A 5-Step Method For Real Happiness During Midlife Transitions

Your life can look “wrong” on paper and still be the beginning of your happiest chapter. We talk about what happens when midlife transitions go south: an injury that takes away a beloved sport, a move that leaves you lonely and questioning yourself, a sudden event that forces a career shift, or that heavy feeling that the old drive and meaning just are not there anymore. Rather than pushing toxic positivity, we focus on something more useful: learning how to make yourself happy as a real skil...

• 0:09Speaker 00

  Hello and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. Guys, welcome back. I feel like I haven't been recording for ages. But the truth be told, I've been recording quite a lot of interviews past week. And so I managed to only release one episode to you. But hopefully you enjoyed that one with Alon Race and his amazing hero's journey that happened inside that allowed him to achieve such a just fascinating transformation in the results, in business, in this personal impact and wealth.

• 0:52Speaker 00

  But it all, as Alon shared, it started within. At some point, the most transformational moment of his life, his career, his business, was the moment when he realized that the only reason why he either achieves or doesn't achieve certain results was inside of him, his personal growth and development. And once he started focusing on that, everything else changed. And you can listen to that episode in its entirety, which I've been getting such great reviews. And people were sharing it more than any other episode and sending me thank yous

• 1:35Speaker 00

  and all the takeaways that they got from that episode and saying, yeah, some good stuff there. So listen to that episode with Alon Race. It's the one before this one. Today, guys, I want to share with you a little bit of fascination with, in my personal life, what I absolutely love exploring these days, coming back to my roots, what fascinated me when I was a kid, when I was a teenager, for whichever reason. And as always, you're gonna get very simple, practical tool to help you navigate turns and transitions and twists in your own life journey.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  Specifically, a life journey when it takes you on a loop or it takes you somewhere where you didn't want to go, you know, especially in midlife. It feels sometimes that a lot more things are taken away from us, things that we don't necessarily wanna give up or separate always with. But sometimes it feels like a lot more things are taken away than we are given. But no matter what, guys, no matter how it feels, we can be happy with exactly how our life is, not pretending to be happy, but truly genuinely happy with what is, how our life unfolds.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  And maybe, just maybe, realizing that that is exactly how our most, our happiest, most fulfilling life is supposed to go versus what we expected it to go. And then it didn't quite turn out that way. And you're gonna learn, you're gonna have a five-step, very simple process that will help you to create more happiness, more joy, more genuine fulfillment in your life, no matter what life gives you on any given day. And I would argue that is one of the most important skills, to make yourself happy.

• 3:40Speaker 00

  You know, all the sages and the wisest people and philosophers and thinkers and meditators, that's what they talk about, learning how to make yourself happy. And it is a skill and there is a process. And you're gonna learn one of those really good processes that I learned from people wiser, smarter and more enlightened than myself. I'm gonna be reading to you parts from the blow that I just finished, "The Many Doors to Your Happiness You Haven't Tried Opening Yet." Chase the Feeling, Not the Thing. I'm gonna open up with a client's quote, not word by word quote,

• 4:24Speaker 00

  but something that I heard quite a few times working with ambitious, purpose-driven midlifers who kind of lost their way and a little bit of the joy and happiness and drive and fulfillment and meaning that they used to have. The quote, "But it gives me this feeling of being alive and groundedness. It makes my life feel meaningful." A client was frustrated with not being able to do rock climbing after injury. Another one. And then I replied, "And then it gets you injured and you can't show up for other parts of your life, also important, like family or the work that's important to you. Do you think it's worth the trade-off?"

• 5:12Speaker 00

  Before, guys, before I left home many, many years ago to study at a university in a city far away, I loved my life, being close to family, my neighborhood, my home, the comfort, the familiarity of it all. And yet I chose to leave. In my dorm room at uni, those first few weeks that I moved to that another city, Kuman, if you're curious, in Siberia, Russian Siberia, I cried those first few weeks consistently. Everything felt boring and comfortable and familiar. I would talk to myself like, why did I do that? Why did I leave? Why didn't I stay?

• 5:56Speaker 00

  And yet, deep down, I knew it was the right choice, the way to explore my life, to grow into the person I was becoming.

• 6:07Speaker 00

  There were relationships in my life that also were comfortable, good even. And yet, some was inside of me said, "It doesn't feel right. You gotta take a different turn here." It was uncomfortable, scary. And every time I listened, I felt that peace, maybe not right away when I had a lot of doubts. I'm like, Angela, did you do it again? Did you just screw it all up? But I felt the deeper kind of peace, even when I didn't know why.

