Your power is in your hand
An invitation to journaling some midlife magic
This post is in two parts… the first is about the power of midlife journaling, of trying to make sense of the mayhem and magic and I offer up my own Daily Midlife Journal Template that I use myself and give to my coaching clients.
The second part is then the launch (very grand word for ‘introduction to’) my new offering for paid subscribers - my Midlife redefined, Daily Journal Guide: 365 days of Checking in with yourself to make the most of, and matter more in, your midlife.
As a writer, I didn’t think to separate my love of writing, reading and words, from my teenage scribblings in endless sticker-covered notebooks, They were one and the same. It was only much later, much more recent in fact, when Journaling (now with a capital J) has become ‘a thing’. That’s not to say journaling is new, given the fact that a lot of history (and herstory) has been gleaned from the private ponderings of famous and not so famous people - the most famous earlier one being the magnificent Meditations by Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, and the more modern popular historic diary of Anne Frank - but in recent years, Journaling (with a capital J and some jazz hands) has most definitely become ‘a thing’ (and not a bad thing).
But back when I was equally engrossed in concealing pubescent spots as wondering if the boy in the caravan across our holiday campsite would ever notice me, it was just a natural way for me to process and make sense of my LIFE (all caps)… which as every teenager knows, is a very complicated, messy thing.
But as every midlife woman knows, midlife can be a very complicated, messy thing. Which is why I’m still working out my life on paper, even though journaling has now, in this Wellness Age (more caps), become Journaling.
I first realised it’s power when I was sitting in my childhood bedroom in 1996, a rucksack bulging with expectation leaning against the wall. I was sorting out my things because my childhood bedroom was about to become the Guest Bedroom now that my childhood was over. I had just turned 26, and having hit the bright lights and dull first-level jobs of London after university for a few years, was back home in Belfast to say goodbye to my family. I was about to embark on a two year adventure overseas, starting with a volunteer programme working with Orang utan in Borneo, and a year of working and backpacking around South East Asia and New Zealand.
As I sat on the floor, surrounded by the rolled up posters of Duran Duran I’d just taken down, I flicked through a pile of old journals. I don’t remember when I began, but I seem to have always had a pen in my hand. There were scribbles and scrolls, ramblings and rants, love-lorn laments and drama-dripping drivels…. the life and soul of teenage angst. I hadn’t journaled as much at uni, but it was still always something I resorted to. I processed, I figured out, I cultivated ideas, I meandered through problems and somehow the page seemed to solve them, or at least give them perspective.
I don’t want to get too woo woo on you here, but a very strange thing happened. I opened a page and read the late night scurrying of my 15 year old self. The pages were filled with more questions than I could answer on who I could be, and what my life would be like. I knew I wanted adventure. I wanted away from the stifling structure that 1970’s and 1980’s Belfast in the height of ‘The Troubles’ currently offered. I wanted to travel, to write, to explore, to “get away”, to live a life bigger than the one I was in. And then I saw an entry, written just over ten years from the day I sat beside my rucksack, about to fly to Borneo and live in the jungle for four months. In it, I wrote these words: “Some day, some how, I will work with Orang utan in the jungle and live an adventurous life.”
Ten years before, I had sowed a seed. I’d forgotten I’d written it, and I didn’t think for a moment I was flying to Borneo just because I wrote those words. (I’d originally intended to go to Africa). But as I know now (and research backs this up) I hadn’t just been wishing on a star. I’d been setting myself a GPS. I’d been exploring directions that I would spend my energy. Now, 30 years later from that entry, as a coach and lover of psychology, I know how powerful that is. How so much of my coaching is helping women switch on their GPS, after years perhaps following the map of the various roles they play as partner, daughter, mother, career-builder.
The power of journalling is that it allows you the space to explore, to question, to determine what is important, and to give your brain a place to focus its attention. And that is the key to living life in response mode versus reaction mode; the difference between being led from your internal needs and desires rather than being pulled by the external demands and expectations on you.
Why I’m creating a year-long Midlife, redefined Journal Guide?
My last book Midlife, redefined: Better Bolder Brighter has had an amazing response from women needing to reset their midlife GPS. I wrote the book I’d needed to read as I looked in the mirror at 45 wondering who the hell was looking back. Somehow, between parenting, partnering and daughtering, I’d lost sight of the me behind the roles. Five years before, my beloved mum had had a catastrophic stroke four days after my third baby was born, catapulting me into my ‘sandwich years’ pressed between the pressures of caring for a baby and two small children, and caring for ageing parents as mum needed 24 hour care. My dad valiantly took on that full time role while I juggled my crazy life with supporting him and mum. Four years into that pressure cooker, my marriage ended and within the year my mum died in my arms. After years of total care-burnout and exhaustion, at 45 I was cast adrift from the family I’d been born into and the family I’d created. I was now single parenting three small kids, supporting my dad and resurrecting a career that was on life support.
