Gwyneth on Change, Letting Go, and What Comes Next

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2:09When you are pioneering anything or introducing new ideas to the culture, you get criticized. You do? Yeah. Did you hear about that? I didn't find the one. I found someone I respected and we made it the one. In a sort of longing kind of view of love, people understand each other as if by magic. Nothing in itself is addictive on the one hand. On the other hand, everything could be addictive if there's an emptiness in that person that needs to be filled. I now know that nobody changes until they change their energy. And when you change your energy, you change your life. I'm Gwyneth Paltrow. This is the Goop Podcast.

2:47Bringing together thought leaders, culture changers, creatives, founders and CEOs, scientists, doctors, healers and seekers. Here to start conversations. because simply asking questions and listening has the power to change the way we see the world. Here we go. Hi everyone, it's Gwyneth. So we're going to try something a little bit different today. Let's call it just some musings on certain topics. You know, sometimes I think reflecting on certain topics or certain times of our lives, creating that space or that kind of reflection proves to be really meaningful and valuable to me because I don't know, I sort of carve out space to have an opening and to stop and to kind of ponder what I'm feeling about, you know, being my internal landscape pretty much.

3:47And so some of the gals that I work with thought maybe it would be interesting to share that with you guys. And so we're going to start today with one. And I think we're going to be talking about transitions kind of through the lens of the transitions that I'm currently experiencing in my life. I talk to the team sometimes about the fact that a lot of the content that we make at Goop is reflective of things that I'm going through, different phases of my life or trials and tribulations. And so some of it might not always be relevant, but if you're too young to be thinking about an empty nest or traversing through that time in your life, maybe you'll save this for another day.

4:37But it's really also about transitions more broadly, I think. So I've come into my little office with a cup of tea, and I'm just going to chat for a minute. So this has been a really big year of transitions for me. Kind of touched on this before, I think, in an Instagram post at the end of the year. But when I turned 50, my friend Amanda Anka got me a reading with a numerologist, which I had never done before. I'm not, I'm actually not that big into like psychics and astrology and stuff like that. You would probably think that I would be, but I've never really spent that much time. I have one of my best friends like consults a psychic all the time.

5:22In fact, a lot of my friends are very into psychics and I'm not sure if I am. I think sometimes I am. I had one reading recently, actually, that was really amazing. But my husband kind of convinced me that it was a fraud. so anyway i'm digressing already this might not go very well me left to my own devices and my own thoughts this might be quite meandering anyway so i spoke to this numerologist who was incredible so much so that i i did it when i turned 50 and then i did it again recently and i think i'll try to make it an annual thing and she explained that i'm in a nine year and so nine year it's generally a year of endings completion which really makes sense for me this year as you know I sold my house in Los Angeles where you know I raised my kids for basically the second half of their childhoods and then of course subsequent to well sort of in concert with me selling the house, we had those crazy fires in Los Angeles, unbelievable loss and devastation.

6:30So we, you know, were sort of ejected in this very, in a, in a way that was a little bit of a, of a shock. I'm very, very grateful that, you know, the timing was kind of uncanny. I'm grateful that we were able to sell our house and, and move. And even before the fires, of course, you know, it was a big transition, big letting go of the house of living in Los Angeles. One of our beloved dogs died at 13. You know, I really also have been letting go of this phase of parenting where everybody lives together and eats dinner together every night. That's been really difficult in a way. I've kind of found that I was sort of alarmed by how much I realized how, I mean, I guess I hadn't really, you know, these things are always so incremental and creep up on you.

7:26You know, you have kids and then they become your focal point in your world. And you're so oriented around the kids. It's as if like your entire nervous system is really tethered to their nervous systems and how they are and what their priorities are. And it's been sort of interesting to move into this, this phase where I'm like, oh, you know, wait, there's like a person in here, aka me. And, you know, there's this kind of orientation around something new, which is my own inner life and my husband. And, you know, sometimes it feels really disorienting and also at the same time freeing to be able to contemplate like a last minute trip somewhere.

8:31and we've been trying to take advantage of that, you know, of kind of honoring this new space that's opened up. I don't know. I almost feel like there's an aspect of me that's remembering what it was like to be, or, you know, it's sort of like I'm, if time isn't linear, I feel like I'm looping back to being sort of in my 20s And when I had just unknowns and possibilities in front of me, now I'm kind of untethered from a school schedule. You know, it was funny. I was texting with a friend this morning, actually. And I said, oh, wait, that's right. You're in Mexico for spring break. And it hit me that the kids are out of the house and I don't have spring break anymore.

9:21Like I used to always carve out even mentally if we weren't going anywhere like oh i'm on spring break that week so you know i'll take that week off or a couple of those days off i don't have that anymore because i don't have kids at home and i i think you know what's the the benefit of going through a transition like this like when i i look back and i really do think that women live their lives in chapters and you know we have these distinct chapters i think that are also defined in a way by our hormonal stages. And, you know, we have our childhoods and we have our, our puberties are kind of like spring awakenings are our 20s when we start to really give ourselves like this, I the freedom to explore who we really are, irrespective of what other people might think and what we want to do and who we want to partner with, incredibly expansive times.

