Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:17.388)
Welcome to Millennial Midlife. I’m so glad you’re here. If you are anything like me, you have spent a lot of your life in your head, over analyzing, overthinking, trying to make the right choices using air quotes there, trying hard to be the right version of yourself for everyone else. After a while, it can get really exhausting. It can also feel deeply
unfulfilling, right? It starts to feel like you’re living from the neck up, always managing and never really being, trying to figure out when do I fit into this? When do I matter? Who do I get to be even in my life? And honestly, that’s why I created this space. I really want to help women, people, but women in particular, get out of their own head and into their own life. My work that I do with people blends mindset, nervous system regulation, and kind of what I’m dubbing practical manifestation.
this way of working with your mind, your body, your energy instead of against them in your life so that you can feel grounded, that you can feel clear, that you can feel powerful from the inside out. And so that you can also have an impact in the world. I’ve talked previously and a little bit about social justice in this podcast, but I do think that that plays a big component and it’s always in my brain. So today I wanna share a little bit about who I am, why I do this work and what I actually do, my approach.
Because I think it might be a little bit different than sometimes what people think when they just think of nervous system regulation work, or they just think of mindset work, or they just think of manifestation. How do we include all of those things? And since this is probably the first time I’ve the word on more publicly, or first few times that I’ve said it more publicly, what does that actually mean for me and for you as one of my listeners or somebody kind of in my group?
Okay, so when people ask what I do, I usually say something like this. I take all of those self-development ideas that we’ve been swimming in for years and make them actionable in your life. In fact, I think one of my superpowers is that I can take the things you’ve heard about on podcasts and read about in books and I can help you use them in your life. So one of the things, one of the comments that I get most frequently from
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:36.12)
from clients is that, this feels doable. I’m actually doing the work that I’ve been wanting to do for years, right? You helped me take it from this idea, these things that I know intellectually, into actually using them in my life. And I think that that’s really important because if you’re a millennial woman or maybe if you’re just a human being in the world, you probably grew up on self-help, right? We’re the generation that learned to hustle, to optimize, to fix ourselves. We learned how to achieve, but not necessarily how to be.
Right? We kind of, we got a lot of mixed messages too and what being might look like or who we were supposed to be. The women I work with are usually somewhere in the middle of life, right? Somewhere between late twenties, early thirties into their sixties. And they’ve usually built things, successful careers, maybe families, maybe partnerships. Maybe they feel like one or a couple of those areas maybe isn’t where they want it to be. But in general, they’re kind of in
in that rhythm of life and they’ve held everything together. A lot of the people who work with me have done a lot of things right, but they’re tired and they’re tired of not feeling right. Right? So they’ve been living in their head. They’ve been chasing gold stars, managing everyone else’s emotions, but ignoring their own. And you can kind of see where do I fit in that? Does that sound like me? And really, even if that doesn’t sound like you, think these concepts are probably applicable in your life. So I can understand if you might listen anyway, but that’s kind of where I’m coming from, right?
people who don’t want to burn their whole life down, but they do want to feel like themselves in life. Right? And they’re afraid that they have to make a lot of changes in their life if they want to start to feel like themselves because it hasn’t worked. They’ve been doing everything they’re supposed to do and it hasn’t quite worked yet. When women find me, they’re usually ready for something different. Calmer, softer, truer, a way of living where change can happen but doesn’t rely on force or willpower.
A lot of times people also come to me because they have tried other things, right? They’ve tried maybe therapy, they’ve tried maybe even coaching in different places. They’ve tried manifestation and it hasn’t worked. They feel like they’ve had the books and maybe they had a recipe, but they didn’t feel like they had all the ingredients or maybe even the skills or the tools to implement that recipe successfully. And I just said that on the fly and I think that that’s it right there, right? So a lot of us have a recipe.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (04:59.32)
We’ve gotten recipes from other people, but we’re lacking either the tools or the know-how to actually implement that recipe. And what we generally make that mean is that we’re broken, but in fact, we just need different tools and we need to know how to apply them in our life. So I think that that’s like, it’s kind of fun. I can spend so much time writing these things out and then talking about them for me, especially I gain clarity, right? So these episodes honestly become more helpful for me than.
