At what point does your work experience peak, and you start to question where to go next? In our 20s and 30s, the race is on to learn as much as possible to hone our craft and practice it daily. When we reach our 40s, we are at middle age, by today’s social security projections of life expectancy! Physical fitness is essential and keeping your brain mentally fit is equally important.
While it may seem daunting to cross the mid-40s and roll into your early 50s, this is when you maximize your secret sauce and take hold of your destiny. This is the best time to seize the opportunities around you.
And yet it is also the time that the demand on your mental acuity has been taxed more heavily than during prior generations.
You are in the grandest stage of your life, and it’s also when your inner Judge becomes the loudest! This is the time to seize the next half of your life. Things you already know include:
- Do 150 minutes of cardio a week
- Focus on strength training at least 3 days a week
- Eat your vegetables and have a balanced diet
- Follow the Golden Rule, do Good Work
- Laugh often
I wish I had caught the physical fitness bug years ago, and while I am constantly playing catch up with it, I have found something even more critical to my longevity and daily clear-headed, laser focus.
A year ago, I was introduced to mental fitness, the capacity to handle life’s challenges with a positive rather than a negative mindset. I’ve always considered myself a positive person, though there were days when I could be sent reeling, totally knocked out for the day because of something that someone else did that I let it impact me. No matter how smart or good I was at the technical aspects of my role as a COO, dealing with human behavior was an area that tripped me up a lot. So I read many books, had a life coach, and had a therapist too. And while that helped, I found myself approaching life’s challenges in ways that were sometimes good and other times bad.
Opportunities appear at the right time, and we must do something with them. I pursued my license in mental fitness, and now it is an integral part of what I do. Because it changed my life so thoroughly, I am adamant that embracing mental fitness into your daily routine will profoundly impact the rest of your life. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you’d like to learn more.
My Pro Tip today is for you to recognize the small things that make you feel stressed, worried, frustrated, and unhappy (tight deadlines, a disagreement with someone, a sick child, feeling unprepared, demanding customer or boss). You have 2 choices in responding to something you do not like – accept it and make peace with it, or convert it into a gift and opportunity. Accept or convert are positive calls to action that squash your inner Judge. Your inner Judge is a master in the needless depletion of your time and energy.