Finally Discovering Balance In Midlife
by Daina Puodziunas
 

Often, it’s not until midlife that we have the life experience to extract the wisdom that will give us a balanced life. That’s one of the most precious things about entering midlife. Experience is our teacher only if we take the time to hear what she has to say. Once we start harvesting this wisdom, we will begin to see the blueprint for our personally designed, balanced life. The next step is to begin taking action on that blueprint one step at a time until we feel vital and alive, strong and clear, focused and centered. This is our authentic blueprint for a long and happy life. A blueprint we could not possess... until now.

Once upon a time, I thought that balance referred to the number of balls I could keep in the air without having them all come crashing down on me. I was proud of my super single mom multi-tasking abilities. I thought I was living a balanced life because I was involved in my own spiritual, social and intellectual pursuits while still managing to devote quality time to my daughters.

My body, however, didn’t agree. It gave me the first in a series of wake up calls during my midlife transition. This turned out to be a gift in disguise and helped me find my way back home. Just like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, I found out I was home all along. I had been making my decisions from an entire list of “shoulds” without even knowing it. I needed to connect with my inner Divinity, listen to my heart and understand the language of my soul.

The funny thing was that I thought I already knew how to do that. I had been a spiritual and personal growth junkie for decades. It was only when I was willing to throw out all my assumptions about what I knew or didn’t know, take the time for introspection and rediscover what was important and valuable to me, that my body and my outer life began to reflect my inner life. Only then could I develop my blueprint by which to make big and small decisions such as what kind of work I wanted to do or how I wanted to spend Saturday night. A balanced life is a high quality life and we are the sole judges of what that is.

Achieving balance in midlife begins by excavating your authentic wisdom – the wisdom you have gained from living all of these years and by discovering what is important to you and why. There is no paint-by-number kit for creating a balanced life that fulfills each of our particular desires and makes room for what is missing. It has to come from within you. This is hard for many women as we have been “givers” for most of our lives and being giving is where we feel comfortable. Women often feel selfish focusing so much on themselves.

It takes a lot of courage for most women to turn inward to discover our own enchantments (those things that nourish, delight, awe, energize, inspire and soothe us). Enchantment is the language of the soul. It is the path, like the yellow brick road, that leads us back home to a mind, body and soul connection. It is your soul’s intention for you. There is no wizard, no great and powerful Oz, to show us the way to our enchantments. But we can become our own fairy godmothers in midlife and grant ourselves permission to design a balanced, high quality life – to enchant ourselves.

I invite and challenge you to take time out of your busy life to go on a quest for some midlife magic. Reflect, reassess, rediscover, redesign, realign, regroup, renew and re-enchant yourself. It will be the gift that keeps on giving. Here are some tips to get you started.

Four Steps To Discovering Your Midlife Blueprint For A Balanced Life

1. Set aside an hour a week to reassess what is important, meaningful and valuable to you. Look at one area of your life each week: work, play, relationships, finances, spirituality, social time, time for yourself, mental stimulation, physical activity, etc. What enchants, nourishes, inspires, delights, soothes, stimulates and enhances your life in each of these areas? Be very specific about how and why. How does it make you feel? Where do you feel that sensation in your body? What associations do you have with it? Get to know your enchantments intimately. Make a huge list under each category. More information will come to you in your dreams and from many other places during the week. Record these dreams and occurrences in the same place you are writing your responses to the exercise. It is not because we don’t know the right answers that we get stuck in life, but because we don’t ask the right questions.

2. After you feel finished with each category, ask yourself if your responses are coming from your authentic soul or if you are responding to something you feel you should want, do or feel. Getting in to the habit of questioning our own assumptions is one of the best habits we can develop to guide ourselves back to our authentic souls. Be willing to be radically honest with yourself. If there is any part of your life that reflects someone else’s priorities, write down the changes you need to make so that your beautifully balanced life fully expresses your desires.

3. Ask yourself what an authentically balanced, high quality life would feel and look like during a day, a week, a month and a year so that you can create the feeling place of the rhythm of an ideal life. If you notice any judgments or criticisms coming from your inner critic just let it know that you are doing an experiment right now. You pose no threat to it and are just playing a game of What If and Let’s Pretend like you did when you were a child. You are exercising your Imagineering muscles once again.

4. Start thinking of your life as a creation in progress and play with this process while you begin to implement what you find little by little into your life. Keep modifying, molding, designing like you would a sculpture, garden, picture, home, etc.

Often, it’s not until midlife that we have the data to extract the wisdom that will give us a balanced life.

Coming to midlife has taught me that nothing is more important than discovering what matters most to me, finding a way to balance those things and ditching the rest. Everything becomes a gift then... even my extreme burnout and other wake up calls. My midlife awakening made me realize some hard truths like no one is going to do it for me. I have to go through the discomfort of feeling selfish for a while and I have to be ruthlessly honest with myself. It’s all part of the midlife heroine’s journey that leads to a life of living happily ever after. We all deserve to take ourselves there.

Daina Puodziunas - Just call me Dinah, Midlife Fairy Godmother. Midlife Fairy Godmother Enterprises providies tips, tools and treasures for self aware, fun loving midlife women who are ready to move past obstacles to second half bliss. Join the free Adventurers Club and receive a monthly newsletter, community calls and much more. She can be reached at (616) 754 9672 or visit www.MidlifeFairyGodmothers.com.