Ep 182: Six Ways to Reignite Your Ambition at Mid Career (Mastering Midlife #3 of 4)

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello , friends . I hope you had an amazing week .

Today we're going to continue our series on mid-career and we're going to talk about something super relevant to almost everyone at mid-career maybe even everyone , I will just say and that is ambition at mid-career . And I want to talk about this from several different perspectives .

And it's coming up for me this week because I'm coaching one of my clients on this topic . We've been working together for a couple of years and there's a lot of things we've worked through , but he finds himself at a place where he's at the top of his game .

He's got a C in his title and he likes the industry and he's got this refined point of view that he brings to his industry and his name is known in the industry and all of that .

So that's all great , but now he's got this high level of passion and he's trying to figure out where he channels that passion and how he does that in a way that not only makes him happy now but that connects the dots to where he and his wife want to be in five or 10 years .

So that's kind of why I wanted to talk about not just ambition for everyone but ambition at mid-career , because I do think it's very different , and I do want to start out just by saying I think in general just my observation over the course of my career and the people I've talked to , and even like some of the coaching clients or some of the conversations I

have today people tend to generalize . I am generalizing here with this generalization . They tend to generalize about people at mid-career and they kind of say , oh , you just get lazy or you just lose your ambition , or you just get into this career slump that you can't get out of , and that can be true .

But I think it's a lot more nuanced than that and for people who have always been kind of ambitious , like I feel like I was one of those definitely when you get out of college and you're just starting , you're on fire and you know what you want to do and you're going after that and the decisions you make are in service of that .

So everything is pretty clear in the early to mid-stage of your career , but we start to realize sometime around 50 year mark that time is finite .

We're going through things in our life , maybe like my last year , where I lost both my parents and , granted , they were lucky , we were lucky to have them for all of these years and they were very , very healthy until right at the very end . So there's lots of blessings there that I'm trying to stay focused on as I work through my grief .

But at the same time , when you start to lose people that are important to you maybe a good friend passes away , or a spouse or partner or , like me , your parents you start to realize that the road in front of you has an end to it , and so when you start to look at your life , we're asking yourself a set of different questions , and some of those questions

are is this , it this routine that I've got , this money that I'm making , is this it ? Is this all I'm going to contribute here on this planet ? And you realize that you're not 25 anymore , right , it's not all in front of you , you know . You realize maybe that the track you're on in your corporate life might have brought you as far as it can go .

Maybe not , but maybe it has . And we're starting to deal with that and you think but I've got so much more in me . So I think that's when people start to feel this general sense of malaise . And so what I want to talk you through today are six things to think about if you find yourself in this kind of a stage .

Because , like I said , my client and I have had a couple sessions over the past couple weeks and he doesn't feel a sense of malaise . He feels more a sense of competing passions and he and his wife are very clear on what they want and where they're going and where they want to be five , 10 years from now .

That's clear , right , and he's at the top of his game right now . So there's nothing technically wrong in his perspective . He's like it's fine . It's just I have all these things now .

I would describe it as more the sense of how do I incorporate all of these other things into this shortening runway that I have left , how do I make sure that I get all of it out of me and that I'm happy with those decisions and how I've spent the remainder of my time in my corporate life .

And , by the way , this person also has a business or two and he's got some other interests that are starting to spin up .

So he's a very busy person , he's a very ambitious person and he's trying to figure out how do you connect the dots from where he is right now to factor in these things that he wants to go do , so that he doesn't head himself in a direction that isn't consistent with what he and his wife want as their children start to go to college and they start to

figure out you know what to do with their retirement years . He probably won't retire in a traditional sense , but still you know time is starting to tick and that's really the underpinning of today's messages . I think you know different times in all of our careers . At any stage we can say do I like my job ? You can feel a general sense of malaise .

You can feel you're in the wrong industry , you work for the wrong boss like that can happen at any stage . What's different at midlife is that things start to change Our perspective , changes on life in general .

