016: Why Success Feels Harder in Midlife and How to Decide What Actually Matters

Episode Summary

If success has been feeling heavier lately...like you’re doing a lot but still feeling behind-this episode is for you.

In today’s Sustainable Success Tuesday conversation, we’re breaking down why success can start to feel harder in midlife…and more importantly, what to do about it.

This isn’t about motivation or discipline.

It’s about decision-making, capacity, and learning how to stop treating everything like it matters equally.

Inside this episode, you’ll learn how to simplify your focus, make better decisions, and structure your time in a way that actually supports your life so you can continue growing without burning yourself out.

Key Insights from This Episode

•  Why success can feel harder in midlife (and what’s actually changing) 
•  The hidden reason you feel overwhelmed-even when you’re productive 
•  Why doing more is no longer the solution 
•  How unclear priorities are draining your energy 
•  The difference between effort and decision-making 
•  How to identify what truly matters in your life and business 
•  A simple 3-step method to reduce overwhelm immediately 
•  Why structure-not hustle-is the key to sustainable success 

3 Practical Shifts You Can Start This Week

1. Choose Your Top 3 Priorities
   Focus on what actually moves the needle this week...not everything on your list. 
2. Do the 3-Column Audit
   •  What only you can do 
   •  What can be delegated 
   •  What doesn’t need to be done at all 
3. Create a Simple Weekly Structure
   Stop operating day-to-day and start planning your week with intention. 

Reflection Question

Where in your life are you treating everything like it matters equally…when it doesn’t?

