Veered off course this year?

Let's veer somewhere better.

Dec 04, 2024

Quick note before the main post…..I’m launching a little New Year Special… called Breakthrough 2025 - Your Year to Thrive, two empower hour coaching sessions plus a copy of my book Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter. All the details are below but it is the perfect gift for yourself or a loved woman in your life, to start the year on track.

Have you veered off course?

It’s easy to do.

You check boxes, say yes to opportunities and follow the next distraction and before you know it, you’re living a life, or working in a way you never actually intended. You think you’re on track but then you do a check in a realise you never signed up for this level of work/life imbalance, or domestic drudgery unfairness.

This is a great time of year to look back and see if there has been any veering off in your relationships, health, fitness, boundaries, balance, money, self-care and where you might need to course correct.

🤔 Where have you let a relationship loose some energy?

🤔 Where have you stopped tracking your budgeting / exercise / healthy eating / mindfulness?

🤔 Where have you dropped a healthy habit that was making headway but not as fast as you wanted?

🤔 Where has your life lost some balance?

🤔 Where have you unconsciously let someone or something steal time away from you that was for you to do something for yourself?

And NO! I am not gearing up in my veering off lament to cheering on New Year Resolutions. I hate them, so they will not be appearing on these pages.

But a little course correcting is always a good thing.

I know one thing I wanted to do more of this year was put the effort into dating… but I veered off that pretty quick because life got busy and so I need a little course correction (given that Keanu Reeves didn’t spontaneously realise I exist and turn up at my door to whisk me away from the laundry piles).

My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer in January and so several of my plans took a veering and certain things had to fall behind (my new book for one). That’s ok,… I’ve just course corrected by changing my deadline and getting back to small amounts of writing often (the large amounts of writing regularly isn’t working). But when I check in, I realise what I have done is focus on my health and fitness more this year. A veering off in a good direction.

And that’s life. You set intentions, you veer, and - if you’re paying attention - course correct. Life isn’t linear. It’s a haphazard hijacking of your well-laid plans on a rollercoaster of hair-on-fire harriedness and exhausting dips (see my column on peaks and troughs here.)

So veering is normal.

However, while veering off course is one thing; drifting into a different life altogether is another.

And that’s really common too, especially for women who can spend years with our heads barrelled down in survival mode not really paying attention to where we are going.

You veer off for lots of reasons; you get distracted, you face a challenge that sets you on a very different course, you say yes to something based on an external reaction rather than an internal response. You just get busy coming and going, you forget to be intentional about who you are becoming.

I had a Breakthrough Clarity session a couple of weeks ago. It was a man (who clearly didn’t mind being asked about his stage of peri-menopause on my pre-chat questionnaire!) who had been to one of my corporate talks.

At 51 he was looking at the next 15 years of his working life knowing he didn’t want to continue doing what he was doing. He had built up an impressive career and held a really good position. But…. he wasn’t doing what he wanted to do. He had increasingly been offered managerial roles (as is often the way with the patriarchal career ladder model) and had ended up far removed from the more creative, solutions-focused, team-building work he actually loved. He felt stuck. There were changes coming up in the business and he knew his next decision was going to set his pathway for the next 15 years.

So I asked him to just plot back his career journey on a sheet of paper and mark the places he had started to veer. He may not have done anything wrong per se but his eye had been on a different ball (“promotion is best”) rather than his long term quality of life. Especially when we’re younger, we often say yes to opportunities and offers because our main focus is money or status… but as we get older, we can course correct by making decisions around money, status and / or quality of life, satisfaction, work/life balance. I’ve written about the idea of repurposing our careers here.

So on this sheet, I asked him to think about the reasons he accepted those jobs that started the veer into a different path than he now wishes he was on. He could identify them easily and also see why he made the decisions he did. There was no drama to the veer…. Just a slow slide away from the joyful stuff, towards the better paid, ego-stroking options. He had been offered positions that suited the company and he hadn’t considered what had really suited him. Again, not uncommon. He saw the reasonings he had made with each decision and realised he had different priorities now. Different aspirations. Armed with that, he can try and course correct in his decisions over the next couple of years.

I have another client who is 51 too, and she’s wants to step back into the workspace after years focusing on the family. She is scared because before she gave up her job when it all got too much, she had veered off track so much, she now associates work and family as being a highly stressful experience. She had just kept saying yes to offers and opportunities without thinking about the consequences. Now, in order to course correct, she can take her knowledge of the struggle to juggle, plus her new found space in her life, and repurpose her career to fit her life with intention. Course correcting means she builds / repurposes her work around the lifestyle she now wants, rather than just taking an opportunity / job without putting it in the context of her wider needs. This will likely go on my gravestone but I’ll say it again… context is everything.

Course correcting

Course correcting often means just learning from mistakes, adjusting your priorities, realising you need different parameters on a decision when offered a job or opportunity. It might mean setting or resetting boundaries, building new habits, focussing your energy on a particular aspect of your life alongside all the other day-to-day distractions.

I have veered off hugely this year by letting boundaries and balance slip when it comes to my home and single parenting. In a frenetic year of exams and change, I have let my teenagers off the hook waaaaaay too much for the chores and supporting tasks in the house. I need to course correct. That, or my two day tantrum I’m currently having will turn into a tsunami of pain for everyone. I am usually Elf on the Shelf on Steroids around Christmas, but right now I feel like the Grinch. So I am course correcting. I am reasserting some rules and being really clear on my expectations. I am also linking my expectations to consequences. It’s hard work and there is push back which feels emotional. But if I don’t course correct now, I’ll veer so far off what I need, my only resort will be to abandon my parental responsibilities and go full Eat Pray Love. And I do love them. They are fabulous girls…. But like any teens, once they spy an inch of a chink in your armour, they take a mile of your sanity. So Domestic Course Correcting Mission is a go.

So have a think about this year. Maybe even plot it out. Where have you veered off course slightly, and where do you need to course correct?

And until 31st December, you can book my New Year Special (or gift it to a pal or sister) but the sessions can be taken any time before or after the new year. Breakthrough 2025 - Your Year to Thrive, is a package of two empower hour coaching sessions plus a copy of my book Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter for just €250. (Normally one breakthrough Clarity Coaching session is €150). If you’re feeling stuck, need a change or want to get a grip on your life, this will give you the space, guidance and focus to make sure next year is YOUR year. As always, my paid subscribers get a 10% discount.. just email me at alana@alanakirk.com.

I absolutely love hearing from you, so please join me in the comments below (if you’re reading this in an email, please click on the link below to go through to the website to join the conversation.)

Veered off course this year?

Let's veer somewhere better.

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