FINDING YOUR “MIDLIFE THING”… A STEP-BY-STEP PLAN

Finding Life PurposeRyan Haddon
Written By Sarah Milken

Show Notes

Are you a midlife woman feeling stuck and wanting more out of life? Are you looking to scratch the “midlife itchies” but not sure how? Do you ever find yourself feeling guilty for taking time for yourself? What if I told you that there is a step-by-step guide to getting out of the midlife rut and reclaiming your creativity? If you are ready to flip the script, then this episode is for you.

Join me, Dr. Sarah Milken in an inspiring and supportive conversation called “Finding Your ‘Midlife Thing’… A Step-By-Step Plan”. My guest Eve Rodsky, author of “Your Unicorn Space, Reclaim Your Creative Life In a Too Busy World". We talk about her guide to reclaiming our time and using time to recreate the second half of our lives. Eve shares all the details of her research on cultivating creativity and framing what she calls our unicorn space.

Creativity is not optional. It’s essential. Get ready to reclaim your right to enjoy yourself, manifest your own Unicorn Space in a too-busy life, and unleash your unique abilities and untapped talents into the world.

Some Highlights:

  • Challenges women face in finding creative time and the lack of permission associated with taking time for oneself

  • Finding the vocabulary to ask for what you need as you get older

  • Unicorn space vs. passion vs. hobby

  • Anti-burnout and midlife challenges

  • Being a mom with big dreams 

  • Mental health and appropriately expressing emotions 

  • Midlife coping mechanisms that you might not realize are coping mechanisms

  • Redefining creativity as a cycle of curiosity, connection, and completion

Connect with Eve:

Eve’s Books:

Follow The Flexible Neurotic:

Full chat (transcript)

I’m joined by Eve Rodsky, second-time guest and author of the book “Your Unicorn Space, Reclaim Your Creative Life In a Too Busy World". We talk about her step-by-step guide to reclaiming our time and using time to recreate the second half of our lives. Eve shares all the details of her research on cultivating creativity and framing what she calls our “unicorn space”. So join me in an inspiring and informative conversation called “Finding Your Midlife Thing… A Step-By-Step Plan” Eve breaks down all the midlife challenges and explains how her new book tackles them head-on. She emphasizes the importance of finding your "unicorn space," which is basically a consistent interest in your own life. It's not just about self-care, it's about sharing who you are with the world.

Before this amazing episode begins, I want to tell you and or remind you that I have announced my first live event. Scary, but it's happening. You asked for it. I listened. The Flexible Neurotic in person. I have invited you to be 1 of the 18 at my midlife baby shower experience. You will sit at our midlife table, curated and filled with like-vibed midlife women looking to go deep, get creative, and feel the experience of the midlife stir.

What's next for us? It is on June 24th, 2023 at my home in Los Angeles. You might ask, why is it at our house? It's at my house because I felt like it was on brand for me. To have it at a hotel or a restaurant wouldn't feel The Flexible Neurotic. I'm opening up my home to all of you. The next question you might be asking is, who's the midlife baby shower experience even for? Who's going to be sitting at my midlife table?

It's designed for super fans of my Midlife Self-Reinvention Podcast, The Flexible Neurotic that you're reading right now, and/or my sassy irreverent Instagram platform. The midlife shower guests will be “real housewives, career paused women, career women or women who are bored as fuck, wanting to scratch their midlife itchies and get off the fucking hamster wheel.” Whatever damn box you put yourself in, we have the cure.

If you're a woman who is looking to invest in yourself and dump the same old, same old, and find nuance, texture, and magic to rebrand, repurpose, and feel relevant again, then this is your vibe and your experience. All of these details can be found on the top of my website in pink letters, www.TheFlexibleNeurotic.com, or there is a link in my Instagram. I'm so excited to have the table almost full.

Women are taking chances and investing in themselves, and many of them are coming from different states. We all feel the midlife calling for what is next. The question is, what will you do to answer your call? You can come to my midlife table and if you don't choose my experience, pick something for you because you deserve it and it's clearly on your mind.

Let's get the fuck out of the midlife waiting room and stir some shit up for ourselves. Check out my offer at www.TheFlexibleNeurotic.com or my Instagram @TheFlexibleNeurotic, and we are onto the episode that is going to inspire you to think about what action steps you're going to take in midlife in addition to signing up for my midlife baby shower. Here we go.

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I have a very special friend and guest. This is her second time on my show. The first episode with her knocked it out of the park with her best-selling book, Fair Play. With a Harvard Law degree and organizational management expertise, she wrote The New York Times best-selling book, Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live).

