Cheryl Beck Esc...: Hello, my friends. Welcome back to season two of Thriving In Midlife: Living Beyond Mediocre. Well, I hope you enjoyed that last episode that kicked off season two, but today, I'm going to talk about a topic that has been kind of front and center for at least a year and a half, maybe two or slightly more for myself, but I think in the last 18 months, 19 months now maybe, that many people have been experiencing a time to reflect, a time to maybe rethink their priorities. I know there's been a lot of silver linings despite this pandemic that we're in, but going even beyond that, I want to address a question that maybe we have forgotten. As we've aged in midlife, we become very consumed with everything we have to do, what our expectations and responsibilities are as a mother, a wife, a sister, an employee, everything, a friend, and even just maybe a caregiver at this point too, for your older, aging parents, so we carry a lot of responsibilities.
Those often crowd out the idea of reaching goals or dreams, and I'm going to talk about dreams more so like the big question that I want you to ask yourself to kind of break open this topic and to break open and kind of unpack maybe something that has gotten lost in those years of child-rearing or years of expectations and responsibilities you've had to carry, and that is, "What did you want to be when you grew up?" I know as a kid, we were often asked that question. I remember keeping a little book that my mom had. It was like this yearly keeping track of your school years, and I think that was one of the questions that was asked, and we all had our dreams as a kid, really, through maybe age seven. I mean, think back to age seven.
"What did you want to be when you grew up? What did you enjoy doing when you were around that age?," because as we've gotten older, even as you progressed out of elementary school, and I see it a lot, I saw it in my kids, or once they got to sort of that middle school, sixth grade age, a lot of that dreaming and vision-IDing, vision-projecting and that creativeness has kind of been squeezed out of them. They don't allow for that. It becomes very heavy into what's called the STEM, science, technology, engineering and math sort of curriculum, that we kind of try to force upon our kids so that they can graduate and get jobs and go to college and all that stuff, but the creativeness and the dreaming aspect of being a child or just living out those dreams kind of gets pushed to the wayside. It gets pushed to the back.
We're told to be realistic and not pursue maybe those dreams. I was very fortunate that I had a very ... My mom was very supportive of the idea that once I realized ... Actually, I didn't realize this till a little later in life. Meaning, I was likely 11 or 12 when I probably mentally decided that I wanted to become a professional dancer, and my mom supported me in all those efforts. She even got me the best schooling, encouraged me to be involved in productions to help hone those skills or have that performance experience, but actually, surprisingly, you want to hear a funny story, when I was seven or maybe slightly around that age, I remember writing in that little book that my mom had, that I actually wanted to become a stewardess.
Now, they call them flight attendants now, but back then, they were called stewardess. It's kind of funny that that was what I wanted to do because I don't think I had ever traveled on a plane by age seven. We did later going to Florida, but I don't know that I had actually had that experience. I mean, I do remember flying to Florida on TWA, if anybody remembers that company, and getting those little flight pins that you can get. I don't know.
I just, I think I've always loved to travel. I think that's been just a part of my blood and that whole, I like to say, that gypsy in me, and I think that lended itself to being a dancer, being a professional dancer. However, I didn't get the opportunity to actually tour with a company like I thought I might, but that desire to travel since I was little is still there. It's still there. Maybe you have some sort of hidden desire or dream that you never fulfilled, and so that question of going back to that seven-year old self, and that's just an approximate age, and maybe you don't remember, but one resource that you can do to help kind of draw that out or bring that back to your memory is if you have some pictures, if you have some old pictures, look at pictures and see yourself in those pictures.
What were you doing? What did you enjoy doing back then? When were you happiest? Those would be questions you might want to ask yourself, and I really want you to sit down and think about, "What were those dreams that I have when I was young?" Now, I'm not saying that that's what you should go back and fulfill, but it helps to kind of give you a sense of, "Who were you back then?," and I believe that that child is still within you in some way.
