9 habits to take you from midlife muck to your Power Years
It's not uncommon to suddenly feel like you're stuck in the muck in midlife. Make these your Power Years by embracing these 9 powerful habits.
Midlife throwing a lot of questions at you? Start here.
forties
“I try and do something every day to push my own boundaries.”
In her late 40s, Johanna Reynolds is celebrating finding success as a full-time professional painter. She says her shifting her mindset and finding the confidence has been fundamental to being able to make this shift.
“I’m putting a lot of time and thought into how I am living my life.”
Melanie Gordon was a new mom of a 20-month old when she found a lump in her breast. This forced her from new mom mode into survival mode. Her experience with cancer made what was important to her very clear and she's been spending her time since recovering focused very intentionally on those things.
“My 40’s have been a decade of finding my voice and growing my confidence.”
At 48, with no experience in Film and Television, Janice Mendes signed with an agent and within 16 months had worked on 30 projects. An unwavering belief in herself and a desire to have a life that inspires and fulfills her is what's behind her ability to leap.
“Shed illusions and get real with yourself.”
At almost 47, Lina is planning a move from the United States to Canada, growing in her creative life as a poet, and pushing the boundaries of her art by exploring new artforms and collaborations.
“I decided to take full responsibility for my own joy.”
In her mid-forties Marina Dempster, a self-employed visual artist, mentor, and photographer felt like she was constantly busy but not seeing the results of all her efforts. She had dealt with some major losses and upsets and was ready to fall back in love with her life and work.
“Ten years from now, what will you have wished you’d done?”
Monique Kavelaars is a former Olympic athlete, wife, mom, and entrepreneur who became pregnant with her first child at 39 years old and is now helping teams and groups of people work better together.
“I started to hear a little voice inside me asking ‘what else?’.”
I finally turned the tables on myself and answered my own questions about midlife and my story. I talk about my challenges with a very rare congenital issue that cost me my first pregnancy, our early challenges with our daughter's health, and the shifts that propelled me into my midlife transformation.
“The biggest shift for me, after 40, was my power to create the life I want to live.”
Melinda Thomas is a former actor in her 50s who left New York after 20 years and followed her heart to Birmingham, Alabama where her boyfriend lives. She also followed her heart away from corporate America to to entrepreneurship. The power to create the life she wants has been one of the biggest shifts she's experienced in midlife.
“There is a sublime comfort that comes with 40.”
When Mercedes Findlay was laid off from her television job in her late thirties, it was the catalyst for a major midlife shift that helped her find unknown depths of strength, skills, support, and maybe most importantly, her voice.