Her Fair Play book highlights how women are tired of doing too much shit. This book is changing the marital dynamic in the family system as we know it. She believes we have to apply an organizational systems lens to our household and family duties. This guest’s book, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World is a step-by-step guide on how to find your thing in midlife and how to show up for yourself and the world. She talks about her research on cultivating creativity and framing what she calls our Unicorn Space. Her name is Eve Rodsky. Hi, Eve.

I’m so happy to be with you.

I'm so happy we could get this together. The intention of this episode is to talk with Eve about her step-by-step guide to reclaiming our time and using the time to recreate the second half of our lives. She tells us the steps to figuring that thing out which she calls Unicorn Time and what makes you, you. Tell us this book about finding our creative Unicorn Space, which is the sequel to your original book, Fair Play, which did so well.

Thanks. It's a little strange to have a book about creativity follow a book about getting men to do more housework and chores. What was happening was, in my data, I've been studying how people allocate their time within family systems, whether it is single parents, LGBTQIA couples, or heteronormative couples. Regardless of the family structure, I've been looking at how people spend their time.

With Fair Play, people were saying to me, “I'm getting time back,” because their home life was becoming more efficient. This is where our work intersects. Many women, after children, especially women in a demographic where their kids were in fourth grade or higher, which was interesting, said to me, “I wouldn't even know what to do with that newfound time. What was the point of Fair Play if I've already lost my identity?” which you talk about all the time and they hadn't found you and had done a reinvention yet. That was incredibly alarming to me. I started to hear that around 2012. A decade later, I didn't stop hearing that. There were three things that were alarming me. Women were telling me that they didn't feel that they deserved permission to be unavailable from their roles.

That’s still one of my favorite quotes from our episode together.

I want to reiterate that for people who haven't read our first episode. It is this idea that I'm a parent, a partner, or a professional, which can mean working for pay or being a stay-at-home parent, on repeat. If I want to be an accordion player or I want to jump into the Atlantic Ocean as a polar bear, that time is not afforded to me. It's a waste of time.

The two other things I heard were, “Even if I used time for myself, I have incredible guilt and shame when I used that time.” The third thing that was super alarming was especially women telling me that even if they felt that they deserve permission to be unavailable and they didn't have guilt and shame, they still didn't have a vocabulary to ask for what they needed.

That's what we're tackling in Find Your Unicorn Space. It was a lot of data and it was really triggering. These themes weren't just American themes. We heard these themes in seventeen countries, even in the Nordic countries where we think they're doing things so much better with the division of labor. I had to unpack what was happening.

FNP Eve Rodsky | Unicorn Space

Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World

What's so interesting about that is that we all look at extra time differently. I want to go through all of these different iterations of it. Some people call it passion. Some people call it a hobby. You define it as Unicorn Space. What is the definition of Unicorn Space?

It’s important that it had a new name, and I'll tell you why. You mentioned two words that are often used for time spent on ourselves. We haven't even gone to self-care, which often can be commodified wellness. You're trying to bring people to what real self-care is. On top of that, when you hear someone say to you, “Find your passion,” what's so weird about that word and what my data revealed about what people felt about that word was that it felt too big. Also, it felt too static.

There was one and we were supposed to uncover it in maybe a lotto scratch card or something like that. It's going to be there for us like an oracle. That word was not helpful in my research when I did my qualitative research with women. The other word that was not helpful was the word hobby. One of the things that connoted for people was frequency. This idea of taking up space is called Unicorn Space, not because I believe in cupcakes or rainbows.

I was going to say, “Why the unicorn?”

I know, right? It feels like you're a seven-year-old in Target. The reason why I like that term was because the idea of having space to yourself where you're not a parent, a partner, and/or a professional is like a unicorn. It doesn't fucking exist.

We need to make it fucking exist.

Exactly. We have conjured unicorns back into our culture. They're mythical and magical. I want some of that combination of consistent interest in your own life. That's this antidote to burnout that I was able to uncover in my research. A consistent interest in your own life is all I can tell you. That gift of Unicorn Space, which is this idea of space to be consistently interested in your own life, is not a walk around the block. It's not a drink with a friend. I wish I could tell you it was. It's not even a girls’ weekend once a year. It's this harder work. That took a whole book to unpack.

“Having that consistent interest in your own life is an antidote to burnout.”

