What made turning 40 impossible to ignore
Embracing the midlife crisis
I’m ever mindful of the phrase ‘what got you here won’t get you there’.
And turning 40 seemed like a perfect chance to reflect, with a number of anxious and uneasy thoughts. Had I squandered my 30’s, was I where I wanted to be, what’s the progress been like, has it been good enough. What about goals, direction of travel and daily habits.
Well there’s two lenses I’ve used here…
One is the ‘beat myself up, you should be better’ lens, and the other one is ‘wow look at everything that you’ve achieved.’
This is straight out of the ‘The Gap and The Gain’ book by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy. The idea that often people spend too long comparing against a mythical future utopia and becoming disillusioned, rather than looking backwards and appreciating the progress.
Anyway, that’s the whirlwind of emotion as a small business owner heading into his forties!
I want 2026, my first year in my 40’s to be the year I master self-discipline. That’s in terms of fitness, finance, family and fun.
Here are five areas I’ve struggled with throughout my 30’s that I should (or could) work on to shift the needle in my 40’s:
Bad Habits
The Voices In Your Head
Self Limiting Stories
The Illusion of Value
Planning and Budgeting
Here’s a quick summary of each area for now, then keep an eye out for future posts for deeper dives…
1. Bad Habits
In your 30’s, you’re forming routines, habits and behaviours. I’ve picked up many over the years and now need to course correct going into my 40’s. As ever, the later you leave the course-correction, the more dramatic it will probably need to be.
Some habits are easy to see the impacts of. Take not having enough sleep, that’s something that quickly catches up with you. What’s harder is the snacking, stress-eating and over-indulging. An extra few pounds every month, and the results quickly compound, in the wrong direction.
Work-wise too, many of the habits that caused me problems in my thirties were not obviously bad at the time. They formed under pressure, during growth or when things felt uncertain. Working longer. Being constantly available. Filling every gap with activity. Early on, those habits helped create momentum and a sense of value… but over time, I’ve realised that it’s often the softer less-tangible work that adds the real value.
I’ve had to learn and adapt to avoid just getting buried in ‘busy work’ but it’s not easy to break away from in our constantly connected world.
2. The Voices In Your Head
You are often your own worst critic.
And if your brain is anything like mine, you’ll jump from ‘everything’s fine’ to ‘worst case scenario’ within minutes.
There are voices that show up when things get hard, often at times when I can’t do anything about them.
As the economy has faltered and the trading environment has got tougher, I’ve often flirted with pangs of anxiety, overwhelm and burnout. Learning to manage this, to care enough and when to let go has been key.
I’ve alway had to develop coping techniques and habits to quieten the voices and deal with the stress > the larger the business gets, the higher the chances of issues cropping up (despite all the safeguards that we put in place!).
3. Self Limiting Stories
You are the stories you tell yourself.
Any time you tell yourself something starting with ‘I always…’ or ‘I never…’ you need to be SUPER careful. Are you reinforcing the type of person you want to be. Equally other people can unwittingly do this to you too of course.
I’ve had various times where I’ve been down, had to put on a brave face, or felt stuck. Sometimes for weeks or months at a time.
But a massive realisation in my 30’s was to make sure you’re telling yourself good stories, and to develop a robust character to avoid listening to other peoples (often incorrect) judgements).
Equally, the sooner you can build back up and create some (even any) momentum, the sooner you can start adding value and making progress again.
4. The Illusion of Value
You don’t need another app / system.
Being busy feels productive. Being needed feels important. Doing more feels like contributing, especially when other people rely on you.
Somewhere along the way, I started confusing effort with value, along with prioritising the WRONG things. Take Refinding Focus for instance… I created the perfect website, obsessed for hours about the logo, got all the systems in place, then got bored and did nothing for months. Of course, setting up a the perfect system isn’t where the value is with it (and now I’ve ditched all that for something simpler).
It’s like procrastinating for perfection!
The things taking the most time and energy were not always the things creating the most impact. It took a while to notice that being busy, and adding value often weren’t the same thing.
5. Planning & Budgeting
For a long time, planning and budgeting felt restrictive to me. In fact, we were always quite good at this until the pandemic hit, and predictably all our plans were blown out of the water.
I told myself it was easier to focus on growth and deal with the focus / numbers later. That’s partly true, but what I eventually learned is that avoiding budgets does not remove constraints. It just hides them by making everything less certain, less clear and harder to plan for.
Clarity, even when uncomfortable, creates better decisions. Uncertainty almost always makes them worse (and probably contributed to my anxiety too).
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What were your big challenges from your 30’s or early career? What might need to change to take you to the next level?
I’ll be diving more deeply into all these topics (and more) in upcoming posts each week, so be sure to subscribe to stay up-to-date.