Building myself back up, and rebuilding my life has taken me on many adventures, scary sojourns and unexpected places and spaces, but doing so has changed my life. For the better. I am older, bolder, better and brighter. My book tells my story, and those of my clients, because that journey took me back to college to retrain and share the skills and tools that transformed me and my life. It is a self-guide that takes the reader on a journey of self-exploration, planning and finally action. Each chapter covers a theme and ends with a coaching exercise so the reader ends up with their own bespoke midlife (wo)manual. The whole book is geared towards connection to self.
But connection to self is not a once-off action; it is a life-long relationship.
At the start of my book, I suggest we ask a better question of ourselves at midlife. Not the one we often ask at the early part of our lives as we pull away from the family that formed us and tentatively and excitedly lurch into a life formed by the answer to that question: What do I want my life to look like?
We create the check list of milestones and achievements, the boxes we want to tick to show us we are on our merry way to “success”.
This may look something like this:
Education / training
Career
Partner
House
Family
Decent bra
For many women, this is also stapled to the WonderWoman To-do list:
Be beautiful and perfect (but make it seem effortless)
Be Ballsy (but never angry - no anger is not an accessory the looks good on a woman, or so we are told. Shoulder pads, yes. Anger, no.)
Be Clever (but no too clever, especially in certain company)
Be feminine and nurturing (but clip the feminine faults of being ‘too’ emotional, ‘too’ soft, ‘too’ flirty, ‘too’ frigid)
Break glass ceilings (but make sure you clean up the mess).
But you know what life has a funny habit of doing? Laughing in your box-ticking, know-it-all face.
Midlife - now a decades long stage of life from our 30’s to our 60’s - can be a rollercoaster of ups and downs, heart-shrieking fear, slow builds, joy, terror, then sluggish straights, frustration, rushes of adrenalin, rinse and repeat. So you’ve loved. You’ve lost. You’ve soared. You’ve fallen. You’ve survived on so little sleep you didn’t know how possible it was to be alive feeling so dead. You’ve juggled. You’ve struggled. You’ve strived. You’ve survived. You’ve been driven. You’ve been lost. You’ve become a whole new person on top of the person you’ve always been. You’ve taken on roles and responsibilities and become many things to many people.
A funny thing can happen though. Like Russian dolls, those roles and layers can start to smother the core of you, until the outer doll is just a version of you, depending on the role, the day, your hair. The key in life however, is for your core to inform and shape those layers, not be smothered by them.
But that’s not always easy for women today. Midlife is messy. We are living at the coalface of life which is amazing, but can also be overwhelming. Those plates we juggle also need to be filled with food and washed afterwards.
One really important thing we can do is try to stay connected to ourselves amid the mayhem. To check in regularly. To see how you’re doing, the same way you check in with your ageing parents, your kids, your work colleagues, your friends, your partner, your neighbours. To put - and keep - you on that list of care.
So now it’s time to ask the better question. Not what do I want my life to look like? But what do I want my life to feel like?
This involves some soul-searching. Starting with self-discovery. You can make all the plans and checklists in the world, but if you aren’t coming from a place of self-knowledge - when, who, how and where you are at this age and stage of life - you could be making the wrong plans, or signing up to someone else’s (culture, society, Instagram, the school gates, the patriarchy, your partner, your parent)’s version of success.
So if you’re the same person at 40 as you were at 25, the same person at 60 that you were at 40, you’ve stayed still, stagnated. Instead, you will hopefully have grown, evolved, loved, lost, learned and laughed and if you don’t keep track of that you might be living via out-dated paradigms, old fashioned limits, unhelpful ideals. You also want some skin in the game on how you want to grow, evolve, love, lose, learn and laugh in the years ahead. Journaling can play a powerful part of that path-finding.
Why journaling works.
The goal in life is not to be happy 100% of the time, but to be able to live through a wide range of experiences and emotions and stay connected to yourself.
The process of putting down what’s in your head onto paper has an impact. It helps your brain make sense of the tornado of thoughts, feelings and experiences that your busy lives swirl around you. It’s too easy to push forward with your head barrelled down to survive. Journaling helps you thrive amid the mayhem of midlife.