We start to realize we don't have an endless road ahead of us , and so there's this sense of kind of competing things like I have to make as much money as I can , so that can make it hard to take chances like changing career paths or starting a business , leaving a job when you're at the top of the game at midlife , when you're trying to set up the rest

of your life . It's not for the faint of heart , like that is not to be taken lightly . And yet if you say no to those things and you stay where you're at just for the money , I can guarantee you , unless you change your perspective on where you're at right now , you're going to be a very unhappy person and that's life's too short for that right .

So I want to talk about what's going on and how do you diagnose it , because I think it's really easy for us to get into a routine at midlife where you have our life right We've got the mortgage and maybe the partner , and if you have children , you've got that .

And , like I said , if you've got your set of friends , you've got your set of activities for you and your family , and then you've got potentially these clubs and outside organizations you belong to .

You've got these things in your life and I think it's easy to just start going through the motions , kind of going unconscious and not paying attention to what's really going on with you , how you're really feeling about where you're at .

And so when you do that and you go unconscious for long periods of time , I do think typically something will happen that shakes things up , like you might end up getting laid off .

You might end up just feeling this sense of dread every day when you go into your job and you feel like I just I can't do this again , and so I think that's where the cliche comes from right .

It's like you're so miserable , burned out , unfulfilled , whatever it is , and maybe you've been ignoring it and you just aren't giving it your best , even if you're someone who always has given it your best .

You just feel like you're questioning maybe all the decisions that led you here and whether or not it was the right path for you and if you're making the kind of contribution you can make .

So I want to talk about the six things that can help if you find yourself in this position , because I do feel like most of us end up here . Whether it's a prolonged period or a short thing , it's not a pleasant place and the way to get through it is not to run out and blow things up in your life without thinking it through .

It's not to say no to making changes , because I don't think that's the answer either . And I think it's not to look at everything at your life in general , which we tend to do , we're not unhappy and just say the whole thing sucks , like it's just a big steaming pile of poo .

But the way to solve problems , especially the bigger , more existential problems in our life , is to pull them apart . And so that's what these six steps are going to help you do , because you can't just look at it and say I'm just miserable , right , and it's just too easy to do that .

I think the first thing you have to do and this might take a while , these first two might take a while is to say what is the issue , and what I mean by that is you have to kind of get clear on what's happening with you , and here I'm going to take all the things in your life for a minute and I'm just going to push them aside and pretend they don't

exist , because we're talking about ambition here . So it doesn't matter at this point what we're going to talk about . It's less about what's going on with your partner or your kids or your marriage or your . Forget about that for a minute . Let's just talk about your career and your job .

What are you feeling every day Like when you get up to go to the job and you think about the things that you're going to do that day ? You think about the things you'll contribute at the end of the week . How does that feel ? When you think about the things you'll contribute at the end of a week , how does that feel ?

Do you like what you're doing every day ? And sometimes the answer to that is nuanced . Sometimes the answer is yes , I like what I'm doing , but , and the but can lead you to places like I don't like the industry I work in , I don't like the boss I work for , or I don't like , you know , the general vibe or culture of the company .

So the but comes with kind of a delineation of some nuanced things , and I think it's really clear to take a look at that and to spend some time examining that . And if you're not sure about that , pay attention for the next few weeks , 30 days . How do you feel every day when you get up and go to work ?

When was the last time you felt excited about the things you needed to tackle ? When was the last time you felt a sense of purpose ?

When was the last time you felt like , ambitious enough to identify an opportunity for the company that may not be on anyone's radar screen , and have the fire and the passion and the belief to quantify that and sell it in and go after it ? That takes a lot of effort and like .

If you don't feel that you care that much , I think it's time to ask yourself some questions . Is it the job ? Is it the organization in general whether it's the boss , the culture , you know , whatever or is it me ? Is there something off with how I'm looking for it ? Because before we go on , I do want to say that everything starts with how you're thinking .

If you listen to this podcast , you know that's really the foundational thing that I teach . And now that doesn't mean that if you're in a situation that doesn't serve you , or you're working for a bad boss , or it's a toxic culture like those , how you think about it isn't going to change that . So I'm not saying that .

