AT NextTribe’s Reinvention Beach Retreat, Dec. 9-16, we’ll be welcoming our partners from Camp Reinvention, which was co-founded by author Dana Hilmer. While you’re having fun in the sun and surf–totally at ease and unplugged from the stresses of daily life–you will be guided to re-imagine your life and take the next steps to making this chapter more thrilling and fulfilling. To learn more, join our Zoom virtual tour on Wednesday, Sept. 13th. Here, Dana offers ideas for beginning the process. 

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Not too long ago, my friend Clara was feeling particularly beaten down. She knew she had a good life and was grateful, but she was starting to feel guilty, resenting the fact that she never really pursued what was in her heart. Who the hell has time?

The bottom line is Clara had given so much of herself to others that it left little time for her and zero time to actually figure out what she wanted for herself now, at this stage of life. She felt like she lost herself along the way.

I call this battling the midlife funk. It’s a longing for an old dream, a new reality, or a sense of fulfillment—a craving to shed old mantels and masks and create something new.

You know what we’re talking about if you’ve ever yearned to have:

• Deep inner peace, or
• The freedom and means to travel, or
• A career that excites you, or
• A way to hone and share your talents and make your mark on the world, or
• A soul mate to grow old with, or
• An abundant life with financial security, and/or . . .
• The ease of loving your body and feeling comfortable in your own skin

If you’re yearning for these things, here are five things you can do to get yourself out of the midlife funk.

Read More: Becoming a Beginner Again at Midlife: Reinvention Secrets

1. Get Clear on What You Want and WHY You Want It

We’ve worked with hundreds of women over 50 who are facing a midlife crossroads, and while many of them tell us they know what they want, almost none of them can articulate it clearly. Of those who can, even fewer can tell us why.

We’ve worked with hundreds of women over 50 who are facing a midlife crossroads.

The midlife funk is a cue that you’re thirsting to live life as the no-holds-barred version of you, and in order to do that, you’ll need to filter what you want until you get it down to your true “why.” That’s the first big shift.

2. Make Your “Internal Operating System” Work for YOU

The outcomes of your life are mostly a function of what is going on between those beautiful ears of yours. You know that old saying, “What got you here can’t get you there?” So, now what?

If you’re feeling stuck, there’s nothing wrong with you or your willpower. You need to hack your biology and update your internal operating system—getting rid of the old thoughts and behavioral patterns that trip you up and letting go of any belief that limits possibility.

When your beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and actions are aligned with what you want to create in your life . . . that is where magic happens!

3. Create Your Compass Point to Navigate Your Choices

When you commit to this practice, you will make choices that consistently move you toward the life you most want to experience.

Ask yourself the question, “How do I want to FEEL about myself and about my life on my very last day?” The answer to this question is what we call your compass point.

Once you have landed on it, we challenge you to use it as a filter by asking yourself questions like:

• “What can I do in this moment that will bring me closer to my compass point?”
• “Does this choice (big or small) bring me closer to or further from my compass point?”

When you commit to this practice, you will make choices that consistently move you toward the life you most want to experience. Simple and life-changing. And it’s a practice.

4. Lean In to Your Wisdom Rather Than Your Experience

We learn by experience. Your experience tells you that if you put your hand on a hot stove, you’ll get burned. Your life, however, is much more complex than that. In fact, in most of your experiences, one small shift could have created an entirely different outcome.

When we rely on past experience to make decisions about the present, we’re taking what is and squeezing into the box of what was. Here’s a better approach: Take that same experience and infuse it with your compass point. Now you see new possibilities and can realize completely new outcomes. This is wisdom. 

5. Start Before You’re Ready

Have you been sitting on your great idea or exciting project for weeks, months, or even years? If yes, chances are you’re waiting to be bullet-proof. To have it all figured out and to know enough, be enough, be more confident . . . to have enough time. Unfortunately that doesn’t work.

Clarity comes from action.

Clarity comes from action, so you need to start before you’re ready. You need to get in action, or hop on the bike, and start pedaling. Once you’re moving, you can steer, and with each new block you ride, you see new things, learn new things, and then you can decide where to steer next.

One small action a day adds up and gives you the clarity you need to take the next informed action tomorrow. This is how you can gain momentum and begin trusting the process. And, when you do, another beautiful thing happens: You go from being the person that wants to do this cool thing to being the person that is doing this cool thing.

Get on the bike today!

The process of battling the midlife funk is simple but not easy. The magic is in the practice. And making the practice your own.

Read More: Learn the Art of Thriving Through Uncertainty

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Wendy Perrotti and Dana Hilmer are the co-creators of Camp Reinvention™, a transformational program and community committed to helping women at a midlife crossroads get clarity on what they want, make it happen, and enjoy their life a hell of a lot more.  As master-level coaches, they have helped thousands of women successfully reinvent their lives.