Topics: How to Reframe Your Fear of Aging, Why 40 is a Fresh Start, Midlife Tips  

 

How to reframe your fear of aging…my experience at almost 40

 

From identity shifts to relationship changes, 40 is a BIG shift…but not in the tired, middle-aged way we’ve been taught. Let this one inspire you, whether you’re turning 40 or you’ve got a few years this way or that!

This episode is about my personal reflections on coming into a new decade with a lot more power and a lot less need to please or “perform” for the world.

 

 

TIMESTAMPS

00:45 — Letting Go of Performance & People-Pleasing
06:10 — Reclaiming Your Body
11:40 — Why Soul-Nourishing Friendships Matter More
14:05 — Permission to Be Messy & Worthy
18:00 — Inner Child Meets Wise Woman
21:45 — Becoming Fully, Unfiltered You

 

Listen in and discover:

• No More Proving: Why your worth has nothing to do with your productivity
• The New Success Metric: How your body tells you more
• The Gift of Aging: Confidence that’s more than years

 

You’ll hear personal stories and real talk on identity, friendship, the nervous system, time, and the power of finally being unapologetically yourself.

 

🎧 Listen for inspiration and a way to stop fearing those next years!

 

 

LISTEN TO NEXT
Episode: The Fitness Secret

 

RESOURCES

7 Steps to Feel Good Nakd book
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CONNECT
Instagram: @itschardet

 

 

MORE ON THIS PODCAST FOR WOMEN EPISODE

 

“This isn’t about reinventing yourself—it’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.” — Chardét Ryel

 

• Your nervous system stops tolerating pressure and starts craving peace.
• Friendships shift toward depth, and surface connections no longer satisfy.
• Success becomes how you feel—not what you achieve or what others see.

 

What if getting older isn’t something to fear—but something to reclaim?

What if everything you’ve been told about aging—about shrinking, about settling, about fading—was wrong? And what if your next decade isn’t a slow descent… but the deepest rise you’ve ever known?

If you’re nearing 40 (or already there), this post is your reminder that you’re not behind—you’re becoming. Because midlife isn’t a cliff; it’s a doorway. And I’ve got a few soul-deep reflections to walk you through it.

 

You Don’t Have to Prove Anything Anymore (Plus side of Aging)

In your 20s and 30s, it’s easy to fall into a pattern of overperforming just to feel enough. Approval is currency. But somewhere near 40, something shifts.

You stop needing to chase the gold stars.
You stop trying to be the good girl.
You stop performing.

Instead, you show up—with presence, not pressure.

“You don’t owe the world a performance. You owe yourself your presence.”

This doesn’t mean ambition disappears. It means you no longer trade your peace for applause. That’s not ego death—it’s ego freedom.

If you’re looking for midlife tips on how to feel more grounded, this is a big one: let yourself rest in who you already are.

 

Your Nervous System Wants Peace, Not Pressure After 40

Gone are the days when five coffees and back-to-back hustle felt exciting. Getting older means your body doesn’t lie anymore—and you start to finally listen.

Stress shows up differently. The tolerance for overextension shrinks. The signals come faster: tension in your chest, tightness in your shoulders, that sense of internal static.

“The ego wants metrics. The body wants peace.”

This isn’t burnout—it’s your system begging for regulation. One of the most transformative midlife tips is learning how to reframe your fear of aging by tuning into your body’s wisdom instead of overriding it.

You’re not fragile. You’re finally attuned.

Friendship Starts to Mean Something Very Different

As you grow into yourself, you realize that depth matters more than history. Just because someone’s been around for years doesn’t mean they’re aligned with who you’re becoming now.

This is the stage where you crave soul-nourishing conversations. Safety. Reciprocity. Emotional attunement.

“Friendships that regulate your nervous system are the ones that matter most.”

If you’ve felt yourself outgrowing certain circles or noticing your energy shift around particular people—that’s not rejection. That’s your intuition reorganizing your emotional ecosystem.

One of the most powerful things about getting older is this: you become your own curator.

 

Success Starts to Feel… Different as You Age

There’s a reason so many women quit jobs, change careers, or start new paths around 40. You stop chasing someone else’s idea of success and start asking: But how do I feel, really?

Your shoulders get tight when something’s off. Your gut knows when a “yes” is forced.

This is the shift from chasing impact to feeling impact.

“You start asking, ‘Do I like how I feel day-to-day?’—and that question changes everything.”

