Ep. 2 - Are You Ready For Your Midlife Shift?

SHOW SUMMARY:

In this episode, I'm talking about midlife shifts. Tune in and learn what the shift is, whether or not it's a midlife crisis, and how to know if you're ready for your shift. Then I’ll share 9 tips for starting your midlife shift and 5 tips for overcoming the fear of doing it!

SHOW MAP:

• 15:16: The big moment I decided to shift my entire life!    
• 17:00: The big action I took to start my midlife shift.
• 18:05: Did I do the right thing and what was my plan?
• 20:21: Key Lessons from my midlife shift
• 22:05: How I became more strategic with my midlife shift.
• 24:28: How to know if it’s time to create YOUR midlife shift into a more vibrant YOU.
• 26:52: How to start your midlife shift + a quote: “It’s time to stop resisting the call of your soul, to do the inner and outer work of crafting the life you are meant for instead of settling.” – Suzette Conway
• 31:34  - tips for hacking the normal fear functions of your brain.

WHAT TO DO NEXT:

• Download the tips and tricks for starting your midlife shift and overcoming the fear that will naturally arise as you do that work. Find it here:  https://flittersphere.mykajabi.com/LP-8StepsToYourMLS-Oct23
• Subscribe to the show & please tell your friends about it!

RESOURCES:

• Flittersphere community: https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife
• Psychology Today Blog "Fulfillment at any age": https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fulfillment-any-age

SPEAKERS:

Hostess SUZETTE CONWAY founded the Flittersphere™, a collection of courses, communities, and coaching programs, to support women 40 and older in creating a vibrant midlife! It’s a great time to shift things so you can release the burned out, angsty, restless feeling of living disconnected from what you are meant for and finally have the deeply satisfying life your spirit craves. Suzette started her company in 2017, bringing the wisdom of a 25-year career in corporate learning & development, a degree in communications, deep curiosity and a love of exploring the human experience, a nerdy obsession with positive psychology (the science of thriving!), a craving for Sparkable Moments™... and a determination to live vibrantly! This quickly turned into a mission of enabling better human experiences and helping women live more Sparkable Lives™!   From that, this podcast was born! Learn more and join the Flittersphere™ with the links below.

• Website: www.flittersphere.com/ 
• Ready for a coach? Book a consult
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/groups/flourishinginmidlife
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/purplechickenlife
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/flittersphere

TRANSCRIPT:

Hey there. Welcome to the Sparkable Moments podcast, where we have conversations to feed the soul! In this show, we explore the human experience using a mix of science, personal stories, random ponderings, and deep-end-of-the-pool discussions. I’m your hostess Suzette Conway. I’m a happiness coach and the creator of the Flittersphere, which is a community of women intent on crafting our most vibrant lives. This show is part of my mission to raise the world’s vibration and consciousness by creating better human experiences to change the world in beautiful and spectacular ways!  I’m so glad you’re joining me on the journey

At the end of today’s show, I’ll share some tips for how to identify if you are ready for your midlife shift, and if so, what you can do to start it, and how to overcome any fears you have about this pursuit. Be sure to stick around so you don’t miss it!

In this episode, I’ll be talking about midlife shifts and how to know if you are ready for yours.  

I’m going to share the story of my own midlife shift, including what lead up to it, when and how I knew something big had to change in my life… and what I did about it.

And we’ll talk about how to find the courage to take action in support of a midlife shift if that is what you want in your life. And I’ll share some specific actions that you can start with.

So, let’s jump into this by first considering the language that we use around this topic, specifically the idea of a midlife crisis. Is what we experience in midlife really a crisis or just the ebb and flow of life that naturally leads to questioning our human experience? Is it a problem or an opportunity, an inevitability or an anomaly?   

The concept of a Midlife crisis is not new. We hear about it all the time. We hit our 40s and kind of go nuts making radical life changes. We buy fancy cars or have affairs or quit our jobs and move to Paris in response to some internal struggle over how we define ourselves and our lives.  

I’ve been fascinated by this concept for years. I’ve tried to define midlife crisis for myself and I’ve even explored how researchers and experts in the field would define it. It’s not easy because there is no single answer to it.

