Molly Claire 00:39

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this incredible interview episode today. You're going to be hearing from the amazing Courtney Townley of the Grit and Grace podcast. This conversation was definitely a favorite of mine. And as you will soon find out, Courtney has such an incredible strength about her, and she really has an understanding of what is required to support and sustain growth as we cultivate that transformation within ourselves and for those of us as coaches, as we are supporting our clients in creating change. So before we dive into this episode, I want to make sure that you all know that applications for Master Coach training are open. We are enrolling. I have four out of 12 spots spoken for. This group is going to be incredible. If you are a coach who is serious about learning how to be the best coach you can be, this is for you. Holistic Master Coach training is unlike any other program in that you are going to learn the different approaches to cultivating transformation with your client, and more importantly, to understand how these different approaches fit together. All of your clients have a nervous system. The nervous system is the backdrop of all of our thoughts and our emotions. Some of your clients will need a very cognitive approach to creating transformation. Some of your clients will need help working with their emotional world. Some of your clients will need a little extra support with nervous system regulation, and plenty of your clients are going to need someone who really understands how to do the deeper work. Because the reality is, right now in this day and age, more than ever, people are waking up. They are tired of settling for mediocre. They can feel that something in them needs to change, and they are looking for the help and support that an incredible coach can give. So if you're excited about up-leveling your skills and becoming the go-to coach in 2026 for your clients, go to mollyclaire.com and submit your application today. It is going to be next level. All right, let's go ahead and dive into this week's interview. Hello, everyone. I know you are going to love today's interview. I have Courtney Townley on the podcast today of the Grace and Grit podcast. And first of all, I love her message and I know you will too. And it's really fun to have this conversation and invite Courtney because she and I are very much aligned in mission and purpose in our approach to things. And yet there is a distinctly different richness to the way that she approaches things. So you're going to love it. We're going to talk about women's health. We're going to talk about what that means. We're going to talk about consistency and it's going to be incredible. Welcome to the podcast, Courtney. So good to have you. Oh, I'm so happy to be here. So tell my audience a little bit more about who you are, what you do, what you're passionate about.

Courtney Townley 04:03

Great. Okay. Yeah. My name is Courtney Townley. I live in the amazing state of Montana. I am a mother. I am a wife. I am a huge lover of movement. I'm a Latin dancer. Yeah. I think I'm generally just a good human. I live in the dream. And the work that I do in the world and have been doing in the world literally since I stepped into the working world 30 years ago is helping women to navigate the health arena with more grace and ease. Because man, let's face it, like it is a complicated, overwhelming space. And I would say that's even more true for midlife women, especially now with all this conversation around menopause and perimenopause, and it's all well and good. But there's also a lot of fear-mongering around this stage of life and all the supplements we need and all the additional supports that we need. And I can see why so many women rumble through this phase of life. And so I mainly work with midlife women. I certainly have outliers, but the bulk of my community is midlife women who are looking to live life with more life. So cell to soul, I always say, we're trying to put more life in the cell and we're trying to put more life in their soul. And that's the work that I'm passionate about. And it took me a long time to get here. But I'm here and I really can say it feels like home. 

Molly Claire 05:31

Yeah, yeah, I love this and I do want to lean into the midlife piece in particular and everything you said just brought some questions to mind. But before we go there, I want to kind of back up a little bit to this general arena of health and women. And what came to my mind as you were talking is that I think back to when I was younger and thinking about the word health and what that meant. And what health meant was staying skinny. What health meant was looking good. It actually had nothing to do with health. 

Courtney Townley 06:06

Exactly. Right? I think you're speaking for so many of us.

Molly Claire 06:09

Some could argue that it was speaking to unhealthy ways of thinking and being, right? But I think, I think as women, and it's interesting how it's changed now and seeing the way, you know, my teenage daughter interacts with her thoughts about the body and what all that means and everything. But I'd love to know from you, you know, you've been in this space for a long time. What are some of the things you've seen in women in relation to their relationship with their health, their beliefs about that, and kind of the wrestle and struggle that they've had to create healthy habits for themselves?

