The Midlife Challenge

Two women turn 70 years old.

One sees her life as coming to an end. To her, seven decades of living mean that her body must be breaking down and she’d better start winding up her affairs. 

The other woman decides that what a person is capable of at any age depends upon her belief, and she sets a higher standard for herself. 

She decides that mountain climbing might be a good sport to begin at the age of seventy.

 For the next 25 years she devotes herself to this new adventure in mastery, scaling some of the highest peaks in the world, until, in her 90’s, she becomes the oldest woman to ascend Mount Fuji. That woman was Hulda Crooks.

I found this story as I was re-reading parts of Tony Robbins book, ‘Awaken the Giant Within’. A great book!

“To stay safe or let some ‘unsafe’ in” - that is the question. 

If you remember from the podcast last week, we were talking about the 5 Components of self-esteem recommended for elementary school children in the classroom, thanks to Robert Reasoner, a renowned educator and trainer.

Let’s take the children part out of this and think of you and me. I don’t know about you but these building blocks to self-esteem ALL apply to me, some more than others.

They are:

1. I need security - to feel certain and safe.
2. I need significance - to know and value who I am.
3. I need to belong and feel loved.
4. I need purpose. To contribute something I want to achieve.
5. I need to feel competent.To believe I’m good at what I do and will keep getting better.

 All of these needs, when being met at a ‘10’ in our lives, create a sense of being unstoppable.

I would say that Hulda Crooks had most likely been building her belief in herself way before she decided to climb mountains. I may be going out on a ledge here but I would dare to say that most women in those 40 to 70 years would not all of a sudden decide to become mountain climbers once they reached 70.

Can you imagine her conversation with herself on her 70th birthday?

“I’m bored. I don’t know what I’m going to do feel challenged over the next 20 years…I’ve always wanted to try mountain climbing. I think I’ll give it a go.” 

Actually, for her it wasn’t a huge stretch because she started climbing in her 50’s when her doctor husband advised that it would help her get her strength back after a bout of pneumonia.

But when all the other older ladies were hanging up their climbing shoes, staying where it was safe and predictable, she decided to ramp it up.

I can’t imagine how exhilarating her life felt. How awesome it was for her to look forward to every day when she was reaching for the next peak. Her day began with running a mile and exercising both her body and her mind.

She climbed 98 of those peaks, some more than once, between the ages of 65 and 91.

Midlife is a Call To Adventure

I think Hulda is a great example of someone who didn’t let her brain talk her out of making an  adventure out of her life.

Her way of feeling safe and certain was to have confidence in herself. And she proved it to herself by looking something BIG right in the eye. And going for it even though it represented alot of challenge which is just another way of saying ‘uncertainty’. 

You know what this does? It keeps your life spicey.

Self-esteem or “believing in yourself” comes from the inside. It’s you feeling certain that you can get through anything life throws at you.

That’s why I call you “Beautiful Warriors”. The definition of a Beautiful Warrior? Having a deep unstoppable belief in WHO I AM.

Hulda was a Beautiful Warrior. Her eagerness to climb mountains became an influence, a legacy, to help encourage others -which was her mission.

What about you? 

Do you feel that Warrior stirring inside when you hear stories like this? 

Passionate is Not "Safe"

Here’s the thing…

We midlife women are really good at staying safe and secure.

If you were to, for example, say to yourself, “I’m going to become a mountain climber like Hulda”, our brains will come up with all kinds of stories as to WHY that is a bad idea.

You hate climbing!

Your knees would never survive.

Are you crazy? Do you know how scary that would be? How much work it would take?

Our brain’s job is to keep us safe.  

But IF you want to live life from e a Warrior Heart, you have to be the boss of your brain. 

And so the boss of your FEAR. 

Now, it doesn’t have to be mountain climbing. You choose what you’d love to tackle.

If you don’t…and you live to 101 like Hulda Crooks did, it’s a lot of time to fill. 

A lot of time to get sick, depressed, angry and dull. And that’s what will happen if you let yourself fall into the need to feel certain all of the time.

The only way you can feel certain is to control everything and everyone around you.

 Can you do that? Ever tried to control the weather?

Ever tried to control one of your adult kids or your spouse or your co-worker who keeps looking down her nose at you?

