Where are your days taking you?

Weeks 21 & 22, Midlife Journal Guide

Me on a sunset swim guided by my new intentions to live more valiantly

As part of my year long Midlife, redefined Daily Journal Guide, I give you 14 daily prompts every two weeks to help you journal each day (or as many as you can muster) to get, and stay, connected to yourself. The prompts below for the next two weeks are about starting to live with greater intention and checking in to see what’s working and what’s not working in your life. You can start this journalling guide at any time of the year because it’s not date related: The daily prompts from Weeks 1 to 20 are here.

Midlife Manifesto

When we start out on our adult life, creating that mental checklist (and for some of us life-long journaling peeps, written checklist) of how we want our lives to look. And now in midlife, whatever stage of your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s or even 60’s you’re in, it’s important to set a new set of goals, aspirations and drives now that you’ve checked some of those boxes, realised some of them weren’t what you really wanted, or some didn’t work out the way you thought. Because as we know, “Life” isn’t like Santa who reads your checklist… “Life” can throw anything at you, and not care one bit what’s on your checklist. You’ll have lived, loved, laughed and lost and so, it’s critical in the mile-a-minute messy midlives we are living today, to reassess, readjust, adapt, really connect back into yourself and checkin to figure out what’s important now, and what you need to become the person you want to become for now and into the next few years. The lovely writer Cheryl Strayed has written that instead of asking the early-life question, “Who am I?”, when we get to midlife, we ask the better question, “Who am I, really?”

As we come to the last month of the first half of this Midlife Daily Journal adventure together, you have been asking yourself that in a wide variety of ways. Now we are honing in, not on a new checklist as such, but on a new guiding light. A new North Star to guide you onwards, or as I like to call it, your Midlife Manifesto.

Part of that is building on the prompts from the last few weeks on your habits and goals and daily actions. It’s being intentional about your daily actions so that you are not just given the pathway by that guiding light, but that you are taking individual steps each day to get there. Deciding how you want each day to feel, and being intentional about certain areas of yourself within each day - your physical self, your emotional self, your mental self, your purpose and your passion. I call these your Midlife Daily 5: core elements that you decide is the theme (not action) for each of these to guide you intentionally each day. So, for example, my theme for my physical element is MOVE. Note, it’s not an action, because then I’ve ‘failed’ if I can’t fulfil that very specific action on a particular day. So instead I commit to MOVE every day and that can look like, depending on my time, the weather and my energy, a run, yoga, weights class, dance in my kitchen. The key is that every day I’m intentional about moving. And so I have a theme that relates to each of these core Daily 5.

For those of you newly following me on Your Midlife Matters (thank you for being here!) I’ve already explained how this year-long Midlife, redefined Daily Journal Guide adventure with yourself will work in Power is in Your Hand. You can start this journalling guide at any time of the year because it’s not date related: The daily prompts from Weeks 1 to 20 are here.

In this year long adventure with yourself, this opportunity to spend a few minutes every day (or as many days a week as you can) thinking about yourself will transform your relationship with yourself and to matter more in your own midlife and to build self-knowledge and empower yourself to live life for you.

A quick reminder we are now in the third section - Taking Action and Living with Intention. The first part was Self-Discovery and the second part was Passion, Purpose & Priorities. Then we repeat these directions (with new prompts) for the second 6 months.

For ALL my lovely subscribers there is my free Midlife Daily Journal Template in my previous post here which you can use as a guide each day - and what I personally use every day.

For just €5 per month, this Midlife Daily Journal Guide (and lots of other content and discounts on coaching) is for my paid subscribers.

So let’s get into the prompts for Week 21 and 22 of your journaling journey.