Courtney Townley 06:43

Yeah. I love this question and there's so much baked into it. But let's start with maybe what health isn't because I think this really speaks to what it has been sold as and why we rumble so hard with it. So you nailed the first one, right? Which is that health is a look and we've all bought into that storyline at some point in our life. And I always say to my clients, look, thinking of your health as a look is a lot like looking at somebody's account on social media and thinking you understand their life by just how it looks. And that is just not how it rolls, right? I have worked with so many athletes and incredibly lean muscular individuals over the years who we would say from the outside, oh, look how healthy they are. But these are also women who aren't sleeping, have really toxic relationships, don't like themselves. They might only poop once every two weeks. I mean, how are we judging health by looking at the human body, right? That's crazy. And it's very outdated and it's simply not true. Dysfunction and disease, I always say, comes in all shapes and sizes.

Molly Claire 07:52

Mm-hmm. 

Courtney Townley 07:53

The second thing I would say health is not, is it's not fitness, it is not a movement skill. So a lot of times we're defining health when we're looking at someone running a marathon or we're watching athletes at the Olympics, like, oh my gosh, look how healthy they are. But then look at people like Simone Biles, right? Who in 2020, like made this big ruffle in the industry of the Olympics saying, look, my mental health is not where it needs to be right now. And I need to bow out in order to stay healthy. And I think that was a move that, oh my gosh, the world needed to see. And I have so much respect for her doing that because it was so controversial in a world that is always selling us this idea that achievement and success, and again, how you look is basically defining health. So not true. Health is not defined by what you can do. It's really defined by how you feel and what is truly going on inside the body and the brain, right? It's not just the body, it's also the brain. 

Molly Claire 09:03

Mm-hmm. 

Courtney Townley 09:04

The second thing I would say health is not fitness. It is not a movement skill. So a lot of times we're defining health when we're looking at someone running a marathon or we're watching athletes at the Olympics like, oh my gosh, look how healthy they are. But then look at people like Simone Biles, right? Who in 2020 like made this big ruffle in the industry of the Olympics saying, look, my mental health is not where it needs to be right now. And I need to bow out in order to stay healthy. And I think that was a move that oh my gosh, the world needed to see. Yeah, and I have so much respect for her doing that because it was so controversial in a world that is always selling us this idea that achievement and success and again, how you look is basically defining health. So not true. Health is not defined by what you can do. It's really defined by how you feel and what is truly going on inside the body and the brain, right? It's not just the body. It's also the brain. I would also say that we've been sold this idea that health is the absence of disease. Yeah, and the root of the word disease is disease and man, disease is coming for you. Nobody gets out of life without it, right? Like we don't get to leave life without experiencing a lot of disease. So it is not true that health is the absence of it. It is how you manage yourself within it. And the best example that I can give you of this is I have a client, Claire. I know she's fine with me speaking to this because I wrote about her in my book, but when we first started working together, she was constantly making her body the problem like the answer to every problem in her life was going to be fixing her body in some way. And as we continue to work on that mindset simultaneously, she was experienced some dysfunction in a right hand and after going to a lot of different clinics and finally ending up at Mayo, she was diagnosed with slow progressing ALS like a horrible diagnosis. 

Molly Claire 10:04

I have a family member that was diagnosed with it, so it's like... 

Courtney Townley 10:09

But I did ask Claire like recently like what does health mean to you right now and her response was you know when I focus on my body's limitations and I focus on what I'm losing and you know how unfair this is I don't feel healthy but when I focus on what I can do and making the most out of the time that I have left I do feel healthy. And so she is such a prime example of health not being the absence of a diagnosis but how she handles herself within it and I think that's such a beautiful distinction and the last thing that I just want to say because I think we can all relate to this one too is health is not an exercise in following the leader and that is what we've been sold. Somebody else knows your body and your life better than you do and so follow this plan this cookie-cutter protocol and you will too have the life of your dreams and the body of your dreams. Well how many times have we followed those protocols and felt like it just felt a little flat right it just didn't quite feel like it was meant for us. So I always push back that health is truly an exercise not in following the leader but in becoming a leader. A leader of your own life and a leader of your own decisions.

