My Nervous System Needs a Map

Last week I went out a lot.

Which makes me laugh slightly as I type it, because “a lot” is relative. Coffee with a friend, two birthday lunches, an ink painting workshop. A few trips into town, so nothing wild, no party central renaissance or anything, Just more than usual, for me.

These days, leaving the house feels like a thing. I’ve written about it before. Lockdown played a massive part, add in the menopausal anxiety, then anaemic fatigue and reducing mobility - a perfect recipe for “reclusivity”. I could almost feel myself turning into a hermit.

I’m not saying this in a dramatic, “poor me” way. Just in a very practical, midlife, still slightly knackered but definitely getting stronger kind of way.

There’s a layer of questioning (that causes anxiety sometimes if I’m honest) that runs quietly underneath any activity that involves leaving the house.

·Where am I parking?

·Is there a time limit where I can park?

·How far can I walk today?

·Is it flat?

·Will I need to rest on the way?

·Will I need my rollator/scooter or just my stick?

·Can I sit down when I get there?

·How close is the venue?

·How much energy will this take?

I don’t go about pretending those things don’t matter anymore. They do, they’re a big part of the equation and help me make informed decisions as to whether I go ahead with something or not. And actually, owning that feels more grown up than pushing through and paying for it later. Which is what, up until the last year or so, i would’ve done.

What’s interesting is that my body is finally doing better. I was more or less written off by the medical profession a couple of years ago and given a series of videos to watch around pain management. Since then I’ve took matters into my own hands and looked at things holistically.

Which leads me to where I’m at right now. The aches and pains have eased somewhat. My mobility is improving. I can feel the difference when I move. Don’t get me wrong, I’m no Olga Korbut, and by most standards I’m still an old crock... It’s subtle but it’s there. The trouble is, I don’t fully trust it.

There’s a cautious voice that's saying, “Steady on. Don’t get ahead of yourself.”

My head can see the progress but my heart is still catching up. I don’t want to give myself false hope.

Which is probably why new environments feel slightly unsettling at the moment. Not terrifying, but just activating the anxiety a tad. If I don’t know the parking situation, or how far I’ll need to walk, or what the layout is, my nervous system is going into mild background alert mode.

So I’ve realised it’s not fear as such, it’s just lack of data. Therefore, I realised last week that confidence, at this stage of my life, isn’t a mindset trick, it’s just logistics.

When I’ve checked the parking or I know the route, or those details are all covered, something softens and it all feels OK.

It’s like the difference between bracing yourself and just breathing normally.

I think it’s easy to equate confidence with bravado. Folk walking into rooms without hesitation or being the loudest, or most visible.

Confidence, to me, now it feels very different. Now it’s about creating the conditions that allow me to be steady.

Can you tell I’ve been reframing, and that’s where my updated DIVA meaning has been landing in a much more embodied way.

·Discernment

·Identity

·Vibe

·Alignment

So, my thinking is that:

a)Discernment is knowing that planning parking isn’t overthinking. It’s self-awareness.

b)Identity is accepting that I function better when I’ve got a map rather than pretending I’m endlessly spontaneous.

c)Vibe is noticing whether something feels good or slightly jangly in my body.

d)Alignment is adjusting the environment so I’m not fighting myself for the sake of it and getting rid of FOMO.

This feels far more powerful to me than any rah-rah version of confidence ever did.

What made me smile is that I thought, once again, I’d taken last week “off.”

It was half-term, my stepdaughter was with us more than a term time week, and it was also her 16th birthday . Now I’ve not worked in education since 2013 and yet my body still moves in termly rhythm. So I leaned into it last week. I had even slower than usual mornings. Crochet on the sofa in the afternoons, a coffee shop meeting and two birthday lunches in town - all without calculating productivity again.

No guilt and enjoying it just because I can.

And yet, in the background, things were moving.

A new 1:1 client said yes and we’ve got our first meeting booked this week. And this came not from shouting louder or from some big launch. It happened due to a relationship that’s been growing quietly over time in shared spaces, familiar rooms and conversations that have stacked up over the past year.

I also secured the second sponsor for Deck 2 despite doing very little that looked or felt like “work.”

Which has told me something important -success doesn’t always arrive through adrenaline. And it doesn’t have to feel frantic to count. In my head I know this, you read it in books, you see the memes. But last week I had my own data.

Now I have my own proof that sometimes it’s slow burn, sometimes it’s depth and sometimes it’s consistency meeting readiness at exactly the right moment.

So I’m thinking maybe that’s why smaller, more intimate spaces are appealing to me at the moment. Rooms where you can feel the tone and conversations where you don’t have to generate hype. Settings where you know the lay of the land and can settle in.

This is not about me shrinking, it’s about refinement.

I’m not interested in being In the loudest, busiest rooms anymore. I’m interested in being regulated enough to be fully myself and have proper conversations. And there’s something deeply Funky Diva Vibey about that, it’s alignment in action.

I see this in so many midlife women I work with. We’ve been told that visibility means pushing through discomfort and confidence means overriding our nervous system. That success means bigger, louder, further, measured by the six and seven figures – the business version of the sausage machine of conformity- the chorizo with the LinkedIn profile.

But what if unsausaging and stepping into your Funky Diva power means something else?

What if it means understanding your energy, respecting your bandwidth and preparing properly so you can actually enjoy the experience rather than surviving it.

That feels like a shift worth acknowledging.

Because this semi-peni stage I’m at right now isn’t about me losing ambition, if anything, it’s clearer than ever.

I don’t want adrenaline driving the show anymore and if my nervous system needs a map, I’ll give it one.

If I need to check the parking before I stride into the room, I will.

If I need to move at half-term pace for a week and trust that relationships are still quietly compounding in the background, that’s allowed too.

This is what this season looks like.

Less proving. More knowing.

Less pushing. More preparing.

And maybe that’s what real confidence looks like now.

Steady. Considered. Rooted.

Aaahhhh rather than adrenaline.