That’s why turning 40 is a fresh start—not because you burn your old life down, but because you finally begin living in alignment with your own metrics.

What does success feel like to you? Calm? Inspired? Spacious? Let that be your compass.

 

The Power of Becoming Fully, Unapologetically You

Here’s what no one tells you about midlife: you begin to care deeply and honestly about your own voice—sometimes for the first time.

You stop over-explaining.
You stop apologizing.
You stop shrinking to fit the moment.

“You can be tender and powerful on the same day—and that doesn’t make you broken, it makes you real.”

Getting older invites you to become the version of yourself that isn’t edited for anyone’s comfort. It’s the season where truth and softness can finally live side-by-side.

If you’re still wondering how to reframe your fear of aging, this is it: it’s not a descent, it’s a deepening. And you don’t need to wait to be fully seen.

 

Midlife Is Calling and It’s Great!

This isn’t about reinventing yourself from scratch. It’s about remembering who you were before the world handed you a script.

It’s about reclaiming your energy, your softness, your voice.

It’s about waking up and realizing:
You don’t have to be perfect to be worthy.
You don’t have to be busy to be valuable.
You don’t have to be young to be powerful.

“This isn’t about reinventing yourself—it’s about remembering who you were before the world told you who to be.”

 

Ready to Step Into It?

If you’re in this season (or heading toward it), know this: why turning 40 is a fresh start isn’t a tagline—it’s a lived experience. You’re standing in the middle of your own renaissance. There is no rulebook, just resonance.

So ask yourself:

• What am I no longer willing to prove?
• Where am I still seeking permission to be myself?
• What version of success actually feels good in my body?

You don’t have to have all the answers. But you do have the invitation.

And if you want to explore these questions more deeply, tune into the latest Feel Good Nakd episode for the full, unfiltered reflections. I promise—it’s the conversation we all needed but never got about what it really means to turn 40.

Listen to the episode: “Almost 40: What No One Tells You About Coming Home to Yourself”

 

 

 

 

Full Transcript on How to Reframe Your Fear of Aging with Chardét Ryel

 

Chardet Ryel (00:02.838)
Get ready to feel good naked. I’m your host, Sade, and if you’re here right now, it means that you are ready to strip away all the crap, all the rules holding you back from feeling good in your body, in your mind, and in your life. Let’s get into it.

Chardet Ryel (00:20.375)
We’re doing this one old school, so no video, just pure raw unfiltered conversation with you. I honestly don’t know what is going to be revealed here about almost turning 40, but I know that I’m going to give you some very real insights into what it feels like to shift, grow, identity changes, relationship changes, all of these different things that really come to a head.

as you approach the end of your 30s. And I think for some of you, you might be feeling this stuff even now, no matter what age you are. But it is very true what they say about 40, that there is a massive shift. It’s not one that happens overnight. I’m not 40 yet, I’ve got a couple more months, but it’s one that’s been building up and it’s one that I’ve thought a lot about. And so this is probably gonna be about, let’s say seven to 10.

insights for you and I want them to be extremely inspiring but also some of them are going to be very real because that’s what I like to share with you here. And I’d also love after you listen to it, if you are approaching this decade or you’re already there, what would you share with me? You know, drop me an Instagram, it’s itcharday. I would love to know because I know a few people who are this age, of course.

But I don’t know as many as I’d like to, and I wish that we had more conversations with people approaching the ages we’re reaching because I feel like it would feel a lot less scary. The biggest thing I’ve noticed, insight number one here, is going to be you stop needing to prove yourself. And it is very disorienting.

You would think, it’s so great. You don’t need to prove yourself anymore because in your 20s and your early 30s, you are so driven by doing enough with being seen, by getting the pat on the back, by getting the media features, getting the promotion. It just consumes everything you do, especially in your 20s. As you come into 40, there’s this really weird, jarring shift from performing to presence.