The term “midlife crisis” was coined by Canadian psychoanalyst Elliott Jaques in 1965 and it became popular because of a 1984 book by Gail Sheehy called Passages: Predictable Crises of Adult Life. Sheehy claimed that we will inevitably experience a crisis between the ages of 37 and 42 and that it’s a predictable experience she defines as an anxiety around the truth of our own mortality. It’s when we start to ask questions like “is this all there is?"  I’ve also seen it described as a panic over not achieving life goals and questioning our purpose. 

Susan Krauss Whitbourne is a professor emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, and she’s a psychologist, and the author of the Psychology Today blog "Fulfillment At Any Age". She suggests that midlife crisis might more accurately be called an "ego integrity" issue because it is centered on confronting our morality and our sense of meaning and purpose and connection to others and concern for our own welfare.

Based on all this and my own experiences, I would sum up a midlife crisis as an angst-filled state of existential uncertainty and worry, a time of questioning our purpose, what we find meaningful, our role in life, and whether we’ll achieve our goals before we run out of time and die. The crisis may send us on a desperate quest to attain goals, regain our youth, or to find answers to life’s mysteries. And it’s all in an effort to make sense of our human existence. 

I think if it as more like a midlife angst than midlife crisis. Either way, I don’t know about you, but that is what I felt like for most of my adult life! It intensified as I got older and it showed up as a ton of fretting over whether or not there was more to life and a deep fear that I would wake up at 85 and regret the life I’d lived. 

But is that a crisis? And is it inevitable that we all have this kind of crisis? Do we all have it at the same age? How long does it last? Does it look the same for all of us? 

Professor Whitbourne questions the very premise of a crisis altogether. She says it is pretty much a myth and that only about 10% of adults experience a true crisis, though I’ve seen reports that put it as high as 40%. But we’ll just go wither 10% for right now. She also says the label itself can be destructive and misleading, in part because there is no clear definition of midlife. I agree with her on this. Sheehy’s book, for instance, suggests midlife includes ages 37-42. In generations past when we only lived to our 60s, 30 would have been squarely in midlife. But we live longer now than ever before. So, is midlife our 30s? 40s? 50s? Maybe it dips into our 60s when we retire and start a whole new career or life chapter with still another 25-30 years of life left in us, If we can’t agree on where the middle is, how can we even use the term ‘midlife’ with the word crisis.  

Whitbourne also suggests that the label is problematic because we might adopt it when we face challenges in midlife as an easy way out. It’s simpler to just label it as a midlife crisis than to look inside ourselves and do the work to figure out what is really going on.  

Whitbourne also suggests that often what we label as a midlife crisis is just an unhappy event that could and does happen at any age in adulthood… whether it’s a divorce, an accident, losing a parent, struggling with a serious illness, or losing a job. These are serious moments, but they often don’t create a deep existential crisis.  I understand her point here, but I can’t help but wonder, how many of these events can someone tolerate before it does become a crisis for them? And how much does our ability to process it affect whether or not it is an existential crisis, making us question the quality and purpose of our existence?

Here’s what I think. The answer to what is a midlife crisis and does everybody have it and when do we have it… is “who knows?”. 

From a science and research perspective, and as someone who enjoys using words thoughtfully, I agree with Whitbourne that we haven’t universally defined what midlife is and it’s likely unhelpful and maybe even unhealthy to use of cliché terms like Midlife Crisis. Not just because it isn’t scientifically accurate, but because it minimizes the meaning of the words when we throw it around as a casual cliché. 

But from a more human perspective, with less interest in word precision and more interest in experience, I think the answer is… well it’s still “who knows?”.  

Midlife is different for all of us. The duration of our lives varies. And so does our experience of it. We each have different levels of resilience and fortitude, unique perspectives, and even different internal and external resources for responding to life’s circumstances. All of these things contribute to whether something is a crisis or just a life event we must manage. 

New York psychologist Vivian Diller, Ph.D., suggests that because we live to be older now, this quandary is no longer about thinking “I have so little time left.” It is now about asking “Do I want to live life this way?”.  And Psychology professor Margie Lachman says we can see the midlife crisis as more of a midlife checkup. 