They become helpful for me too, probably in different ways than it is for you. Okay, my story starts in a very similar place. I’m also part of this self-help generation where I work constantly dieting, fixing, improving, one-upping ourselves, trying to be perfect, trying to do all these things, right? Everything for everyone else. That’s how I earned love, that’s how I proved my worth. In my late 20s, it all started to feel really shallow, hollow. I remember thinking,
Obviously I was in my life, but this is not my life, right? And I don’t know what my life is. I know for certain that this is not it anymore, but I don’t know where to go from here. And I have these tools and I read these books and it feels like I’m scrambling a little bit, like I don’t know where to begin or how to implement all these things they’re talking about. I happened to stumble into yoga and breath work. And the kind of yoga that I stumbled into is you do it by yourself and it’s silent. And so it’s a
introspective experience. You’re not being led through a flow with somebody talking the entire time and music going on, right? You actually get to hear your own voice, which can be illuminating and also sometimes disturbing. For the first time, I got to feel what it meant like to be in my body and hear my voice. And while it took a while to get here, I learned how to not manage my body or fix my body, but just trying to be with whatever was coming up, starting to actually feel
what it feels like to have a regulated nervous system for probably the first time in entire life, right? And I say that not because I had, I mean, like if you look at my life, you’re like, it’s quote unquote good, right? I had a nice family, I had a lot of things growing up, did not want for much, had great educational opportunities, et cetera. And yet, because we all live in the world around us, we are a microcosm in the macrocosm.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (07:23.486)
I was stressed a lot of the time. I had, was in a dysregulated nervous system place because I trueoverthinkingwas always trying to prove my worth and test to see if I was actually being loved and accepted. And a lot of times I wasn’t unless I was performing, right? And so I learned how to perform. When I got into yoga and breath work, I figured out how to actually not only bring myself into regulation, but feel safe in that regulation. And when that happened, I could start to hear,
I could hear a couple of voices, right? The voices isn’t mine that was trying to get me to perform, but also the voice that was mine that had these little bits of truth, these desires, what I actually wanted, what I needed. And from there, things unfolded, right? I ended up leaving the job and the relationship that I was in at that time. I started teaching yoga and breath work, got a degree in counseling, ended up working in coaching to be able to combine these different aspects, right? So I saw when I taught yoga and breath work that we weren’t addressing
the cognitive spoken intellectual side, I felt like in my counseling degree, we weren’t honoring the nervous system side that well. And so how do we get to a place where we get to see all of us get to be all of us, right? We get to honor every single part of us so that we can change together as one coherent being. Every step of the way, I was learning how to meet myself with more awareness and less judgment. Every step of the way I was figuring out
where I was still trying to prove myself, where I could actually bring in more safety, where I could be more me and less who I thought I needed to be. Along the way, I also got really curious about the energetic side of things, which makes sense, right? If we’re thinking about the different components of ourself, we are all energy, is what they tell us, right? So we’re all energy. So I got really curious about this. And this is where people would probably start to bring in that word, right? Manifestation, quantum physics, the metaphysical.
for a long time, I was really afraid to admit that. I come from a science background, I have an engineer as a dad talking about this energy side, this manifestation felt risky because it didn’t feel like those things were congruent in my head. Like I couldn’t be interested in the energy side of it and also be based in science, which is obviously not true. There’s whole arm of science around this, right? To the point where…
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (09:50.758)
This is kind of funny. Every time this came up in coaching, if you’re in my groups, you know this, right? Every time this kind of came up, the session would be there like the recording would be corrupted or I had forgotten to push record for some reason when it records automatically, like something would happen where we didn’t actually capture it. So over the last couple of years, I’ve been talking about it more. I’ve been bringing it more in. I’ve been more amusing air quotes, but public about it because I do think that it completes these other two sides.
When I was in the breath work and yoga world and I noticed, we’re not actually, we’re not allowing the cognitive processing that people need. When I’m in the cognitive processing side and saying, well, we’re not honoring like the body based thing. Well, then we’re not actually looking at the energy too. And so that it’s all three parts of ourselves that really matter and that we need to bring to the table. So the more I’ve been in this manifestation space and the energy side of things, and the more I’ve realized that this isn’t.
Magic, although it can also be magic, magic is great, but it’s how our brains work, right? We expect what we expect to see. We create what we believe is possible and it’s impossible for us to create something that we don’t think is possible for ourselves. Manifestation doesn’t need to be about pretending. It’s about perception, regulation, and alignment. And I want to say that again because I think that this is really like, I don’t know if this is said that often around manifestation. I think it’s really crucial. It’s not about pretending.
or wishful thinking. And in fact, if you’re in the wishful thinking, you’re not in regulation. And so that’s why it feels like it doesn’t work. But it’s about perception, what you’re choosing to see, which is based on what you think in your nervous system state, the regulation you feel in your body, your capacity to create a sense of safety, and then what leads to surrender faith and non-attachment, and then alignment in the different pieces of you, what you actually want.
Not what you think you’re supposed to want to be safe, but if you already are safe, what do you want? If nothing was wrong, what would you want? Before I learned what I know now, I used to change myself with lot of force, willpower, shame. You’ve heard that story, right? And I’m sure that a lot of you are there. I worked harder and wanted to be better and thought that if I could just get myself to fit in a certain box, whatever that box was, it had different labels at different times, then I would be good.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (12:06.146)
then I would be successful, then I would be loved, then I would be worthy. But here’s some things I’ve learned about myself and through working with other people. You cannot hate yourself into healing. You cannot work enough hours to feel unworthy, to stop feeling unworthy. You cannot work your way out of feeling unworthy. You cannot be perfect enough to finally feel like you’re worthy of love. Real change within yourself, real change starts within yourself and it starts with safety, with nervous system regulation, with love and compassion. And that’s why
The work that I’m doing is now, I would say, it’s at this intersection of mindset work, nervous system work, and practical manifestation. If you think of a Venn diagram, the three circles, if one is mindset, nervous system, manifestation, right there in the middle, we’re overlapping, supporting, and amplifying each other. Mindset work helps you understand your thoughts and beliefs, the stories that shape how you see the world and what you believe is possible. Nervous system work helps you create safety with
in yourself so that you can actually see those thoughts, so that you can understand that you yourself are safe and okay no matter what is happening outside of you. And you don’t need outside things to happen for you to feel safe on the inside. And manifestation connects you with your deepest desires. It helps you believe in new possibilities. helps you, that’s that like pulling forward of like who you’re becoming and why you’re here.