But what I am saying is sometimes there's nothing really wrong with where you are or even what you're doing .

You're just feeling some sense of malaise or this drifting sense of no purpose , maybe because you've lost your focus , or maybe because you feel like you've hit a plateau and you don't feel like you're going to go any higher , and that's causing you to feel a sense of regret , dissatisfaction , things like that .

So number one is really important and I think it takes time . You've got to pull it apart and I'd start with is it the job , is it the organization , or is it me ?

And it might be a combination , but try to put your chip on one of those things that it's disproportionately this , and if I could fix this , then the bulk of my work week and my work day would feel better . It would look better .

So that's the first thing I want you to get clear on , and then we're going to walk you through some other things , like if you find out that it is the job or it is the org or it's you , you know we'll talk about what does that mean as you go through . But that's number one . Spend some time getting clear on those three things .

Answer that question and don't allow yourself to land in a place where it's like oh , it's all three , you know , just bundle it back together . No , keep it pulled apart . And if it's all three , I want you to force yourself to put a percentage on each one , and it can't be 33 , 33 , 33 . You've got to decide what's the biggest problem and fix that .

Get to the root of it . And it very well could be you . Allow yourself to stay open to that . Nothing's ever perfect . Like the company might not be perfect , your boss might not be perfect , your job content might not be perfect right now , but if you changed your perspective on it and put a renewed energy into it , might that change ?

It's a question to wrestle with before you think about doing anything more significant to change your life . So that's number one . Number two once you get clear on those things , then I want you to do something . Even if the longer term thing you're kind of clear you want to leave the job , I want you to do something first before you leave the job .

I want you to reinvigorate right where you're at Doesn't mean you have to stay , because I'm going to be talking in a few steps on how do you leave , but I want you to be able to leave knowing that at least in this last sprint that you did with that business . You gave it your all , a hundred percent , just like you did when you were 25 .

Why is that important ? Because when we retool how we think about something , even something that we know isn't right for us , we feel better A in our workday . And that's one of my goals is to immediately get you from malaise to a sense of purpose again . Even if you're planning to leave , it's totally fine .

You can still reinvigorate , because sometimes the moves you're going to make are going to take a bit of time . So I don't want you to stay in the malaise . I want you to renew . I want you to feel a renewed sense of drive and purpose and contribution , and you can do that right now , even with a bad boss . I promise you . I promise you on that one .

So the value here is to reinvigorate , and there's a couple of things I'm going to give you as an idea of how to do that . Number one take on something new . Volunteer for something . If you've got a full plate , that's okay . You can volunteer for the new initiative or to participate in some kind of a committee or whatever .

That will give you a renewed sense of something new on your plate and maybe even a new set of people that you're working with on the day-to-day and that will change how you feel . It'll give you a sense that you're contributing this new important thing and it'll make you feel better every day , more interested in what you're doing .

Number two you might consider and it's easier to do these days , but you might consider a change in your work environment . So shake things up a little bit . So , for example , if you're full-time in the office , maybe you could ask for a work from home , even if it's not forever . Could you do it for a quarter , that kind of thing .

Could you do it for the summer and you and your family go rent a Airbnb on a lake somewhere and shake things up for the summer . Right , do your work , but do it in a place that serves you and your family .

Just an idea Could you go hybrid if you're full-time in the office , could you do something to shift your work schedule where maybe you're working , from , you know , six to two or seven to three or something like that ?

A little change like that , especially if you're an office worker , can totally change the traffic patterns you're encountering , which changes the general length of your day , including the commute , and I get up at an ungodly hour of the morning for most people . My schedule has always been I'm a very early riser . I am almost always up by four .

I know that's really early , and so I get into the office early and I get a lot done , and that can give you a sense of accomplishment too .

Like I don't know if you're like me , your calendar is full of meetings and it makes it hard to get the work done , and a great way for me to balance that is I get in early and I leave a little bit earlier , so that really makes a difference for me in my , in my eight to five .