I agree with both of them. Midlife isn’t a crisis. It’s an opportunity. There is power and purpose in a midlife shift – in intentionally reflecting on our lives, without regret or judgment, and asking if it’s what we’ve wanted. And if not, we get to explore what we do want and then choose to create that. There are legitimate crises in life, and we need to respond to them accordingly. But I think a midlife malaise is not about that. Instead, it’s about asking “what’s next”.  

This perspective comes from personal experience. My life is pretty great today. I’m getting healthier, I have a sense of freedom with my time and creativity, I get to do work that I love, and use my gifts to make a difference in the world. I’m being true to myself and living an authentic, holistic, mostly balanced life. I have a sense of purpose, and I have finally, mostly relaxed into myself and I can live the life my curious, adventurous, fun-loving spirit craves!

Life isn’t perfect, and some days are better than others. But I have master skills now that make all the difference and I use them daily to continually evolve and intentionally shift into my next best self, over and over and over again. That is the gold, the answer to everything else for me. It is a source of my peace, satisfaction, hope, and joy in life. But it wasn’t always this way. 

I’ve spent most of my life trying to resolve a deep inner angst. I was never quite satisfied where I was or happy in life, I was always looking for more, trying to fill an emptiness in my soul.. trying to feel whole and enough. You know what I mean, right, thin enough, smart enough, pretty, successful, stable, wealthy, and kind enough… on and on with all the ways we measure ourselves.

The struggle was visible everywhere in my life. At 31 I had a short and disastrous marriage followed by a quick and painful divorce. It left me broken and unable to create future relationships. I was humiliated, lonely, financially unstable, gaining weight rapidly, and generally unhappy. 

I pushed through and tried to go on with the rest of my life. I graduated from college at 32 and went back to corporate America and kept building my career. I bought a house and enjoyed my family and friends and went about living a mostly good life that checked nearly all the boxes. But still, I had the angst and emptiness. Then in 2008, it got worse because there was an economic crash, I got laid off from a job that I’d poured myself into for 11 years. I felt betrayed and rejected and I was scared because I was unemployed for 14 months and I almost lost my home. And I felt aimless and lost. I didn’t know where I belonged. 

Eventually, I got a new job that I loved. But after a couple of years, I was back in a rut and unhappy, thinking again that I needed another change to fix my dis-ease…. my disease of unhappiness. Over the next 3 years, I changed jobs 4 times looking for that fix. I took the last job in desperation, in a small company with a toxic environment at half my pay… and it was quickly clear they were insolvent and couldn’t afford to pay me. I knew it was a matter of months before I’d get laid off and be looking for work again. 

All of these struggles were symptoms of something larger, something deeper. But I couldn’t see it as that when I was IN it.  So, for years I struggled. I felt out of control and full of anxiety about the future, my purpose, my weight and fast declining health, whether I’d have a good life if I’d ever find love… all of it. And I was full of guilt for wanting more than my “good on paper” life, more than a lot of people get in this life. I was so depressed there were days could not manage to do the dishes or get off the couch or call a friend. All I wanted to do was sleep and eat and zone out from the pain I felt. But I couldn’t really disconnect because my brain was always on, I was always obsessing, striving, doing, searching, and proving myself.  and the whole thing had its own momentum… I was getting worse, fast. I tried lots of things to get on track in life… job changes, online dating, weight loss surgery, vacations, therapy, always walking around with a smile on my face… none of it made me happier or eased the angst I felt. I was chronically stressed out and it was impacting every aspect of my health physically and mentally and it was impacting my life.  It was exhausting and overwhelming and it was robbing me of a good life. I was desperate for relief.

After nearly 2 decades of floundering, of wondering if there was something MORE and BETTER to this human experience… 2 decades full of divorce, unemployment, nearly losing my home, unable to be in a relationship, poor health continuing to decline, struggling with undiagnosed depression and anxiety… I was fully burned out and at my breaking point. 

I’d like to say this was me at 28, that I figured this out early in life and did something about it! But I wasn’t. I was in my late 30s.. then my mid-40s, and then my late 40s, and I was still in this place. So, in addition to all this struggle, I was judging myself for not having figured out how to live well. And, I thought I was the only one like this and so I was, on top of everything else, embarrassed that I couldn’t get it together.