That is a dense book. What's beautiful about it is that it has so much packed in there, but it's laid out so geniusly, if that's a word. It simplifies it. It takes all of this research and all of this information and makes it so easy to take away the nuggets. I love the way you did it. With Unicorn Space, in your research, when you use that term, were men like, “What are you talking about? Is my wife going to walk around with a robe and a headband on?”

Men as well aren't that interesting in midlife either. Maybe they feel that they figured it out with golf.

Maybe they bought a car.

This is a win-win proposition for any family structure. Whether it's a single parent and their children or whether it's a woman who's married to a man that she's been saddled with all the unpaid labor of the home, it is this idea that we can get independent space from each other. We don't have to do everything together and we become unavailable again.

When we were first dating, you don't text your person right back. You try to create a little bit of mystery, but that mystery fades into our roles. We ended up with two terms in the word cloud that came up associated with midlife. We've talked about this in episode one. It was incredibly alarming to me when I spoke to women, especially that demographic of women whose first kid was in fourth grade, so ten years of being a parent. The word cloud that came up was overwhelmed and erasure. I felt that, too. I didn't set out to be an expert on the gender division of laborers there. This wasn't something I ever even thought about.

FNP Eve Rodsky | Unicorn Space

Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live)

It's not like you got a degree there, right?

No. None of us do. What I did recognize was that we had really big dreams and we want those big dreams for our daughters. I went to Harvard Law School thinking I was going to be President of the United States and a senator at the same time because you could legislate during the day and issue executive orders at night, and I was going to still be a Knick City dancer and fly Air Force One into the iconic Madison Square Garden. The smashing of those glass ceilings was something that was not even a question in my mind. I graduated in 2002, so this would be 2011. You cut to a decade later and the only thing I'm smashing is peas for a toddler.

There are soccer bags. You forgot to buy the fucking blueberries for your husband's shake.

I became the fulfiller of his smoothie needs. That was the end for me. We'll talk about what a lot of men say to me. I like to go dark to go light. This darkness that we're talking about, this overwhelm and erasure, especially in America because we don't have a social safety net of free childcare or we don't get paid leave, there are so many hurdles allowing us any free time and space of our choosing that it is mythical and magical. It feels so far away. This book is trying to say, “You deserve permission to be unavailable from your roles. You deserve to have that time without guilt and shame. You deserve to be able to use your voice to ask for what you need. Good things happen when you do that.”

“You deserve permission to be unavailable from your roles. You deserve to have that time without guilt or shame. You deserve to be able to use your voice to ask for what you need. Good things happen when you do that.”

That's it. You nailed it. That's what we're all looking for in midlife. It's so interesting. When I look at my life, I'm like, “Who was I? Who am I right now? Who do I want to be?” Who am I has changed over the years. You're a mom of a toddler. I'm a mom of a kid who's going off to college and a daughter who's sixteen and has her own car. My identity has shifted. I'm not the primary point person in their lives anymore. I've moved to a consultant management role of like, “Here's my credit card.”

It shakes you a little bit because your relevance day-to-day, at least for me, was so tied to what my children were doing minute-to-minute. Now that they are older, there becomes this greater space, which is such a gift. Yet, so many women like me, when I got the midlife itchies, were like, “That's great. I have all this fucking time but now, I don't even know what to do with it.” I don't know what other people are going to think. If I take up tennis, is someone going to think that I don't have any big goals in my life? There's so much judgment packed into this. It's inner mean girl judgment of ourselves, but it's also our perception of the external peanut gallery. What did you dig up in all of this?

I love how you laid that out. I loved how you said it was this internal mean girl of ourselves that we internalized these external values of success. On top of that, we had something weird happen in the past few years. We talked about this before, too. I don't remember if it was on the show or in our own personal conversations, but it is this obsession with being happy. There was happiness this and happiness here.

Even the happiness experts that I love and interviewed for Unicorn Space feel like their work has been misconstrued. The goal of mental health, whether it's in middle life or for our kids, is not to say to ourselves or to our kids, “I want you to be happy.” That's a troublesome and problematic thing to say to your kids and to yourself.

In fact, that becomes a mean girl thing to say to yourself because it's sociopathic to be happy all the time. There are lots of things that fill me with rage. Roe dropped the day that the opinion came out. I'm not going to be sitting there saying, “I wish you to be happy. I wish you to have integrity and be rageful.” You're in the book. I don't know if you know that, but you're at the end about the little gold box.

I've read it. Thank you.

The beauty of talking to these mental health experts when we were uncovering this fallacy around happiness was that the true definition of mental health is to have the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time and the ability and strength to weather it. Unicorn Space is the ability and strength to weather it. It doesn't mean I'm protecting you from the quick fix of instant happiness or the rains. What I'm saying is I can give you an umbrella.

