Essential Strategies for Thriving in Midlife

Before you even consider going on a health journey, or set goals, you need to be in control of your own life, not life controlling you. The success of your health and wellness journey is an inside job. Developing the inner skills to ensure you create and sustain a healthy lifestyle is fundamental. Learn how to master the skills of self-management to show up in a powerful way in midlife.

Are you a time-slave? ‘Not enough time’ is one of the biggest obstacles in failing to reach your health and wellness goals, relationship aspirations and success in your work.

So what exactly is self-management? Self-management is having better control of what you think and do. When you’re in the driver’s seat of your life, it means that you are in tune with yourself, you’re aware of your emotions, but not ruled by them.

Ignoring emotions can be damaging, this is about identifying how you’re feeling, think about why you’re feeling that way and regulating those emotions so you remain calm and collected.

Thoughts create the emotion and the emotion triggers the action. But when emotions have taken over, that space between your thoughts and actions gets extremely narrow, so you may be left with one action – and that’s – reaction.

Emotional regulation keeps the space between thoughts and actions open, so you can see the bigger picture.

Self-management also regulates our ability to procrastinate. Procrastination creates overwhelm, because we’re just not getting things done. The ‘to do’ list builds up. Overtime this can create anxiety, which in turn can create chronic conditions such as IBS, and hormone imbalance.

You can see why self-management is so important in our life!

Here are my tips to help with self-management:

Take Control Of Your Physical WellBeing

Focus on adopting a healthy sleep routine. Aim for around 7 hours every night. Get your body clock in sync by aiming to go to bed and wake in the morning at the same time every day. Even on the weekends! Our internal clock relies on regularity. This consistency can make it easier to fall asleep and wake up fresh in the morning.

Prepare Your Meals

Schedule in time to plan meals for the week, create a shopping list and batch cook as much as you can. This will control what you put into your body. You’ll have healthy food available, quick meals and you’ll avoid making unhealthy choices. Don’t have them in the house or office, then they’re not even an option.

Make Exercise a Non-Negotiable

Block time-out in your schedule for exercise; whether that’s going for a walk, a yoga flow or something more strength training. Just make sure it’s something you enjoy and then you’ll be motivated to stick with your commitment. Be sure to schedule this time in as a priority, before you schedule anything else!

Be Proactive in Managing Stress

As we get older our body is less efficient at regulating our stress levels and so it’s essential to be proactive in stress management techniques such as meditation can be powerful; focus on your breath and sit quietly for 5-10 minutes.

Journaling is a great way to understand and connect with your emotions. Try reflecting every evening. Think about how you’re feeling, why you’re feeling that way, acknowledge it’s validity and let it go. You’re then in a place where you can think clearly and respond in a meaningful way or it simply does’t require any action from you, and can simply be gone.

Manage Your Time

Get to know your calendar really well! Schedule all your tasks, starting with time for you – exercise, time to plan and prep healthy meals, time to meditate and journal. These are your priorities, even though they’ve no doubt been squeezed out of your day up until now.

If you’re a time-slave, remove non-essential tasks, delegate where possible and time-block your tasks. As soon as you get distracted away from your task, instantly bring your mind back. Make a note of whatever distracted you and at the end of the day, schedule it in your calendar.

“Mastering others is strength; mastering oneself is true power”  -Lao Tsu