 And I didn’t understand why I felt such pain and unhappiness, because, despite the struggle and everything I just described to you, my life was really good on paper. I had a home, a mostly prosperous career doing work I was good at and that I mostly enjoyed. I had an education, a good reputation, loving family & friends, I got to travel, I made good money.  I was mostly a happy person.

 But really, I was only half-happy. Something was off and had been for a very long time and clearly, these struggles were a SIGN. My spirit screaming for my attention.

 I was suffering from what I call chronic low-grade unhappiness. It was the worst kind of unhappiness because it was unrelenting and had a significant impact, but it didn’t stop me from living my daily life, so I didn't realize exactly how bad it was when I was in it. 

 In that kind of situation, we humans tolerate the intolerable for a really long time. While that helped me to be resilient, to be a functionally depressed person, it stopped me from making the meaningful changes that I needed in order to go from surviving to thriving.

 After 20+ years of this, I was so “over” feeling unhappy and unfulfilled in life, over tolerating this as if it was normal and all I deserved or all I was capable of creating.

I reached the peak of my distress in 2016 when I went through some boxes and found old journal entries that I didn’t remember writing, entries that highlighted how unhappy I had been for so many years. 

 Then I found a thick folder full of 15 years of business ideas scrawled on sticky notes, envelopes, notepads, napkins.

 Then I found new year’s resolutions from past decades, decades I tell you, with the same goals showing up every year because I never fully accomplished these changes that I thought would make me happy.

 It was like evidence of a crime… proof I wasn’t creating what I wanted in my life…. that my unhappiness was all my fault... And it left me no room for continued denial or complacency. It was clear my soul had been screaming at me for a long time to do something different, to be someone different. And I was so tired of being restless, lost and empty and disconnected, lonely and hopeless. 

I couldn’t figure out what was wrong yet, or how to fix it. But I knew I could not find the path out of it with my old methods anymore. 25 years of trying had proven that.

In this moment, I finally realized that I didn’t need more... I was meant for more… and that meant  I needed something different… and that felt way bigger than having more money or getting skinny or finding another husband or getting out of debt. This was about whether or not I was living the right life, living in the right way.  The answer seemed to be a resounding NO and that terrified me. My worry and fear over a wasted life deepened and my heart and my spirit were broken by seeing how long I’d been suffering in this state.

 Around this same time, my sister and I were having amazing conversations about life and I mentioned how I was struggling and that I felt like a trapped artist - I didn’t feel like my spirit was being fully expressed in the world. I told her I’d been thinking about selling my home and pressing the reset button on my entire life. It would mean I didn’t’ have to work and I’d have the time, money, and mental space to explore what I truly wanted. She asked me “Why don’t you do it?”… and I didn’t have a good answer. There was literally no reason NOT to do it.

 At that exact moment, something shifted in me.  I finally knew something big needed to change. Now. And I finally had the courage and the will to do it.

Was all this a crisis? Honestly, I don’t know. It felt like one. But the label doesn’t really matter. Regardless of what I called it, and when it started or how long it lasted… it was definitely a psychologically uncomfortable state. It was painful. And it needed my attention. And so, I gave it my attention. 

I decided to sell my house! And that last job at the insolvent company didn’t even last until I got it on the market. But by then I knew my path. I was NOT going to get another corporate job. I wanted to work for myself. That’s not true for everybody, but it was true for me. And even though I didn’t know what that looked like yet, I was ready to embrace the discomfort of the unknown! I was finally ready to explore all the possibilities of my life.

So, I sold the house, put everything in storage, moved into my other sister’s dining room…  and started my midlife shift!  I was 48. Scared. Excited. Determined. And feeling a sense of relief that I’d never known before. 

I took a year off to unclench and breathe, and I played with some business ideas. I traveled and reconnected with old friends and I journaled like a madwoman. And I got a coach and found a community of people like me, seekers, creators, people determined to get every drop of goodness out of this life.  They understood the angst and the need for answers.