“The true definition of mental health is having the appropriate emotion at the appropriate time and the ability and strength to weather it.”

It's so interesting because I interviewed Lisa Damour, the clinical psychologist.

She's one of the people who gave me that definition in the book of mental health.

She's amazing.

Shout to her. She's in Find Your Unicorn Space. I love her work so much.

Her whole description throughout our episode, her book, and all of her work is that idea that our kids can be pissed off. They can be upset. They can be heartbroken, but we have to look at whether these feelings are appropriate for what has happened. If your son gets dumped or your daughter gets bullied, they're going to be upset. It's okay for them to be upset. We can't magically erase all of this. Explain how Unicorn Space acts as a resilience umbrella for midlife women in the clunkity clunk of life.

I love that so much because you said something important. We can't magically erase it. The problem is in our culture, we try to. We've done that by normalizing mommy juice. We've done that by normalizing edibles. I have friends who tell me, especially for this book, that on weekends at 10:00 AM, they pop an edible on Saturdays and Sundays. To be fair, there are people who have many children, so I get it.

This idea that we've normalized for women to numb ourselves through midlife is why I love your work so much. If you don't have the show, and you're a good friend to people to bring them through these themes, what else do we have if we don't have these resilience umbrellas? What we have are hedonic coping mechanisms, which are not healthy. Our kids have them, too. It's emotional eating for me. It’s the mommy juice, the two glasses of wine in our hands.

We're all dopamine chasing.

This is a better way to chase dopamine because A) It's cheaper. Over time, if you need to save money, it's cheaper. What's so beautiful about this type of chase of serotonin, dopamine, or whatever we need in our brains is that truly, when you combine meaning and purpose together, which is a Unicorn Space, it's not hedonic well-being, mommy juice, edibles, or even a walk around the block, which is important. Those are the building blocks.

This is a different type of umbrella. The resilience umbrella here is combining a feeling of happiness as a clue, not the end goal. When you do Unicorn Space, happiness has its place but not as the end goal as a clue. I'll give you an example. There's one woman who decided on her Unicorn Space after reading the book. She DMed me. I love this story. She's Far Rockaway. That's in New York.

She was feeling super isolated, so she found on Facebook a polar bear group. She knows that a Unicorn Space often has three things. This is what I've seen from people who have these resilience umbrellas. They have Curiosity, Connection, and Completion. Her idea was, “I wonder what it would feel like to jump into the Atlantic Ocean in the winter.”

I do not wonder that.

Me neither. It's not my curiosity.

I can’t even cold plunge into my shower.

I don't understand it at all. If you guys out there want to DM us if you do these cold plunges, have jumped into the ocean, or have surfed without a wetsuit, I want to give you power. That was her wonder. It’s not a passion. No one has a passion for being a polar bear. It’s not a hobby. She wondered something. She connected, which is the second C, with others.

The first C is Curiosity. She was curious like, “Can I fucking jump in the ocean?”

She was like, “What would that feel like?”

The connection piece is the other women showing up to do the cold plunging.

That’s correct. You are sharing yourself with the world. That's the hard part. That's why it's not self-care. These meaning, purpose, and resilience umbrellas always have a piece of sharing yourself with others. Even if people think they have the most lonely Unicorn Space pursuit and people will say, “I do pottery in my studio,” I'm like, “On your shelf, I see your beautiful bud vase with a flower in it. You're sharing that beauty with the world.” There's always a connection piece of sharing yourself with the world.

For example, in this show, I will say to you, “Whether you make $0 from it $1 billion from it, it is a Unicorn Space.” You were curious about the narrative around women in midlife. You did the hard thing of connecting with others. You have to reach out to others and say, “Will you sit with me and talk about this?” You then have to do the hardest part, which is to edit it and put it out in the world. Whether 1 person listens or 1 million people listen, it's scary to show yourself to the world. That's what I'm talking about, whether it's a show like what you're doing or whether it's this amazing woman in Far Rockaway who I love who's a polar bear.

Let's talk about the women who are taking up mahjong and pickleball. Those seem to be the two big activities for women in midlife, and they're enjoying it. I have a ton of friends enjoying and I'm like, “I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid yet.” My brain might be too small for the mental gymnastics of mahjong. Maybe I'm too ADD for that. For pickleball, I've only done it once. I'm the least coordinated person. Line those up and tell us why those are Unicorn Spaces.

