Your Power of Possibility in Mid - Life and more

The Power and Possibility of Midlife

When I think about power and possibility, I think of the ability to see situations from a different perspective. The way life looks, sounds and feels from the position of someone different than me is where I learn, teach, offer a course of action and achieve joint flow in a way that is whole.  

I think how lucky I am to be entering midlife. 

I notice that when I choose - instead of label or interpret things as wrong - I immediately narrow my own range of possibility.

Even the silliest of intentions like, ‘I am going to pretend that everyone likes me and will go through my day smiling, in joy and love as if I was all of that,’ changes how the universe intersects with me. It allows me to come into presence with my own power and what lies behind the possibility of being who I truly am. 

Here is the thing though. Most of us do not have a clue as to who we are until we are much later in life. The first decades of our lives were made up of forming other people’s impressions of who we were. In our 20s we attempt independence (without our parents or caregivers). Our 30s are about partners, marriage, babies and shaping our identity pieces into complete jigsaw puzzles. We obsessively scrutinized our own behavior to ensure we were valued by others. For many of us this meant that the things we wanted to do or say were left undone out of fear of alienation. Whole aspects of ourselves have never been in full expression. This can make us feel like we are stumbling into midlife with angst and confusion and oftentimes, low self-esteem and regret.

While I have always sought connection with others,  what I notice is that most of us are most concerned with relationships, and place our power within that arena. Our desire for meaningful bonds is demonstrated in the ancient cave drawings of humans hunting together. Modern office water cooler chats are no different than our ancestors meeting at a central water well to connect. 

However, a woman who hasn’t learned how to direct her power can lose her purpose.

We have not been taught how to embrace, hold, or use our innate power for individual good. Instead, we are taught to be “good girls,” acceptable (mostly to men) so we can be loveable to men, obedient, and eager to please.  If we do not embrace these views, our world becomes staggeringly dangerous.

What it also  becomes is frustrating. If we keep being the “good girls” into midlife, we become invisible and we are walked over. 

As I have moved into midlife, I notice conversations are becoming more influenced by the word NO. Rather than using placating words that require us to make others comfortable, we are embracing others' discomfort to hold power in our personal truth. 

Our work in the world today is to be leaders for the younger generations. To encourage younger women to be governed by what we know is true, allow our intuition to develop and lead with integrity, insight, and compassion. From this place, kindness, wisdom and love become our possibility and power.

As we begin to move forward from this place of power and possibility, we begin to move out of ego and become the expression of the Divine.

We learn from the first half of our life (our puzzle pieces) to understand our purpose and power come from the depth of the pain our wounds, and it is through our wounds that we begin to channel our divinity and remember who we truly are. 

Our power is not power over but rather from within. Midlife is when the desire to be seen and accepted is pushed away. Midlife is when we acknowledge that the deep yearning for love we coveted from others actually exists inside of us. 

Here are my favorite ways to be in Power and Possibility:

An authentic desire to be of service:

Unless we can be present with clear intention,  we cannot serve others without serving our ego. When we serve the ego, we are unknowingly seeking external approval and meeting our own needs first. When we come from a place of inauthenticity,  the less trustworthy we are. 

We must be able to give ourselves love, respect and a feeling of importance. Then we can serve others. We all have inner child wounds that need to be acknowledged, and I submit that when we are actively taking care of the wounded parts of us, we can serve others with a clear intention. However, if we are trying to meet our own needs through service to others,  we ultimately fail ourselves.

Oftentimes, we have a desire to be of service to others; and, inside of that service can be an undercurrent of codependency. We desire to help to be seen as the ‘savior.' I don’t believe we consciously choose this; but, it has become very clear in my profession that while we as coaches do want to support others, we have most likely entered the coaching profession as a way to resolve our own wounding. We teach what we need and if we aren’t aware of our intentions we can disrupt the quest of healing others and make it about ourselves.