Molly Claire 11:27

And I think, you know, when you said that about, we start following something and then it doesn't work for us. And then typically what do we do? We blame ourselves. We think we must be doing something wrong, but maybe it's because that wasn't the way for us, right? That wasn't the path. Oh, I've so many thoughts, so many questions, but you know, when you're, because as you're talking about health, if you all notice in listening to this, we all have a certain idea of what health means to us. Some of you think health and you do think about the body or you think about, right? The mind or emotions or whatever, but really, truly health is, it really is the whole being, right? All parts and, and certain parts of us need more attention than others at certain times, right? 

Courtney Townley 12:13

Absolutely. And what I need to work on is not the same as what you need to work on. What's causing me a lot of stress in my life are not the same things that are causing stress in your life. And so how do I access where my personal gaps are and start doing the work around that? I mean, it really is. I mean, you nailed it. Health is multidimensional. It is not physical. That's how we treat it. That's how it's sold. It's a physical thing. And of course, it is a physical thing. But it's also mental and emotional and relational and environmental and spiritual. And literally the word healing means a return to wholeness. You cannot return to wholeness. You cannot heal if you aren't addressing the wholeness of your humanity.

Molly Claire 12:57

Yes. Yes. You know, the other thing that came to mind as you were talking when I was, I was in my early thirties and I got hit with chronic fatigue syndrome pretty much like overnight. And I would have said, you know, by all measures that I was a healthy person, because to me, what this meant was I exercised, I ate well, I'm like, I, all the physical things and all the things you're supposed to do were there. And, and really, in part, what this experience opened up for me when I went from someone who I'm typically a very high energy person, physically and otherwise. And so to feel like now I was struggling to get out of bed, like I couldn't function the way I was used to, it was pretty hard. And it felt like a loss of my identity. And it really forced me to question who am I now or what is my worth if I'm struggling to get out of bed. And I think for me, part of the gift in this, and I don't want to stay stuck here, but this is relevant to this because part of the gift in this is that, and certainly there were physical reasons why the fatigue, why chronic fatigue syndrome hit. And there were also mental and emotional pieces within that these stressors underneath that I did not realize were there, that forced me to really look at and understand my own relationship with myself, my relationship with achievement and my emotional world. And so all that being said, I think that it is important that we all are continuing to become more aware of ourselves as a whole person, and what is going on within us and what are our needs, and that truly can be the foundation of building better health.

Courtney Townley 14:44

Yeah. And two things that you just said that I just think are so important to highlight. Number one, health is relationship because life is relationship. You are in relationship with everything in the world. Other people, food, exercise, the environment, your thoughts, yourself. And if those relationships are creating unnecessary stress, they will affect your physiology. So health, I think it's a beautiful definition of health that health is absolutely relationship. And it's really about mending the most important intimate relationship you will ever be in, which is the one you have with yourself. 100% agree. The second thing is that we've been sold this equation, eat less, exercise more, and that will solve all your health problems, right? Like I know that there's nuance to it now, but generally that's the package it comes in. There's exercise and there's nutrition. And I just want to offer listeners a different equation. The equation is this. Number one, you have to reduce unnecessary stressors in your life. And my friends, that is so much more than what you eat and how you move. Yes. It's how you think. It's how you deal with challenges. It's how you talk to yourself about yourself. It's how you relate to other people. When you are generating unnecessary stress in your life, you are unnecessarily contributing to your stress bucket and a very heavy stress bucket will break down your nervous system, period. The second part of the equation is you need to identify, and this is the radical honesty part, where do you need to start leaning into stressors on purpose? Right? So I call this on purpose stress and it has a name, right? You stress is the type of stress that grows us and enhances our life. It's a beautiful type of stress. And there are things that you are going to have to lean into that are uncomfortable, that might be hard, that will make you a healthier human. What are those things? Do you need to quit the career that you've hated for 30 years? Do you need to have a crucial conversation with somebody that's just that it's been creating a lot of internal friction for you?

Molly Claire 16:56

Mm-hmm. 

Courtney Townley 16:58

Do you need to maybe say no to some responsibility so you can actually get to bed at a reasonable hour?

Molly Claire 17:04

Mm-hmm.

Courtney Townley 17:05

And that to me is such a grace-filled equation because it doesn't just address diet and exercise. You could literally reduce unnecessary stress in any area of your life and improve your health. Like that is starting to improve your health. You could intentionally lean into on-purpose stress, the things that put more life into your life, and you would be improving your health. Like, it literally can be that simple.

Molly Claire 17:30

Yeah, I want to actually go this direction in just a minute here around some of the impacts of hormones and such. So we're going to go there, right? But we don't realize how much the cortisol, the stress hormone impacts our physical health, right? It impacts our weight. It impacts the quality of our life, our emotions, all of it. But you know, as you were talking, I was just thinking about how leaning into these stressors, I think one question that we can ask ourselves that can sometimes help us to be willing to lean into them is thinking about if I don't have this conversation, if I don't leave this job, right? If I don't face this thing, what is my life going to look like in a year? What is it going to look like in five years, right? Because it's one thing to avoid what's present, right? And think I'm okay. But when we think about where is this heading long term, I think it can be a pretty big wake up call that we need to have that conversation or lean into that thing we've been avoiding.

Courtney Townley 18:30

Absolutely. And every decision we make in our life has a consequence. So if you choose to stay in that career that's chipping away at your soul and making you reactive to everyone and everything around you, what is the long-term cost of that? Because it's costing you some very high ticket items, right? And ultimately, all of those high-ticket items are going to have a huge hit. They're going to make a huge hit on your health.

Molly Claire 18:57

Yeah, I mean, it's so true. I think for all of you, I mean, if you take some time, whether it's now or after this podcast, to just think about what is that thing I'm avoiding? What is that stressor that I'm not wanting to lean into? And what is the cost, right? If I don't, what is the long-term? Yeah.

Courtney Townley 19:15

So I have a phrase for this that I've used for, I don't know, ever. It's been like the last decade. It's called integrity pain and it's the problem that I help people solve, right? Integrity pain is the very real dis-ease and discomfort. It feels like an internal friction that affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, and basically integrity pain. It's all the ways in which you're showing up in your life that is not in alignment with what you want for your life. We all have it and we all have many forms of it. No one is immune to integrity pain, but the exercise of improving health, I believe, is really helping to soften integrity pain. And we soften integrity pain with those two things I mentioned before, reduce unnecessary stress and lean into the things that are going to make you more resilient and make you have more capacity and make life just feel better.

Molly Claire 20:07

Okay, I love this. This is so good, all of it. So, this is what I want to do. I want to shift a little bit to the midlife piece of this because I know that is, you know, a passion for you, your specialty. And, you know, as you were sharing some of your thoughts when we first started, you talked about midlife and we know that in midlife, we're having a reduction in our hormones, right? It's almost like this. We hit this period in midlife where some of the things in our brain and our body seem to be indicating that it's all downhill from here. And yet, I think anyway, tell me your thoughts about this. But I think simultaneously many women in midlife, there's a part of them that is ready to like wake up and like make their life great. I think there's something there. And I don't know if this has been your experience, but then it's like these two things seem to exist simultaneously. This awakening of soul and self that we want to celebrate and simultaneously feeling like, wait a minute, but is everything in new shutting down? It's by design. Nature's so smart. It's totally fascinating.