The big thing with this is you take on something new , you investigate a different work schedule or even and this is going to take a little bit more drive and ambition but notice the problems in your business and ask yourself is there something that you can see that would help to fix that ?

And put some thought around that pitch and then maybe take it to your boss and see if there's any interest in having you take that on . I think that takes a little bit more drive and ambition than the other two that I brought up , but it's an interesting way to honestly , even in a job you don't love very much or an organization you don't love very much .

It's a way to really reignite that flame that most of us felt earlier on in our careers . It gives you the sense of making a big contribution to something that matters to you , right ?

So number two is about making a series of micro changes that aren't necessarily leading you to your future , but that are doing something just as important right now , which is making you feel better in your day to day . Very important that we get your mindset in a place and your emotional state in a place where you feel not the sense of malaise and no purpose .

You know that you're feeling pretty good every day and that's going to help set you up for the things that are going to come next . So number three is I want you to ask yourself what could you do to start infusing learning and growing into your everyday .

Now , some of the number two would get you there , but here I'm talking about doing it not to feel better , doing it with a sense of purpose , so that it's leading you to where you want to go .

So , however , you answered number one like , if it's your job , if it's your organization , if it's you and your mindset , I want you to look at number three as the first step in leading you to the new place . Like , if the outcome in number one is that your organization but you kind of like what you do , that's an easy answer .

You just need to look for a job in a new organization , maybe a new industry , where you can do the same thing and just feel the sense of renewal . Right , I'm not saying finding that job is easy , I'm just saying the path is clear on that one .

If it's your job , I think you've got to ask yourself , okay , like , do I want to stay in this functional area or do I want to do something new ? Like that is going to require more effort and I think number three can help with that . So number three is about learning . I'm a lifelong learner so I am always taking courses .

Like I think I said on an earlier podcast , I am contemplating going back for a master's in positive psychology . Obviously won't help with my brand career , but it will help with the future of my business and I want to kind of do that at University of Pennsylvania . So I'm in the early stages of thinking about that and the timing for that .

And that makes me excited just to think about that because I really want to do it , and so I'm in the process of noodling that . But there's other things that you can do . You can get a course catalog to a local university or even one of the ones that offers online .

So these days we can go to any school from our home office and look at some courses in areas of interest that you might want to take . So let's say you're in HR and you think you want to transition into marketing and work on their social media . You can get certified from any number of places that certify people for social media .

You can take some marketing courses in content or social media or campaign creation . How would you think about this period of time as skilling up to prepare you for the future that you think you want ?

And if you're not 100% sure on that , try to listen to what's calling to you and ask yourself what are some learning , what's calling to you , and ask yourself what are some learning options available to you ? So for me , a big part of that was my side hustle .

It's getting a little harder to keep it my side hustle because it's growing , but that really reignited me .

It really did . I always knew that when I got to a certain phase in my career . I would want to teach people who are earlier on , because I've had a very non-traditional , I think , very interesting career path in the industries that I've been in and I want to give back , you know .

So what I didn't expect was that five , 10 years ago there'd be the emergence of this education , this entrepreneurial thing we could do around courses or memberships , and I always thought I'd maybe go back and teach through college . But you know , now I get to do that through my business and that was a very unexpected opportunity and I jumped on it .

As soon as I got clear that that's what I wanted to do , I started taking the steps to stand up the business , even though for me , it has been a very slow burn because I wasn't ready to give up my corporate career .

I jumped in with a side hustle and the first thing I did before I started the side hustle was I started taking courses from some of these online entrepreneurs who were doing it themselves to learn how did they do it , how did they structure their day , how did they structure their business , that kind of thing .

So start to fuel your life with learnings that are going to head you in the direction that you want to go or that you think you might want to go . You want to point yourself in that direction and then fuel up the learning right .

And I think the other thing you could do like if the answer to number one was that it's just you , that you're just feeling unmotivated or whatever because of things that have gone on in your life , or you feel like your career's stalled a bit , or whatever I do think like , go for the promotion right . Shake things up .