Now, not everyone has the option or the need to sell their home to create a better life. The truth is, I probably didn’t need to do it either. In many ways, it wasn’t the most strategic or healthy choice I could have made. But it was ONE choice, one way that I was willing and able to show myself that I was committed to big, imperfect action toward the next best version of me. One way to acknowledge that I’d seen the truth and was no longer willing to tolerate my current reality.  And it was absolutely what my spirit wanted at that moment.  I had been wanting to sell my house for years. And for the first time in years, I was listening to my spirit again.

 I had some big goals in my mid-life shift. I was gonna write a book, and create massive weight loss, and build a thriving business. What I didn’t know then was that these things were just more symbols of what I thought a good life looked like. I was still using my left, corporate brain and strategizing and planning and seeking proof of my enoughness by measuring whether or not I hit my goals. But it was a starting point. It was enough to own what I wanted, which at that moment, was just to figure out what I wanted. So I was playing with some ideas. I didn’t know what any of it would look like, how long it would take, or if I could even do it. But I knew I had to start. I knew I wasn’t too old, it wasn’t too late, but it was time… and I jumped in!

 And today… I run my own business and I have freedom in what I do, and who I work with, and where I work and live. My health is improving and so is how I define health. I’m a learning and development consultant, I’ve started writing my first book and I’ve launched this podcast. I’m a happiness coach helping women create a midlife shift into the next expression of themselves. I no longer feel burned out, trapped, or stuck in life.

 These are the outward signs of my shift. They are fun and they align with my gifts and interests and goals, and it’s exactly what I wanted for myself. What might be harder to see are the internal wins that came from doing deep work on myself and learning new tools for functioning optimally in service of my highest good.  I’m happier because I live an authentic life, connected to my true nature and my purpose, to my own spirit. It’s a joyful life full of meaning and well-being, powerful conversations and Sparkable Moments™, and all the things that light up my soul.  I wake up each day eager for this glorious life I get to have, and I go to bed insanely grateful, and most days… pretty satisfied, and fulfilled.

 This isn’t because things are always rosy and perfect. They aren’t. It’s because I’ve learned how to dance with my doubts and fears and to love and leverage my inner critic.

I’ve learned how and why our ego and identity are formed, which helps me to see its value and its limitations… and it helps me hack it for my own higher purposes. 

I’ve learned that I get to break the rules and conditioning that no longer serve me and create new agreements with myself that are aligned to my values, purpose, and true nature. 

I’ve learned to be comfortable with being uncomfortable.

 I’ve learned to embrace a deep sense of purpose and feel good about my place in the world.

 I’ve also learned some crazy powerful tools to help me intentionally shift into a higher state of being so I can operate from there. 

 And I’ve learned to stop expecting myself or my life or other people to be perfect, especially as a condition I had to meet before I can have what I want.

 And I’ve learned to stop thinking that I have to be done and fully evolved before I can claim my happiness or own this shift in my life.

 Mostly, I learned that the thing that was missing, that “something more” I needed, was ME. I had disconnected from my spirit, from my personal truth and purpose, and from my own inner power.

 I had spent my whole life trying to meet other people’s expectations, pleasing them and doing what I was supposed to do, following the rules, walking the right way on the right path, thinking that would create a good life. Once I reconnected to my inner spirit, to the divine, pure, authentic part of me, everything changed.

 As I created this midlife shift, I started to learn how to be more strategic, which for me meant being more aligned to that spirit by identifying my gifts and talents and my essence. I created a mission based on what I believe is my primary purpose. I interviewed people, read books, took courses, and researched what creates human flourishing… what makes us happier, healthier, and more fulfilled. And it turns out that science breaks a flourishing life into the same categories that I’ve always used for new year goal setting and examination of my own life.  The science and my own heart were aligned  And the great news is that science identifies ways of optimizing how we function in each of these areas. And so does our intuition, that inner divine genius that we all have. It also knows how to optimize our human experience.