It is self-expression, self-examination, processing thoughts, dreaming, exploring, reflecting, venting, decompressing, liberation, problem solving, mulling, musing, choosing, and recording where you are, who you are and how you are in these moments of your life.
Secondly, for me anyway, it’s the time. Even a few minutes at the beginning of the day or the end of the day, or whenever you take a break, or on the bus home… the time you take to just think about you is sometimes all it takes to keep that connection to self. So much of our lives is output. So much. So much is being the practical parent, partner, daughter, sister, friend, colleague. It can leave little space to be something to yourself.
Over and over, the research indicates that journaling improves your health. It helps your brain focus, decompress, name feelings, and find clarity so you can get unstuck and take action.
Reflection gives you perspective, a crucial sanity-saving element we often miss in our mile-a-minute lives.
It’s been shown to improve your emotional intelligence, your awareness, self-knowledge. It’s also a really important way to explore gratitude, to take a beat to realise, remember and recognise that actually, amid the shit-shows, there are glimmers of beauty, moments of connection, sparks of purpose and passion.
Journaling dos not have to be poetic prose or beautiful sentences. It can be scruffy and scrolling, it can be bullet points and diagrams, it can be cobbled together thoughts and half-assed meanderings. It can be short and long, ramblings and rantings, coded shorthand or letters of love to yourself.
As a coach, as a Recovering Perfectionist and as a women determined to keep connected to myself amid the mayhem of midlife, journalling, reflecting, processing with writing has been part of my survival and thrival routines. And so, it’s a natural next step to create an active and proactive journalling guide based on the process explored in my book. This can be a standalone, or an accompaniment to Midlife, redefined: Better Bolder Brighter.
I have a daily journal practise, and for all my lovely subscribers (I appreciate you so much!) as a New Year gift because I’d love you all to know and benefit from the power of journaling I’m attaching my own Daily Midlife Journal Template I use myself, and give out to clients and participants of my regular Happier Habits Adventures.
And to my lovely paid subscribers who help me continue as a writer as well as a coach, I am launching my Midlife, redefined Journal Guide prompts over the coming year.
I’m so excited to start this adventure with you, and alongside you. Every two weeks I’ll be posting 14 daily prompts, along with a very short introduction to the theme (triggers and glimmers, for example) and why they’re important to be aware of.
There will be three clear sections: Self-Discovery; Purpose, Passion and Purpose; Action and Living in Intention. I’ll cover them in two 6-month cycles (different prompts second six months, but they all interweave and so the second cycle will be deeper because of all the reflections from the first).
Each Section will have eight weeks of prompts, divided into weekly themes.
Format
So as I post prompts for the next 365 days (14, fortnightly) I will take you on a journey. You can start at any time, as they’re not date specific. It also means if you miss a day or a few days, you can just pick it up where you left off. There is no perfect way to do this - just show up for yourself as much as you can.
So the first 6 months will look something like this:
Section 1 - Self-Discovery (2 months)
Week 1 - Very short intro and 7 prompts
Week 2 - Very short intro and 7 prompts
To Week 8
Section 2 - Purpose, Passion and Priorities (2 months)
Week 1 - Very short intro and 7 prompts
Week 2 - Very short intro and 7 prompts
To Week 8
Section 3 - Action and Living in Intention (2 months)
Week 1 - Very short intro and 7 prompts
Week 2 - etc
To Week 8
And then a second cycle of the three sections with new prompts.
Each day will have the same format:-
A section heading - to remind you of what part of the map you are on
A daily prompt to answer - this is me just opening up the ideas for you to explore. A one word answer mighty be enough; a sentence or an essay. Your choice on any given day.
What am I grateful for? - this can be for today, your life in general, you, anything.
What is my intention for myself today? - this is the holy grail of living well. To be in charge of the ship not dragged behind it. To check in with how you are and what you need. As the prompts develop this will become easier.
Just to get you warmed up, for these next few days I want you to get into the habit of journaling and to use the general Daily Midlife Journal Template above. And below, I’m going to give you a prompt to mull over the next few days to get you thinking and then I’ll post the first set of 14 daily prompts on Sunday and then every two Sundays thereafter.
Thank you for being on this journaling journey with me, and at the end of your year (whenever that starts!) you will have deepened, strengthened and empowered your relationship with yourself…. the most important relationship in your life.
Let’s get started!
Week1 & 2 are here.
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