• 6:41Speaker 00

  Another story from my life, 15 years ago, so I had a really bad accident. Six broken ribs, a shattered shoulder blade, a punctured lung.

• 6:52Speaker 00

  It forced a turn in my career and in relationship. I thought I had it all figured out and the path was so clear and that that happened. Part of me was bitter, resistant. Why did this have to happen to me? Why right now? I was so sure that that path I was on before the accident was the right one.

• 7:15Speaker 00

  Then at some point, I had to sit down and make peace with what was and ask myself, what if this is the right path? What can I try to make myself happy still? I looked at my options while recovering, not having much to do, but a lot of thinking. And then I signed up for an integrative health coaching course in the US with integrative, what is it, Integrative School for Integrative Health or something like that in New York City. Today, I think it was the best thing that could have happened to me back then. I also reconsidered my biking habit. That was the cause of my accident. Maybe, I thought to myself, I could get the same chills from speeding on rollerblades

• 8:00Speaker 00

  with a lot less chance of dying. Turns out, I could. I love my rollerblades these days. Yes, I get some bruises, but nowhere near close to dying and broken all of my ribs.

• 8:12Speaker 00

  Today, I'm still finishing that. I was listening to Robert Greene on the Huberman Lab Podcast. His whole plan for writing his new book, Sublime, I haven't read it yet, but on my list after I'm finishing the book before Mastery. So his new book, Sublime, his whole plan for writing it was to chase all these crazy experiences, from psychedelics to swimming with dolphins to get this sublime feeling. And then he had a stroke and he couldn't leave his house.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Frustrating to say the least, wouldn't you say, guys? But he realized it forced him to go slower, deeper into his writing and made him a better writer, a better thinker.

• 9:02Speaker 00

  It woke up some missing, what felt like missing emotional part of him. He couldn't type on the right by hand. He had to write and rewrite and use his hand. And it took him like forever to finish things. But that took deeper roots, that created deeper thinking.

• 9:25Speaker 00

  He couldn't travel, so he had to figure out how to experience the sublime within constraints of his room, his regular, quite ordinary routine.

• 9:35Speaker 00

  And that he realized was actually far more relatable. Not everyone can swim with freaking dolphins and go on psychedelic trips. Everyone kind of mostly has their ordinary day, ordinary life, ordinary room.

• 9:51Speaker 00

  Talking to my clients recently and just reflecting on my own life and learning from thinkers like Green, it seems like, you know, finding life's path, purpose, figuring out life's journey is kind of a theme in the literary, literature world. So learning again from my clients, thinkers like Green, reflecting on my own life, I keep arriving at the same place. We're not really chasing the bike, the city, the relationship, the plan. We're chasing feelings. And this is a good news, guys, very good news.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  You know, we're chasing the feelings of being fully alive, living a life true to ourselves, meaning, connection, groundedness.

• 10:38Speaker 00

  And the good news is

• 10:42Speaker 00

  the sources of your feelings, even though sometimes it doesn't feel like that, any feeling, are plenty.

• 10:50Speaker 00

  And a big part of life is learning to find those feelings, not only in what you ideally want or thought you wanted, or in how you think your life should look or go, but in how life actually unfolds right in front of you. And the trade offs we have to make. And embracing change instead of clinging to how we always thought it should be.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  What if the feeling was never tied to a third thing, to this thing? And here is an exercise I share with clients, the five step process that I promised to you in the beginning, to help my clients and you navigate the twists and turns of life in midlife especially. Especially when it feels like so much is being taken away from you, like things just slipping through your fingers. So the five step process to find many doors to your happiness, joy and fulfillment. Number one, name the feeling, like name it. What feelings do you want more of every single day? What feels like it's missing? What is the feeling?

• 12:01Speaker 00

  Number two, go back. Learn your history. Research your history. Brainstorm everything that used to give you that feeling, childhood, teenage years, uni, early adulthood.

• 12:16Speaker 00

  Three, go wide. Go into the future, list new things to try that could give you that feeling. Brainstorm with Claude or ChatGPT if you get stuck. Think of all the things that you wanted to put on your calendar but never did. Like going and learning kintsugi for me. I'll explain a bit later. So go wide, three, go into the future, brainstorm all the ideas that, of the things that might give you that missing feeling. Number four, dip your toes. Put the ones that resonate most on your calendar.