Chardet Ryel (02:32.045)
You’re ready to just be more in these moments and obsess less about the outcomes, the results. It doesn’t mean you don’t care, you still do. Because the ego is resisting it, of course. Ego doesn’t want to let go of the metrics and the things that we usually use to show the world that we are doing well. But there is a shift. It’s made me think about how confidence, especially when you reach this age,

understanding that you are here for you, you’re here to support the ones you love, but you’re not here to get the check mark for the world. I don’t know if you felt this, but as a woman especially, that is extremely validating. But it’s also so different from how you grow up. Because think about how many times you were told how pretty you are, what a good girl you were, how smart you were, and it was always about what you achieved, what you look like, and that…

is going to end as you come into this decade. Not saying it doesn’t still pop up, but I definitely see a lot less. And so no matter what age you are, because I always like to bring this back to you, where are you still trying to earn worthiness? Is it in your job? Your relationship with family? Where are you still trying to earn it?

because this might be the biggest thing that empowers you to let go. Insight two, your nervous system wants peace, not pressure. You don’t thrive on the five coffees a day anymore and hustling and being out all night. There’s so many jokes about how I’m 30 and I wanna be inside and I wanna sleep. But what it really comes down to is you don’t ignore anymore the fatigue and the stress that you put on your body. Hustling doesn’t feel good at 38, 39.

like it might have a 27 or 28. The body says no more, even if your mind wants you to just push. So you really honor your body a lot more with that, where before you would just get the caffeine, you know, have a drink to stay out. You don’t do that now because you feel like I want to have the regulation. And there’s many things you start to learn as well, which is really interesting around your body telling you because most of the time we would get sick.

Chardet Ryel (04:54.223)
in our 20s or 30s. And that was the sign of nervous system is crushed, it’s time to relax. It would take getting ill. Now you start to read some more subtle somatic signs. You start to feel this false urgency and it is false because almost everything can be delayed if it needs to be. But you start noticing these signs of that urgency and the burnout showing up in your life.

the subtle signs and you often will stop them. Not always, sometimes I still don’t listen. But as you know from my three months of losing my voice, your body makes you so you eventually will. And this is where I would invite you to think about what are three things you used to tolerate that your body now rejects. And these can be things that also your mind rejects, your emotions reject. You know, not having

certain treatment and relationship, not having certain boundaries at work. What is your body now rejecting? I just can’t believe I shared before one of the stories of how when I was in my mid late 20s, so about 27, in the last job I ever had before I quit and said, no more, I’m going to start my own business. They had us work really late until about 738.

and then we would be expected to go to happy hour. And I remember being so obsessed with wanting to fit my wellness in and I couldn’t that I went to this happy hour and I had some tequila and then I went to the gym. And to me, it is insane to think that I did that. Why? What was the point? One of just not saying I need to go, I need to go to the gym, not having the drink. What was the point of pushing so much like that?

and it really came down to I was not feeling at that time the impact of my body. The third thing I’ll say I notice is you start to really reclaim your body and it becomes about a lot more than performance or looks. Now because I’ve had this podcast and I had the journey that I have, I went through this a lot sooner than probably most women do.

Chardet Ryel (07:12.291)
So from my mid-20s, I was beginning to see fitness in my body as something more sacred, intuitive versus worrying about it looking good. I know that that’s not the case for most people because there’s a hell of a lot of pressure out there to look a certain way. We’re fed so much stuff from influencers and the like, especially now. But I see especially the more women I speak to in their late 30s and going into their 40s and

especially after they respect their body in a different way. It doesn’t mean they love it all the time. Doesn’t mean they don’t criticize it. The mirror becomes less of a measure. You start to care a little less. It’s not that you don’t care for your health and your well-being. It’s that you are done trying to make it fit into the window for everybody else. And if you haven’t gotten to this point yet where no matter what your age is, where you can see your body as more than just what it looks like or

the metrics that it’s meeting or that it’s not. Think about when was the last time you moved, you exercised for joy and not for a result. Because when you can start to do movement that you enjoy, that you love, that is the first step to seeing your body differently. There’s many episodes on this in the podcast. I think there’s one called the fitness secret.

which is basically this. And we go into more about how important it is to use movement as a healing tool for self-esteem. A fourth thing that has come up is this idea that you kind of lose labels and that’s a weird identity shift. So I kind of talked about this in the beginning how you don’t care about performing as much.

But you also don’t care about being known as the ambitious one, the hot one, the fixer, the super caring one. And that stuff of course is great sometimes, but it doesn’t really define you anymore. You might actually start to feel that those identity labels don’t relate to you anymore. I have always, always thought of myself as the ambitious one. And I’m starting to…

Chardet Ryel (09:27.775)
leave that identity behind. Not because I don’t want to achieve things or have impact. It’s that my ego is basically dying. Like it’s going. I’m letting it go because the stress and the frustration and the comparison is not worth it. And it’s hard though because it is a death even though it’s your ego, your identity. It’s a part of you that you are losing and it is sad and it is disorienting and who are you if you are not that thing?

