What's lighting your way?

When you feel lost, finding your guiding lights creates your path

It’s really easy in the mess and mayhem of mid-life to feel you’ve lost your way. Often when a woman comes to me for coaching to find clarity or direction, she doesn’t have to completely reinvent her life, or scramble around in the dark for something new. Often it just means looking back to find her guiding lights. 

What are your guiding lights?  Are they shining bright, or do you need to get a cloth and scrub away the dust of domesticity or drama to clean the lens so they shine on your path again?

I was recently asked to give a talk to a group of Transition Year students (in Ireland, there is a Transition year of school available for 15/16 year olds where they focus on the person rather than the academics, so they do varied subjects that aren’t exam driven as well as work experience in the community, and generally relax before they re-enter the exam vortex.)  

My remit was to help them figure out who and what they wanted to be as adults. You know, an easy topic. 

I didn’t want to add to the pressure on them. I wanted to let them know what I know now, as someone who left school with that pressure 30+ years ago: that your life evolves. It grows with you. Sometimes you outgrow parts of it. Sometimes you have growth spurts and there are certainly growing pains.

Growing up, I felt stifled by the prospects, patriarchy and politics of 1970’s and 80’s Belfast. I peered back on my own feelings and fears at that age, about the enormity of answering the question “What do you want to do with your life?” and reflected I was excited and anxious in equal measure. 

I didn’t have a specific job title in mind so that caused some anxiety, but I did have the vibe I wanted, the direction, the sort of path that shone more brightly than some others.  And that was really exciting. (No adults were impressed in the late 80’s however, with “A Vibe”. They expected “An Answer”). 

But what I did have, I see now, where guiding lights. Sometimes they were blaring beams and other times faint flickers, but guiding lights all the same that have strangely, wonderfully, chaotically, and clearly led me to this exact place in my life; one that still doesn’t have a box-tickable job title, but has a vibe - that valiant, vibrant vibe, I yearned for so much. 

So I told them to find their guiding lights. To listen, learn and lean towards those lights, now at this early stage, but also throughout their hopefully long, and luscious lives. There are stages of your life - entering adulthood, but also midlife - where you have to make decisions. 

It’s what I tell my clients, even when (especially when) they face a crossroads (or often a spaghetti junction) at midlife: Search out and follow your guiding lights. 

As I peered back and pursued my life, I realised guiding lights shone bright from an early age.  But they don’t always have to. Sometimes they drop like stars into your life. An incident. An accident. An exposure or a discovery and your light is ignited. Follow the light. 

There is no path you choose. There is no path until you walk on it. No-one has walked your path. You will not walk anyone else’s path. You create your path with every step.  Step into places where your guiding lights are shining and that path will feel the most inspirational and nourishing. That’s not to say the path will be easy, necessarily. Or always beautiful. Or without its potholes and thorns. But it will be the path most lit. 

So what are the guiding lights? 

As I spoke to these young people looking outwards towards their futures, so, so much of it unknown, I asked them to also look inwards, to delve into, and dwell on, the things that ignite, inspire or involve them:

• The things that matter to them, even if that doesn’t necessarily make sense. 

• The things that they do with ease, that are their talents, even if they’re not a seemingly translatable into a job title.

• The things that absorb them, excite them, foster curiosity, where they enter a zone, even if that’s not on the school curriculum.

You can choose subjects and courses, and later, careers and lifestyle choices, but if you keep your eye on the guiding lights, they will weave their way through them.  I see that in my own life. 

When I was a teenager, I was intrigued by the BBC war correspondent Kate Adie. The sense of adventure was certainly appealing. But I think it was also her storytelling that intrigued me. Books were my exploration into life, the “out there-ness” and so words, writing and storytelling spoke to me.

That was my first guiding light. That’s all it was… a light on a certain path. It’s not the path necessarily. It’s a spotlight on something that ignited me.  That light led me to working in the non-profit sector for many years, using my words to tells the stories of those who couldn’t. That light led me to writing more and more until I became a published author and writer. That pathway has had many twists and turns but it’s always been about storytelling and words. 

I’ve had a complicated relationship with feminism all my life. As a teenager growing up at a time when misogyny was rampant, I always knew supporting women and fighting for fairness was important to me but I had no idea how. I kept interested, kept learning and so when the time was right and I went back to college in my 40’s to study psychology and become a coach, it didn’t occur to me to do anything else but be a midlife coach for women; to help them fight through the years of conditioning that holds them back from putting themselves first or investing in their lives. That has been a consistent guiding light, and it brought me here. 

Something I’ve always been good at is articulating. That’s it. That guiding light has led me into roles and experiences in communications, PR, journalism, fundraising, marketing, teaching, writing and now coaching and public speaking. Standing in front of a room full of people, or on TV or radio is my comfort zone. It’s not a job, but it was always a guiding light. 

Just like those Transition Year students transitioning from teenagers to adults, midlife is often a time of transition when we hit those crossroads or spaghetti junctions. You either started off with laser focussed trajectory and ended up with a complicated career, a relationship based on reality rather than the rom-com version you aspired to, care curveballs you could never have imagined (partners, kids, parents, dogs), and things that were important when you were “young” like fitness, health, fun and frivolity are like poltergeist in your house - you know they’re there in the background but whenever you confront them, they scare the beejaysus out of you because they are ghostly and not a real part of your life.  Or you blundered through, doing what you thought you were supposed to, with no real connection to what you really wanted. So now it’s time to transition, to look to your guiding lights.

So often my coaching is helping my clients untangle the various junctures and which-ways of that spaghetti junction, deciding where to turn at the crossroads, or simply to decide what is next. And often, they come to me in tears because they want the answer by next Tuesday.  They add it to their to-do list:

✅ Book chiropodist

✅ Pick up the child’s new glasses

✅ Buy turmeric because you know it’s meant to be good for you but you’ve no idea how to use it

✅ Work out your entire life purpose and mission and begin a whole new life... 

…….by end of play on Tuesday. 

Yeah, that’s not how it actually works. 

It takes time, energy and thought. I know. So does the dinner. But this is better (and calorie-free). 

Sometimes your guiding lights are glaringly obvious. Sometimes they’re hidden behind the pile of laundry.  But if you trace back though your life - work, relationships, interests, hobbies, passions, moments of curiosity, you will realise they have been shining all along.  And if you haven’t created the path they are showing you, you still can. Because… your life is always evolving and growing. 

I think about where I am now  and I could never have imagined it….. and yet. With the foresight of hindsight, there have been signposts all along the way. Every path I’ve created has somehow always been highlighted by those three lights.

I haven’t been dropped out of space to this spot where I spend my working life coaching, speaking and writing about women’s lives. I never ticked that box at school but it certainly ticks all my boxes now. 

What are your guiding lights?  Are they visible like lighthouse beams or do you need to go looking? I’d love to know.

For my paid subscribers, you can download an exercise below that will help you piece together some of the guiding lights search. 

For anyone interested in coaching, or doing some self-discovery work, details of my coaching programmes, my one hour Discovery Coaching Sessions and my self-guided book Midlife, redefined: Better, Bolder, Brighter are on my website www.themidlifecoach.org