Join the Conversation

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:21

Welcome back to the Limitless Living Podcast. I'm your host, Frederica Davis, wellness expert, entrepreneur, and creator of the reset method. So today is Sustainable Success Tuesday. This is where we talk about building success, leadership, and life in a way that actually supports you instead of slowly consuming you. If success has been feeling a bit harder lately, not because you don't know what to do, but because everything feels like it matters so much. This episode is for you. Because what I see happening with so many women in midlife is not a lack of discipline, it's not a lack of motivation, it's that you're trying to carry too many things at the same time, at the same level of importance. And this will exhaust anyone. So maybe this sounds like you. You wake up already thinking about everything that you need to do, you're managing your life, your work, your responsibilities, and maybe your business, your family, of course, your home, and even when you're getting things done, there's still this constant feeling like I'm behind, or or I should be getting more done. At the same time, you are feeling exhausted. You're just tired, you're mentally tired, physically tired, decision tired. And it makes you start questioning yourself a little bit. You know, I it's like, why does this feel so much harder than it used to? And and that's frustrating. I don't know if it's frustrating for you, but I know it can be frustrating for me. So I hit a point where I hit this face to face, head on. And it was because of the way I was operating. I j it it all just stopped working. I was saying yes to everything, every client, every opportunity, every request, every friend's need, every problem. Anyone I knew needed help. I was burning the midnight oil almost every single night. And I told myself, this is just what it takes. It's just what it takes to get through this period. I gotta get through this period. I was short on staff and uh one person out of maternity, and we had an unexpected relocation of our wellness center. I mean, I could go on and on and on. And it was a phase, yes, where I did need to push sometimes more than normal. However, I was doing it every day, every day. And what I didn't realize at the time, and long before that, quite frankly, uh pushing through, was that I had made everything feel equally important. And when everything feels that level of importance, nothing is actually getting prioritized in your day. So I was constantly in motion, just constant, constant motion, but not always knowing which things I needed to focus on to really make a difference, and instead, I was focusing on a lot of things that I didn't need to be focusing on. Does this sound familiar, or does this feel like it it might be hitting home a little bit? So at the same time as all of that was going on, my body was breaking down. You've heard some of the bits and pieces of this story, and multiple things led to this, but this was a very big piece of the breakdown in my body, and it just created pain, incredible pain, uh, ramping up my autoimmune system, fatigue, uh beyond fatigue, skin breakouts of my psoriasis that I had not ever experienced, uh brain fog, sleep problems. I could go on and on. I had to stop and I had to really ask myself, how much longer can I do this? Number one, and what actually matters here? And what is genuinely urgent, what is not? I had to figure out what felt urgent versus what really was urgent, and those questions started to really change a lot of things, and they led me to realize that my nervous system needed balancing. Yes, I've talked about that before, I will probably talk about it again, and it's what I see with clients all the time, but it also led me to some other things because here's what I see over and over and over again. It wasn't just in myself, I see this in my clients. High achieving women are not struggling because we don't know how to work hard. We already know how to do that. Our generation has pretty much nailed that. The problem is you haven't been taught how to decide what actually deserves your time, your energy, and your attention at this stage of your life. So I thought today we would break this down a little bit, and there's a lot more to this. I'm gonna do this in a little series. Before we get into the how uh to do this, you you need to understand what's happening and the why. Because once you start to see this clearly, it it'll help you stop making it mean something about you. So your capacity has changed. This is number one. Your capacity simply has changed, whether we like it or not. We've lived a long, full life by this point. You're in your 40s, 50s, 60s, maybe your 70s listening to this or beyond. I mean, my mom worked until she was 96. So I don't know how old you are listening to this. Maybe you're 30 listening to this. Well, that's still three decades, and you're starting to accumulate some things. And when you live more life, you carry more responsibility, responsibility typically, as you go through each year. Your body absorbs more stress over time, so that's going to be more heartache, more loss, more um disappointments, yes, more successes too, but it's going to have a lot more emotional scars, a lot more physical challenges, a lot more cortisol floating around in your body than ever before. And what used to feel manageable now requires more from you. It starts to feel like what you used to do just takes so much more energy to do it than it used to. Does that hit home with you? This is real. This is not your imagination. So, number two, in terms of why this feels harder, is your life has expanded. You've got many roles that you are likely filling. More decisions, more moving pieces that you may be responsible for, even if your kids are older at this point, even if things have shifted, you have likely built a full life, but you likely did not build the structure to support the full life. And number three, you're operating without clear priorities. This is a big one. You're not lacking effort, but what you are lacking is clarity on what actually matters the most right now. Whether that's what matters most in your daily to-do list, what matters most in your business, what matters most in your home, your relationship, your self-care, it's getting in touch with what matters the most. So everything gets treated the same, and when we treat everything the same, that creates constant pressure instead of weeding out the things that should matter a little less or should be lower on the priority list. So when success starts to feel harder, it's not because you've lost your edge, it's because you're trying to operate at a high level, and uh and usually it's a higher and higher and higher level without clear decision-making filters. That will drain you every time. So, how do you decide what actually matters? I'm gonna give you four shifts today, and these are simple, but they will change how you operate. Shift number one: this is gonna be stop treating everything like it matters equally. This alone will change your life. Everything cannot be a priority. If everything is important, you will feel overwhelmed no matter how productive you are. So I want you to start asking yourself, what actually moves the needle in my life or my business right now? Not 10 things, not five things, one, two, three things. Now I'm gonna tell you, ladies, I struggle with this. However, implementing a system where you are looking at this, reorganizing, refocusing, and putting the first three things in front of you and getting them done the next day, the things that move the needle, and committing to yourself to do what is the real priority, whether this is quality time with your family, private time for your health, movement, or client acquisition in your business. You've got to figure out what are the three things that really move the needle in your life or your business right now. No more than that. You can have the list of all the other things you have to do because trust me, I do, it's pages long. However, when you're able to clearly see the difference of those one to three things, and you commit to tackling those first, things start to happen. First of all, you feel like you've accomplished what you should, and you don't feel like you're spinning your wheels as much. And second of all, if there's time left over to do other things, great, you do other things. But you are not feeling like every single thing has the same level of importance. For example, I no longer give my personal picking out of the groceries the