Have you ever caught yourself thinking about a “want,” only to realize that you’ve been thinking about that same “want” in your midlife season for years and have made zero progress towards it? It can feel discouraging enough to cause you to put it back on the shelf and tell yourself, “Not today…maybe someday” or forget about it altogether.
I want to lose weight.
I want a different job.
I want to take my dream vacation.
I want to run a marathon.
For women, we spend years tending to everyone else’s needs that we are experts at delaying or ignoring our own. According to research about midlife crisis for women, it often takes menopause, when physical and hormonal signals become so loud that we are forced to pause and heed their messages. It is at that point that we find ourselves at a place of self-reflection where we are reassessing our choices and questioning whether to stay the course or muster up the courage to make life changes that allow us to lean into those wants we have spent years ignoring.
It is hard to suddenly practice self-care, putting our needs first. This midlife crisis feels selfish and unfamiliar, so we talk ourselves out of exploring our own needs before we even get started.
If we ignore the calling and do nothing, we are unfulfilled and unhappy. If we choose to consider the possibility of change, we can easily just get in our own way planning, organizing, and over-thinking, keeping us conflicted and stagnant.
Logically we know that progress requires putting in the work, but guilt, negative self-talk, and limiting beliefs can be loud and influential. Learning to quiet those voices is necessary as we lessen the energy, we waste on thinking about the action versus taking action.
How about you make the decision to Stop.
Stop thinking yourself out of it.
Stop researching yourself out of it.
Does it really matter if you haven’t written down your goal or determined your why? If it interferes with you getting started, then move forward. You know you are unsettled, so make the decision and start experimenting with new things in your current midlife season. Be curious. Everything you learn is momentum, so seriously…Just Act and Move Forward.
Toss the junk food out of your pantry.
Apply for a job.
Transfer $20 into a vacation account.
Take a walk.
Trust me, you are not the only one who has experienced this internal battle. I fight it as well. I think I have just trained myself to stop fighting it for as long. I hit a wall earlier in my midlife, putting me on a path to entrepreneurship as an executive coach. It is something I do in addition to my corporate job, allowing me to express my passion and purpose in a way that fulfills me. That decision didn’t come easily, but I did it anyway and have had no regrets.
Every day, I face new crossroads that help me continue this journey. Just recently, I was putting together my annual coaching roadmap, looking at the major goals and milestones. As usual, I started with where I want to end the year and began to reverse engineer the path to success. I realized that I had to get busy and finish a program curriculum to launch in January.
You see, I have my goal. I have my milestones and know exactly what I need to do. I have been busy doing things to move me forward, but I have been avoiding the two most important things to reach my goal. Make my list of potential prospects and reach out, inviting them to sign up and join me. You see, none of the other stuff I have been doing matters if I don’t have clients. For a month, this task showed up on my weekly schedule, but I found every reason to avoid doing the uncomfortable thing. Finally, I had enough. I was done waiting for perfection and I made the calls.
Guess what, people said yes. While I’m not yet at my goal for this session, I am on my way because I am taking action. I am farther than I would have been if I were still trying to think my way forward.
This choice to be uncomfortable honored myself, my spirit, and my purpose.
Planning is important but doing is more important.
Make 1 action step today and feel good about it. Do it again tomorrow and the next day. Pretty soon, your why will show up. Your goals will become clear. Your destination is visible.
Remember, it’s the small changes that add up to huge results.
It’s time to stop holding yourself back. Release the old beliefs and scripts you tell yourself and embrace your needs for fulfillment. No better time to start than now, so stop reading and do!
I believe in you and want to celebrate your progress, no matter how small you think it is.
I invite you to share the one step that got you started.
Be Brave and Live Fabulous!
Feature image photo credit: Freepik
