(The Un-Sexy Truth No One Is Telling Us – And What We Can Do Instead)
None of us are lost. We never have been.
But we have spent the last few decades of our lives living for, and taking care of, everyone else.
So it’s no wonder we don’t know who we are or what we want once our caregiving role has ended.
Advertisers and social media spend billions trying to convince us that what we need lies outside ourselves – pretty pictures on Instagram, better clothes, expensive cars, vacations we can’t afford.
As if a perfectly curated life will relieve that sudden loss of connection we feel when we become empty nesters.
Here’s the unsexy truth – the loss of connection we’re grieving isn’t just from our kids no longer needing us every day, it’s from a loss of connection to ourselves. A connection we’re just now realizing we’ve neverhad.
When we were growing up our role was people–pleasing, and our measure of success was how happy we made the people around us.
Midlife is our chance to redirect the time and energy we used to spend pleasing others, into discovering who we are, and also designing the ‘who’ we want to become.
Why the “Woo – Woo” Doesn’t Work
I’m a believer that repeating mantras and thinking positive thoughts definitely have their place in helping us feel better. But if that’s all it took, our lives would already resemble an influencer’s Pinterest feed.
Unfortunately it takes much more effort than that to produce real change in our lives.
Trying to discover our identity after a lifetime of people–pleasing and pretending to be someone else requires intentional work.
Identity is a collection of intentional decisions, practiced daily.
-Vicki Pike
Real results come from deciding “I am someone who”, and not “I want to be someone who”, or “I wish I was someone who, or (my least favorite) “I should be someone who.”
For example, I decided a few months ago that I no longer wanted to eat sugar or flour.
My reason for the decision was that I now had an intolerance to both and my body reacts negatively when I eat either one.
My decision statement was “I no longer eat flour or sugar”.
I wasn’t telling my brain that I would like to give it up some day, I was telling my brain that I already had. That statement hits very different.
I liked my reason for my decision. It felt valid in my body because it’s something I truly wanted to do for myself.
Once we decide on a new, intentional thought, we need to sit quietly with it for a minute until we actually feel the decision cause a shift inside our body. That feeling puts our brains on notice that something is different now, and our former actions (or re–actions) can no longer be on default.
It doesn’t mean I suddenly stopped craving sugar or baked goods, but when the temptation came up it was easier to say No, because I didn’t have to re-negotiate with myself each time.
The decision had already been made. I would simply recall the feeling of that decision in my body, and gently remind my brain that this is who we were now.
Repeating these thoughts and actions a few times, over a few days, causes us to become the “someone who” that we want to be.
Every intentional decision you honor is a vote for the person you’re becoming.
And once you start repeatedly honoring your decisions, you build the confidence to keep going.
New identities are formed through action, not insight
Even the most intentional of us lose our way sometimes.
Life gets busy, our default brain sneaks in, and the next thing we know we’re back to binging Netflix next to an open bag of M&M’s, telling ourselves we’ll try it again tomorrow.
But we didn’t come this far to keep putting ourselves off.
Once we’ve decided we want an intentional life, we need to keep re-deciding it. Every day. It has to be kept front–of–mind, so nothing else can undermine it.
The game changer for me, and I what I recommend, is keeping a journal and writing in it every day.
I spend 10 – 20 minutes every morning with my journal and a cup of coffee, and I write to remind myself of who I am becoming and what I want to achieve next.
I write about what I’m grateful for, not just in the present, but for what my future life will look like. I write like I’m already her, and I’ve already achieved my goals.
I imagine my ideal future in detail until I can feel it in my body: how it will feel to quit my corporate job (after 39 years) and become a writer and coach while traveling wherever I want, whenever I want.
Left alone, our brains will automatically default to what we’ve always thought and who we’ve always been because it’s comfortable, it’s easy, and there’s no risk in staying where we are.
And for some people that may not be a problem, there is no rule book to mid–life. None of us has to change if we don’t want to.
But whichever path you choose, let it be a conscious choice.
Don’t spend your second chapter letting life happen to you, like many of us did during the first.
Decide what you want your life to look like, and who you want to become within it.
Then be intentional. Do the work to make it happen, and become ‘who’ you want to be.
Discover What’s Possible.