Like , even if you don't get promoted right away , offer to take on another team or another area of responsibility . That will place new demands on you and you're going to have to call upon yourself to show up in different ways and that alone will change the quality of your workday .

So number three is about learning , and not learning in general , but learning with a purpose , based on how you diagnosed yourself question number one and then where you think you might want to go , like , start investing in your learning .

Number four this is especially for the ones who answered that there's nothing wrong , that it's just me and how I'm thinking about things . Number four is about looking for meaning . Now I have a whole episode on this finding meaning at mid-career .

So if this is resonating with you , I encourage you to go back and listen to that episode , because there's a lot of goodness in that . But what I'll say here briefly , is that finding meaning in our work doesn't just happen magically .

I mean , maybe it does if we're a medical researcher or something like that , but for most of us we have to kind of look , and for most of us , in almost every career track I know of , your life is going to be made up of a series of things every day .

And when you do that , you get into a rut and you start to look at the composition of your day as like , oh my goodness , I just I cannot do the same thing one more time . It just feels like it's just busy work , it doesn't add up to anything , it doesn't matter that kind of stuff .

And here I want to challenge you that one way or another you can work through your thoughts to get yourself to a place where you simply decide that what you do every day does matter . It matters to your peers , it matters to your boss , it matters to the business in some way , and by giving it your all , you're making a difference .

That can be enough sometimes to change your perspective so that you feel that renewed fire in your belly to actually do your best every day , when maybe you feel like you've just been going through the motions for a while . Finding meaning is not something that gets bestowed on us . We have to decide that our life and our career has meaning .

No one else is going to decide that . They can tell you that . It doesn't mean you're going to believe it . You have to choose to look for that meaning , to purposefully seek it out and find it and connect the dots out to how what you do every day matters , that ripple effect of your contribution matters .

And stay grounded in that , because if you don't , even if you blow up your life and you move to something new , I can promise you that same sense of malaise and feeling of boredom is just going to crop up again . The only way out of that is by changing your perspective and how you choose to look at your life and what you do with it every day .

So number four is look for the meaning . Number five this is an obvious one , based on what we've been saying . But if your answer to number one was you think that it's your job , you've got to consider a career change .

So either changing your functional area , changing your industry , industry alone might not be enough , because for most of us at least , like in marketing I'll say I've worked across many industries the day's basically the same , you know . That's .

The good news is , you know the world is open to you when you have a skill set that is transferable to industries but the industry alone . Aside from , like new jargon and new acronyms , every company's got their acronyms and once you learn that , pretty much everything is similar . But if you change your function , that's different .

That's learning a whole new set of skills . Sometimes many of your skills will be transferable , but that's you're probably adding a like . I knew a girl who spent most of her career in marketing and just recently changed into an area of recruiting in the same company . That's a whole different skill set .

It's not that everything she knew was tossed out , but she's kind of renewed , working on a different part of the function and an area that she's passionate about , which is like recruiting from campuses and college and stuff like that . So you can change your function but you could also start a business . Now , that is what I did .

That was my solution , because I realized that after a career spent running really large brands and playing secondary role in other brands and playing secondary role in other brands kind of a support brand role I just realized that changing and doing that again isn't going to give me anything new . I think I've . I've had most of the challenges .

It wasn't going to give me enough of a change . I feel like , you know , I've reinvented , I've repositioned , I've taken brands after an acquisition , you know , from a master brand into a house of brands , like I've done kind of all the paradigm stuff and I've loved every minute of it .

So if you want something new and that's what you've done and you don't want to move out of your functional area which I do not then it's like , well , what do you do ? And I thought , well , now it's time to do what I always said I would do , which is start to give back , and I chose to do that as a side hustle and you can do that .

Or some people just choose to pivot out altogether and to say , okay , I'm going to have an end point to my career and then I'm going to start a business and I'm going to do that full time . There's no right or wrong way to do it . Do it in a way that works for you and your life and what you want and where you want to go . I will tell you .

For me , the side hustle has done lots of things and I'll list them out here . First , I spent a good amount of my career shaping brands at a macro level in the market . So so looking at their brand health numbers and saying where's it working , where's it not working and how do we pivot .