A lot of people go through this in different ways. Who am I if I’m a mother and my children are grown? Who am I if I identified as a wife or a partner and that person’s gone? Who am I if I was the successful one at work and I’ve been laid off or fired? We all go through this, but it is especially powerful as you come into midlife. So weird to say midlife, isn’t it? It’s so strange for me to think about being middle-aged.

It just seems like middle age is 60. Now the one that’s really hard, insight number five on being almost 40 here, and I’ll be curious to see how many of you experience this, is the friendships you crave change and deepen.

So you start to really have this strong desire for a soul-nourishing connection. You are not as interested in surface-level hangouts. It doesn’t mean that you are opposed to a tea or coffee or a wine or whatever. It’s just that you really crave more. Maybe not a lot of people fit that. And it can feel very lonely at first. And it can feel very hard because a lot of us feeling calming and grounding and safe.

comes down to deep friendships. And if you are going through life transitions, like many of you are with work, with children, with relationships right now, and you don’t have those cornerstone friendships, it feels rough. And when I started to notice this shift, it was amazing to me to think about the people that I actually had this connection with. And I feel sad on one side because it’s not with the people I thought, because it’s not

Chardet Ryel (11:42.497)
about how long you’ve known each other or even the moments you’ve shared. It’s about where you are now. So I would ask you to think about who do you feel safe and seen with even if right now they’re just an acquaintance? Because I had the same thought and I really made an active effort to deepen that connection. Same for you. Who do you feel safe and seen with? The first names that come to your mind. And who?

The draining part was really hard. I’ve had a conversation on this show about friendships, some of them that you really cherish but you just are not in the same state of mind anymore. And you do feel like it’s draining. Like one of you is really taking more of the energy than another. It’s hard. It’s hard to let that go. I think there’s so many memes probably around as you age how many people

you realize you let go. And part of it is because of this draining. It’s a really sad thing. It’s also an extremely empowering one as you start to get through it. Insight six is one that I really love. And this is about as you’re approaching 40, you feel like you can be messy. You can be inconsistent and you can still be really worthy. It’s less about perfection for you and you’re not as afraid to show it.

Now this can be different for many people. I know some people feel like they can do this in their real life but not online. I get it, that’s a harder thing. I feel like because I’ve been online for so long now and I’ve been in business for so long that I also can do this online now. And it feels really great to stop self-policing, stop trying to be perfect every word, every gesture, everything to stop…

giving stories that are super polished to be very real. When you can do this, it’s like the nervous system breathes because you don’t have to expend energy on trying to hush down the parts of you that are not smooth. You can be that little rocky rock. So I want to ask you, where are you holding back your joy, your feeling of freedom because you are so set?

Chardet Ryel (14:06.388)
on almost seeking permission and validation from others. Where you wanna put forth this perfect image, you don’t wanna share what’s going beneath the surface because you don’t want the judgment. You don’t wanna admit that it feels like failure. What is it for you?

Chardet Ryel (14:25.676)
The seventh insight, it’s as you start to accept that I’m not here just to perform, I’m here to be and to live my life because they always say on people’s deathbeds what they regret is not doing the thing or paying too much attention to what other people wanted or thought. When you let go of climbing that ladder, it’s not your primary concern, you start asking.

Do I like how I feel day to day? This is why people quit their jobs in their 40s. Because they ask this question and they say, well, I don’t like how I feel. So why am I gonna keep doing this? People call it the midlife crisis, but it’s not that. It’s like a midlife renaissance where you get to become more who you are before society took over. And it’s not just a title.

for success or a timeline that you care about. It’s the entire experience in your body. I wanna grow this show. I wanna write books. I wanna do all these things, of course. I haven’t let them go. But success now for me is not about those so much as it is how am I feeling with the work I’m doing every day. If I feel tight in my shoulders, if I feel resistance in my gut, if something doesn’t feel aligned, I don’t ignore it anymore. What about you?

If you could think about what you feel in your body now related to success or your life, what would it feel like?

Insight eight. 40 is the year of dichotomy, I wanna say, because it’s almost like you are, again, becoming who you always were. By the same time, you’re still trying to heal the stuff that hasn’t healed. So it’s almost the portal between the wounded parts of you and the grounded person you’re becoming. So it’s these weird cycles of inner child and then wise woman.

