It’s a vital step to happiness.
You can’t help others if you are burnt out.
In midlife we are so often defined by outside elements, like career of family role.
Don’t get lost, it’s not being selfish to take care of No1
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Hi, Christie here on Monday the 15th of February 2021 ready for tomorrow the 16th, when I’ll be broadcasting Episode 27, which is all about finding yourself. And it isn’t all ‘woo woo’ and ‘hippyfied’ to find yourself.
I do think it’s a vital step to happiness, especially in midlife. So we’ll come on to that shortly.
First of all my intro.
I have finished my first edit of my novel, really excited about it, it’s coming together really well. I’ve also written at least four short stories possibly six this past week, and four of them are in a new pen name so that’s exciting as well.
If you’re not aware you can have different pen names and write different niches and different genres under different names and that’s what I’m doing. So that’s a new adventure as well.
I’m posting 500 word stories on medium, and I will put a link in the show notes, so you can go check those out. And why not join me and do some writing of your own, you can use my writing prompts, or make up your own.
I found these fantastic cubes called Rory Story Cubes. You can buy the real thing, or you can get an app on your phone, and it’s a couple of pounds, a couple of dollars. It gives you a shake of the dice and it gives you a brand new writing prompt so why not give it a go.
I’ve also been visiting a previous novel, because I’m writing a sequel, I need to go back it’s quite a while since I wrote the first book, and I need to go back over it. And it’s making me realise how much my language has changed, how much my writings come on in the time since I wrote it.
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I’m a lot more critical. I know my characters better as well. They’ve got more of a voice now because I’m more used them and I spend more time with them.
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If you’re a writer yourself, you’ll understand that your characters become not real but they just become more well rounded the more than we write about them.
I want to just say that – !
Get your work out in public, get your writing finished, move on.
Don’t keep constantly looking back and going over and over and over and over and never publish it because it will never be perfect. If you can’t afford an editor right now, there’s lots of different ways you can self edit, which I can help you with.
Just get in touch and I’ll give you loads of pointers on that.
If you can afford an editor. That’s great. When I got my first book out, I couldn’t, I couldn’t afford one, looking back. Yeah, it needs edited, but I think even if I’d have been editor, it would have still needed more work, because that’s how life is, we change, we develop.
You look back and you think, Oh my word. What was I thinking when I did that? That’s just life, you have to move on.
Learn by it you can go back and edit books later that’s what a lot of writers do. And I’ll be doing that at some point as well, but I just wanted to share that.
Don’t be worried about making mistakes if you do choose to just move on, and you may or may not make that mistake again. But it is no biggie, you can just move past it.
So, coming back to finding yourself.
It’s a very woowoo expression, and I don’t really know why it’s become that. I think because of movies in the 1970s you know, going off for a gap year to find yourself used to come in ‘inverted commas’.
I do think mid-lifers can struggle with this and that’s why the ‘crisis’ element comes in, people lose their identity.
If you think about it, you’re often defined, especially in midlife by other elements rather than yourself and your personality.
You can be defined by work, by your role, by your place in the work environment in the office or in the factory whatever.
You know you can be defined by that, you’re not Mark or Lucy, you’re a manager or a supervisor, or you may even have a rank if you wear a uniform.
That can define you. But it isn’t you.
That is just your job, your job might mean a lot to you, but you shouldn’t be defined by your job or your family role.
You are somebody’s Dad, or somebody’s brother.
A lot of Mums find that struggle at first, because they come from a work environment where they were defined by a career to suddenly only being defined as a mother, and no other element to their personality.
You can also be defined by your past, whether that’s good or bad. It can be a huge defining element, not just to other people, but also to yourself. You may feel that you’ve got this role, you’ve got this title, whatever it may be, and that’s you forever.
You may rebel against it in midlife.
You can feel lost because if you have, as you know I’ve gone through a lot of redundancies, if you do go through redundancy and midlife / society at the moment are going through a lot of that changes at work, changes in career, shut downs, being let go.
Might be a divorce or even your empty nest. It can very definitely make you feel lost because
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you’ve been defined by your family and suddenly your family aren’t there anymore.
Who are you, it can be a bit difficult to sort of explain who you are and feel needed and wanted and feel whole again.
It’s important I think to find your own identity. Within relationships and outside them, and away from work, and especially if career is a big part of your life or a lot of your life.
You know, if you are a manager and you’re in charge of staff, it can be very difficult to put that away. And especially with lockdown and the situations, we’re in at the moment where an awful lot of people are working from home.
You can feel that you never get away from work that you’re having to constantly be accessible to everybody all the time. It can be difficult to put that to one side and it can take a bit of guts to say to your boss
‘You know, yeah I might be at home but no I’m not working, I’m switching my phone off!’