It’s interesting you said mahjong because I like to do an exercise with people where I start with an activity that maybe they're interested in or makes them come alive. For you, I'm going to put the values that I would align with you based on what I know of you. I would say lifelong learner, curiosity, and connection with others.

I'll give you an example. There was a woman I interviewed for the book along with my Aunt Marion who I love, and she also has a mahjong group and my mother-in-law. There was something interesting about this one woman. We did it in the context of a corporate exercise, and this is what I'm going to ask your audience to do with us. I want them to play along with this mahjong woman that you made me think of. Pick an activity. Pick something that you're like, “I wonder about that right now,” whether it's to play pickleball or mahjong, or even if it was like, “I wonder what it would be like to host my own show.” Pick anything you wonder about.

What I like people to do after that is to ask themselves why they picked it. When you ask yourself why you picked it, I ask people to go further. This is still part of the exercise. I do this in the book. You could always follow along in the book, but we're doing it here, too. I want people to name three values that the thing that we're talking about brings up for them.

I'll give you an example with mahjong because you were asking about that. It's not mine, but it was exactly what you said. I don't remember exactly what she said that the values that mahjong brought up, but for sure, it was connectedness with others. Having the game allowed people to be more serious about the get-togethers. The risk was another one. She's been doing it with gambling. She only wanted to be in a mahjong group where they used real money, like high stakes, which I thought was interesting. The other one was lifelong learning.

What is interesting about those values of risk, lifelong learning, and connection with others is that you can use those values not in just the context of the activity. Ask yourself if you're getting those values on a daily or weekly basis. You can say to yourself, “Am I taking risks? Do I have the opportunity to have some lifelong learning in my life? Do I have a real connection?”

Often, what I realize is that's where we need to be. I don't care what people do, whether it is pickleball, mahjong, or polar bear. I care about the values behind why you picked it. I will hold you accountable and say, “Have you taken risks?” I will not ask you if you've played mahjong. That's too boring for me. The activity is important, but I care about the values behind it. I want to keep you accountable to those values.

You also talk about how we don't, as midlife women, give ourselves credit for those small wins. We send that scary email the first time, “Eve Rodsky, I'm starting a new show. I've only had five guests. Can you please come on?” That's a small win.

“As midlife women, we need to give ourselves credit for the small wins.”

The email is such a win, and I hope you realize that.

Even if you had said no, you put yourself out there. You were scared and you did it anyway. I've had noes before. People are like, “I’m too busy. I’m sorry. I can't do it.” If I never sent the email, then I would've never known.

We hear those types of rah-rah inspirational quotes like, “You can't make the shots you don't take.” I tell my kids all those things, but are we internalizing that? I talk about how important it is to have others with you on this journey and that this is not an isolated path because if you don’t, it’s scary. I talk about them as spiritual friends. There are two types of spiritual friends that I ask people if they're feeling like, “How do I even start?”

Spiritual friends will help you. One type of spiritual friend is somebody who does the Unicorn Space with you. It's somebody like in that mahjong group with that woman who's also willing to take risks and probably has similar values. That's a cool success partner. It could be someone who signed up for the triathlon with you.

It was 99% more likely to do something if you have a success partner, but sometimes, you don't have a success partner. Maybe your Unicorn Space is not the same. Sarah's is a show and maybe mine is pickleball. You can be my accountability partner, which is 60% more likely that somebody will do something. You call me up and say to me, “Did you sign up for that pickleball lesson?” Those types of spiritual friendships, because you brought up fear before, are important to combat that type of fear.

In my case, I hired a life coach.

That is a spiritual friend.

Not everyone can afford that. There are different variations of that. For me, that was more important to me than therapy at the time. I was looking for something else. I was looking for a different conversation. For me, that has been helpful. My husband has been super supportive and all of that. You also talk about another tip for sticking with it is accountability, but you also had 2 or 3 other ones.

There are a lot of things that are important about the consistency piece. I want to wrap up and remind people of the three Cs again, Curiosity, Connection, and Completion.

We're going back to that.

We will. I want to tell people that what's important about that is you don't have to focus on all at once. What you can do is think about which C you may be lacking at the moment and start with that. Back to the polar bear example, that woman focused on isolation. For her, the connectedness was more important than whatever the activity was. Sometimes, I have people who tell me their graveyard of unfulfilled dreams. That person probably needs to work on the completion of something. Other people say they don't know what curiosity means anymore. You start from that place.

What you're talking about is the fourth C, which is probably the most important. Those are the frameworks that I talk about in the book for being Consistent about these pursuits. Consistency is the hardest C. It's much easier for people to think, “I can carve out two days once a year to go to Vegas with my friends or even do maybe a writer's retreat.”