 So, as part of my strategic approach, I explored each area using the science and authentic conversations and personal experiences – discussing with others our stories, our hopes, and longings, our dark side as well as our light. I talked to people about how we define ourselves and the world around us. And I learned about creative principles and tapping into my intuition.  I spent years experimenting to see what would work or not, and I found a phenomenal personal coach and built that community of like-minded seekers, and I created a collection of techniques and tools and methods. Then, I rebranded flourishing as living vibrantly and I alchemized it all into this powerful system that I used in my own life and with my clients. It helps us confidently, intentionally, and continually rise up into the next level of ourselves and have a thriving life. All of this has evolved into the Flittersphere™, which is a collection of communities and experiential, transformational programs.

 The building of the Flittersphere™, the doing of this work, it is a spot-on expression of my spirit. It’s been and continues to be an amazing journey, to go from floundering to flourishing. I’ve found my way out of my restless, sad, unfulfilling state and got past the guilt I had for wanting more than what I was already so blessed with. The journey is full of beauty and mess. It’s included a lot of work and struggle and pain. And I wouldn’t take away any of it because it got me here. And because it is often in the dark, in in the struggle, that we learn and grow the most.

So, now that you’ve heard about my journey, I’m wondering which bits of it resonated with you. Where in it did you see your own story, your own struggles? If you can relate to any of it, the next logical question is… how do you know if it’s time to create YOUR midlife shift into a more vibrant YOU? Well, you can look for some signs, for some evidence of your own spirit being stifled.  For instance,

• Are you waking up each day dreading going to work?
• Do you constantly crave a vacation and then decide there isn’t time to make it happen or money to make it happen?
• Are you feeling a deep exhaustion and burnout, maybe a sense of hopelessness because no matter what you do you can’t keep up and do all the things and please all the people and feel any sense of accomplishment because you are always on the hamster wheel?
• Are you feeling a lack of balance? That’s a classic sign that something needs to shift.
• Do you feel triggered by people and situations more often or more easily these days – jumping to conclusions and assumptions, getting angry and resentful, or hurt at little things?
• Are you judging and criticizing yourself and others? Losing patience? Feeling wronged? Are you arguing more than usual with the people you care about? This is a sign YOU are unhappy. I know it’s counterintuitive, but arguments with others are never about others. It’s always a reflection of something going on in ourselves.

 Here are some other signs you could look for.   

• Are you feeling a low-grade, ongoing unhappiness in one or more aspects of your life, maybe your career, relationships, your finances, or health?
• Are you feeling stifled, creatively unexpressed, like you have more to give, and skills to use, something to say or do but it’s kind of stuck inside of you? Maybe it seems impossible to do in your life right now or ever, but the longing is there.
• Maybe you’re feeling restless, like you’re ready for what’s next or something more than what you are currently experiencing in your life but you’re unsure what to do about it so you just stay put.

 Any one of these things is a sign that you need some tending to, that you are not thriving. We humans can tolerate the intolerable for a really long time, especially when the pain of the intolerable situation starts to feel normal and change starts to seem impossible or like it is just one more thing to take on.

 It’s ok to feel that. To sit with it a minute. And, it’s ok to want something different, to want to stop tolerating what doesn’t serve your spirit.

 So… let’s see if I can help you get started with how to start your own midlife shift. While I can’t pack in 5 years of intense focus and a lifetime of seeking and learning into one podcast, I can leave you with a few obvious actions toward what’s next. I’ll put a link to this in the show notes to a document that summarizes this, but here goes.

