Welcome

Hello,

Thanks for stopping by and spending some of your precious time looking at findingyoursmile.com

So why have you stopped by?

Don’t get me wrong I’m very pleased you have, but because you have, I’m going to assume that in some way you are dissatisfied with your life and you’re looking to make some kind of change.

Maybe you’ve recently experienced a big “wake up” call. Maybe it’s something smaller, a persistent lack of fulfilment in your career or another area of your life. Maybe you feel you’re at a life crossroads and you have some tough decisions to make. Maybe you sense the life you are currently living doesn’t reflect your deepest values or priorities. Any one of these can leave you stressed and unfulfilled. Any one of these can be enough to give you the motivation to take a deep breath, look inside and start your personal transformation.

If any of these are true for you then we have something in common. I arrived at the mid-way mark and woke up to the realisation that my inner smile had gone into hiding. Mid-life, the years between 35 and 65, is generally a time we don’t like, at least not to begin with. We don’t like it for a number of good reasons:

Time’s running out - As we age, our focus shifts from “time since birth” to “time left to live”. Our approaching mortality highlights that time is running out. This can be a shocking realisation.
I’m getting old – We look in the mirror and see nature beginning to take its toll. Our bodies begin to show the signs of breaking down and aging. Menopause, hormones and physical changes take control of our faces, hairlines, figures and frames of mind, leaving us confused, irrational, wrinkled and bulging in all the wrong places.
My parent’s died - As we hit mid-life we are likely to witness the death of one of our parents. Additionally, they will be experiencing the health and emotional issues that come with age. They’re likely to be physically and mentally deteriorating or in the process of dying.
My partner left me - Marriages can flounder as the foundations set in the first half of life begin to crumble. Research has shown 45% of marriages end between the ages of forty and sixty.*
I’m over the hill - Our society favours youth over age and wisdom. Society expects “oldies” to slow down and wait for retirement. Our society sets youth as the gold standard and makes “oldies” invisible. This creates an added stress in mid-life.
I’ve lost my health - Fast foods, lack of quality rest and non-stop activity takes its toll on our physical and emotional well-being. Today we take on more and more, cramming activities into every moment and tolerating increasing levels of stress. The body’s alarm goes off, but we keep hitting the snooze button so that we can keep going and going. Eventually our body breaks down through neglect.
I’ve been made redundant - In our careers it can be scary to see young arrivals valued more highly than ourselves. As companies merge, downsize, and make advancements in technology, we can find ourselves out of a job. Suddenly finding yourself unemployed can be shocking. Losing your job in your twenties or thirties is annoying, but losing it in your late forties or fifties is traumatic.
I’m feeling down – It’s around the mid-life period when we experience disappointment and sadness as we reflect on goals we haven’t achieved and regret opportunities missed.
I don’t know what I want – Many of us arrive at the half-way mark of life not knowing what we want, but knowing it’s not the life we currently have.

It’s a rare individual who does not face one of these crises at mid-life, but all of us has a choice as to how we view them. On the one hand we can view them as meaningless personal and family catastrophes, which will only assist in increasing our level of suffering. Alternatively, we can view them as gifts containing meaningful lessons to be learnt and opportunities for personal growth.

I do appreciate linking mid-life and gift together seems a contradiction in terms, especially in our society, but mid-life is in itself an extraordinary gift. It’s a window of opportunity in our lifetime to shift our focus inward and reconnect ourselves to our deeply held beliefs and values and long forgotten dreams. It’s a chance to become more connected with our passion, wisdom, liveliness, and strength – the fullness of who we really are.

Just in case you have any doubts, here are some of the gifts I now believe mid-life offers us. Mid-life provides a chance to:

Re-connect with our truest, most enduring self.
Find greater acceptance of ourselves and increasing levels of confidence and comfort in our own skin.
Let go of many of the burdens we picked up in our twenties and thirties and simplify our lives.
Stop letting what other people think control our lives and live with more freedom and spontaneity.
Harvest the wisdom gained in the first half of life.
Become more understanding and compassionate in our dealings with other human beings.
Redefine our definition of success rather than live the culturally prescribed definition.
Find our true vocation and purpose in life.
Do what’s right for us and make better choices regarding how we wish to spend our time.
Use our gifts to give back to society and do something significant.
Live with more peace, contentment and fulfilment.

If you are excited by any of these gifts mid-life offers then start today your journey towards them. I have and I know you can too. Be under no illusion, finding more meaning and purpose in the second half of life will be the toughest thing you’ll ever do. It’s not easy, it’s hard work, but I can promise you it’s the most rewarding thing you’ll ever do.

Expect disapproval, even rejection from others (especially those who love you the most), a lack of support and many challenges on the journey ahead. It will take courage, enthusiasm and discipline to take control of the second half of your life. You need courage to drive towards your core value-based priorities, enthusiasm to keep going, and discipline to create new habits even when the going’s tough. But, closing the gap between what’s important to you and the way you spend your time will make made your life more balanced, fulfilling and will be time well spent.

As I conclude this welcome I would like to leave you with one of my favourite quotes by George Bernard Shaw:

I am not a teacher but a fellow traveller of whom you’ve asked the way. I point ahead, ahead of myself as well as you.

I like this quote because it fits closer to how I see myself – a fellow traveller. I’m not a teacher or guru or expert on this material, more a fellow traveller who is also wrestling with life’s tough questions as I make the transition. Like us all I’m work in progress. Sure, over the last few years I’ve done a lot of reading and research to understand mid-life transition, but by far the main source of the information contained in these pages has come from either my own mid-life experience or the experience of fellow travellers who have shared their own valuable understanding of travelling the pathless path.

It’s my intention with findingyoursmile.com to provide specific tools, ideas, support, links, latest research and inspiration - through stories of people just like you who face the mid-life challenge - to help you turn it around and live a life where you greet each day with enthusiasm and sleep peacefully at night – I want to help people find their smiles in mid-life. It’s my hope that this website is a useful resource for you going forward. All of us could do with trusted fellow travellers on the sidelines, helping us make sense of what’s going on, especially as we navigate this difficult transitional period. Someone who can cheer us on when the going gets tough and help us step back and gain a new perspective in moments of confusion. Someone who can be with us all the way until we come out the other side with greater hope and a more meaningful existence.

Thanks once again for stopping by. As we stand together I point ahead of myself, as well as you, with love and encouragement. May these ideas inspire and enrich your journey, my fellow traveller, towards finding your smile in mid-life.

Love and best wishes

Colin

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*Statistic for England and Wales in 2003. Office for National Statistics, Divorces:1950-2003, sex & age at divorce. www.statistics .gov.uk Accessed 14.06.06

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