“At times, you have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you’ll discover will be wonderful. What you’ll discover is yourself,” Alan Alda.

Welcome to Midlife Woman Redefined, a podcast for women near retirement who are ready to step into a new chapter of freedom, travel, and fulfillment. If you’re ready to focus on figuring out who you are and what you really want, this is the place for you. Here’s your host, master certified life coach, travel addict, and midlife maven, René Washington.

Hello, mavens. Oh my gosh, it is 2020, the first day of the new year and a new decade. I am C. René Washington and we are here for Midlife Woman Redefined. And today, we are celebrating everything.

We always start out celebrating something personal to ourselves, and I am celebrating not setting resolutions; not setting resolutions. We are going to talk about following the nudges. More about that in a moment, but I do want you to pause and start out the year right by celebrating something personal to yourself, something that you’ve achieved, that you have accomplished, that you can say, “Yes, I did that.” And we are also celebrating all things new year new decade. So let’s get started.

My maternal grandmother died when my mom was seven years old. Her dad died at age 50. I barely remember him. Her brother died at age 75. And my mom died when she was 74. Last week, I talked about the power of story, and I realized that I’ve been telling myself a story about early death.

My health profile more closely mirrors my mom’s side of the family and plus I experienced a mini-stroke at age 45. Then losing my mom a few years later, after that, to a pulmonary embolism set within me an unconscious expectation that I may not even live as long as she did.

I speak often about the arbitrariness of life and death. My mom’s death rocked me to my core and to this day is something that still is somewhat unbelievable to me. People live who we expect to die and others die who we thought would live.

My faith tells me that God does have a masterplan and I believe that. And I also know that I’m not privy to the details of that plan, hence the arbitrariness. I don’t know. We don’t know.

This past December, I spent about eight hours in the emergency room because doctors wanted to check whether I’d had another mini-stroke. I didn’t, thank goodness, and this is what came to me; FOMOOL, fear of missing out on life, which is a variation on FOMO, which some of you may be familiar with. FOMO is fear of missing out.

I don’t get caught up in doing what the other person is doing, which is FOMO, that keeping up with the Joneses, trying to keep up with your friends or the people you see on social media. But I did realize that, at age 60, as I get closer to 70, I’m afraid of running out of time, and as if being afraid will stop it.

No, it won’t. Like I said, it’s arbitrary, we don’t know when our time is coming, how long we will live, sooner, later, today, the next minute. It might in fact speed up because my big takeaway from this ER visit, that I need to be more intentional, to rest, and to open up more space in my life.

I’m a life coach and I get coaching. I work with coaches and I coach women. It’s not a one-way street for me. I coach what I need to learn too. And rest has been an ongoing struggle for me.

For one, one of the stories I’ve always told myself is that I’m a night person, I’m a night owl. And maybe I do have a setpoint for that, for being that, my clock may be set later than other people. But hat I have to admit is that the older I get, the more rest I require, the more sleep I require. And I can’t do what I used to do, no matter how much I want to.

And I realize that I was running myself down, and that’s the conclusion that they came to when I was in the ER is that I probably had been just rundown and that I need to do better about taking care of myself.

And one of my focuses is to get more rest and to be intentional about doing that, and also to be intentional about doing the things that truly light me up, as I talk about, to be more intentional about making sure that I am doing what I enjoy doing; the work that I enjoy doing, the personal life that I enjoy experiencing, that that’s where my intentions lie and that’s where my actions move toward, because that will open up more space for what I want more of in my life, what I love more in my life. And to do that, I’m following the nudges.

One of my coaches – I just ended a really wonderful money mindset coaching experience on money shame. I have been someone who does a lot of work in that area. And at the beginning of 2019, I worked with Keisha Dixon. I’ve mentioned her. And at the end of the year, I worked with Mary Houston.

And Mary Houston is the one that talked about following the nudges. And the nudges are intuitive knowing. I call it my spiritual GPS, my body compass. So instead of setting resolutions, I am simply moving forward. None of this telling myself that on Sunday or Monday or my birthday, or a new year, that I’m doing that new and better thing. No, I’ve implemented a new 24-hour rule that when the intuitive nudge comes, I act on it within 24 hours.

Now, I’ve gotten really good at following my body compass and paying attention to my intuition. Sometimes though, we’re talking about fear in 2020. So sometimes, when those nudges hit me that also scare me, then I can go into self-sabotage, procrastination, delaying, no more of that. I have committed to myself that I will act on the nudge within 24 hours, no matter how much it scares me.

Now, I may even reduce that time frame to 12 hours, or even two. But it can’t go over 24. Starting over implies that there was a stop, and I’m not stopping living. I will modify or magnify, course-correct, or adapt, redefine, we are Midlife Woman Redefined, but I won’t stop until I die. And I no longer will worry about that date.

Maybe I won’t live as long as my mom. Maybe I’ll live much longer than my mom. It really does not matter. Stay in the moment, keep moving forward, that’s what I’m here to do. We will be braver, bolder, better. We are mavens and this is what we are going to do; be experts at living this blessing called midlife.

Some of you may have the fear of time from the perspective of, “So there’s no reason to do anything.” There’s not a reason to do that thing, so instead of trying to cram it all in like me, you may be sitting on it and not doing anything. None of that. We are going to do it. we’re doing this thing this year. Stick with me.

And we can do it while talking the best care of ourselves. And if something in this episode lit you up, resonated with you, take a few moments and gift me the honor of leaving me a review and a rating. I would so deeply appreciate it. The instructions for that are in the show notes. And if you are not subscribed, be sure you hit that subscribe button too.

Peace, joy, and love to all of you. And remember, for midlife mavens, living well is our only option.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Midlife Woman Redefined. If you’re ready to learn more and reclaim your time, head over to crenecoach.com.