Are You Approaching 2024 with Openness and Curiosity or Gnawing Angst?
How to foster an open, curious mindset and create space for all the unexpected possibilities the new year holds for you.
Image: Plimmerton, New Zealand
Welcome to 2024!
I hope you’re gently easing into a fresh year.
Do you feel rested and ready to approach 2024 with a spirit of inquiry? Or with a growing angst about the unknown? Perhaps you’re sensing both. That’s understandable. It fits the global mood we find ourselves currently navigating.
Darkness and Light
It’s becoming harder to split one from the other these days. They seem to merge and create a murky ebb and flow. Joy and gratitude alongside waves of fresh heartbreak and new hurdles to clear.
How will you cope with this duality?
Create Space for Both
I’m learning that clearing inner space for all you’re feeling as you stand at the threshold of any major life transition can help ease that tension. In her poem, Until I thought of myself as the sea, Hanna at HannahRoWrites likens this duality to an ocean that carries both wild and calm waves.
Eight Years into Midlife
2024 marks my eighth year on the midlife journey. It’s been a powerful life season but one that can involve a complex transition. The conflict is often fuelled by unhelpful fears about ageing, the looming empty nest, career shifts, and life regrets flowing from untapped dreams and goals wrapped up in messiness of people-pleasing.
Research shows that these are all common challenges that can surface in the transition and can spiral into the dreaded midlife crisis.
Are You Living or Merely Existing?
Oscar Wilde writes:
To live is the rarest thing in the world; most people exist, that’s all.
This year, I’d love to see mid-lifers start shifting the goal post further away from a life of stressed existence and move deeper into a space of fuller, joyful living. And that joy will naturally flow into the world, and others’ lives.
Explore Midlife with Curiosity and Openness
A good place to start making this shift is by exploring the midlife landscape with curiosity and openness. You may be surprised at the unexpected possibilities it holds.
The Magic of Midlife
Something almost magical happens when you enter midlife. You step into a welcome new freedom to finally become your whole self. In that deeper awareness of becoming, you’re no longer willing to hide parts of you for fear of what others may think or say. Your validation and self-worth shifts away from external sources to find its way back to its rightful place - within.
As you reclaim your personal agency, and clean up blurry boundaries that made you lose your way, you start to notice subtle shifts. Insecurity and fear makes way for courage. You slowly find your voice and use it to build bridges to peace, grace and hope.
Until next time, travel gently on your journey.
XoXo
Glynis / The Midlife Introvert
Related Resources
If you’d like support on your midlife journey from someone with lived experience, valuable insights, and a growth-mindset, you’re in the right place. Glynis harnessed her academic background in Applied Social Science (BAppSocSci) with her passion for personal growth and creative writing to design her flagship e-course, the Midlife Roadmap, currently available on Teachable.
The Midlife Roadmap is a self-paced, flexible tool that integrates personal story, audio and video lessons, printable workbooks, reflective journaling tools and creative activities. It focuses on self-empowerment, and tapping into one’s unique strengths, passions and vast life experiences to craft a fulfilling midlife chapter.
Join Glynis on the journey and find your own unique way to thrive on purpose in midlife.