“Your purpose in life is to find your purpose and give your whole heart and soul to it.”
― Buddha
What is going on with my body? This was a question I seemed to ask myself everyday for the past couple of years. As you hit a certain age your life seems to start to change quickly (again) and I am wondering if finding your new purpose in a changing world may be the key to unlocking your motivation.
Getting lost on my way into middle age
As I enter middle age, or maybe at this point honestly as I get comfortably settled into my new age bracket, I realize how different my life is from just 10 years ago. My body is changing with hormones shifting, hot flashes keeping me up at night, my hair is strangely brittle, new wrinkles and gray hairs pop up every week and whatever I do my weight either seems stuck or goes up.
What worked 10 years ago doesn’t seem to work. As a health coach I spent years pouring over books about inflammation and nutrition which has led me to lots of knowledge about both the nutrition and the behaviors that go into creating lasting change. I have tried to get my body back into my old exercise routines which has left me feeling tired, hurt and unmotivated. And worse of all, resentful.
Nothing seemed to work. Nothing.
This fall I decided to stop forcing myself and my tired aching body into habits that used to work but no longer seem to serve me well, and instead focus on my life as a whole.
Who am I as I approach 50? I am not the same person I was 10 years ago, and my life is very different from what it was a decade or two ago.
I realized that I had gotten a bit lost along the way.
As I talk to other women dealing with perimenopause and menopause this is a theme that keeps coming up. Women at this age deal with and do a lot. Change is hard and this period seems to include a lot of changes. Our bodies are changing and so are our lives. Our families change as children grow up and instead of toddlers some are now parenting teenagers which is a whole new challenge. Some of us are becoming empty nesters or learning to accept that children were not part of our life path. Our parents are getting older and some of us have lost parents, friends and other family members. Careers have taken shape; some are at the peak of their careers dealing with the stress that comes with all the increased responsibilities, some have lost jobs, and some of us realize that our careers did not become what we had hoped and planned for. Our relationships change and some fall apart as our children leave. Some people grow apart as our needs and interests change.
For me personally, the loss of my parents meant that grief was a new and constant companion that was fueled also by the loss of other loved ones as well as the loss of those things that never came to be and the possibilites they represented. I felt this grief emotionally and also physically.
Finding purpose in change
This honestly sounds quite depressing but it doesn't have to be. Change can also mean hope.
Over the last year I have focused a lot of my attention on learning more about resilience, purposeful living, optimism and how these impact our health and wellbeing. I realized that I was doing things in the wrong order. I was trying to build habits and routines on a very unstable and shifting foundation.
So I went back to the beginning and took classes and read many books in the field of positive psycholog. Harnessing the power of purposeful living, resilience and optimism through greater knowledge and easy exercises has given me new motivation to build a new foundation for my life. This in turn has helped me find the motivation to make changes to support a healthy lifestyle in middle age. Those pieces may be the same, healthy diet and daily exercise, but the whys and the hows have changed.
For me it all started with purpose after I took a wonderful online course given by Professor Vic Strecher at the University of Michigan. He recommends starting by thinking about what the themes of your life are.
So until next time I leave you with two questions; what is the overarching theme of your life and how would you describe yourself when you are at your best?
Kommentare