Yeah, I know this blog has started out a little hot. It’s because I’m saying the title with my chest!

Have you ever had a season of being frustrated with someone you see so much good in? Great abilities. Super talents. But they won’t choose themselves.

High performers, let me say this (and as my Pastor E says, I’m in the front row with you): we cannot be so worried about others choosing themselves that we end up abandoning ourselves. Whew, chile. Say it loud for the people in the back!

This current season of shifting, bobbing, and weaving through menopause has given me more than enough on my own plate. So listen. I want you to choose you. But if you’re gonna play about it, I’m gonna run on with my meal preps, my strength training, my good sleep, my patch and my supplements, and do my BAM (Bust A Move) Thang! But for real? Come with!

It’s exhausting trying to get everyone else to make their selection of themselves. So we’re not gonna worry about that anymore. We’re going to CHOOSE OURSELVES.

What “Choose You” Actually Means

Let’s clear something up. Choosing you is not selfish. It’s not quitting your job, ghosting your family, or leaving your responsibilities on the curb. And it’s not one big dramatic moment either.

Choosing you is a daily decision, made over and over, in five places: your work, your health, your rest, your play, and your joy.

And Maven, for many of us, this season comes with a plot twist. Perimenopause and menopause have entered the chat, and our bodies are rewriting the rules. Pretending they aren’t is not a strategy. So let’s get into it. Come with!

Choose Your Work

You are not your output. Your work is something you do, not the whole of who you are. And no, I’m not telling you to stop working. I’m telling you to stop letting your to do list decide your worth.

How to choose you at work:

• Own your expertise out loud. Retire “I just.” You don’t “just” run the department. You run the department.
• Ask for the thing. The raise. The resources. The help. Closed mouths don’t get fed.
• Guard your best hours. Give your sharpest time to your most important work, not to everybody else’s emergencies.

Choose Your Health

This one is personal, so I’m going to say it plainly: “It’s just aging” is not a care plan.

Perimenopause and menopause can show up as sleep disruption, brain fog, hot flashes, mood shifts, joint aches, and more. Too many high performing women push through quietly because we’re used to handling everything. Not this time.

How to choose you in your health:

• Advocate, don’t apologize. You are not being dramatic. You are being informed.
• Track your symptoms. Notes app, journal, whatever works. Patterns get taken seriously. “I just don’t feel like myself” too often gets brushed off.
• Find a provider who is knowledgeable about menopause. The Menopause Society offers a directory of certified practitioners. You deserve someone who knows this season.
• Build your strength. Strength training is widely recommended in midlife for bone and muscle health. And great for mental
• health! Maven it helps calm ‘that rage’!
• Fuel on purpose. Meal prep is a gift to future you on her busiest day. I’ve come to like the results of it helping the scale move down!

Choose Your Rest

Rest is not a reward you earn after everything is done. Because, Maven, everything is never done.

How to choose you in your rest:

• Protect your sleep like it’s a meeting with your biggest client. Set a wind down time and honor it. Mine is 8:30 PM
• Schedule real pauses, not just collapses. Take The Divine Pause™: create deliberate distance from the noise and chaos so you can hear what actually matters. That includes what you need.
• Stop wearing exhaustion like a badge of honor. Maven, tired is not a personality.

Choose Your Play

Play isn’t childish. It’s how you remember who you are outside of your titles, your roles, and everybody’s expectations. Is fun on your calendar on purpose? If your answer is “I’ll get back to you,” we have work to do.

How to choose you in your play:

• Put fun on the calendar. Literally. In ink.
• Try something you’re bad at, just for the joy of it.
• Find your BAM (Bust A Move) Thang. Dance in the kitchen. Take the class. Move your body because it feels good.

Choose Your Joy

I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it: joy isn’t frivolous. Joy is not a bonus you collect when life finally calms down. It’s a decision you make right in the middle of it.

How to choose you in your joy:

• Notice what lights you up this week, then do more of it.
• Stop waiting for permission to enjoy your own life.
• Keep a receipts file. Log your wins and read it on the hard days.

#Maventalk

Maven, you can’t make anybody choose themselves. You can only choose you. So do it with your whole chest. Your work, your health, your rest, your play, your joy. All of it. And if somebody wants to come with? There’s room. But we’re not waiting.

Ready to Choose You?

If you’re ready to choose you and want a strategy partner for this season, book a conversation with me.

Lead Well. Live Well. Maven

Stay Connected with Maven Miara

Join my email community where we’re building a community of women who are choosing to lead from fullness, not fumes.

Join Miara’s Email Community

Follow me on LinkedIn where I share The Shift Note, short, bi-weekly videos with real talk about burnout, boundaries, and what it takes to lead well and live well. Consider it your mid-month reminder that rest isn’t weakness and clarity isn’t optional.

Connect with Miara on LinkedIn

You’ve been treating your pause like a script that never changes.

Summer gave you permission. The slowdown. The space to remember what peace feels like. You built your rituals. Your Pause Card. Your boundaries. And they carried you beautifully through those slower months when the world finally exhaled.

Then fall showed up, and everything shifted.

Life got loud again. Busier. More demanding. And suddenly the pause that worked so well feels like it was written for a completely different season. Like you’re trying to force last season’s playbook into a moment that’s asking something different of you.

So you started questioning yourself: Why isn’t my pause working anymore?

Here’s what I know: You’re not failing at pause. You’re being invited to evolve it.

When Your Pause Becomes Your Teacher

The lie we’ve been sold is that spiritual practices stay the same no matter what’s happening around us. That if you found what works, you should grip it like a life raft and never let go.

But what if evolution is actually the highest form of wisdom?

I’m in a season of supportive work right now. Good work. Meaningful work. The kind that matters deeply. But it’s also depleting work. And no amount of my usual pause practices, the ones that carried me through spring, could touch the unsettledness I was carrying. I felt emotionally tired in a way that rest alone couldn’t fix.

I used to believe pause was this fixed thing. One ritual. One practice. One sacred way of showing up for myself. Which meant when circumstances changed and my old pause didn’t land the same way, I thought I was doing something wrong. That I’d somehow lost my way.

But here’s what I discovered in the middle of this busy season: I wasn’t losing my pause. My pause was becoming what this season needed me to become.

My revised pause looked completely different. It meant relaxing what had to be done versus what could be done. Not out of laziness, but out of honest necessity. My energy was finite, and some things could wait. It meant adding strength training for my mental health, not just physical fitness. I needed internal resilience to handle the emotional weight I was carrying. And it meant reaching out to friends for support, not to solve anything, but just to share. Sometimes I just needed to tell a sister, “I’m unsettled, and I’m tired.” Being heard was the pause I needed.

The pause didn’t get smaller. It got different. And in that difference, I found something I hadn’t expected: a deeper trust in myself.

What It Means to Lead from Becoming

This is where The Divine Pause™ reveals its real power.

It’s not about maintaining one sacred ritual forever. It’s about your ability to return to yourself, even when everything around you is demanding something different. It’s about knowing who you are beneath the circumstances, and choosing that version of yourself no matter how loud life gets.

When your pause evolves, so does your leadership. Your presence changes. Your ability to show up grounded instead of running on fumes shifts. You become someone who doesn’t just survive the busy seasons; you become someone who leads from the grounded place you found when things were slow.

Think about the leader your younger self needed. The one who didn’t have all the answers but stayed centered anyway. The one who admitted when she was tired but didn’t let that tiredness steal her peace. The one who said no without apologizing. The one who reached out for help because she knew her worth wasn’t measured by how much she could handle alone.

That leader? She’s the one you’re becoming right now, in this season, by choosing to evolve your pause instead of abandoning it.

Three Ways to Meet Yourself in the Noise

When life gets hard and your usual rhythm doesn’t fit, here are three practices that ground you in what matters most: your own clarity, peace, and wholeness.

None of these is the “right” practice. They’re all invitations to return to center in whatever way this moment needs.

The Grace Is in the Becoming

Here’s what I want you to understand: If your pause isn’t working the way it used to, you’re not losing yourself. You’re choosing yourself in a new way.

Your pause might look different this season than it did last season. Your pause might need all three of these practices instead of just one. Your pause might be 60 seconds of walking instead of a full morning ritual.

And that’s not weakness. That’s wisdom. That’s you listening to what you actually need instead of forcing what used to work.

The women who are most grounded aren’t the ones who white-knuckle the same practices into every season. They’re the ones who listen deeply to what they need and give themselves permission to adjust. They’re the ones who understand that flexibility is not the opposite of depth; it’s the expression of it.

This is The Divine Pause™ in its truest form: creating deliberate distance from the noise in whatever way serves you best. Sometimes it’s a full morning. Sometimes it’s 60 seconds. Sometimes it’s a conversation with someone who really sees you.

What matters is that you’re still returning to center. You’re still choosing you. You’re still becoming the leader your younger self needed you to be.

Lead Well. Live Well.
Maven Miara

Stay Connected with Maven Miara

Join my email community where we’re building a community of women who are choosing to lead from fullness, not fumes.

Follow me on LinkedIn where I share The Shift Note, short, bi-weekly videos with real talk about burnout, boundaries, and what it takes to lead well and live well. Consider it your mid-month reminder that rest isn’t weakness and clarity isn’t optional.