One woman in the book named Brenda said she was inclined to do a writer's retreat because she was interested in going back to writing. She writes fun fiction books for a living, but she was a lawyer at the time. Her friend, Shawn, who was an accountability partner for her and not a success partner because she's not a writer, said, “I don't want you to go on a writer's retreat. I know you. You're going to get 40 pages written as something great, then you're going to put it on a back burner and you're going to go back to working your ass off at the firm.”

She was at a law firm at the time. She said, “I want you to take a writing class.” She paid for it for her with her friends for her birthday. It reminds me a little bit of your gold box. It is this idea that people come around and define you for you. She knew that that consistency piece was going to break through. She said that writing class was so important.

Let me remind people if they don't know what the golden box is. When I was 45 years old, it was my birthday and I had a severe case of the midlife itchies. My daughter didn't know that. She was thirteen at the time. She made a gold box for me. She texted all my friends and said, “What do you think of my mom?” It was like, “Your mom is the researcher. She's the go-to friend. She's the curator of all information. If you want to know anything about any topic from vaccinating your kids to how to find a lemon law attorney, call Sarah.”

When I got that book and I read all of these messages, there was this common theme of information collector, curator, nerd, pretty nerd friend, and all of these things. That's what made me think, “I am a curious person and I do like to talk to people. What could I do with that?” That's when I hired the life coach. I was like, “Here are my strengths. What can I do with this?” It turned into, “I love podcasts. Let me start a show.” I didn't know how hard it was. It's probably good that I didn't know that. That gold box was emblematic and a beautiful thing.

What I love about those so much is it echoes the framework, which is that consistency we were talking about. There are important things around a fear framework. It is ready, set, go. There are different things you need at different times to push through fear to get ready for something. A lot of that is about preparation, which is exactly what Sarah said. It's this gold box. You didn't stop there. You said, “I’m going to take these values, internalize that, and then work with a life coach.” It's not like, “I’m starting a show.” That deliberation is important.

The set part is what we were talking about before. To set yourself and ground yourself, often, you need those spiritual friends. The go is fun because that go in this fear framework that we talk about in the book is it's hard to go. It's hard to upload that first episode. It was hard for me to get on stage that first time for my book. I didn't do myself any favors because I happened to be the speaker of something called Women on the Go the day my book launched. I had to speak to 3,000 women in Radio City Music Hall. The speaker right before me was Diane von Furstenberg. The speaker right after me was Condoleezza Rice and the Head of NASA.

They were in a fireside chat. Somehow, I was the only slot that was a TED-Style Talk. I didn't know that until that day. It was crazy and fearful. My heart pounds when I think about the feeling of working up to what I agreed to do that day. Sometimes, you have to go. By doing the hardest thing first, almost the hardest talk I could imagine in my brain first, everything else after it felt easier.

That ready, set, go is the framework in the book we talk about. It is about how to march through fear. I have one more thing I'll say about fear. I thought more of the fear was going to be, “I'm not curious anymore. I don't know what to do with my time,” because I did hear a lot of that in the Fair Play research. What was holding women back wasn't that they weren't inherently curious. They were so worried that they'd been excellent before that they could not be excellent again. They would say things to me like, “I do want to write a book or start a podcast, but I know I'm not going to be Top Apple 100, so what's the point?”

“What’s holding women back is not that they aren’t inherently curious, but that they’re worried that they’d been excellent before and that they couldn’t be excellent now.”

Honestly, I talk about that all the time. It's like, “How do you start small?” I'm like, “I went to an Ivy League school. I got a PhD. I've been a stay-at-home mom for many years,” or at the time, it was sixteen years. I thought, “How am I going to put out a show and start an Instagram account with zero followers? How embarrassing is that?” It's like getting an entry-level job at a takeout restaurant.

That's for a 16-year-old, not 45.

That’s what I'm saying.

That's what we think.

It's really hard to be a beginner.

It is so hard, but it's the most rewarding thing. It goes back to what we said. We are looking for resilience umbrellas out here. We're not looking for quick fixes. We don't want you to numb yourself through this part of your life. The work we're talking about here, we're here for you. That's the beauty. You have this beautiful community with the show. Also, I'd love to come in, dip in, give you a thumbs up, and say the people who are tuning in are curious. They're doing the right thing by being here.