Chardet Ryel (16:27.97)
They’re both rising, they’re both interacting. And so you have these moments of, feel so self-assured. I know what I want. And then you have these devastating days where you just feel like, wow, this was hard. This was painful. This is difficult. You feel a little tender and powerful sometimes on the same day. It’s a very jolting experience.

so deep and the more I give words to this, the better I feel about expressing it because I, when I first started to feel this probably earlier this year, I didn’t have these words to explain it. And I think about how the inner child part of me was really wounded for most of my 20s and my early 30s. And I acted out. I did stuff that was horrendous because of it. I feel like a totally different

person now. I could be the mom to that person. Not because I feel old, but because I’m fully grounded in healing those aspects of me. And you might feel this kind of tension right now. And your first impulse is to fight it, to resist it. And this is where I would ask you, what did your younger self need to hear that you finally believe now?

Chardet Ryel (17:50.008)
For me, it was very much, you don’t need to perform to have impact, to be included. What about you? What did your younger self need to hear that now you believe or you’re starting to?

Chardet Ryel (18:07.274)
Insight nine, I think we’re gonna go to 10 here and then we’ll wrap up. Time feels really different and in some ways sacred. They often will say that time doesn’t really exist, that it’s about your perception of it and this is why when you are in moments of vacation, it feels like it moves very differently from when you’re in moments of hustle and work. Now time feels like there’s a slight urgency, not.

from fear but just wanting to have impact and direction. You want your hours to mean something, not in terms of output or outcome, but in terms of how they feel. You really don’t want to waste time. This is where also you start to drop certain relationships because you see time differently. It’s not time scarcity where you feel like you’re running out. It’s more like a time integration and closeness and a value for it that you

didn’t have before, that you don’t want to squander it on all the things and people, false goals that don’t matter to you anymore. And so I’d give you a question here because time is so special. What do you want to create before 40? Not for the optics, but really for you and what feels good. Because there were several metrics I had that I wanted to reach by 40. Some of them I reached, some of them I won’t.

The ones I did reach, it was great to reach them. I loved it. But at the same time, it wasn’t a life-changing milestone or moment. But it was more of a, glad that I did this, but I feel even better that it’s on the path I wanted. So for you, what does that path look like?

Chardet Ryel (19:57.72)
And insight number 10, the biggest one, the one that I love for me personally and also with my work is the ability to be unapologetically yourself. You stop apologizing all the time, asking for permission, shrinking yourself. You start really trusting who you are and your voice. You can be completely you and it’s almost like you have this steel around you because you just don’t care.

Now I know different people have variations of this and some might care more. I’m just sharing my experience here coming into 40 is how it feels. I’m just thinking, you know what? Let me be who I’m gonna be. I want everyone else to be who they’re gonna be even if I don’t agree with it because it’s your life. So what’s one way that you will be more fully yourself? No more editing, no more filtering down.

You don’t have to make a huge show of, I’m being this person. But what’s one way you could be more fully yourself if you are honest about where you might be hiding? The biggest action of this episode, if you don’t do any of the other questions or things here, the one that I hope you take home is this. I want you to do one thing like someone who no longer needs to prove anything.

Maybe that’s you resting without feeling bad, saying no without tons of explanations. Maybe it’s moving your body for you. What is one action that you can do?

For those of you approaching 40 or it’s still a long way off, I want you to know it’s not a crisis. It is very much a reclamation. It is shedding the timelines, getting rid of the titles. It’s this quiet confidence that feels very powerful. No longer feeling like you need to chase what you thought you had to be. Knowing that you don’t owe the world a performance at all. Please let me know which of these insights, one through 10, hit you the most.

Chardet Ryel (22:08.62)
What would you had? Can find me on Instagram. It’s Sharday. You can DM me there. Several of you already have. Please, I do respond to the real DMs, not the spam. Spam will be deleted. I do reply to it I would love to hear from you about this. Thank you so much for listening. If you want more around this topic, let me know and I will see you in the next one.

Follow Feel Good Naked in your favorite listening app. And if you’ve enjoyed the lessons that you have found here, check out my book, Seven Steps to Feel Good Naked, Health and Body Confidence Without Dieting. I guide you through how to create gentle nutrition.

movement that works for you, self-care you can do even when you’re busy. This is how you make a roadmap to help without all the struggle. You can find a link to the book in the show notes, or you can go to feelgoodnaked.com, Naked Without the E.