And in those conversations you're working with the very senior level executives . You're telling them about the issues and then you're working with the organization to drive out those new strategies . Here's what you're not doing . You are not down in the deep in the channels .

I've directed all the channels but getting deep and learning how to physically run an email platform myself not directing people to do it , but doing it myself . Building my own funnel , not having my agencies do that . Standing up my own landing pages you know , doing my own Facebook ads , not having a media agency that does that Like that's what's different for me .

You know , doing my own Facebook ads not having a media agency that does that Like that's what's different for me and what's been interesting is that I really loved it . Now , if somebody in my corporate career would ask me hey , will you go run the daily email campaign ? I'd be really upset . But doing it for my own business feels like a huge reawakening .

You know , like I feel like I've got this command over marketing , not just at the strategic level , which my my corporate career trained me on , but at the operational level , like I've spent these three or three and a half years learning how to do everything myself .

My website , if you go to the purposefulcareercom . I created that website , I wrote every word on it , I did the design and I built it . No , I did not know how to do that . I knew how to direct agencies in doing that . It's one thing to do that . It's quite another to do it yourself and to have it turn out the way that you want .

And I will tell you , I've been through a thousand iterations of it , but I feel like I finally landed in a place that it's what I had envisioned . It took me a long time to get there , but I'm really proud , like I know how to do it now and I'm in the process of standing up my own membership site and building that myself too .

So my point is that if you start with a side hustle . It is going to allow you I'm not going to say force you allow you to learn a different level of operational expertise down kind of in the weeds , because if you don't do it , no one's doing it , unless you've got a huge amount of money .

You want to invest in your business , and I wouldn't discourage you from doing that right away , because one of the things you're doing at the side hustle you're trying to figure out like are you resonating with people ? Is it something they want from you ?

And my view of it was I'm going to bootstrap it , I'm going to take my time and I'm going to proof it out .

And if this is , in fact , my long term thing , then if I want to reinvest in a designer and a this and a that and all the things I'm used to in my corporate life , then I'll do that , because I'll do it knowing that the money that I put into it is going to have a good ROI on it .

I don't want to invest a ton of money upfront to make it beautiful , only to find out that I need to change it to something else , right ? So starting a business is , I think , a beautiful thing , and I would tell you , no matter where you spent your career or what you've done or whatever .

I promise you that you have something to teach others , whether it's from a hobby you have or something you've learned about parenting your children or , like me , you know you want to help people navigate their career .

Whatever it is , you've got something to share based on your own journey , a perspective , and based on that , there are a set of people out in the world that you can help and , at the same time , you can give yourself what you're looking for , which is freedom , maybe more money , whatever it is .

Mine's really about contribution and what I want to do over the long term , because I do not want to retire in the traditional sense , at least not right now .

I might feel differently about that at some point , but I really believe , especially watching my parents , that keeping a strong sense of purpose and that fire inside of you I don't know this for a fact , but I do believe it keeps you cognitively sharp and I believe that it gives you a sense of this is what I'm here for and this is what this is how I'm

making a difference , and I have to believe that as we age , it has to be . This is just me . I'm not judging anyone else who feels differently , so don't judge me for what I'm about to say . I feel like it has to be about something more than just fishing or taking yoga classes or watching your favorite shows or quilting or like .

I'm all for hobbies , and I've got many of them myself and others , that I want to start . I want to start photography classes and things like that .

There's all kinds of things I want to do , but I want to feel that I'm still contributing and that all of the wisdom that I've gained all of these years from all of my mistakes and all the things that have gone well , I want to feel like I'm helping people Anyone who wants the wisdom of that so that they can make their own journey better .

That , for me , gives me a sense of purpose , and so I want to take that into my later years with me . Now there may come a time when I do just want to sit on the couch , but I want to minimize that for me .

I don't want to be stressed out , I don't want to be overworking , I don't want that , but I just want to feel like if I get up in a day , you know 20 years from now that there's something I've got to go do and there's new things that I'm thinking about . You look at these authors , you look at politicians .