• 12:54Speaker 00

  I, I thought of kintsugi, this Japanese art of golden, what, let me read, golden joinery. Right, I thought about it for so many times. I'm like, okay, I'm freaking doing it right now. I opened up my Google and typed in kintsugi Cape Town. And there was one class upcoming Thursday and it was first Thursday in Cape Town, which is kind of artsy thing. And there was this class and I immediately invited a friend and on the same day, we booked the class and two days ago, we went to that class, right? So dip your toes, the purpose of that exercise is to actually try things, not just think

• 13:39Speaker 00

  about the things. And number five, which is also key, the key step for you to learn more about yourself right now, not as a concept you thought about in the past or for the future, but as you are right now, exploring the terrain of you, how you are today, reflect. After each experience, ask, after each experiment, each test, ask, what turned out as expected? What went better? What went unexpectedly worse? Why?

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Then keep exploring. Keep something, toss something, keep reinventing yourself. You can't make a transition, guys. Become someone you, embrace a new path. If you keep telling yourself you already know how you should be, how your life must turn out, you can't make a transition like that. So what will you try this week?

• 14:38Speaker 00

  We're gonna recap the episode and five steps in a minute, but before that, a little bit of a personal story. And don't forget, guys, if you're finding good value in this podcast, please share it with someone you love, someone you want to thrive and flourish, someone you'd like to find a better way of living their life, more joyful, with more happiness, more meaning, right? Share this podcast episode or rate and review, especially if you are on Apple Podcasts. For whichever reason, it really helps with promotion of the podcast. So please take a little bit of time, rate, review, give us some golden stars to reach more people, to help more people live happier, fulfilling life.

• 15:21Speaker 00

  So kintsugi, as I shared with you on Thursday with a friend, we went and we broke some dishes and joined the pieces together with using some golden dust, not like golden made of gold, but color, the sparkles of gold.

• 15:39Speaker 00

  And kintsugi, the ancient Japanese craft of golden joinery. And guys, while I experienced it, I think, I don't know if I'll ever do it again. But I realized that it brought me closer to following my intuition, not just my to do list, and that what I was feeling, the lack of me being in a flow of life, listening not just to my schedule, but also what life has to offer in every single moment when it feels right, say yes to that. That was the main purpose for me, starting to say yes to things that feel right, not

• 16:23Speaker 00

  just to my to do list that my logical brain say is right.

• 16:29Speaker 00

  And maybe, just maybe, guys, the break of you, of life, is of your plan, is where the gold is supposed to flow. Maybe, just maybe, the break is where the gold is supposed to flow.

• 16:48Speaker 00

  And so now we're gonna recap the five step process to, to open many more doors, possibilities to your happiness, more fulfillment and joy every single day.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Number one, name the feeling. What feelings do I want more of every day? What's the missing feeling? Number two, go back. Research your history. What used to give you joy and the feeling that you're missing right now? Childhood, teenage years, uni, early adulthood?

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Remember the time when you really felt happy? What did you do more back then? Number three, go wide, go into the future. Think through all the things that you wanted to do but never put them on your schedule. Put an idea list together, ask Claude, ask ChatGPT. Number four, dip your toes. Don't think about it, try it. Put the ones on your schedule that resonate most with you. And number five, reflect. What turned out as expected? What went better? What went unexpectedly worse? Why? What can you learn from that? What, then keep exploring, keep something, toss something, keep reinventing yourself. Again, you can't make a transition, become someone you, embrace a new path.

• 18:03Speaker 00

  If you keep telling yourself you already know how you should be, how your life must turn out. So what will you try this week when you finish this podcast episode? Think about one thing that like I've always wanted to do it for like weeks and months, sometimes decades. Figure out the way to try it and put it on your calendar right now, right after finishing listening to that podcast, no matter how crazy that idea, how childish, how it doesn't make sense to the logical brain at all. Figure it out, put it on your schedule. I can guarantee you 100% that you won't regret it. Or if you do regret it, you learned something about yourself, a lesson or a heart full

• 18:48Speaker 00

  of joy. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Hopefully this podcast episode was useful to you in reaching your life, leading you towards more doors that can lead to your happiness. Thank you, guys, for tuning in. Thank you for listening. Until next time, keep exploring and keep growing your true self.