Courtney Townley 21:22

Yeah, let's talk about it. Because what happens when we lose hormones like estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, our tolerance level goes down, our tolerance for our own BS. And other people's too. But ours especially because we're the ones who need to set boundaries and say what's okay and not okay and teach people that we want to be treated differently. Like that's our work. And so when those hormones are declining, which they will, it's for some women it happens earlier in life if they go through early menopause. But for most women, it's happening at midlife. And we also happen to be living with more responsibility and stress than we've ever had before. Because we're taking care of aging parents. We're trying to get kids out of the house in some cases. We're in the depths of our careers. Sometimes we're changing careers. We're thinking about retirement, finances. I mean, there's a lot going on. So there is so much opportunity for cortisol, you mentioned to be running rampant through our system. But guess what helps us to manage cortisol, estrogen and progesterone. So those two are leaving the party as cortisol is coming in head on. Right. And we wonder why things are falling apart. And we feel so foreign in our bodies and our bodies are doing funny things. It's no mystery. Our ability so I gave you the image earlier of a stress bucket. Your stress bucket is basically your physical resilience. And the bucket itself at midlife starts to get some holes in it. And it starts to get a little flimsy. Not because you've done anything wrong necessarily, but because we're losing those hormones that help us with resilience. So we better be looking for ways to reclaim our resilience. And this is why I always call midlife the renovation years, because you get to do some serious renovation work and you don't have to do it. But there is a cost to not doing it. And the reason I call it the renovation years is because working with so many midlife women over the years, I equate it to walking around your home and looking at a house you've lived in for 30, 40 years and saying, man, there are things I love here. Like I love some art on the wall. I love some of these projects that my kids put up. I love my couch, but you're also looking around and you're saying, okay, like that carpet has got to go, right? Or that wall color just doesn't bring me joy anymore. And so there's the invitation to start renovating your space. And that's exactly what the invitation of midlife is like. It's just saying, hey, nothing has gone wrong here, but you've now been doing that 40, 50 years of research because I don't know who said that, but right. The first 40 years of your life is really just research. Awesome. So now that you've done research for 40 years, what have you learned? And what is that telling you about what needs to shift? And hormones are helping us to make those decisions because if we don't make those shifts, it's not going to get better. It's going to get worse. It's going to get harder.

Molly Claire 24:27

Yeah, I love it and yet it is still a choice right because we can allow it to just take us take over and let go of well I guess it's all down here from here but we also can make the other choice and the other choice does feel a lot better the other choice brings its own challenges.

Courtney Townley 24:44

Yes, but worth it. There will be discomfort either way. The discomfort of staying where you are and potentially getting worse or the discomfort of looking this as an invitation and a reinvention and going all in on what you want to create moving forward. And man, to me, there's just no, that if you look at the benefits on the other side, there's really only benefits in one of those categories. Right.

Molly Claire 25:05

Right, right. I know well and I know I talked about this earlier I just it's like keeps coming to mind to me as you know when I had that experience with getting hit with chronic fatigue I sort of felt like I was in an old body like overnight like very old right because here I was in my early 30s and I couldn't walk my kids to school without needing a nap and so it felt like everything in my body was shutting down. And so I almost feel like I had a little what would I say? I got to have two of these periods where I had this reinvention there, right? It's like something's got to change because I know a lot and it's and it's much better now There's more information about chronic fatigue, but I know then I mean I went to so many practitioners and it's like most people Well, if you get this well take some medicine to help the symptoms and your life's downhill from here I mean that was the message that I got and I was like no no no no this is this can't be so It's worth facing what's there and figuring it out to reclaim your life no matter what stage you're in or no matter what you're facing.

Courtney Townley 26:07

Yeah, and I mean, this you bring up such a good point, because I think this is so important for women to hear were sold this idea that self care should always look the same, you should eat in this way, you should move this way, you should go to bed at this time, you should, you know, like, it's all scripted. Yeah, and yet, self-care, true self-care, which I like to refer to as self-honoring, does not always look the same because your resource availability is not always the same based on what's happening in your life. So if I didn't sleep well last night, and I have massive stress because of some family stuff going on, and I have projects do at work, and my kid is having issues at school, is it really the best time for me to be signing up for a 6am boot camp class? When you think about cortisol, probably not, right? All it's gonna do is further break me down, it's going to cause distress. But if I go for a walk today at lunch, that would probably be really good for me. Get out in nature, get some sunlight in my eyes, breathe some fresh air, orient with nature, right? Like, but we don't, we don't look at health that way. We look at it as this linear, doing the same thing over and over again, that's how we define consistency. And I think that's why the state of our health and our world is the way it is, like, there's lots of factors. That's not the only reason. But I do think that when we're constantly chasing protocols and systems that we may have done temporarily in the past and trying to convince ourselves like, oh, if I could just get back there, everything would be okay. Again, it's superficial health. That's not deep health. Deep health is saying, based on where I am today, and what's truly going on in my life, what does self-care look like? Do I need a nap? Do I need to ask my husband to cook dinner? Do I need to cancel some meetings? Do I need to go to the gym, even though I don't want to go?

Molly Claire 28:04

Mm-hmm. Right? Yeah. Yes. And as you're talking, it's like, and I know you mentioned consistency and what that really means. I know that's a topic you're passionate about. I know your book, the consistency code is something that I want to touch on. So I want to go there next. I want to talk about that. But before we do, I want to just point out that, you know, this example you give of going to the boot camp at 6am with all of this going on, I do think that's been the old script, that it's like you push through, there is no wiggle room to go off protocol. And that's really what we've been taught and sold. And I think that we've bought into it for only so long, right as women. And so it's like, okay, you always do this and you push through and you hunker down. And what happened is other parts of us got out of balance, right? And I know that some people worry that if they're actually asking themselves what they need or what's best for them, that they're afraid they'll, you know, like quote unquote wimp out or give themselves an out. But what I want to say is those of you listening, what if we can drop the hard and fast rules around this and actually find out what do I need? What does my nervous system need? What does my body need? And not just in a, what do I feel like in the moment, right? But what is in my best interest now and my best interest long term? I think that's the question that's really going to guide what we do.

Courtney Townley 29:33

Yeah, and health is, I mean, there's a reason my company's named Grace and Grit, right? And that reason is, I have seen women use grace to rationalize why they shouldn't have to do the work. And I have witnessed so many women use grit to the point of self-destruction. Health does not live on the end of a spectrum. It lives on a sweet spot somewhere in the center and that center is different for all of us. It's not point center. It's, you know, just somewhere between those two extremes. And there is a way to apply grit to do the work in a graceful way. And there are sometimes being graceful with yourself requires grit because it's really like for me, grace does not come naturally. It is something I have had to really work on over the years to be kinder to myself, to be more forgiving, to give myself the permission to pull back rather than always push forward. And so it's not either-or; it's both-and.

Molly Claire 30:33

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I love it. I love it. Okay. So last thing I want to talk about and lean into here is how do you define consistency? What does that mean? And talk a little bit about, you know, how this is in your book as well. So tell us about it.

Courtney Townley 30:47

Yeah. So I would say, just going back to what I said earlier, that the consistency that I really advocate for is showing up for yourself on the regular to honor your needs, whatever that looks like for you. Not for someone else.Not because you want six-pack abs, right? That's a different level of consistency. But consistent self-honoring is meeting yourself where you truly are and saying based on this, what does self-care really look like?

Molly Claire 31:16

Mm-hmm.

Courtney Townley 31:17

That's consistent self-honoring and sometimes it means push like you gotta push yourself. You've got to coach yourself into the work and sometimes it means like not today. Today's not the day. I don't feel well. I didn't sleep well last night. I'm not doing the aggressive workout or restricting my calories today. That's not happening and I'm okay with that. I like my reasons.

Molly Claire 31:38

Mm-hmm and one thing that came to mind as you were saying that is how important it is that we cultivate self-trust, right? Because everything right because can I trust myself to be honest with myself about what I need? If I do feel that I actually need a nap, can I trust that and can I trust myself that the times? When I know what's in my best interest is to do the thing that doesn't feel good to me, can I trust myself to do that, right? So that's why we've got to cultivate the self-trust.