You can’t create feeling certain by controlling your environment. You have to do it by controlling yourself from the inside. 

What you think. What you feel. And how you take action based on those two things.

 I get it. We fall into this cycle of belief around 2 things in our lives.

1. How we see ourselves.
2. How we see others.

We see ourselves as the victims who just seem to attract disaster into our lives. And others as not loving, not caring about us, being selfish and all about themselves.

Our thoughts say, “If he would be more loving, then I could open up and be happier.”

You can just feel all the feelings that come out of that statement, right?

What actions would result? You would close down even more. Because whatever thought you let your brain dwell on produces that result.

We need to feel certain that others love us, respect us, and have our best interests at heart.

I want to encourage you, my Beautiful Warrior, to throw that thinking out.

You can’t control the wind or love.

The only thing you can control and be certain about is WHO YOU ARE and how you will respond in every situation.

That’s where certainty comes from.

Hulda Crooks didn’t make the decisions she made to do brave things at 70. She made those decisions decades before.  

How Do You Grow the Heart of a Warrior?

How can you grow a Warrior Heart?  You are unstoppable, you know. Just saying because you need to hear it. Here’s how to release that part of you:

1. Take responsibility for the thoughts you’re thinking.

 Stop right now and do a Brain Dump. That’s when you just get all the thoughts you’re thinking out onto a page.

 Don’t judge yourself. Or hold any back. It’s just you and yourself here.

 How many of these thoughts are negative? Unhappy. Scared. Blaming. Unsure about how things are and how things are going to turn out?

Ok. Just take responsibility for them. That means to be ok with it, neutral, as if you’re just an observer.

  2. Focus on the outcome of those thoughts

Ask yourself, from a neutral point of view as if you’re someone else talking to you, “If you keep thinking this way, where will you end up?”

What kind of thoughts do you think that Hulda Crooks had to think in order to keep her body moving, her perseverance strong ?

What did she have to believe about herself In order to have the determination to climb Mount Fuji when she was 91?

How many of the thoughts you wrote down were about how you can do anything you set your mind to?

 How many of your every day thoughts centre around a vision of who you want to be and where you want your life to go?

  3. Create a Vision. Find a Mission.

The climbing was not necessarily the goal. 

 Hulda knew who she wanted to be. How she wanted to be remembered. The legacy she wanted to leave. 

So everything in her life supported who she wanted to become.

Who you want to become is your mission. Once you establish that, you work at creating a life that trains you to become it.

 Your Mission needs to be compelling. Inspiring. 

 It needs to pull you towards it, to be the reason you say ‘yes’ to things in your life and the reason you say ‘no’.

 Certainty, safety comes from knowing who you are and knowing that you are constantly growing toward becoming more of it.

 Imagine how it would feel to stand on that mountain peak like Hulda did. They actually re-named a mountain peak she climbed so many times after her.  

What if you spent so much time doing what you loved that it inspired people to name that activity after you?

How To Age Gracefully

Who do you want to be when you’re 70? That decision starts now at whatever age you are.

Make it your Mission to become that person no matter what life throws at you.

Imagine what your life would look like at 91 if began right now to build the source of certainty and safety from the inside out, not dependent on your circumstances.

If you had a deep unstoppable belief that you can handle anything, it wouldn’t matter what happened, you would know that you could get through it.

Imagine if sickness came knocking…

If someone didn’t live up to your expectations…

If you suddenly lost a good chunk of your finances…

What if you could respond with, “I am a Warrior. I have a deep unstoppable belief in who I am?”

Certainty. This component of self-esteem, “believing in yourself”, requires you to feel certain that you can get through anything life throws at you.

It’s having a deep unstoppable belief in yourself

Decide on your mission for this midlife season of your life. 

Create what I call your ‘Passionately Personal Mission Statement’. Sign up for a free consult with me and I’ll help you do that.

Or download the e-Book to walk you through. The link is in the show notes.

And then…start training that Warrior Heart.  Maybe that will lead to doing some fun, adventurous, a little bit dangerous, even outrageous, things. Brave things. Exhilarating things.

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If you want to live your life with passion. Feeling beautiful from the inside out. Feeling purposeful...but you don't know where to start, how to get from here to there, book a consult with me and let's look at who you are. Let's define your Mission. Let's build a Life Adventure Plan.