#327: How to Stop Living for Everyone Else's Approval in Midlife Transitions

For many, for most of our lives, we may have been trying to prove ourselves.

We're proving we can get the grades, land the job, earn the title, raise the children well, hold the whole thing together.

And that proving is not a bad thing at all.

It builds a life.

It builds real skills and confidence, and I wouldn't trade those decades for anything.

But here's the thing I want you to notice.

For so much of that time, the proving was pointed outward.

We were proving ourselves to others, to our parents and the expectations they raised us with, to our employers, to our families, to a whole world that seemed to be watching and keeping score.

So much of what we chased, we chased because somewhere along the way, we absorbed the idea that we had to earn our place, that we had to show them that we were good enough.

And when that judgment arrives, when we feel we have fallen short in someone else's eyes, it so often causes us to believe that we truly are not good enough.

And that is the moment the inner critic takes over, the voice that tells us that we are behind or that we're not good enough, that we should have been further along by now.

That voice was almost never ours to begin with.

It was the voice of everyone else we were trying to prove ourselves to, and we s- simply took it on and made it our own.

And what I have come to believe and, and what this decade of my life has clarified for me is that midlife is where that can finally change.

Not the ambition, the audience.

I'm not here to tell you that achievement is behind you now, that this is a season to sit back and give away what we have gathered.

For some women, yes, because this becomes a season of giving back, of mentoring, and of wisdom, and there's actually something really beautiful in that.

And if you do feel that pull, honor it.

But that's not the only path, and I don't want you to hear that your most ambitious days are over.

For a great many women, midlife is exactly when the biggest dreams finally come out.

The business, the book, the degree, the thing you never dared.

I'm building a whole new chapter myself right now, so I'm certainly not telling you to wind down.

What I am telling you is that the reason can change because there is a world of difference between proving something to others and proving something to yourself.

Proving it to others sounds like, "I have to," or, "They expect me to," or, "What will people think if I don't?" It's really heavy, and it never quite fills you because someone else is always holding the scorecard, and the approval you are chasing never lasts.

But proving to yourself sounds completely different.