Courtney Townley 32:09

I love that you're bringing that up because I think this is what coaching helps us to do, right? A good coach is going to help ask you some pointed questions so you can make better decisions for yourself. And ultimately, the idea behind coaching is that you become so skilled at it because you have someone constantly asking pointed questions that eventually you take on that role yourself. They become the voice in your head. So for someone listening who might be thinking like, yeah, this all sounds great, but how the heck do I even enter those waters? Well, working with a coach can be so helpful for that or getting my book, getting your book, like, you know, buying a book that helps give you resources for doing exactly that kind of work. And that's really why I wrote the consistency code because number one, I was so tired after a 30-year career of continuously seeing women's health crammed into this little box of diet and exercise. Like I've been pushing back against that for so long. And I also am such and so passionate about teaching people how to self-coach and how to become their own coach because that is the only way to sustainable behavior change. Period. Full stop. As long as you look to someone else to tell you what to do, when to do it in exactly what dose, at some point that person is not going to be available, whether you're on vacation or you don't have the finances to keep hiring them or because things just happen, people move on. So what happens when those relationships dissolve? Do you have the skill sets to run your own life? Yeah.

Molly Claire 33:46

Yeah. I love this. And I think this is a good thing to consider because it's like, and I know you and I talked about this a little off camera, when we were talking about how there are different types of coaches and some people think that a coach is about someone telling you what to do, directing you what to do. And I know that we are of the shared belief that a coach is going to help you connect with yourself, connect with your own answers, your own wisdom to get to know yourself, right? And so I'm a total believer in that.I'm a total believer in like with my clients and I'm sure you're the same with yours as you just spoke to helping them to become self-sufficient, helping them to understand their mind, helping them to be the CEO of themselves in their life. And also I am definitely of the, like for me personally, I can say I will have a coach until I take my last breath. You and me both, right? Because right, because not because, because to your point, I don't want to rely on that person as being the one to tell me what to do or that they know me better than I do or to dictate, right? It's not that. Hopefully every coach I'm working with is instilling more within me. And also I just think there is tremendous value, not only in getting outside perspective, but in someone on the outside illuminating things that we miss because ultimately we're all going to have blind spots. And then also because healing happens in connection, right? And growth, like we, as we are designed for and wired for connection, being in supportive relationships and advocating for that support is also so valuable. So, so I'd love to hear you like speak to your view on that.

Courtney Townley 35:30

A thousand percent. I agree with that. I do strongly feel that the deep health piece and the sustainable behavior change piece, it's not a matter of following a list of rules and regulations that someone wrote out for you. It's really learning skill sets that will help you to navigate a life of transformation because life is transformation. Self-care will not always look the same. My self-care looked very different when I was in college versus when I became a mother versus now going through perimenopause, right? And if I'm not willing to be flexible within that model, I am not going to be healthy. And having people, and I say this in the intro of my book, my book, as much as it advocates for self-leadership in the health arena, in no way am I dismissing the importance or the power of working with therapists and nutritionists and personal trainers and doctors and all the other helpers and healers of the world, because healing is a team sport. That's what I always say. Healing is a team sport. You are not meant to go it alone. That being said, you are the only person at the end of the day who really understands the wholeness of your life. And how someone's information or advice fits into the wholeness of your life is something that only you can decide.

Molly Claire 36:54

Yeah, absolutely. And it takes me back to this, this spectrum discussion, right? Where it's like, okay, on one end of the spectrum, we are maybe thinking that we need to go at this alone, do this alone, figure all this out on our own, not helpful. The other end of the spectrum is feeling like we're having to outsource everything. Like, I don't know, I can't do this, right? Going, like feeling really incapable and sort of weak internally, right? But instead, it's how do I build in a support? How do I rely on this? And how do I bring everything in through my own knowing, through my own filter and build up my own knowing so that I can make the best use of what's coming in and ultimately become stronger in my own right.

Courtney Townley 37:35

Yeah. And beautifully said. It's both and, not either or. Yeah. Yeah.

Molly Claire 37:39

Yeah, yeah. This has been such a great conversation. I wish we could talk for hours, but I would love for you to tell a little bit about your book first and foremost. What is the book and where can people find it?

