Cancer was not on my vision board. I’m the healthiest person I know and have no family history of cancer. Yet there I was on my son’s 21st birthday hearing the news, “You have breast cancer.” Why me? How did this happen? Will I lose my hair? A tsunami of fear flooded my mind as I wondered how the dime-sized tumor would transform me and my life.
Little did I know when I was writing, Rock Your Midlife: 7 Steps to Transform Yourself and Make Your Next Chapter how I would soon see the lessons unfold. My own 7-step signature system became my Rosetta Stone providing clues to deal with a life-threatening diagnosis that felt undecipherable.
After working with hundreds of clients, I see many women struggling at midlife. They don’t know how to handle the challenges, stressors, and unraveling that so common. Our youth obsessed culture is clueless. Google “midlife” and what appears is crisis.
Loss of confidence, low energy, empty nest, caring for aging parents, finding work-life balance, health issues, financial problems, menopause … there’s a ton to deal with. Self-doubt, fear, and low self-esteem make changing your habits and trajectory feel impossible. Simply surviving is hard. Thriving and creating a new you, daunting.
That’s why I wrote Rock Your Midlife. I wanted to provide an encouraging roadmap to help you become the woman you want to be FAST because time is precious, and the world needs you. Follow the steps sequentially or pick one that resonates with you, and I guarantee that you will let go of the old “not____ enough” beliefs and make room for a magnificent next chapter.
Step 1: Know Yourself
Your midlife adventure starts with becoming authentic. Why? When you know yourself, you trust yourself and can say yes from the bottom of your heart and the top of your soul to the life you are creating. Conversely, if you don’t know yourself, you may create a life that looks good on the outside but doesn’t make you happy because it’s not in alignment with your true self.
Don’t worry if you have no idea how to do it. Begin by discovering your strengths (yes, you’ve got those), weakness (yes, you have those too; we all do), passions, desires, and dreams.
Start today, not in an imagined future when you like yourself more, lose weight, change jobs or partners, get out of debt or {fill in the blank}.
Getting to know yourself is fun; after all, you’re unique and interesting. Spend time with yourself. Ask deep, meaningful questions like: What lights me up? What accomplishments am I proudest of? As a kid, who did I want to be when I grew up? (My book, Rock Your Midlife, contains dozens of journaling prompts to support you.)
Stay curious. Keep asking: Who am I? Own the truth of who you are. You are free, you are powerful, you are good, you have value. You are the author-ity—master, leader, author—of your life.
Step 2: Love Yourself
Figuring out who you are naturally leads to deepening your relationship with yourself, which is the most important relationship you will ever have. Partners, parents, children, friends will come and go, but you’ll spend on average about thirty thousand days with yourself.
Unfortunately, we’re often nicer to other’s than ourselves. However, you can flip the script and learn to treat yourself like a good friend by practicing self-compassion, the “how-to” of self-love. Self-love isn’t just about getting massages and mani-pedis and lighting lavender candles. Being kind to yourself especially when you are suffering is how you deeply love yourself.
And love is free and abundant. Regardless of your relationship status, you can be in love 24/7—madly, passionately in love with yourself. You don’t need the perfect partner to feel loved, nourished, and whole. The only person who can fill your inner void is you.
Step 3: Energize Yourself
Riding the waves of menopause and midlife can leave you dizzy and exhausted. There’s so much to do and so many people to care for. Your plate can overflow, especially if you’ve forgotten how to say no to others and yes to yourself.
What’s exciting is that you can change daily habits and behaviors to feel more energized. Start by working on five areas: body, mind, heart, spirit, and relationships. To determine which to prioritize take my Raise Your Vibe Quiz (raiseyourvibequiz.com).
As you get energized, remember two things. Change from a place of self-love not self-loathing. This is key because when you work on yourself from a place of self-loathing, focusing on changing what you don’t want rather than moving towards what you do, you drag what’s wrong with you into your future reality, and then that’s what shows up. Second, be patient. Making lasting energetic shifts takes time.
Start where you are. Examine your lifestyle, and ask: what changes would feel expansive, not punitive? Move more and sit less? Prioritize sleep? Scheduling self-care? Eating more produce and less junk? Starting a meditation, breathwork, or yoga practice? Then set SMART (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-related) goals. If you’re not happy with your energy level take action.