10:19And then And for those of us whom this is relevant, you know, we go through our childbearing and our raising of the kids. And then they go to college and usually we're in some stage of perimenopause. And each one of these transitions, I think, really comes with its own specific set of challenges and also its own kind of beauty.

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11:56I guess what I'm doing differently this time. I notice that I'm just trying to brace less against the feelings, the more difficult feelings. I think when I look back at my other transitions, I don't know, we're scared of change, I think it's interesting that we're inherently, that we are discomforted by change when life is just nothing but a constant stream of change. Every day we have no two days alike, and we're always forced into the next iteration of things, and we're always constantly forced into letting go. And those feelings are always uncomfortable, so I think I've always braced against that.

12:46Sometimes I remember my daughter when she was little, I remember overheard her, she and her brother were talking, they were probably like seven and nine, and he was saying something like was making him sad. And she was like, don't think about it, Moses, you know, and then I was like, how do I start parenting them such that they are not afraid to let a bad or uncomfortable feeling pass through? How do we teach our children and ourselves really to be able to kind of just be a vessel for those feelings. And instead of bracing against them, thereby, you know, pushing them into our cells, like, how do we, how do we let ourselves just breathe through something that really feels terrible or uncomfortable or unknown?

13:38And I, I really have been trying to just notice when I feel that bracing start to come up and just loosening and untangling those knots of, you know, that the bracing causes, you know, the sort of numbness that bracing causes and letting those feelings pass through me and letting, you know, these feelings of sometimes it feels almost like shock that there's been so much transition this year, that there's so much that's unfamiliar and the grief that's, you know, there's just been something about not all of us not being under the same roof every night that really has been painful, has been, has really felt like I don't know it's like heartbreak it's like homesickness it's like it's reminiscent of other feelings that I've had at different times in my life but I get these kind of waves of pain that come with that separation it's like this untethering that it again offers possibility but also feels like man this is this is over and I think that's all okay as long as I'm fully allowing the feelings and allowing them to fully permeate and allowing myself to let them fully be and trying to be observant about breathing them in as opposed to shutting them out.

15:26and it's actually been a very edifying process and a clarifying process to remind myself that feelings are just feelings and they might be uncomfortable but they're not going to kill me and of course it reminds me of that great Rumi poem Rumi the Sufi poet who talked about who has a poem called The Guest House, that very famous poem, about essentially letting our body, our soul, our whatever open chambers of the heart where feelings come into just to be a guest house for those feelings and to let them come in that each day every feeling comes through and goes out. And sometimes they're there to clear your house out and so I've been really trying to remember to be that and to go a bit easy on myself and to not and to not judge I think if I think about you know in service of kind of talking about things that I've lived through and and learned I think a transition that might it might it might deserve its own sort of musing at some point but you know the transition of my father from being of this earth to being not of this earth was really one that I don't know if you can ever fully integrate that, but I do think that, you know, as, as with everything, I used to think, you know, whether it was getting through the grief of my father, anything else or big, big heartbreak or disappointments, you know, or very difficult things that happened in childhood.

17:23I used to think that at some point there would be a finish line that I would cross over into, that, you know, my therapy, my meditation practices, all the work that I do on myself, that at some point I would be able to cross over this threshold into I'm healed or I've fully metabolized this transition or I've integrated it or this won't be painful anymore to think about. And I think the truth is I've realized that these core key things that we sort of put on earth to work through. You know, if we have these, if you believe we have these kind of predestined faults that we come here, these things that we need to heal, right?

18:24And so we're perfectly set up in our painful childhoods to deal with those particular issues. And I think we think, you know, at some point we're going to do all the work and we're going to get to the other side. And I think I've realized that this is just being alive. It's just a lifelong attempt every day to continue to feel your feelings and be true to yourself and to act from that place. I talk a lot about getting close to yourself, and I think it can sound a little bit esoteric, esoteric but at some point I think in my 40s I started to pay attention to how I felt and to listen to what my instincts were and the biggest blocker for me in terms of acting from that place was always other people's feelings or other people's expectations and it's I was talking to my daughter about this this morning actually that literally you know when you have those nights where you're lying in bed and you have anxiety or this is now something that's happening to me when this hormonal phase of my life that I get anxiety at night sometimes which I've never experienced before like this and when I lie in bed and you know this the part of me that wants to sort of take me down, which my therapist calls part X.

20:03It will use things, you know, from my past to try to get me to feel worse. And every one of these things like tend to come from situations like the downstream impact, the negative impact of me not saying what needed to be said at the time. Me either pulling punches, not wanting to be direct, not saying the hard thing, not wanting to say, hey, you're not right for me anymore, or you're not right for this job anymore. I love you, but it's not right. All the issues in my life have come from that, like that I feel bad about. That at the time I didn't say, this doesn't feel right to me. Or I don't like how we are interacting anymore.