Courtney Townley 37:53

Yeah, so the book is called The Consistency Code, and the subtitle is A Midlife Woman's Guide to Deep Health and Happiness. And it can be found at theconsistencycode.com. Right now, you can just join a wait list because the book launches November 5th. But I'll just tell you a little bit of what people will find in that book is there's three parts to the book. The first part is really just talking about the model of health that we've been sold and why it's not effective. And then I talk a lot about the behavior change science and what's happening in our brain and also what's happening at midlife and why we need to honor those two things if we truly wanna create sustainable change. And then of course, the second part of the book is the meat of the book, which is the actual consistency code, which is four parts. I'll just tell you here and now, there's four practices that I teach all of my students. The first one is the practice of awareness. You can't heal what you don't see or you're not willing to face. And so we have to shine a light on the things that are preventing us from living the life we want. And that comes down to certainly thoughts and emotions, but it also comes down to your behavior. It comes down to the environments you're spending time in. We just have to expose all of that. The second practice that I teach in the book is the practice of organization. Because once you have awareness, awareness of course, isn't enough. We have to have a strategy and a plan for how we're gonna move the needle without overwhelming the brain because the brain gets overwhelmed really easily. So how do we stay in what Susan David calls the state of realm? And so the practice of organization is all about the state of realm. And then we go into the practice of follow through because let's face it, the reason most of us don't actually achieve what we set out to do is because we have the beautiful color coded planner with the beautiful color coded plan, but then we don't follow our own plan because we have thoughts and emotions and dysregulated nervous systems and all the things. So those two chapters do a deep dive into what it really takes to keep showing up for yourself to do the things that you said you would do.

Molly Claire 39:54

Mm-hmm. 

Courtney Townley 39:54

And then the final piece of the framework is really the practice of realignment because life is going to throw you curveball after curveball after curveball it is not a linear sun filled rainbow and butterfly path we all know that and so what happens when the obstacles show up do you retreat do you stay on the sidelines for the next six months how can we get you to realign quicker and so that final piece of the framework helps people to do that and then the final part of the book is really just about how to kind of piece it all together and use this not as like a one time process but as really a framework to support you for the rest of your life because that's really what it is it's a framework it's not saying this is exactly how you have to do things it's just giving you a way to sensibly organize your brain and ask yourself some really good questions so you can stay on course with the life that you said you wanted.

Molly Claire 40:53

Yeah, and the thing that's really standing out to me as you are explaining this is the space and the grace within this framework, right? Like thinking about that fourth step of realignment. The fact is that we do have curveballs thrown at us and we get out of alignment and we get off track. Like that is a normal part of the deal and the more we can allow that to be there and follow a framework like this, it's like what a gift to be able to have an approach that is truly working with ourselves in every moment to continue on the course without perfection, right? Yeah.

Courtney Townley 41:36

Yeah. And also honoring that hopefully if you're doing the human experience right, you're going to evolve and grow. And so as you evolve and grow, you learn more about yourself. And as you learn more about yourself, you're probably going to change some of your approaches and the ways that the things that you like and that you don't like. And so this framework gives us an opportunity to kind of reshape ourselves within that. And I think that's something that just is so, it's so missing from most wellness programs out there. There is no nuance. There is no opportunity to be flexible. And that's really what health is. It's allowing yourself to be flexible so you can consistently self-honor.

Molly Claire 42:17

Yeah, yeah. Amazing, amazing. Okay, Courtney, tell my listeners, where can they find more about you? Where can they tell them all the things the podcast?

Courtney Townley 42:28

Yeah. I mean, really probably the easiest one-stop shop is graceandgrit.com. I mean, you'll find out about the podcast. You'll see a link to the book and all the things. Like that's probably the best place, graceandgrit.com.

Molly Claire 42:39

Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. I will have, by the way, everyone in the show notes, you can find links to the book and to Grace and Grit and find out more about Courtney. And thank you again for being here. Such a powerful conversation.