Why I’m Ending Millennial Midlife, and What’s Coming Next

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (00:27.954)
One thing that I am genuinely proud of is how supportive I am of myself now. This was not always true. I used to parent myself with force and with pressure and with a lot of internal criticism disguised as motivation and willpower. I believed that if I was hard enough on myself, I’d finally become who I was supposed to be. And I know that that story resonates with so many people here. And then slowly that stopped working or it felt too uncomfortable.

Not because I became lazy, but because something in me changed. Years ago, I started a meta meditation, which is a loving kindness meditation practice. And once I did that, it was like I lost the ability to be cruel to myself. Kind of like the way I also lost the ability to walk fast after I lived in India for a while. My body just almost cannot walk fast anymore.

Suddenly I couldn’t force myself the way I used to. I couldn’t be mean to myself or talk to myself in the way that I had before and I had for years. This initially caused a little bit of panic because I thought what’s gonna happen. But on the other side of it, I got to give myself so many things that I’ve never given myself before. The two most important are freedom and love. So freedom to explore, freedom to wander, freedom to not know, loving myself even in that liminal space of

not knowing where I was going. This freedom helped me take some pretty big turns in my life. Before this, I’d already left geology after, and that was done through some force. But I walked away from a master’s in accounting program. I followed lots of different paths before I got to coaching, including teaching cooking classes, which was lovely and still makes me smile. Eventually, I found my way to coaching.

And for a while I’ve been meandering within coaching. So coaching I knew was right. I love coaching. I love teaching. I love talking about this. But within coaching I’ve been meandering and you’ve probably felt that too, right? So I know what I love. I know mindset paired with nervous system work is like crucial for me. I love teaching. I love tapping into metaphysics and quantum physics within this space. I love explaining complex things very simply so that people can implement them.

Cecelia Baum Mandryk (02:45.538)
but I was still looking for my place and my framework and the idea that really felt like home that could name it. So here’s the honest part. I don’t think I’m meant to do small, quiet work. I think I’m meant for books, for big audiences, for a real body of work, maybe even a movement. And this is coming from a place of recognition rather than ego. And that sort of recognition or that coming into that place has finally landed. So I am letting go of Millennial Midlife, not because I don’t think it’s a worthwhile mission or worthwhile show to have. I hope somebody else gets this big idea. There’s nothing wrong with it.

but because it belongs to a different version of me or even a different version. And I am stepping into a new podcast and a new body of work, not one that’s radically different in terms of what it’s built on, but one that’s built around a single clear idea. It’s what happens after insight, what happens when self-help stops working and what actually creates change in our lives. The next chapter is called Life After Insight.

And I hope that you’ll follow along there if it’s of interest to you. But I want to thank you for being here. I want you to thank you for your messages, your emails, your notes, for walking with me and staying with me as I figured all of this out in real time. I appreciate it so much. I hope that I’ll see you on the side with more clarity, more depth, and a steadier voice. As always, thank you for being you. Thank you for being here. And I will see you over there.