We often carry those personalities and those characteristics of ourselves throughout our life. Can we change? Absolutely, but there's always that nature within us, so think about that. "What did you want to be when you grew up? What did you enjoy doing back then?"
I enjoyed doing the dress-up and playing pretend and performing in front of my family, so that kind of went hand in hand with the whole dancing, but I didn't start taking really serious dance lessons till I was age nine, nine and a half actually. There were other dreams I had along the way that as I got into adulthood, particularly when I got married and started having kids and having to raise my family, obviously, those dreams and visions for myself for my future had to be put on the back burner, and so now that I am, my kids are older, I've actually just started kind of that empty nest season, I have discovered that there are some things I want to awaken within me. This process actually started a little bit before, then pandemic hit the U.S.. I was diving deep into a 12-week program, and I had gone through this book or 12-week program three times, so this was my third time doing it, and it's called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. Maybe some of you have heard of it.
I highly recommend it mainly because it provides, at the end of each week or chapter that you have to read, very deep questions, questions that will get you thinking about what it is that you were made to do. What do you enjoy doing? What are your tendencies? That book has some great questions in it, and if you're looking to kind of look deeper into yourself and figure that out, maybe you're unsure, it does take some time. I know that my dream muscle, I'll call it, was very well used until about maybe my 30's, mid-30's, because I still, even after I graduated from grad school, I had these visions of what I wanted to do, and then, I think it was probably closer to when I had my second child, that those things really got lost, and in my 40's, I tried to remember how to dream, and I felt like I was stuck, like I couldn't dream.
Like that muscle wasn't working in me anymore, and that's why I kind of found The Artist's Way to be very helpful and beneficial to help me ask those poignant questions, to help me find that muscle again, to help be able to go back, and even if I knew dreams or visions for myself as well, which has been very helpful. I'd like you to take some time to really sit down and write that out for yourself. If you're driving and listening to this, maybe you can come back and revisit that question. The question is, "What did you want to be when you grew up, and what were you like around age seven? What did you enjoy doing?"
"What made you happy?," and think about, "What were those activities that you liked doing, or where did you ... I mean, did you like being outside all the time?," and so start to just write those down. Journal about it for yourself. Most recently, I came across another way to kind of look at dreaming and looking forward to life goals, as they might call them, or some people might categorize them as a type of bucket list. We're all familiar with what a bucket list is, and mostly when we think about a bucket list, most people actually, and I'm one of them, has a huge list of places they want to travel. That typically seems to be kind of what most people think of when they think bucket list, or maybe adventures they want to try, but it kind of goes beyond that.
I recently was reading another book and I kind of took the idea from this book. Not exactly. I kind of morphed it my own way, but what he had you do was to sit down and just brainstorm about every life goal or bucket list thing. Just everything. Just dump it all onto paper.
Sit down, maybe give yourself a good 10 minutes to just throw everything out on paper. Write it down, and that could be just anything. It could be the craziest thing you can think of, like I want to try every flavor of Baskin-Robbins ice cream, or it could be I want to travel the world, or it could be anything, but also be specific. Then, once you've done that, you have this whole ... I actually have a front and back sheet of paper in which when I did this project, I just covered it, and I just wrote all kinds of things, and there's more that keeps coming out as I'm doing this, but then, I have ...
I'd like you to categorize that whole list and get another sheet of paper, and categorize those life goals or bucket list items into different categories. I've used the categories of skills, travel, of course, adventure, and then I did a kind of service category or miscellaneous category. You can decide kind of how your life goals or dreams, what they fall into, what category they fall into. After I did that, then I looked at my big list and I moved them each to whatever category I thought they fit under. For example, under my life goals for some skills where I want to learn to speak Italian, want to learn photography, so there's all kinds of things.
There's other things, other just examples. Then, I listed a bunch of travel stuff that I want to do. For example, I want to visit all 50 states, which I already have 39, I think in my last count, and I'm taking a trip because life is short to the New England states, which were part of ... There are several up there that I have not been to, so that's going to kind of ... I'm going to tackle that kind of thing. Then, I have a list of adventure stuff.
