Midlife Cry, Sis (Formerly known as The Bettys Podcast)

069 - Too Much Monkey Chatter in Your Brain? Why Listening to it Can Tell You a Lot

Good morning, Bettys and Jacks! After a little bit of talk about our “Hot Dog Summer,” today Alexis and Mary are talking about “Monkey Chatter,” or that constant (often negative) narration in your brain. 
Lexy had to do a lot of quiet thinking, watching and observing to survive her childhood, and would often find herself having to think through every possible worst-case scenario before she could go to sleep. To help herself cope with all of this, Lex developed a gift (and a vice): the ability to paint any situation romantically, poetically and beautifully. The problem with this is that sometimes it can be blinding to reality and to setting healthy boundaries.
Negative self-talk can become a normal noise in our heads–we get used to the Monkey Chatter, and may tend to take everything it says as objective truth, not just as temporary thought companions. And these thoughts often lead us to believe that all of our solutions are outside of ourselves and our control.
Our Better Betty Challenge for today is to find a way to listen to that Monkey Chatter. Identify the actual threats within that narrative, and separate them from the worries and negative thought patterns. Ask yourself how these thoughts make you feel, and listen to your body to determine what you need to change. Meditation, journaling, and just being outside in nature may help with this. Check out some guided meditations on YouTube like this one to get started.
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Please support our sponsor, Get It Done services.
 
Thank you for listening, Betty. You could wear a “sack of potatoes,” and still be the hottest person in the room. Don’t be insecure about your feet, listen to those monkeys, and remember that we love you more.
 

068 - Betty Byte: Honesty is Kindness

Hello, there! We’re trying out a new format for our Betty Bytes, so thanks for bearing with us! 
Today Alexis and Mary are talking about one of Mary’s favorite fictional characters: Dr. Eleanor Arroway from the 1997 film Contact (available for rent/purchase on Amazon here).
While listening for extraterrestrial life, Ellie hears a transmission originating from Vega, a star about 25 light years from Earth. Embedded in this literal message from the universe are the plans for a transport, and in some of the drama surrounding who will get to represent the human race, Ellie’s honesty is used against her.
 
We believe that honesty is kindness, but intention matters. A quote from Meg-John Barker: “Real kindness requires us to be honest with both ourselves and others, even if that is painful and hard.” We recommend reading this short article “Kindness & Honesty: Mutually Exclusive or Interconnected Ideas?” on growcounseling.com 
 
And another powerful quote about honesty and kindness from Bryan Reeves:
Honesty without kindness is cruel.
Kindness without honesty is manipulative.
But honesty WITH kindness is sublime. 
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Please support our sponsor, Get It Done services.
 
Thank you for listening, Bettys and Jacks. Your honesty is refreshing, and your kindness is greatly appreciated. You’re incredible humans, and we love you more.
 

067 - How to Build Character, Even When You’re Being an Anti-Hero

Welcome back, friends! Today Alexis and Mary are talking about CHARACTER. There’s a lot of definitions (which we go through a little bit . . . thank you, Oxford Learners Dictionaries for this information! We also talk a little about overexposure and underexposure in photography. Here’s a good article explaining this concept.
 
Mary recently finished watching “Better Call Saul” (a prequel to “Breaking Bad,” available to stream here on Netflix) and attempts to explain some of the definitions of character using some of the roles and situations found in these fascinating (and very TV-MA) shows. Some characters cannot be defined either, like (the unpronounceable symbol to which Prince briefly changed his name).
 
We do go into anti-hero behavior (thank you, TayTay), and how sometimes we find ourselves acting out-of-character. But when we find ourselves in hot water, we can choose one of three outcomes: to become hard (like an egg), to become soft (like a carrot), or to change our environment (like a coffee bean). Mary and Lexy VERY HIGHLY recommend listening to this episode of the Ed Mylett podcast: “The Greatest Life Transformation Behind Bars” with Damon West.
 