Step 4: Reprogram Your Brain
Due to neuroplasticity, you can literally change brain structure and chemistry. The key is balancing four neurotransmitters — serotonin (responsible for feeling calm, optimistic, and confident), dopamine (responsible for keeping you motivated and energized), and cortisol (responsible for revving you up when necessary), oxytocin (the love hormone).
There are strategies to boost brain health and improve mood, memory, and concentration. Here are five 1) Unplug. To improve focus and concentration, reduce social media and electronics use especially prior to bedtime. 2) Enjoy brain-boosting activities like reading, listening to music, or doing puzzles. 3) Exercise. It enhances memory, increases brain volume, and decreases how age-related brain changes impact cognition. 4) Be mindful. You’ll improve memory and reduce mind-wandering. 5) Declutter mentally to reduce stress and overwhelm and enhance focus.
Step 5: Empower Yourself
Of all my steps this is the one I relied on as a breast cancer patient to advocate for myself. The Oxford Dictionary defines empowerment as “authority or power given to someone to do something”, and “the process of becoming stronger and more confident, especially in controlling one’s life and claiming one’s rights.”
Like all the steps, empowerment is a process. To grow stronger within you stress and nourish empowerment muscles by facing your fears and doing what’s challenging. As a result, you feel more confident and in control. You stop being a victim and become a heroine.
It’s an inside-out process that entails believing in yourself and developing an empowered mindset and vibe especially when life is challenging. To quote Nietzsche or Kelly Clarkson, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”
Step 6: Rehab Your Relationships
Warning: When you transform, certain relationships won’t fit neatly into your new jigsaw puzzle of a life. As you show up authentically, love yourself, and bust out focused, energized and empowered, not everyone will like the new you.
Congratulations—your new Me is emerging! Now you want to be that new me, but what about all those other relationships in which you were a “we”? How do you make the transition?
First, revisit Step 2: the most important relationship in your life is your relationship with yourself. Then follow my three-part Relationship Rehab Process: 1) Let your Good Girl—the people pleaser who puts others before herself, wants everyone to like her, and avoids conflict at all costs—go; 2) Set healthy boundaries, and 3) Communicate powerfully so you use rather than lose your voice.
While not easy, the process will help you balance your relationships so giving and receiving are equitable and your relationships are energizing and fulfilling rather than draining.
Step 7: Enlighten yourself
While this is my favorite step, it isn’t simple or easy. I know, it’s taken me decades to emerge from the spiritual closet. I now agree with the French philosopher and Jesuit priest, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin who said, “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”
Wherever you’re at in your relationship with God or Spirit, let that statement infuse your self-concept. You don’t have to strive or be perfect to be spiritual! You already are a spiritual being. You can experience the Divine at any time. Simply sink into silence, feel into your heart, and you will radiate joy and connect with the piece and peace of God that is inside you.
An 8th Step: Get Unstuck
What I’ve discovered is that there’s also an eighth step: Get unstuck. You can get unstuck by choosing one step to work on. Don’t wait. There never is a “right” or “perfect” moment to start.
Something interesting and infinitely wonderful can happen at midlife. Knowing there is no knight in shining armor and nothing to save you, you save yourself. You mend your own life now because you’re running out of time.
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Make Self-compassion Your Superpower!
Self-compassion is both a life-vest and a parachute. It will save you when you face a crisis AND support you when you step outside your comfort zone and take risks to create a bolder, more beautiful life. Plus, self-compassion can be learned. Practice it regularly and you’ll increase self-love, which is key to Rock Your Midlife. When you love yourself, you stop doing things that insult your soul and you start to attract what is truly in your best interest!
According to self-compassion research Kristin Neff, there are three elements to practicing self-compassion:
1.Be kind to yourself, rather than judgmental.
When you are suffering or stressed be nice to and easy with yourself. Notice your self-talk. Ask: Are your being kind and supportive or harsh and judgmental? Make a list of self-care practices that you already do or would like to do. When you are suffering pull out the list and give yourself what you need.
2.Common Humanity
Remember everyone suffers and makes mistakes. We are perfectly imperfect. It’s part of the human condition. When you realize this, you feel less isolated and alone.
3.Mindfulness
Cultivate awareness around your own feelings especially when you are struggling or suffering. Rather than ignoring your feelings or throwing a pity party, accept them and then practice #1.
Photo Credit of Dr. Ellen Albertson – Karen Pike www.kpikephoto.com/