21:02I don't like what I'm seeing happen. I don't feel that this is right. And I wish I could go back in a certain way to those the circumstances and say the hard things then and sometimes you know even now saying the hard things are so difficult especially if you want to bow out of something you know a relationship with somebody sometimes it's very difficult to say like i you know what i what i see in you is not resonant for me or our values aren't aligned. You know, it's very hard to, to say that. And sometimes when I don't say that now, like things will really blow up. So I, I've promised myself through all of these next phase of transitions, I'm going to try to be really rigorous around saying what's true for me in the kindest of all possible ways, but not compromising myself at all and being really true to that core center line.

22:20Because when I step away from it is when I start to doubt myself or not like myself. And when I'm rooted in that alignment with myself and nothing can get between me and myself. That's where I'm in my power. And that's really all we need to navigate transitions that like this ruthless self alignment, and also letting things hurt. It's okay that it hurts. It's okay that it's uncomfortable. It's okay that we don't know what to do. It's okay that we've never experienced this kind of feeling before. I mean, I really try to approach myself with curiosity and space. This is why even doing something like this today is so helpful for me, because I can think through a lot of this stuff as I talk to you.

23:17And I think we need to allow for those constant iterations, those shifts in our identity. Sometimes those are uncomfortable for the people around us, but all you really have at the end of the day truly is your relationship with yourself. If all relationships stem out of that place.

23:47so I think self-acceptance has to come with a degree of openness around your own self changing your ideals changing your I don't know your political affiliations changing your your romantic relationships changing anything it's like this idea that we have to stay the same it's very reductive and very confining and I think as I as I go forward I would like to keep approaching change with the softness and understanding and in friendship with myself and And to be open to the wisdom that comes with that redefinition. I think, you know, this particular phase of life where your kids are older and more independent and, you know, sleep under different roofs, our roles as parents shift out of that hyper, you know, hyper focused on their schedule and their poetry reading night and parent teacher and, you know, being at the soccer game.

25:10And it's like it really shifts into the ether, you know, and you have to build. And I think what I'm trying to do is build this like emotional grid that they can plug into when they need it. And then I can be here and be for them in that same vigilant way emotionally. but you know also giving myself more space and I which also comes naturally with them not being home all the time but creating kind of a new way of relating to them and communicating with them absolutely being here for them but in a different way and in a kind of more adult to adult paradigm. And I think back to, you know, when I was, when I left college to try to pursue acting and at 19 and so lost, so with no idea of who I was or how I was going to become who I wanted to become and thinking about what I could have used then in terms of, you know, what I could have asked for.

26:24I just didn't have the language to ask my parents for the support that I needed. And I felt so lost. And I think I would like to, I'm just thinking through this as I am saying it, but, you know, create this emotional grid or this energetic grid where my kids can tap in and feel oriented, you know, that they have myself, they have their dad, they have Brad as sort of touchstones. And, you know, Brad always says in our house, I'm the rudder and he's the keel. So he's keeping us strong and upright and I'm kind of steering things. And so I want to know, I want my kids to know that they can always come back and hop on the boat if they need to.

27:22And it doesn't mean that we can't let them off the next dock when they're, when they're ready, but just acknowledging that they're in big transitions too. we're all navigating these big transitions at once and i think it's my job our job as parents to be more thoughtful about the transitions and what everybody needs so i guess i'll leave it at that for today yeah i will continue to encourage myself and anyone for whom this is resonant to just be breathe change in it's going to be okay no matter how difficult or painful something is even the death of a parent or someone you love so much that changes an axiom and it's how we approach it, how we approach the pain of the transition that will determine how it impacts us in the rest of our lives.

28:38And that even the most acutely painful, grief-stricken scenario, even in that scenario, we have the ability to not brace against the feelings, to let them come in, to let them wash over us, even if sometimes we think we can't tolerate it. I believe that we can. And I believe that kindness to oneself during those transitions, forgiveness of oneself, we all can get really stuck on that. I did something wrong. I wish I hadn't done that. I wish I hadn't said that. I said too much in this scenario. I said too little in that scenario. coming at ourselves you know trying to truly forgive the places in which we've fallen down which we all have we're all human but the more that we are holding against ourselves the harder it is to pass through difficult times that's what i've noticed so i i say this sometimes like the biggest act of wellness people sometimes say what is the if you could just say to people what is the one most powerful thing that you could do for your own wellness and I think it's to forgive yourself to forgive yourself for the ways that you acted that were outside of your own alignment or integrity because those are the things that really stay with us.

30:16You know, I still have a few of those. And I try to bring forgiveness to the version of myself that did the thing that still hurts when I think about and accept all those parts of me. And again, when we do that, then I've noticed, I observe that the difficult transitions in life get much easier to tolerate. So thank you for being with me today on this mini episode. A few musings from your old girl, Gwyneth. Let me know if there's anything else that you want to talk about with the next one of these. And until then, thank you so much for joining me.

31:07This has been a presentation of Cadence 13 Studios. I hope you'll listen, follow, rate, and review all of our episodes, which are available for free on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.