We also love the books The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and The Untethered Soul: the journey beyond yourself by Michael Singer. This quote from chapter 8 (“let go now or fall”) is particularly salient:
 
People don’t understand that fear is a thing. It’s just another object in the universe that you are capable of experiencing. You can do one of two things with fear: you can recognize tha you have it and work to release it, or you can keep it and try to hide from it. Because people don’t deal with fear objectively, they don’t understand it. They end up keeping their fear and trying to prevent things from happening that would stimulate it. They go through life attempting to create safety and control by defining how they need life to be in order to be okay. This is how the world becomes frightening.
This may not sound frightening; it may sound safe. But it’s not. If you do this, the world truly becomes threatening. Life becomes a “me against it” situation. When you have fear, insecurity, or weakness inside of you, and you attempt to keep it from being stimulated, there will inevitably be events and changes in life that challenge your efforts. Because you resist these changes, you feel that you are struggling with life. (Singer, M. A. (2007). The untethered soul: The journey beyond yourself. 71-72)
 
Our Better Betty Challenge for today is to consider what paradigm shift is happening in your life (whether you want it to or not): is it a changing relationship? A new job? A move? Any or all of these thing may be frightening, and we may want to resist them. But what if they are an intervention from the universe? Ask yourself what can this situation teach you. And please remember this quote from Paulo Coelho:
 
When you want something, the whole universe conspires to make it happen.
And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Please support our sponsor, Get It Done services.
 
Thank you for listening, Bettys and Jacks. You are very fine characters (even if you may find yourself being an anti-hero from time to time), and your listening and your messages are character-building for us. You’re wonderful, and we love you more.

066 - Betty Byte: Teddy Roosevelt

Hey, friends! Today’s Betty Byte contains some more incredible quotes from the one and only  Teddy Roosevelt. We’re into the full swing of summer around here, so we are basically living in our cars, trying to teach kids responsibilities, and fighting with those chaotic schedules. 
 
One of Mary and Lexy’s favorite quotes is this: “Believe you can, and you’re halfway there” (explore more of his quotes here). We hope you will do the difficult mental work of believing that you can do whatever you want to do, even if you’re “living on a prayer.” Don’t let that beautiful brain get in your way!
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Thank you for coming back again for more of our word vomit, Bettys and Jacks. We hope you appreciate the wisdom from this fine man, and we hope that his words and our struggles will help make your lives a bit better. And always remember that we love you more.
 

065 - ”Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick.” Insights from Teddy Roosevelt

Hello, Bettys and Jacks. Today we’re talking about Teddy . . . Roosevelt, that is. After a mild swear warning (Mama Ximena is a little spicy today!), and a discussion about how the only free thing in life is your mother’s love.
 
After some fun facts with Lex (“Half the facts, all of the laughter!”) about the life of President Roosevelt, with some minor fact-checking by Mary (thanks, Wikipedia!), Alexis gives a lot of great quotes by this fascinating conservationist, cowboy, governor, war hero, and President of the United States. One of his most famous quotes is “The Man in the Arena,” which you can read more about here:
 
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.
 
Another quote Mary and Lexy really appreciate is this: “The joy of living is his who has the heart to demand it” (read the article here, and explore more of his quotes here). This is our Better Betty Challenge for today: ask yourself what can you do in your everyday life to demand joy. And our ‘shot of Jack Juice’ (is that even a thing?) is to be careful when you demand something from another person, especially women. Many times women do not feel they have the right to demand anything, so we hope you’ll encourage your Bettys to demand joy.
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Please support our sponsor, Get It Done services.
 
Thank you for listening, Bettys and Jacks. We hope you appreciate some wisdom from this fine man, and we hope that his words will help and inspire you as well. And always remember that we love you more.
 

064 - How Change Can Make You a Better Person (Les Misérables, Part Deux)

Salut, Bettys and Jacks! Welcome to Part Deux of our Les Misérables series (it’s not really a series, as much as it is we just had a LOT to say about it, and didn’t want the episode to be two hours long!). If you haven’t listened to episode 63, please do that first. Mary and Lexy spend at least the first 20 minutes of this episode talking about injuries, and some of the descriptions are a little graphic. If that kind of talk is not your thing, go ahead and skip to about the 20:00 mark. You’ll miss our PSAs on how to prevent injuries (PLEASE don’t reach up into your lawnmowers, people!!), but we completely understand. We also talk a bit about Fantine's desperate situation (prostitution) and Javert's suicide, so please be aware of that before you listen.
 
Alexis does a little bit deeper dive into some of the characters in the story: Javert, a little about Jean Valjean, Fantine, her daughter Cosette, who is raised by Valjean after she dies, and Éponine. As Mary and Lexy discuss these characters, we talk about some of the forks in our own roads, and how we have responded to the inevitable changes in our lives, and the sacrifices required to become a better person.
 
Our Better Betty Challenge for today is to consider whether we are navigating our lives and decisions from a place of ego, or from a place of humility. Teachable or bust!
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Thank you for listening today. This episode is a little bit intense, but we hope you can appreciate some of the things we have to say.  We’re so grateful you keep coming back for more of our stories, and that when it comes to this podcasting thing, we’re not On Our Own. You are wonderful. And please remember–we love you more.