It’s very very difficult I know that, but it is important to try and keep your own identity.
If you totally focused on work 24/7 that will become your defining element, and that isn’t you. That’s just your work as I keep saying.
Find some space it doesn’t matter how small it is.
I don’t necessarily mean physical space but I mean some space in your life to do the things that really make you passionate.
You might say, well, that’s my work. I love my job I absolutely adore what I do, that’s great, but it’s very easy to burn out if that’s the case.
Sometimes in midlife people do literally get to the point where they just walk away because they’ve got to breaking point without realising.
They haven’t made space for things that they need. If you love reading, running, writing, family time, even education and self development, how much time you putting into those elements?
Obviously, if you’re in midlife, you’re not at school anymore, presumably, but it doesn’t mean that you stop learning.
I believe that you learn all your life until you drop. Basically it’s always an education and self development opportunity.
Life Changes – there’s so much exciting technology and things that you’ve heard me talk about this before about AI and all the exciting developments that are going on. It’s really key that you keep up on those for financial reasons for your financial security / personal security in the future.
Do you make time to read about those, are you just constantly on hamster wheel and not really getting anywhere?
Guilt.
You feeling guilty for taking time out? Well don’t. You are the priority. You are responsible for you. You’re responsible for your health. You’re responsible for your happiness no one else is.
It’s not up to your partner to make you happy it’s up to you to make you happy, and do what you choose that makes you happy.
I think it’s Will Smith that often talks about this, he had a defining moment when he realised in his marriage that it wasn’t up to him to make his wife happy, she needed to have her own happiness and find our own space, and he ‘allowed’ her to do that.
I think it’s really important that we don’t feel guilty for being a bit little selfish and looking after number one, because at the end of the day, you’re no good to anybody if you’re not happy, healthy, fulfilled.
Because you’re not going to pass that on to anyone else and share it and feel able to give of yourself. This is really important for parents, that, you know, for your children to see that you’re happy and fulfilled. If they see that you’re making time for yourself. They won’t begrudge you that time, they’ll grow up to know that you need to look after yourself, and it’s not being selfish.
It’s just taking care of what matters.
It can be hard.
I’m not saying that he won’t be. You need to do some self analysis. And that might involve finding things that you’re not particularly comfortable with. You might not like who you’ve become. You might not like where you are either work or personally. But that is something that you really need to look at and analyse and you might need to make small quick decisions. It can take time, but it’s important that you make the time. If you want something badly enough, we always make the time for it. And I think it’s important that
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you make time for yourself whether that just be 10 minutes to sit down while the kettle is boiling while you’re making a cup of coffee whatever you’re doing, to just be you. It might be 15 minute yoga time.
I know that we all have busy lives and know that we’ve got so many pressures on us at the moment and that’s why it’s even more important to look after yourself. Looking after number one became sort of a motto for selfish reasons, and it’s not, I don’t mean it in that way, I mean self care.
Self maintenance really and sanity and looking after yourself is so, so important, so please make time for it.
Book recommendation.
This week I haven’t given you a specific book title. But I want you to go online, you might not be able to go to a bookstore but call a local bookstore.
Find something that you’re really passionate about and would love to indulge but you just either don’t find the time or you’ve neglected it or you’ve just never got around to it, whether it be learning a language, self development which we touched on earlier, some sort of hobby. Maybe you love cars, it might be that you love painting, whatever it may be.
I want you to go and treat yourself to a book on that subject, whatever that subject may be. It’s not a book for someone else. It’s not for anyone else to read. It’s for you, and I want you to commit to buying it.
It might even be better to buy the actual book rather than an ebook so that you’ve got no excuse by getting distracted on your phone when you’re reading it, then you can sit and study it and really get the most out of it.
So you’ve got my permission to go and buy a book that it might be totally impractical, but it might be something that you’ve always wanted to do and always wants to look at always wants to read.
I’ve got a book of Caravaggio paintings, I absolutely adore his work. I’ve not read it yet, it’s got his biography in and I will read it. But that was a treat to myself because I wanted to buy it, I really loved his art and I get enjoyment from sitting and looking at it.
Call to action:
Put something in your schedule or your diary this week., that’s all about you. Just you. Finding yourself, whatever you want to call it, in your diary. Me time / downtime whatever.
I want you to put something in the schedule just like you would a meeting for work or a date or whatever, put it in the schedule. 15 to 30 minutes at least, and stick to it.
And why not put it on repeat, so that happens every week, or just put a reminder to yourself that every week you need to make time.
Alright, so I hope that’s helped because I don’t want you feeling guilty for looking after number one.
If you’re not well and you’re not happy and healthy, you can’t help anyone else.
Don’t forget to get exclusive content on Patreon. I will put the link in the show notes.
And thank you for joining me.
Go look after number one.
Bye.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai