I’m F.I.N.E.: My Origin Story*
Do you know that feeling of intense shame you feel upon realizing you aren’t where you thought you would be at this point in life, somewhere between the ages of 35 and 55? The feeling when you wake up and think “How did I get here? What am I doing with my life? Do I have anything to show for my life up to this point?”
For me, this midlife transition sapped my confidence and self-esteem. And by getting through it I found real confidence and self-esteem, based on my internal life and not on externals like looks or jobs or hobbies. And I wouldn’t have the confidence I have now without the trying experience of my midlife transition.
Here’s how I came to be the me I am today: when I was 43, I reached the point of finally admitting that I was unhappy, unfulfilled, and unbearably stuck.
I was drinking to numb my amorphous sense of unhappiness and shame.
I had no idea who I was. I felt like an imposter in my own life.
I was anxious and depressed, all while acting like I had it all under control.
I was afraid to not only deal with my big feelings, but to even acknowledge them.
All of these things combined to turn me into an inauthentic wreck who ran away from where I knew the answers to be.
I could trace the paths I took to end up in that state of suckitude. I was able to look back and see that I was just a passenger in the car that was my life. I let myself be taken where the road led. I was passively going where the wind blew me. And I finally reached a point where I was ashamed of where I ended up.
When I looked at the path that was my life up to that point, I could see the good things that happened to me: two and a half degrees, married to the love of my life, two children who were legit amazing human beings. A good paying job, a lovely big house filled with light. Vacations every year. No worries about money. With all these amazing things in my life, why was I feeling so icky and regretful about my life?
Because I was passive. I had been telling myself for years that I was proud of who I was and what I earned. I should have felt gratitude and grace in my life. And I didn’t feel that at all. But as much as I knew I had a great life, along the way I never asked if this is what I wanted. Did I actively choose who I was being? Nope. Which brought in the sense of shameful floundering.
I recognize some of the things that contributed to this sense of floundering. My career didn’t reflect my values - I really only took the job and kept it because it paid well and made my husband and family proud of me. I was diagnosed with a weird neurological problem that made me lose feeling on the left side of my face and throat – my neurologist gave a shrug after numerous MRIs and CT scans. Maybe it was viral damage to a cranial nerve? I was deep into perimenopause, with the hot flashes and night sweats and weight gain. I couldn’t control what was happening to my body: I felt betrayed.
Feeling adrift in my career and betrayed by my body, I secretly started to drink. I don’t know when it really became a problem, but it did. I would secretly drink in the parking lot by my house, and over-generously pour drinks in the evenings. For some reason, instead of choosing to play an active role in my life and take responsibility for the choices I’d made, I felt the need to numb my life with vodka.
The floundering and drinking and angst led me to my rock bottom. And it felt like a new start.
Having battled my dragons, both literal and metaphorical, I realized I had inherent strengths. When you learn to trust yourself, especially after overcoming the crap life throws at you, confidence ensues. I am now a more present coach, mom, and human.
I strongly believe that women don’t have to be content with their discontent. Nor do they need to hit a rock bottom to rebuild their own confidence and self-esteem.
After spiraling in my own career for decades, I finally discovered what I wanted to be when I grew up: a life coach. When I left my PhD years ago, I saw a career counsellor who asked me what I would do if I could do anything. I said I wanted to be the person in the background helping people be their best selves. Two decades after that conversation and that’s what I’m doing.
My purpose in life is to help women flourish through the midlife transition using Stoicism. Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that is all about common sense. It is sometimes seen as a “masculine” philosophy, but it does it a disservice to think so.
The basic tenets of Stoicism that I teach my clients are:
Determine if something is in your control or not. If it is, do something about it. If it isn’t, let it go.
The present moment is all that we really have control over. Right here, right now. Focusing on the future can bring on anxiety, and focusing on the past can bring on depression. The Stoics had a phrase, ‘memento mori’ to help bring this home – it translates into ‘remember we will die’. How’s that for focusing the mind on what we’re doing right now?
There is no inherently good or bad in nature – there are only our perceptions. Shakespeare wrote in Hamlet that ‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’. This helps us reconsider our first impressions: what are we loading on our first impressions? Are those impressions true?
Accept whatever life throws at us. Nietzsche coined this as ‘amor fati’ which translates to ‘love your fate’. Treat everything that happens as something to be embraced, not avoided. Because it happened, and we can’t make whatever it is unhappen. One of my coaching catchphrases is ‘Life doesn’t happen to you. Life just happens.’
Putting the basic Stoic tenets into practice frees us from caring too much about things that are beyond our control. It helps us focus on the present (because it’s the only thing we can control) and to take life as it actually happens, not as we wish it would happen. There’s a sense of calm that can come to us when we start to let go of things we have no reason to hold on to.
I’d like to say it is just that easy; simply do those three things and life will be all unicorns pooping rainbows. But it was a multi-year process that hurt sometimes and frightened me at times. And I did it: I became a better version of myself, maybe even my REAL self as I aged. So now I help women hopefully skip the bits of life that weigh them down.
The most important thing that helped me turn my life around was learning about Stoicism. While not identifying as a Stoic, Mark Manson’s book The Subtle Art of not Giving a F*ck, is steeped in Stoicism. One line of the book reached out and smacked me on the side of the head: “It may not be your fault that your life sucks, but it is your responsibility to deal with it.” Taking ownership over my own life helped me thrive.
Second, I enriched my original coaching certification by becoming a Certified Heroic Coach. Heroic combines ancient wisdom with modern science to create a practical set of tools to live your best energetically, both in work and love. The 300-day coaching program taught me the science of positive psychology. I use the tools I’ve learned in every session I have with clients.
Lastly, I learned how to feel my feelings without running away from them. From therapy to journaling to kickboxing to weightlifting, I was able to sit in the uncomfortableness of pain and regret and shame and not be consumed by those negative emotions. I learned self-compassion.
I now look back on nine-years-ago-Lydia and I want to give her a hug and tell her it will be okay.
And it will be okay for you too.
*This blog entry is an excerpt from my upcoming book All Will Be Well: A woman’s guide to flourishing in midlife.