The thing is with this whole self-reinvention journey, you can't buy it. No one can do it for you. It's like working out. You could want a trim and healthy body. Maybe you could hire a trainer, a nutritionist, or whatever, but you're still the one who has to do the work. If you want this midlife rebrand, you can listen to as many podcasts and read as many Unicorn Spaces as you want, but unless you're willing to do all the little micro baby steps that are fucking annoying, scary, and hard, you're not going to have the growth.

“You can’t buy self-reinvention, and no one can do it for you.”

That doesn't mean that every day is a slam dunk. Believe me. Some days, I'm like, “I can't do this for one more fucking minute.” It feels clunky and hard. On other days, I'm on fire. My husband's like, “Where have you been for two days?” It’s accepting that not every day is going to be this blockbuster event. In midlife, we're also dealing with so many physical, psychological, and physiological changes that we're not in control of.

That's where those words that we started with come back, whether it's the overwhelm from not knowing why your hair is falling out, the overwhelm of a teenager saying, “Fuck you,” which mine did to me, or the mundane of the repetitive.

It could be the brain fog of, “I feel like I can't think of one word to say.”

That overwhelm in the mundane is here to stay. That's what we're trying to tell everybody here. It doesn't mean that 24 hours a day, you're going to be happy. In the overwhelm and mundane, you are allowed to have your appropriate emotions of rage and maybe resentment or sadness. The beauty is when you have these Unicorn Spaces in your life that you know you're going to be consistently going back to, it does provide that armor. I remember one day, Anna kicked me in the eye. I had a huge black eye. It was also a day that I'd written a chapter of this book. I remember thinking, “Thank God I wrote that chapter. Thank God I had some writing banked in my day because this part of my day feels so hard.”

I love the idea of using that as the umbrella. You talk about creativity. Creativity is like Pandora's Box, honestly. There are so many definitions of it and so many ways to look at it. There is so much research on it. How do you define creativity? Why is creativity in midlife so important?

This is the crux and a great place for us to wrap. Creativity has been hijacked. To me, it's been hijacked as a noun. It’s this idea of, “I am not creative.” It’s this idea that somehow, that means you have to have paintbrushes. The beauty of redefining creativity as this cycle of Curiosity, Connection, and Completion, to me, makes it much more accessible. That's really what it is. Those are the three things I saw in anybody who identified as being creative or people who said, “I didn't feel like I was creative. Now, look what has come out of me.”

When you have those three things, Curiosity, Connection, and Completion, you don't have to work on them all at once. You can try a micro-step in one of those things. You can say, “I'm going to wake up and spend 30 minutes wondering and going down a rabbit hole on something that I'm curious about.” You can say to yourself, “I want to spend 30 minutes connecting or thinking about reaching out to people who are interesting in the area that I may be curious about.” You can spend twenty minutes completing it.

Maybe it's that you have a GoDaddy account for something that you're interested in. Maybe you revisit that account. Maybe you start connecting with a web designer or looking at what Squarespace would be to start putting up a page for what that old unfulfilled dream was. That's the beauty of creativity. It’s been hijacked to give it a meaning that it never ever meant. It does mean that you have an itch. It does mean that we have some seeking to do. Once you give up seeking, you give up living.

What's your biggest piece of advice for midlife women trying to find their Unicorn Space in midlife?

My biggest piece of advice is to understand the importance of this idea that we do not have to be available as part of our identity. Availability is not part of your identity. If you feel like it is, do the hard exercise of closing your eyes, picturing your school calling you, and not picking up that phone. What does that feel like to you? Why is it so hard? Why do we get stress responses for even having that imaginary exercise? It’s because we've been conditioned to believe our most valuable currency, which is our time, is meant to be given away for free to others. It's time and it's glorious when we reclaim some of that for ourselves.

That is so beautiful. Where can the audience find you if they want to find you?

@UnicornSpaceLife is our new account dedicated to these issues. It's very exciting. We also have @FairPlayLife, which is so fun for me because that's where all my rage goes.

I love it. I loved talking to you, picking your brain, and having you back on the show for a second time. I know you're going to talk to your publisher about your third book.

Cross our fingers.

Thanks for coming back to the show. We love it. Talk soon.

Big hug.

Bye, doll.

--

I read this episode with second-time guest, friend, and author of Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, Eve Rodsky. I could summarize the golden nuggets for you to have actionable items to start using now. I know that when I read a long episode, I'm like, “I fucking love that,” but then I can't even remember the specifics. This is why I come back and do a Golden Nugget summary.