Like I want to, believe it or not, I want to do a hot-air balloon ride. I want to ride on a camel in a desert. Those are different things for under my sort of service or miscellaneous things. I would actually want to work for Habitat for Humanity. I have not done a service project like that, so these are just different ideas that I had, and I put them in, okay?
Once you get them in the categories, and I really want you to do this, because when you write something down, you're more likely to follow through and do it, okay? Then, once you get them into those categories, whichever categories you have determined fit your big list, then what the author of this book I was reading was saying, he didn't necessarily do those categories, but he said, "In each of those areas, find one of those things that you can do immediately or do now." Like start doing now, and so for me, under travel, one of my ... It actually hits two of my travel bucket list ideas, was I want to see the fall foliage in Maine or in the New England states in October, which I'm actually doing this month. That also kind of encompasses that visit all 50 states travel goal or bucket list.
Then, like for my adventure, believe it or not, I have never karaoked, okay? I have sung onstage for productions, but I've never karaoked, so I will be doing that very shortly with a dear friend. Those are just examples of ways to keep your brain dreaming. Now, I know we all also have bigger dreams. I don't want us to forget that those are also obtainable and that we should continue to dream about those as well, even if they seem so far off and so impossible or unachievable.
Do not let yourself quit dreaming. Do not let yourself give up on those long-term life goals as well, and write them down, and revisit some of those questions, that question I asked. If you really feel stuck, go back. Really, envision yourself maybe as a seven or eight-year old and what you were like. Envision what you wanted to be when you grew up, and did you accomplish that?
Part of mine was to become a professional dancer, and I, in a sense did that. I can't say that I feel like that dream has been completely fulfilled, so there's maybe a little part of me that wants to explore that possibility. However, there are some dreams that I have resolved or know, because God has shown me that that door is closed or that dream is done, and those, I may wrestle with that for a while, but those, I can gradually accept and know that, "Okay, I'm not going to revisit that," and so you might have some of those as well, and so I don't want us, especially as we're aging and we're thinking our life is almost over, it's not. Trust me. It is just beginning, ladies.
It is just beginning. I feel more excited and revived in this midlife period of my life than I think I did even as a 30-year old, so we have so much more living to do, ladies, and I want us to really go after those dreams. Find a place to quiet yourself. Get a journal and dig deep. Allow yourself to dream. Allow yourself to envision what that looks like.
What do you want to do? And please, do not let other things get in the way. Meaning, like I said, life is short. We don't know, we're not guaranteed tomorrow, and so I think the idea of living without regrets is very important, and there is a book out. The book is called Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing, and so this was written by a hospice nurse, and she asked many of those people at the end of their life what their regrets were.
In her book, she says one of the top five regrets was that they wished they had let themselves be happier. I look at that too as allowing yourself to dream and follow those dreams, and that also kind of coincides with one of her other points that she says, "Another regret they often say is they wish they had had the courage to live a life true to themselves, not the life others expected of them." I think both of those are great reminders that we need to live our dreams. We need to fulfill those life goals and be who we were created to be and not what society expects. I hope that you do take some time and journal.
Answer those questions. Create your huge, huge bucket list. Just brain dump onto some paper everything and anything that you can think of that you've always wanted to do, and then categorize it, and then start doing those things, because I know I don't want to be on my deathbed having any of those regrets of not living the life that I wanted. A few resources that I will also list in the program notes include the book I mentioned called The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron, and it's a 12-week program that you do on your own, although there are some support groups if you want to work with some other people. Great questions at the end of each chapter, which is done each week.
Then, another great resource is called Designing Your Life, and there are some online PDFs, but there's also a book that goes with it. It's by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. Then, another one that I enjoyed that I got the idea of that, kind of that brain dumping thing was from a book called The Art of Non-Conformity. It's basically living your life the way you want to, idea, another great resource. I hope you've enjoyed this and I hope you go on and dream your biggest dreams and live your best life so that we are thriving in midlife and living beyond mediocre.