TRANSFORM YOUR LIFE WITH A POWER DECADE Get what you want with clever thinking
Karen Davis overhauled her outlook on life in midlife – and explains how you can, too
When I turned 50, I took a long, hard look at myself and saw someone who was overweight, unfit and not really an achiever in her career. I felt like a failure.
It had been coming for a while. I was divorced in my 20s, and by my early 30s I’d had two children within two years with my now-husband. While the kids were young, we’d had a house fire and lost everything. Then, of course, after the insurance assessor had been through the wreck, he broke the news that we were under insured. After that, I was playing financial catch-up as a self-employed mum, taking on limited work because I wanted to be able to drop my children off at school and tuck them into bed at night. It put me on the back foot; it wasn’t where I wanted to be career-wise. But, at the time, I just didn’t see it and, frankly, I wouldn’t go back in time to change this choice.
In my 40s, I loved being around my family and so didn’t take steps to ramp up my career, which was probably a mistake. But I felt full of energy, young and as if I had time.
However, children grow up. When mine did, I realised that I was about to hit my 50s and hadn’t really achieved the things I’d wanted to. That’s when I sunk into a real depression, thinking that I had left it too late.
I looked tired all the time (I was) and my face was lined, with fully formed jowls and a permanent furrow in my brow. It was bad. I had been so full of drive, dreams and ambitions in my earlier decades, and it seemed that the time to achieve those things had vanished.
But then something happened. I was asked to join the committee organising a local village fete, to help with its publicity as I worked in public relations. I’d never done anything like it, and I went along feeling vulnerable about meeting new people, about being judged and about being dragged into something that I didn’t have the time for.
How wrong I was. After the first few meetings, I’d made friends with people from all walks of life, as we were all volunteers giving up our time. My fellow committee members were full of gratitude about any press that I generated for the fete, and I found myself in a place where I was welcomed and appreciated. It changed my outlook. It was a turning point. I began to think about all the things that had made me happy when I was younger, many of which I had lost through the years, and that’s when I came up with the concept of a power decade.
A power decade is a window of time to make a run for what we want out of our lives before it’s too late. A 10-year period to correct what we have out of kilter, to put the smiles back on our faces and dust off those dreams.
From my experience, there are four pillars to a power decade, and each holds the others up.
✓PILLAR 1 Transform your health
I had let myself go. Having children, the stress of work, making family meals, no time for exercise – I’d allowed all of that to put me in a really unhealthy place. That had to change, because if there’s one thing I learned while interviewing experts about ageing, it’s that lifestyle choices catch up with you as you get older. Start taking your health in hand: eat well, have treats in moderation, drink water and start getting your weight under control (easier said than done during midlife, but there you are).
Likewise, you need to think about exercise, which will help enormously when batting off disease and illness. If you do become ill and you’re fit, you’re in a much better position to deal with it. Strength training in the form of weights, running, tennis or even just using your body weight are essential for helping stave off osteoporosis, the scourge of women as we age, so we need to incorporate this now.
✓PILLAR 2 Be creative
When was the last time you genuinely set aside time to do something creative; something that fired up your imagination and allowed you to explore ideas, to express yourself through an artistic medium? I believe that being creative is one of the keys to good mental wellbeing in midlife.
Being creative is proven to give you all the good stuff that meditation brings, but with supercharged benefits. It absorbs you into a different task, alleviates your anxieties of the everyday, improves brain function, boosts your immune system and helps prevent disease. It’s also time just for you and is immensely therapeutic. You’ll be amazed at the sense of achievement and the colour it brings to your life.
I believe that being creative is one of the keys to good mental wellbeing in midlife
✓PILLAR 3 Volunteer
It won’t come as a surprise that I’ve put this in the mix because it did so much for me. Volunteering gives us the chance to form new relationships with people of all ages, which is at the heart of why we should do it. We have the experience to help those younger and the physical ability to help those older. Because of our age, we can mentally touch all generations with a real understanding of their worlds.
There are so many benefits to volunteering, including boosting mental health and gaining a sense of true satisfaction, because you can genuinely make a difference.
✓PILLAR 4 Know your dreams
All four pillars are about you, but this one is special; this one is about your dreams, and we always tread carefully around dreams. What do you want to do that you haven’t ticked off the list?
Do you still want to do the things that you dreamed of doing in your 20s or do you have new goals? Write a list. Think about looking back in years to come: will achieving these things make you feel that you lived life well, that there are no regrets? Only items that meet that criteria should stay on this list.
Now plan them into the next 10 years, in terms of finances, time available to you and when you want to do them.
What do you want to do and how can you make it happen? Maybe you want to go to the Seychelles but can’t afford it? What about booking a volunteer project out there and then organising a series of charity events at home to cover the cost? Think laterally about how to achieve what you want.
Having the time of my life
I am 56 now and my life has totally changed for the better since I embarked on my power decade. Physically, I’ve taken myself in hand and am halfway towards my weight goal (my BMI is no longer in the obese category) and I exercise every day, whether that’s a walk or a session in the gym. For my creative hobby, I’m taking road trips all over the UK, meeting amazing people, and I want to turn this into a book. I’ve moved on from the village fete and now give my time to a volunteer project alleviating loneliness in my local area.
My dreams have started to become reality, with the publication of my book, The Time Of Your Life, which is all about what I’ve learned from midlife. I chose the title as a reference to the phrase my mum used to use in hushed tones. ‘It’s the time of life.’ I’ve changed it around to be more positive, which is what, I believe, we all want from these years of our lives.
From a washed-up 50-year-old who was looking down the barrel of an unhappy retirement, I think that’s pretty good progress. Why not try your own amazing power decade in which you make incredible things happen for yourself? Remember, no regrets.
The Time Of Your Life (Rethink Press) by Karen Davis is available on Amazon and toyl.co.uk