Midlife is THE time to reset and refresh your habits

A pedestrian crossing button with a sticker on it saying “Push to reset the world”

Are you a habit hoarder?

Do you ever take time out to pause and reflect on the day to day things that make up the process of your life, and whether those things are still meant to be there?

Or do you just stack up habits, bundling them all into your big bag of autopilot things, that we don’t have to think about, and just keep wheeling them out on repeat?

When I talk about being intentional about what we bring into our lives, and creating a life on purpose, this is one of the things I am talking about - and this week, in a completely different context, I was reminded of the importance of taking time regularly to consciously review, take-stock and if need be to reset and refresh.

(and, fyi - being in the middle of life is a brilliant time to do it!)

A story of old habits

I was chatting to a corporate client about Inclusion and Diversity and their recruitment process (…one of my other work ‘hats’…) and it became apparent that there was a step in their process that didn’t really need to e there.

It had been set up with very clear purpose and intention at the time, but following changes to the way of working across the business, following Covid, it was now proving more difficult to administer in the way that gave them the results they wanted.

Not only that, it also transpired on further questioning that even before the Covid changes, this particular step in the process was not really adding much measurable value to the process overall. It was inconsistently applied, not consistently used, not monitored, and filtered out a tiny number of candidates.

It gave the appearance of being useful and necessary, but the reality was somewhat different.

In fact it was actually creating potential problems.

So I asked the simple question: “Do you really need to keep this part of the process?”

There was a pause of stunned silence (while I took a breath and wondered if I had completely bombed!).

Then PING! A total lightbulb moment…

“OMG! NO! I LOVE you! Let’s just stop doing it!”

Why do I mention this?

We change - so our habits should too!

Because I see the same pattern of holding onto old habits simply because they had a good intention once, and once they worked - so they ‘should’ still work, right?

But of course that’s not accounting for the life experience and changing demands on you that have occurred over the years as you’ve raised a family, or grown a career, or both.

Nor does it account for the physiological and life-stage changes that come with hitting that ‘middle of life’ phase.

Yet we don’t see it, because we’re in it, because we and our lives are super busy, and because we don’t take the time out to press pause and review where we’re at, what we’re doing with out time and our days, and whether that still ‘fits’ or is still helpful to us.

So when work creates overwhelm by creeping into out personal time, and we know that we should be looking after our wellbeing more, we try all the old things that ‘used’ to work, ‘before’.

We tell ourselves we’ll go to the gym - because we ‘used to’ love going to the gym, and we felt SO good afterwards.

But we can’t get motivated to do it. So we don’t.

Then we feel bad about ourselves, and we feel stuck.

Or we physically find the pace of life more challenging, and an injury stops us from doing all the ‘normal’ things we like to do to keep us sane and our parents are getting older and need more of our time, and we just don’t have it - so we feel miserable, and resentful and frustrated.

We are stuck in an old frame of reference, because life has been so full-on we haven’t noticed that the structures we have in place to support us and needs haven’t adapted to keep up with the way our needs, and desires from life, have changed.

So we need to get intentional about shifting things, bringing in new habits and ways of doing things, that align to the woman we are NOW - in the middle of life - not the woman we WERE ten or twenty years ago.

Plus, as the saying goes “old habits die hard” - which imho and experience is full of truth.

Old habits die hard

Because when things are part of our automatic pilot, not only are we often unaware that maybe we don’t need to do them anymore, or that maybe they’re not really working for us quite so well any more, it’s also the case that even if we DO notice, it can be confusing, maybe even fear inducing, to actually CHANGE our comfortable ‘old’ way of doing things into something new and different.

Add to this the identify crisis that often hits with midlife, where facing up to a need to ‘move on’ can bring up all sorts of resistance to getting older, accepting that things are becoming different - and it’s no wonder that we keep going with the tried and tested.

It’s easy.

Even when it’s not really working for us.

But it’s not the path to growth, a calm life or to introducing more sparkle into our days.

So we have to get INTENTIONAL about bringing in NEW ways of doing and being that DO feel good and that will OVER-RIDE those long standing reflexive ways of doing and being.

And if you need further convincing, we can look to nature for some insight here too (as always!).

What nature teaches us about reset and reboot

I have been watching the Blackbirds in our garden for the past few months, since they reappeared after the Winter. I’ve watched them hanging out, grazing on the food when they needed to, and then singing their hearts out, and gadding about; I’ve seen them courting, nesting, and then frantically filling their beaks with as much food as possible, as often as possible, and now they’re starting to look a bit jaggedy and jaded, with feathers looking a bit skewwhiff, and in desperate need of a rest! Now here’s the point at which, as soon as the little ones fledge, the adult Blackbirds will take themselves off to indulge in some self-care: resting, feeding themselves back up again, and moulting and preening their feathers as new ones grow so they are fit and full of vitality to get back to living life to the full again.

They don’t operate on full throttle ALL of the time, for all time.

What I see in us human women is that we forget that we are allowed to take a rest.

In fact, we are SUPPOSED to rest.

To take stock, reset and replenish.

It’s the way nature intended.

But we’ve lost connection with the ‘nature’ within us to remind us.

Our busy humanised lives with the bank of automotic pilot habits, just keeps running on repeat, without much thought.

And we get a growing FEELING that things are not working for us anymore.

We feel tired, dissatisfied, discontent.

Create new habits - on purpose!

So now is the time to start taking back control.

To switch off the autopilot and declutter ourselves from the habits we’ve hoarded that are no longer relevant to the woman we are in the here and now.

It’s time to take on a new perspective, to embrace growth in this new phase of life - and to stop feeling that the middle is messy, and instead, craft it into something a bit more marvelous and magical.

So, if parts of your life are feeling heavy and hard, get curious as to whether there are any habits in amongst it all that are getting in the way of you feeling lighter and brighter. Things that you do because they’re what you’ve always done, but actually don’t feel good right now, or that you just can’t do any more?

Ask yourself:

Is there a different way you could achieve the same result, that feels GOOD for the you that is now?

Do you have to do ‘the thing’? How would it be if you stopped doing it, for a while at least (or asked someone else to do it)? How would it feel to stop it and try something different ‘for now’ and see where it leads?
Could you see this as an opportunity to try some different and new things? Closing one door to allow new ones to open? What can you do that feels good, today?

These are the kinds of questions I ask my 121 clients.

And without fail, the clouds begin to lift, the light beams in and the excitement starts to build - and that’s where the magic is to be found!

Nicole

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