1. The first step is to acknowledge that you want something different than your current life experience, even if it is only in one area of your life. Give yourself permission to want a life of your choosing.
2. Get still and be quiet. Find moments every day to just sit with yourself and your thoughts. In those quiet spaces, ask good questions about your life, like what makes you happy, what is working for you right now or not. What would you change? Look at the past and the present at where you’ve compromised and what you’ve tolerated and resisted.
3. Then, stay still and listen for the answers. Your intuition, your spirit, will speak to you. Curiosity and listening are powerhouse transformational tools. When I’m doing this, I find the answers are clearest when I start with a few simple steps. I breathe deeply for a minute or two, then notice what is going on in my body – pain, movement, sound, tension, etc., etc. It’ grounds me in the present moment. And then I imagine being connected to divine, universal energy. There are lots of ways you can do this. If this is new to you, one of the simplest ways to feel connected to something divine is to sit in nature and concentrate on the things you see… a leaf, a blade of grass, the wind on your face, the sound or sight of rushing water. When you can sit in that contemplation, you’ll feel more connected to something bigger than yourself. Then, from that space, the questions are obvious, and the answers seem pure and from the core of my own genius spirit. 
4. As you do this, write it all down. Practice receiving whatever comes to you in that question-and-answer session, without judging it or censoring or minimizing it. Just capture it. Later, you can reflect on it and notice the themes and patterns and what you are making it all mean about yourself and your life. But for right now, just write it down.
5. Another thing you can do is to define your gifts and strengths and then look for the ways you are or aren’t using them in your life. We tend to be happier when we’re connected to our gifts and our strengths. So look for ways to add that.
6. Another thing you can do as you’re starting your midlife shift is to let yourself dream about what you’d like in life. This is easier said than done for some of us. When I first started my midlife shift, I struggled with this. My dreams were tiny. I didn’t think I could really have what I wanted, so I kept it safe and small. And I thought my dreams had to include or benefit other people for me to be allowed to have what I wanted. Over time, I’ve evolved, and I’ve grown my dreaming abilities are stronger and I know today that if I can dream it I can create it. But that wasn’t the case initially. So, as you imagine what you want in your life, notice if it's easy or challenging or if your dreams are big and bold or tiny and safe. Notice if they include others or if you let yourself dream of things just for you just because you want them, even if they don’t benefit anybody else. Don’t judge any of it, just notice it and watch how it evolves over time.
7. Another thing you can do as you’re just starting out on your midlife shift is to set some goals for yourself and use them to pull you toward something, to have meaning and focus. But don’t get attached to the outcomes. Things often work out differently than we expect but that doesn’t mean they didn’t work out in our favor. So set a goal as a target and then listen to your intuition, let it pull you towards something, and let go of any concern about exact outcomes or perfection. Just enjoy the journey.  
8. One other thing you can do is to create a community for yourself. We are not meant to human alone. Talk to other people about your feelings and dreams and about theirs. Look for the seekers and the creators, and people determined to live fully. Connecting to others over this pursuit can be strengthening and admitting out loud what you want can be liberating.
9. The last tip I’ll share with you on how to start your midlife shift is to find a supportive coach whose methods and spirit align with you. Look for someone to help you deepen this exploration of your inner world and teach you the tools for using what you find to create what you want. It's ok to get some help to do the inner work and reconnect to yourself.

These are just a few of the things you can do to start your midlife shift. But as I share these ideas I can almost HEAR your thoughts racing. You know, like how you can’t do it, or how no one will support you, hell, they may laugh at you over this. Maybe there is no time or money for what you want, or you lack the skills or the discipline to do it. Maybe there is no personal space in which to even get still and be quiet!

It’s normal for our minds to race towards reasons for NOT to do something. We all fear change. It’s an evolutionary tool of the mind to keep us safe. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t move toward what you want. It just means you need to learn to hack the way your mind works so you can create the courage to act in your own best interest. 

 Let me teach you a few tips for hacking the normal fear functions of the brain.