Right, this kind of like Dharma aspect, if you will. When you combine these three, change doesn’t feel forced. When you combine these three, it starts to be easy to love yourself and feel compassion towards yourself and others. Change starts to feel natural. You stop trying to need to control your way into peace and instead started creating from peace. So you’re suddenly not, you’re starting within and growing out instead of trying to control out and bring in.
And my approach isn’t about spiritual bypassing. It’s not about perfectionism. It’s not about gaslighting yourself. It’s not about, it’s about wholeness, right? It’s about connection. It’s about letting all of you be welcome, whether it’s calm, chaos, whatever. It’s the space where you get to finally be you and love you. And it can be so fun. It can be so fun. I like to think of it as the bridge between science and energy. You might even say like soul for women.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (14:32.522)
It’s for women who are open to energy, but want something that feels real and grounded and intelligent. That’s like where we are, right? And it can be a playground because all of this starts to be a way of, I get to connect to myself in this way. And what ideas could I start to play around with? And what could I really want if I didn’t need to want the thing that everybody thinks I’m supposed to want? What could I open up for myself? So what happens when somebody becomes regulated, resourced and rooted in their own agency, right?
Everything changes, sometimes in really quiet ways, sometimes in wild ones. It’s kind of like, it’s funny, it’s everything and nothing changes, right? So suddenly you feel grounded, clear, you know your worth without having to prove it. You stop chasing better and you start feeling good. So I’ve seen women open up to love and meet partners within weeks because suddenly, not because they’re suddenly lucky, but because they’ve shifted their energy and their story about what’s possible and what they’re open to receiving. I’ve seen others land dream jobs, creative opportunities, new levels of peace.
the ability to be around bugs in your bedroom, right? Like changing of fears and phobias. This piece that it feels like they can finally stop and recognize what they do have. They can finally be in the life they’ve already created. And from that space of grounded regulation and recognizing, they can ask, what else do I want? Most of this is about day-to-day moments though, right? Because like the big stuff matters, but also the who you are each moment.
really is what this is about. Waking up and not feeling like your thoughts are already five steps ahead of you. Feeling more space in your body, feeling a little more calm, a little bit more joy, recognizing fear and being able to respond to it instead of react from it. Recognizing when you’re feeling just a little funky and not needing it to go away immediately, but making space for it and validating your own emotions and not being afraid of your own emotions or other people’s.
What this work is really about is creating safety within us, forgiving what was, and then choosing what’s next intentionally. So creating safety with what is, forgiving what was, and intentionally choosing what’s next. So that we’re working with this past, present, and future, so that we are one whole person, that we’re working with our body, our mind, and our energy, that we’re all integrated in this space. Okay, so I hope that this gives you maybe a little bit of an inside scoop on what it is that I actually do.
Cecelia Baum Mandryk (16:53.558)
And as I am able to articulate it differently, right, this grows and changes. If this resonates with you, if you’re here and you’re saying, okay, I wanna do more of this, if you’re ready to get out of your head and into your own life, I want you to know that’s available to you, right? You can start exactly where you are right now. And that’s exactly what my work is about. So we can do it together in many different ways, right? We can do it in the Life Lab, which is my coaching program. We can do it through this new course series that I’m having that’s starting next, it starts in December actually, but it’ll open up at the end of November.
where you can actually start to connect with yourself. You can start to use these tools in your own life. If you’re curious, I’m going to put a few links in the show notes. One will be about the Life Lab, right, which is my group coaching. Another is about this, the Life Series, which are these classes where we’re combining these three pieces of work. And then a different way, well, obviously you can follow along here, right, and on Instagram and engage in this way. And then if you want,
to if you feel called to work really deeply with me, then one-to-one is always an option as well. So there’ll be some ways to join the community to learn the tools, simply stay connected through giving me your email address and being part of that. But know that if you become regulated, resourced, and rooted, you will change everything you touch. Your entire life will change, not because you need to blow it up, but because you can actually start to change slowly from within. And before you know it, things will just feel better. They’ll feel easier, even when things aren’t going that well.
Right? Like even when objectively things may be hard, you can also say, but I’m connected to myself and I know I can get through this. Thank you for being here. I’m so glad that you found your way to this space. If you feel called, reach out and let’s work together. If you love this episode, please share it with a friend. And I will see you the next time I’m here. Bye.