In this episode, we discuss Eve's guide to reclaiming our time and using the time to recreate the second half of our lives. Golden Nugget 1) What is Unicorn Space and how do I get one? Eve defines Unicorn Space as the time that we spend on ourselves. She refers to this as “real self-care.” It's not a walk around the block or a drink with a friend.

This is a space where you spend time on what fuels you. It could be a passion or a hobby, although Eve is mindful of using those terms. This is a space where you are not a partner, a parent, or a professional. It's a unicorn and it doesn't fucking exist. I know what you're thinking. “Sarah, can I order my own Unicorn Space on Amazon? Does this episode have a promo code for one?” No, this isn't something you can buy online. Trust me, I tried to buy my newly reinvented identity online. It's not there. This is the space you create for yourself. It's work, but it's so worth it.

Golden Nugget 2) The three Cs. The three Cs are Curiosity, Connection, and Completion. Eve is redefining creativity as a cycle of Curiosity, Connection, and Completion, which makes it so much more accessible. The three Cs don't all need to be worked on at the same time. They are micro-steps towards things. Maybe one day you wake up and decide that you're going to do research on a subject that you've been dying to know more about. Even if it's 30 minutes, it's fulfilling and part of creating your Unicorn Space.

Golden Nugget 3) Spiritual friends. A spiritual friend is someone who can help you in your midlife journey. A spiritual friend is someone who does the Unicorn Space with you. This person might be in your mahjong group, your pickleball team, or your reading group. This is someone who is willing to take those risks with you and has similar values. It's like an accountability partner.

Golden Nugget 4) The resilience umbrella. The resilience umbrella is observing when you have feelings of happiness and using it as a clue. Happiness has its place in the Unicorn Space, but it's not the end goal. People who have resilience umbrellas utilize the three Cs and have Curiosity, Connection, and Completion. Eve refers to the resilience umbrella as the fourth C at times, Consistency. The umbrella is different from a quick fix. It's a long-term solution to fulfillment and commitment to the Unicorn Space in midlife.

The gold is dripping off these nuggets. Grab it. Use it. Before you go and start thinking about your Unicorn Space, I want to remind you that my live baby shower experience event that is at my house on June 24th, 2023 is happening. It is a space where you can start thinking about your Unicorn Space that we talked about in this episode. Take a chance on yourself. Invest in yourself this season. Choose me or choose something that is just for you. I love you all very much, and I'm saving space for you at my midlife table but the seats are going fast.

Go to www.TheFlexibleNeurotic.com and across the top in pink letters, there's information about my event. You can also go to my Instagram @TheFlexibleNeurotic. The tickets are selling fast, and I want to save you a seat. I want you there. Take the sign that you're reading this as a sign that you should be sitting at my midlife table with me on June 24th. If my show and this episode make you feel good and you've learned something and you are feeling inspired, then please share it with a friend. Hit the share button. Share it on your Instagram stories and write a review.

I know it's so fucking annoying, believe me. Technology sometimes feels hard. I can also send you an easy link. The show is growing. It depends on reviews and subscriptions. Don't forget to subscribe. If you invest in yourself and you're 1 of my 18 at my midlife table, I will see you on June 24th, 2023. DM me. You know I always respond. Follow my Instagram @TheFlexibleNeurotic. Love you. Talk soon.

Important Links

About Eve Rodsky

FNP Eve Rodsky | Unicorn Space

Eve Rodsky is working to change society one partnership at a time by coming up with a new 21st-century solution to an age-old problem: women shouldering 2/3 or more of the unpaid domestic work and childcare for their homes and families. Her New York Times bestselling book and Reese’s Book Club Pick, Fair Play, a gamified life-management system that helps partners rebalance their domestic workload and reimagine their relationship, has elevated the cultural conversation about the value of unpaid labor and care.

In her highly anticipated follow-up, Find Your Unicorn Space: Reclaim Your Creative Life in a Too-Busy World, Rodsky explores the cross-section between the science of creativity, productivity, and resilience. Described as the ‘antidote to physical, mental and emotional burnout,’ Rodsky aims to inspire a new narrative around the equality of time and the individual right to personal time choice that influences sustainable and lasting change on a policy level.

Rodsky’s work is backed by Hello Sunshine—Reese Witherspoon’s media company whose mission is to change the narrative for women through storytelling. Rodsky was born and raised by a single mom in New York City and now lives in Los Angeles with her husband Seth and their three children.

This podcast, along with associated websites and social media materials, are not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. The views expressed are that of Dr. Sarah Milken, and that of her guests, respectively. It is for informational purposes only. Please consult your healthcare professional for any further medical questions.

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