1.  First, breathe until you’re calm to center yourself in the moment. Fear is a function of the future, it’s rooted in worrying over what might Breathing puts you in the present moment. It helps you focus on exactly what you’re experiencing right then. Also, your fight or flight mode gets activated when fear is triggered. When this system is ON you can’t access your executive functions, which help you make decisions, plan, see possibilities, and so forth. Breathing deeply deactivates the fight or flight system, which is part of our sympathetic nervous system, and it turns ON your parasympathetic nervous system, which allows you to access those executive functions.
2.  The next tip that I’ll share for hacking your normal fear functions is to admit what you want for yourself and ask what it costs you to NOT have what you want. Get real and raw with this. Look at the emotional and the tangible costs. When we are in fear our brain throws up immediate thoughts and feelings to get us to act in a way that keeps us safe. And in times of real danger, this serves us. When a tiger is chasing us, we need our brain to tell us to run and make our muscles and nerves work so we are able to run. But when this same function is used to keep us from pursuing a dream or creating something we’d love, we need to notice it and realize that the thoughts and feelings may not be rooted in objective reality. The brain is just trying to convince us of something to keep us safe. Stopping to ask good questions can reorient the brain away from fear and toward exploration.
3.  Another tip for hacking into your normal fear functions is to acknowledge your fears as they come up. Don’t deny or dismiss them or push them down or try to avoid them. For instance, you may fear that changing to improve your life will mean losing a long-term relationship. Ok, it might. Yes, you may need to let go of people, jobs, habits, or a sense of security or comfort, old stories and definitions about yourself. You may need to let go of all kinds of things in order to have the life you want for yourself. Allow for that possibility. Just owning that takes some power out of the fear. Then allow for the possibility that it may not happen. Then acknowledge that whether it happens or not, or however you end up handling it, doesn’t change what you want for yourself. Let yourself feel the truth of what you want, even if you don’t think you can have it.
4.  And then, from that space of having acknowledged your fears and acknowledging that you still want what you want even though you are scared of it, ask yourself some questions specifically about the fear. Like, what if my fears happen, ok, what if I have to let go of some people or change jobs or whatever… what resources do I have in me to handle it? What are some examples that I have of other times that I’ve overcome challenges or fears? What if the fear doesn’t happen? How could I move forward, what is ONE thing I could do? These kinds of questions are empowering, and they help you take control over your fear and shift your focus.
5.  And then after all of that, acknowledge that what you just did was give yourself some options. You are powerful. You can move forward, you can overcome roadblocks, and there is one thing you can do to create what you want. Just that little bit of awareness and acknowledgment puts the power in YOU instead of in the fear. Then, to really use your power, go DO that one thing, take that obvious action. Show your brain that you can act despite fear and respond well to whatever the outcome is.  You are a creator. 

A good friend of mine said something once that I’ll never forget… everything you want is on the other side of fear. (QUOTE: See if I can attach Cara’s name to this) When we learn to manage our fear, to befriend it, and understand it, we can move past it to what’s on the other side, to creating the life we would love. 

Ok, so let’s summarize all of this.

• Midlife challenges and existential pain certainly existed for me, and they exist for many of us. But that doesn’t make it a midlife crisis.
• I prefer to see it all as a call to a midlife shift, to examine our lives and evaluate our level of happiness and meaning, our sense of purpose, how we use our gifts and strengths, how we define and express ourselves and our place in the world, and so forth and so forth. If we do this, we can re-align our lives to what our spirit craves.
• This kind of shift can be done at any time, but midlife is a natural inflection point to stop and reassess. It’s a grand opportunity to spiral up into the next level of ourselves and be more fully expressed. And it can be a magical experience if you let it.
• You’ve got some tools now for identifying when you are ready for your shift, for starting the shift, and for combatting the fear that will naturally arise as you do so.

 I hope you can see from today’s show that there is so much beauty and power in intentionally transforming your life. You are the predominant creative force of your life. Owning that, accepting responsibility for creating the experience you want in this world, is powerful and life-affirming. Scary as shit, but life-affirming!  And the beauty and magic that comes from it is stunning, uplifting, and life-changing.

Happiness comes from expressing your true spirit in the world – authentically, meaningfully, and fully!  I believe this self-expression is our primary purpose in life. If you don’t, that’s ok.  Either way, following your spirit will still lead to an amazing human experience!

I want to challenge you to start exploring what you want for your life at this point. Go download the tips I shared using the link in the show notes and practice applying them. Just a little each day. When you are ready for your community, I invite you to join us in the Flittersphere™. There’s a link for this in the show notes, too. Come tell us what you think of this topic and how you are applying the techniques in your life.

Ok, that’s it for this episode. Please share the podcast with your friends and subscribe so you don’t miss a thing! 

Thanks for listening to the Sparkable Moments podcast, produced by Purple Chicken Life LLC and shared through the Flittersphere™. I’m Suzette Conway and you can find me at Flittersphere.com. Remember… you deserve to have your most vibrant life and the world needs the highest version of you. Those two things are related, and they are worthy of your attention because you are the only one who can create the life your soul craves… and when you do it, everyone around you benefits! So go on, be vibrant!