A longing to live as an expression of the Divine:

It is one thing to say you have self-love and it is another to really do it. Self love is quite mysterious in that we have an entire culture talking about it, but do we really know what the heck it means? Consider someone you deeply love (a healthy connection) and the way you protect, nurture, support and show compassion to that individual. How does that compare to the ways in which you care for yourself? This can be a painful comparison. On one hand, we see ourselves through the lens of all of our experiences that made us unworthy: betrayals, mistakes, perceived failures, deceptions. We play these out in our minds and contribute to our own concept of who we are and what we deserve. The ways in which we see ourselves is the degree to which we can develop self-respect, self-love and a sense of value.

To see ourselves as an expression of the Divine can be a challenge; but, in truth you are a constant expression of the Divine. When we see ourselves through the eyes of love - flaws and all - we can begin to take responsibility for all the wreckages in our pasts, know that we sprung from the Divine, and it is in this acceptance that we begin to form deeper relationships with our real self. Until we have uncovered the sacred and explored our personal connection to the Source, ‘spirituality’ remains only a concept, and everything we have to offer is limited by our humanness. We cannot express what we are not familiar with.

In our longing to live as an expression of the Divine, we can sometimes feel as though everything needs to be ‘good.’  Living through the expression of the Divine may look like feeling all of your sacred emotions circularly, where each feeling is equally valuable within context rather than living in a hierarchical perspective where some emotions are ‘better’ or ‘more enlightened’ than others. Insinuating that emotions compete dismisses spiritual teaching and justifies emotional repression.

A deep self-awareness; Respect and the ability to know and honor what is true for you:

When we honor the Divine, we develop a deep self awareness. We cannot use logistics with divinity; rather, we must align with our belief system to stay true to ourselves. Our humanness gets in the way, which is why we can’t think our way into spiritual alignment. Ultimately, we are looking to channel the sacred through our innate knowingness rather than use our righteousness of human flaws. 

Most of us have mastered techniques in which we please others to have our wants or needs met. While that may work for a small period of time, we are ultimately left with an empty bag, depleted over time because our life force energy has weakened. If we are not aware of how we want to honor the Divine inside of us, we will be pleasing everyone but ourselves. If you stop and quiet yourself long enough, you can hear the whispers of your soul.

A way of showing up in the world that reflects values and convictions to which you are committed:

Showing up committed with firm values (the Source) and convictions demonstrates your deeper commitment to the world and to who is in front of you. From our higher plane of awareness, not only can we see a variety of perspectives, but we can more readily find that resource, solution, or deeper compassion for what is in front of us.  We can begin to lighten our burden as well as the collective burden of humanness.

Integrity is sometimes defined as an alignment of your head, heart and words. In a culture where fear runs our social media and jumping on the latest-trend bandwagon is the norm, we must consciously come back to what is in alignment for us. What has been the pattern that you come back to over and over again that continues to be true for you? It is easy to move on to the latest fad/narrative/ideology but it will not serve you to easily jump on a path that is not aligned with the divinity inside of you. When we stand in our integrity, we stand on the hill on which we are willing to die - because in fact, it is that true for you. 

A spiritual clarity that allows you to see beyond the surface to the deeper aspects of any situation:

Allowing ourselves to see beyond the surface to the deeper aspects of any situation allows us to observe the underlying motivations in behaviors – which allows for responding rather than reacting. When we can stand in compassion for others, we offer an opportunity for others to have grace and compassion for themselves. When we can stop and understand the underlying pain behind negative and hurtful behavior, we stand in compassion instead of judgment.

When we become present with ourselves and the divine we can see the ways in which we have been motivated by relationships. When our relationships don’t go the way we want them to, or we show up with a spouse or a friend in a negative way, we can begin to see the person as the pain responding to a reaction or trigger, rather than who the person is. Our job becomes seeing the person and the pain as an experience, rather than just an interaction.

As we begin to step into the power of midlife, there is a sweetness to us and an appreciation for life that is springing forward. We know when it’s been enough. Our days are spent finding ways to create, live and have awareness of our spirit.  We become fierce, protective of our energy and hold an unwavering commitment to the sacred in all of our manifestations. This is power and possibility.   

Much love, Jenn