as drinking water or getting good quality sleep. You know how important that is, right? And so many women are not getting quality sleep, right? And it's like, this is a major component of your health and wellness.

We talk about all of these things and try to help guide you through them and just little bite-sized pieces that can just kind of help you really get kickstarted. How do I actually just get my life on track? Then from there you can take any additional steps that you want to, you know, just take a look farther as you feel comfortable.

Karli: Why don't you share your website, your Instagram, like how people can learn more about KBX and maybe get in touch with you too.

Jade: Sure. KBXPHX.com, simple enough. That's our website and you can go there for your free class pass and, you know, get a little bit more information about our classes, see the schedule and all that.

My website is masterjade.org, so you can go there and just check out my website and find a little bit more about my background and what I'm working on.

Instagram is @kbxphx, same for Facebook. And Instagram for me is @themasterjade.

Karli: Thank you. I'll include all of those links in the show notes and transcript so don't worry, don't panic, you don't have to rewind. I'll have that all there for you, but I wanted Jade to share those.

KBX is not just about moving, it is definitely taking things that develop in the studio, like your confidence, like your strength, and you do apply them to your life. That's another thing that I really love about going, is that I leave there feeling like a badass pretty much every day, even though I'm wiped out because, I've, you know, kicked and punched out all of my stress. It's great.

Jade: Absolutely.

Karli: I want to wrap up this episode so that we can, move forward into part two of our conversation. I always wrap my guest episodes part one with this question. What's your favorite thing about, or what are you most looking forward to in midlife and beyond?

Jade: I am very much looking forward to really fully living my life with me as a priority. I met my husband when I was in my mid-twenties and we built a beautiful life together, but a lot of it was very much about him, and his career. And it was a very busy career and we did a lot of moving and I loved so much about that, but it was certainly his life and that was the priority.

Then I had our son, Jack, and he's 12 years old now. And so much of those early years are really about your kids, right? Like raising your kids and, doing the mom things and learning how to be a mom and all of that. It was just very, very consuming, and it still is. But now he's getting older and growing his own independence.

My husband has moved into the next phase of his career, which doesn't require so much, support from me. And so this next phase for me is really about my personal growth, achieving some of the things that I still would like to do, taking that time being okay with setting aside time for me for that.

Of course, still supporting and loving my family and being there for them. But just giving myself some permission to say, Hey, it's okay now you can take some of that extra time and energy for you. And I'm looking forward to that. I think it's pretty exciting. You know, I think it's still a really busy life.

You know, we're, we're still living a very busy life, but I think there's a little bit more, structure to it that's not so wild that I can really take some time for me. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to all the experience and knowledge and, when I speak to women who are older than me, right, I'm in my early forties, and when I meet women and have a chance to talk and work with them, I just really realize how wise they are, how much wisdom they really hold. I really try to soak it all in and, and hear what they have to say about what life is like as you age and how wonderful it is. I think society has terrified us in some ways into thinking that it's just doom and gloom.

It's like, here comes the wrinkles in the, you know, the gray hair and like, you might as well just forget about it. And now I just think that there's still this like vibrance and sexiness and all of these amazing, powerful qualities that women in their forties and fifties and sixties and seventies and like until just forever.

And we are still allowed to be all of those things, powerful and sexy and confident. Now more than ever and I'm looking forward to that because I think it's just awesome. Women have never been more powerful and more respected and I think deservingly so.

Karli: You bring up something that a lot of women look forward to. And also as you're starting to get closer and closer to it, struggle with. Whether you raised a family or not. We were raised to put other people first, to sit quietly, and let other people speak. To sit there and be cute. But we are changing that conversation. This generation of women who are in midlife and beyond right now are changing that conversation.

So it isn't always easy to let go of those things you Thought you should be, that others expected you to be, and to really realize this is my time to be who I am at my core and to please me first.

And I can still love and take care of others, but I'm going to love and take care of myself first. And that is something that I really love about this time of life.

Jade: It's so much better, right? It's like, think of how much more love and support and energy you have for the others in your life when you also are feeling awesome, you know, when you are also feeling pumped up and your cup is so full and you have the energy and the inspiration for that, you can just be a better support system and cheerleader and leader for everybody in your life. So I think it's really, really important and it is tough to let go of. but I think it's just super exciting.

Karli: Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. All right. We are going to wrap up part one of our conversation today. Thank you, Jade, for being here.
I really appreciate your time.

Jade: Thank you for having me. It was a pleasure.

Karli: I hope that all of you out there listening and watching will go to flipsideofmidlife.com, check out the ELEVATE membership page, and sign up so that you can have access to part two of my conversation with Jade coming right up.