August: Living Before Writing
How Daily Habits Shaped Dream. Decide. Do.
Nine years ago, in the year I turned 40, I experienced a mental shift. Not an epiphany, arriving with a blinding light, but more a change in my thinking, by degrees. The year was 2018 – I had been married for 14 years, and my children were ten and six years old. I had been in my promotional gifting and marketing company for 18 years – with eight years at the helm.
Turning 40 made me pause, look around, and take stock. I was feeling healthy and increasingly strong. My relationship with my husband was stable, satisfying, and still exciting. I was having a good time parenting my children, and loving their evolving interests and the spontaneous fun that having young children brings. My work was engaging and often still enthralling. I was starting to feel financially stable, and prepared for the future. I was managing to find time to train, to read, to be with friends and family, to potter around my home and garden – all things that bring me joy.
Changes in perspective often come from an impactful experience, but mine did not – it came about as a dawning realisation that I was happy and lucky, and that I was nearly halfway through my life. The years left for leverage seemed plentiful - and yet few. Was I as fit and healthy as I wanted to be? Was I using my brain enough and could I do better at work, or achieve more with my company? Could I use my time better to start making progress on some of the dreams that bubbled below the surface of my consciousness, submerged by busyness and endless to-do lists? The image of being on a treadmill was foremost in my mind – I was happy with the speed and incline of mine, but at the same time I felt like getting off, and living a bit differently. Could I embark on a new career, but at the same time keep the old one that I loved? Could I try some new and different experiences? Could I learn new things, and stretch myself? Could I write a book?
The answers were that yes, of course I could – there was no one to stop me, other than my ideas of what others may think. I am still learning to quiet that doubting inner voice that concerns itself with the perceived judgements of others, and am learning that people have far less inclination to condemn than we imagine – they are occupied with their own paths and dreams, and could probably do with our support rather than our inclination to question.
I also realised that I could not embark on all of these journeys at once. Drastic change can be disastrous, and I decided to begin chipping away at some of these dreams, but in a mindful and measured manner, using each day that I was given to cover some ground. That year, whilst taking long walks and short runs, I began listening to audiobooks and podcasts in the self-help category. I have always enjoyed these types of titles – I like the idea of the ‘self’ being the person we can rely on to make positive change. ‘Own the Day, Own Your Life’ by Aubrey Marcus, made a specific impression on me at that time. He advocates for taking control of your day from the moment you wake up until the moment you get into bed that evening. He focuses on daily routines involving sleep, nutrition, exercise, work, rest and relationships. Repeated consistently, he explains how these choices can improve energy, mental clarity, productivity and well-being. His approach was too regimented and prescriptive for me, but I really liked the idea that being intentional about how I conducted each day would start to help me make progress on some of my dreams. Goal setting has always come naturally to me, but the methodology is where I have often struggled and faltered.
Clichéd as it was, ‘one day at a time’ did (and still does) make perfect sense to me. I began to make small improvements in the areas where I wanted to make progress – my health, my relationships, my career, my recreation, and my growth. And so began a journey of being aware of the possibilities within my days. For me the word ‘intention’ sits naturally beside the words ‘choices’ and ‘decisions’. Too many of us are marching along on our treadmills, heads down, out of breath, and forgetting that we can slow down the speed, adjust the incline, or even choose a winding and intriguing path instead. Happy, stimulated, satisfied and about to turn 40, I greedily decided that I wanted even more, and resolved to begin designing my days, one at a time, to help me achieve new goals. What followed was years of trial and error, excellent days and some shocking ones, wonderful highs, rotten lows, and many in-betweens – but always the feeling that I was in the driving seat; always a sense of control over my own choices and behaviour.
I believe that we all have so much more potential than we allow ourselves to explore. We do not need to be huge achievers and ground breakers, but we can live our lives, love them and embark on a personal program of continuous learning and self-expansion so that we can improve our experience of the life that we lead. Since starting to think this way I have stretched and challenged myself in quite a few ways – I have built a solid training and fitness habit, changed the way I eat (and drink!), started a writing practice, begun a part-time degree, re-imagined my company and the way I do business, embarked on an additional career, formed inspiring new relationships, strengthened many old ones, explored more of the world, and had a lot of fun in the process.
Nine years later, I still recognise that the positive habits that have helped me to cover ground are practices that I will remain ‘fit’ at for only as long as I persist with them., and that is certainly what I intend to do. As each goal and milestone is reached, new ones continue to form (almost by magic!) Each is more inspiring, stimulating and scary than the ones before. The book that I began to write in 2024 was born from a willingness to self-reflect, to decide on the next steps that were right for me, and to get properly stuck into the doing.
My habits and approaches may not be yours – but don’t we all owe it to ourselves to pause, to evaluate, and to consider fresh alternatives? To dream, to decide, and then to do?