same level of importance that I once did. I can let somebody else do that and have them delivered. There are seasons where I am in a creation mode or a purpose mode where I say, okay, I don't care if the laundry is put away. It is no longer of equal importance. Okay, I'll use that as an example. Though someday I hope for it to be put away. I'm laughing. Uh I hope you can relate to this. This is the real me. You get the real me. So you get the picture. You cannot put equal importance on every single thing. If you're a business owner and you've got social media that needs to be done, maybe you've got content or marketing that needs to be done, maybe you've got clients that need to be seen, and people you need to train, and uh client relationships, and business forecasting, and business management, and uh maybe the restrooms need to be cleaned, or uh the place needs to be vacuumed, and you're all doing all of this, and you're putting equal importance on all of these different things, just to give you some examples. That is too much, it's burnout, it's not sustainable. So, shift number two. This is gonna be move from doing more to deciding better. Now, most women think that success comes from doing more. At this stage, success comes from better decisions, so those are gonna be the decisions about what what you choose to say yes to, what you choose to say no to, what you choose to delay, and what you remove completely from doing your results are coming from your choices, from your decisions, not from necessarily your effort. So if you're feeling overwhelmed, you're making decisions to do too many things that are likely things that you don't absolutely need to do. That is just the reality of it. Tip number three is audit what only you can do. This is where things start to shift in a real tangible way. I want you to take a piece of paper and divide it. Do this in your journal if you've been keeping one that we talk about, and divide it into three columns on your pages, on a piece of paper, however you want to do it. And in column one, that's your only I can do this column. Column number two is going to be I could train someone to do this column. And column number three is gonna be this doesn't actually need to be done. So how I did this first was I sat down and I made a list of all the things that I want to do, all the things I have to do, all the things I would normally put on my list to do, all the things that I thought I needed to do, all the things that weren't getting done that should be done. I put everything on the list. One master giant brain dump. Then I came back and I did this audit. I took everything off that master brain dump list and I moved it to the appropriate column, column number one, column number two, column number three. So again, it's column number one, only I can do this. Column number two, I could train someone else to do this or delegate. Column number three, this doesn't actually need to be done. And that's it. Be honest because a lot of what you are carrying, you were never meant to carry alone. And some of it, truthfully, when you start looking at this, some of it doesn't need to be carried at all. Do this as an exercise for yourself, for your sanity, for the rest of your life, so that you can live a limitless life versus a limited life versus a rundown and overwhelmed life. Now, shift number four, I want you to stop living day-to-day and start structuring your week. If you're waking up every day asking, what do I need to do today? you are already behind. Instead, start thinking in weeks. This is the CEO planning. Stop living day to day. I want you to start structuring your week. Because here's the deal: if you are waking up every day asking yourself, what do I need to do today? You're already behind. Instead, you want to start thinking in weeks. What are your priorities this week? I'll back up with you. When I first started to do this, and I realized I needed to start structuring my days better. The first thing I got accustomed to doing was thinking about my next day, planning everything intricately out the night before, going back on. I used to use the illegal pad to do this. Sometimes I still do, but a legal pad, and I would put every single thing down. I'd try to gorize it on the page, one part of the page, the things I needed to do, one part of the page, the places I needed to go, one part, things I might need to buy, another part might be calls or emails I need to return. Because by doing that the night before, you get it off of your mind and you can sleep better because you're not subconsciously thinking about what you have to do the next day because you know it's on that piece of paper and it's ready for you the next day. So if you start there, you can do it this way. Now, I did that, it worked for a long time, but every night I was transferring to me things, and I still was not looking at the top things. That was still limiting. So if you're doing something like that, I want to I want to share with you my personal experience and what I've seen with clients is I've worked with my entrepreneur clients and busy high-functioning women, is that when you start thinking a little bigger than that, maybe it's three days, maybe it's the entire week, ideally, the entire week for this, you start getting your priorities in order a little easier. So when you're looking at the total picture of a week and you're thinking, what are my priorities this week? What must absolutely get done to move my needle forward in my life, in my business or in my um health or whatever category you want to put this in. If you're an entrepreneur, looking at this total week, you're gonna be looking at when am I actually focusing on clients? When am I actually focusing on business growth? When am I actually focusing on my life? Where does my actual life fit in here? Because your business is supposed to support your life. You are not supposed to be what supports your business. It's supposed to be the other way around. And I've done it both ways. So it's definitely supposed to be your business that supports your life. You don't need it to be a perfect schedule, but you want to be looking at the full week so that you can make adjustments and see that picture. You need this structure because structure creates clarity, and clarity reduces the overwhelm. And when you are less overwhelmed, you make better decisions, your productivity goes up, everything works better, and you feel better going through your life, through the building or growing or sustaining of your uh career in your business. So let's integrate this for a second here. When I started doing this, everything changed. I wasn't working less because I decided to try and slow down. I was simply working differently. That's what I want for you. I was more focused, more intentional, less scattered. And my body responded to that, and I started to heal better. That was a piece of my puzzle. So energy improved, my clarity improved, results in my business, in my personal life, in my body, they improved. Because I stopped trying to do everything and give everything equal importance and started deciding what really actually mattered. So here's what I want you to do this week. Keep it very, very, very simple. Do the three-column audit. What only you can do in column number one, what can be delegated in column number two, and what can be removed in column number three. Choose your top three priorities for the week, not ten. Not everything, just three. Create a loose weekly structure to this. Just time blocks. You can do it in your Google Calendar, you can do it on a piece of paper, whatever works for you. Nothing complicated. That's it. Don't overcomplicate this. I cannot stress that enough. The trick is doing this consistently as a small, sustainable shift that will give you big results. This week I want to leave you with this question. Just sit with this for the week. Where am I treating everything like it matters equally? When it really doesn't. If this resonated with you, I invite you to come join us in the free limitless living community. These are the conversations that we continue in there, and you get more access to me, and you can ask me questions. I'll put the link in the show notes. If this episode helped you, share it with somebody who might also need it. If you haven't already, leave us a review so more women can find this message. And I'm gonna leave you with this success should expand your life, not overwhelm your life. Sometimes the next level of your life doesn't come from doing more, it comes from deciding better. I'll see you in the next episode.