You look at musicians they're still touring at 70 and 80 . I don't know . I've always thought that was amazing and that's how I've decided that I want to live the rest of my life . You might be different and that's okay to each our own .

I'm just saying watching my parents , I realized I wish they'd had more in the past 10 years , because I think maybe we could have gotten more out of them . I don't know , it's just , it's just a thought that I have . It may not be true . So number five , you know , consider career change . And number six is rebalance .

Now here , when you get into your career , sometimes , if you're like me I really enjoyed my career it can disproportionately make up your identity and it can disproportionately take up the bandwidth of every day .

And so you end up , not because a boss is asking you to necessarily sometimes that's the case , but most of the time I think it comes from us , where we just have this sense of I have to do this , I have to do that , and so you end up working on vacation , you end up working on the weekends you end up .

You know your hours that you work in a day tend to enlarge and that just kind of creeps up . And I feel like if you took a look at your daily life as a pie , it's a pie chart and the pie is 100% . I just think an interesting exercise for you would be if I took an average work week . What percentage of the pie is going to what ?

What percent is going to your partner ? What percent is going to your job ? What percent is going to your business ? What percent is going to your kids ? What percent is going to your hobbies ? What percent is going to your self-care ?

I think it's important to look at that from time to time , because it is really easy to get to a place where you feel like you know it's all out of whack and one thing , whatever that thing is , has disproportionately started to take up too much of your time .

And so I want you to realize like if you just do that pie exercise , it's a real quick thing to do . Look at an average week and ask yourself those questions like how have you spent your time and what as a percent , you can just choose to rebalance it . You can , and I think you have to . No one's going to do it for you .

Even the best boss in the world doesn't know necessarily how much time you're putting in outside of work hours . Sometimes they do and they'll say something , but a lot of times you just don't know . And you know , and your partner knows , and your family knows , right ?

So just pay attention to how you're spending your time and decide how you want to best spend your time to serve you , to serve your family , to serve your life , to serve your career , all of that .

And then just do it and keep paying attention , right , because it'll probably old habits creep back in and as soon as you fix your pie over time , your pie will gradually get back to where you are right now , right ? So you've just got to kind of retrain how you think about your day and how you spend your time to serve you best .

So those are the six things , and that's what I wanted to say about ambition at mid-career .

I mean , it is a journey , and it's a journey that's far more nuanced , as I said at the beginning , than it is , I think , in our 20s and 30s , because you know we're realizing that we're running out of time and if you're like me , you have all these things that you want to do and contribute and they're on occasion over the past couple years , I have had

this rising sense of panic , like I have to get going , like I have to get busy or it's going to be too late , I'm not going to have enough time . Those are just thoughts I'm telling myself . So when I find those thoughts creeping in , I try to kind of calm them down and remind myself that's not true .

But you know , on the one hand it is true , like I don't have everything in front of me , right . I probably have 40 more years , maybe . Everything in front of me , right . I probably have 40 more years , maybe . And it's like what do I want to do with that time ? That's a lot different than being 20 years old and you've got 70 more years .

It just feels different in midlife , right ? And so if you feel like you've bought into this idea that at mid-career we start to slow down and that's just the natural course of things and that retirement is going to be about fishing and traveling and stuff like that , I want you to challenge that .

It doesn't mean it can't be that If that's what you want , that's what you should do . But I do feel like we're programmed and we're trained to believe that retirement is about , you know , endless travel , or retirement is about sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair .

Or I also feel like , you know , people believe that people mid-career , in their fifties or whatever just aren't ambitious anymore , that they're , you know , have just kind of settled in . I just want to challenge all of that because it's not true .

You have to decide what you want your life to be , and I wanted to talk about this ambition thing because I want to challenge it . I want you to look at the next 30 , 40 , 50 years as what could it be and what do I want it to be , not buying into what everyone else told you it should be or that it must be , or whatever .

So that's what I wanted to say about ambition at mid career , and I hope you found this episode helpful , and with that I will leave you until next time .

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