063 - 3 Keys to Changing Your Heart (Les Misérables, Part One)

Bonjour, Bettys and Jacks. Our obsession with musicals continues, so you get not one, but TWO glorious episodes (“ah, ah, ah”) about one of our all-time favorites: Les Misérables. Mary was fortunate enough to see it when the U.S. tour came through Salt Lake City, but Lexy has never seen the stage production, and is a petit peu angry about it. After quite a lot of makeup talk (we highly recommend Tarte Shape Tape and NYX Undereye Concealer) we spend a lot of time talking about the story; a little about the classic novel by Victor Hugo, but mostly about the musical.
 
Mary and Alexis give a rundown of the main characters and their personalities, their hardships, weaknesses and strengths. We also talk a little about the contrasting themes in the story: poverty vs. wealth, right vs. wrong, etc. The biggest takeaways for us are about changing your heart: Seeing the whole person, not just where they may be at any particular moment; allowing other viewpoints to be true, and how making big decisions requires sacrifice.
 
Our Better Betty Challenge for us today is to think about someone who is going through something hard, and to ask yourself what is the most charitable thing to think or to do for them. Remember that the kindest thing to do right now might be to give them space.
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
We know we tend to ramble and get into the weeds on some details, so thanks for sticking with us. We’re so grateful for your attention, and we hope you will “join in our crusade.” And please remember–we love you more.
 

062 - Betty Byte: Off The Rails

This hilarious episode gets derailed rather quickly into ‘hot tub conversation’ (Sting, Kama Sutra, and Joe Millionaire, anyone?), so you might want to keep this one away from littles. Or your mom. Or anyone who might get a little uncomfortable when we talk about S-E-X, baby. The logistics!
 
We also chat about social media, musicals, and self-service (wink, wink). 
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast.
 
We hope you like this short (and slightly insane) episode! Please let us know if we should make more of these BBs. You make us “dream of gardens in the desert sand.” We may not love you the way Sting does, but we do love you more.

061 -Needing More Peace in Your Life? Some Techniques That Are Helping Us Right Now

Greetings, Bettys and Jacks. This episode starts and ends with some heavy breathing (no, not that kind). Lexy tries to pep us up to begin, and to calm us down at the end. She is a pretty good hype-girl, even if she’s not great with parking (or directions).
 
Mary and Alexis talk about cognitive bias or the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Lexy seems to have been seeing and hearing a lot about finding peace lately, so she wanted to speak about that subject today. As a teenager, Lexy needed to be a fighter for her peace, and has been working on that in therapy for the last several years. Mindfulness, slowing down, feeling your feelings and allowing your emotions to teach you are all things that are helping her to build resilience and to overcome trauma.
 
Lexy quotes Andy Warhol: 
Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, "So what."
"My mother didn't love me." So what.
"My husband won't ball me. So what.
"I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.” (The Philosophy of Andy Warhol)
 
And Mary quotes a couple of songs: “This is the Last Time” by Keane, and “So What” by P!nk. 
 
Our Better Betty Challenge for us today is to embrace the “so what” in your life. Be present in the now and believe that God and the Universe have given you the tools to figure it out and to find peace in your life. 
 
Lexy’s breathing technique: Breathe in for 4 counts, hold your breath for 7 counts, and breathe out for 8 counts.
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast. 
 
We want to hear from you! Your comments and messages really help us know what you want to hear and how we can improve. If this show resonates with you, please make sure to share & subscribe, and give us a rating & review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
 
Thanks for listening to us talk about things that are important to us. We hope they are important to you as well. We’re so grateful for you. And please  remember–we love you more.
 

060 - Betty Bites: Under The Sea

Hey, friends. This is not a Betty Byte–it’s Betty Bites. This episode is a little tough, because we talk about the tragedy of the Titan. We also talk about the live-action version of The Little Mermaid, which was released recently, and how some people are willing to risk everything and pay the ultimate price for an incredible experience. FYI, Lexy has major FOMO, and would probably jump off of the bridge at St. Mary’s Falls in Glacier National Park. Mary wouldn’t do that, but she would totally go to space on the Virgin Galactic. 
 
Please get in touch! Send us an email at thebettyspodcast@gmail.com, and please follow us on Instagram @thebettyspodcast, on Facebook as The Bettys Podcast, on TikTok as TheBettysPodcast and on Twitter @bettys_podcast.
 
We hope you appreciate these shorter episodes, even if they aren’t always light and fluffy. Please let us know if we should make more of these BBs. Thank you for being part of our world. And remember that we love you more.