After years as a licensed professional counselor and yoga/meditation instructor, my work in the world has expanded and morphed. My own life experience enriches my understanding of what others are going through. This past year I launched Wonders Wellness to support women over 40. I help women in mid-life with the process of life-redesign.
Life-redesign is a process of consciously and mindfully renovating the structure, systems, beliefs and perspectives of your life!
I’ve always been a fan of HGTV shows where people take these outdated, run-down houses and completely redesign, refurbish and remodel, creating a beautiful new home from the old.
It is so inspiring and uplifting to watch people have a vision, work hard to bring that vision to life and then with the reveal of the finished product they are able to stand back with happy tears as they contemplate the transformation of their home.
This is very much like the work I do with women over 40.
When women get to mid-life, it is here they often realize a profound discontent with life as it is. Mid-life is when a woman’s body begins to age more rapidly. We experience menopause. Our children are leaving the nest.
Mid-life is often the time for a life-redesign.
And the process is not too different than what they go through on those television shows.
I’ve created a map that I use with my coaching clients to help them with life-redesign. There are basically 8 steps to the process. You can use these 8 steps to create your own life-redesign!
- Do an initial inventory – Gather data! It is important to observe and assess where your life is right now. Take note of your physical health, the state of your physical body. Look at where you live, what you do day to day, habits you have, people you surround yourself with. Take an inventory and write it all down. Describe it as it is. Note how you feel as you are describing it. Use lots of adjectives.
- Make a wish-list: Circle all the things and feelings you’ve written down that you DON’T want anymore. Turn those things around into the things you DO want and the ways you DO want to feel and write the wants down on a separate piece of paper.
- Design your dream life: Take all those things you DO want and weave them into a vision of how your life will be when they are all plugged in. You can create a vision board with images and words or a map or just a description of what life will be like when you’re done with your redesign. Post it somewhere you can look at it everyday.
- Create a master to-do list: Now, what specific things do you need to do to make this happen? Join a gym? Hire a life-coach? See a doctor? Sell your house? Get your resume together? Re-prioritize your obligations? Start a blog?
- Circle the wagons: It’s time to create a dream team of support people. This team might be people you hire to delegate certain tasks to support you on your mission or it might be friends and colleagues who are willing to pitch in and contribute to the project. It might mean you go to therapy, hire a mentor or seek other consultation with experts. This team might include your health care practitioner, coaching support, a massage therapist, a handy-man or a virtual assistant.
- Dig in: Get to work! Dedicate yourself mentally to the tasks at hand every day. Remind yourself this redesign is going to take time, persistence and hard work every day. This is most often where people fall off track. Hang in there and keep moving forward.
- Be gentle with yourself: Be sure you are balancing all that hard work with meaningful breaks to attend to the care of your body, mind and spirit along the way. Don’t mistake dedication for being hard on yourself! Be proud of your progress. Nurture yourself.
- Celebrate!: Once you have realized your dream and your life is looking and feeling so much better, take time to celebrate yourself. Stand back, admire your work and breathe in to this place of realizing that YOU DID IT! Take time to sink into the new life you have created for yourself and frequently take pause to reflect on how far you have come.
If you should decide you’d like some support along the way, contact me directly to set up a free Connection Session so we can talk about where you are now and where you’d like to be!
