MIDLIFE MUSINGS: THREE PHASES OF CHANGE

Change is on my mind lately, my friend. We're experiencing a lot of it in midlife and beyond. We're creating a lot of it. Our friends are going through a lot of it.

Want to know more about the phases of change?

Listen in to recognize where you are on your journey of change and to help move through it with greater understanding.

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Transcript

MIDLIFE MUSINGS: THREE PHASES OF CHANGE

{MUSIC INTRO}

Hi there, my friend. It's me, Karli. Thanks for listening to my MIDLIFE MUSINGS.

I've been thinking about change a lot recently. It's come up in quite a few of my conversations and in just observations I'm making about the world around me and the people around me.

Change is something that we can really struggle with. And today I'm speaking about change that we want to make or change that we think we want to make. Not change that happens to us.

Midlife and beyond is a transformational time of life, and there is a lot of change going on around us. There's a lot of change going on inside of us. We are choosing to make a lot of change in our lives.

Change can be so powerful when it comes to you feeling satisfied with where you are in life, knowing your purpose, feeling fulfilled.

In my training as a coach, I learned a lot about behavior change. So I want to share these things with you today because this may help you if you have change in your life that you are thinking about, or that you're in the midst of making, or just to put in your pocket for somewhere down the road where you are going to create change in your life.

Think about these three phases as you are looking at change, going through change, experiencing change, talking to your friends about their change: awareness, choice, and execution. Seems easy enough, right?

Knowing this has really helped me identify where I'm at when I'm making change, and for the women that I work with as they are going through their own journeys of change.

Awareness - it's just that. Realizing that there is an option to change. Recognizing that there might be something you want to change in your life. The awareness phase is where it all starts.

The choice phase is where you make the choice to change. You know that you want to do it. And you're starting to actually take some small steps to move toward that change.

Execution is the last stage of change, and that's where you're taking action on your plan for change.

I'll give you an example from my life. I have gray hair in case you don't know, haven't seen pictures of me. And that was a very big change that I made the choice to do three years ago.

Now the awareness had been sitting around and ruminating in my head for years. I wondered when I would stop coloring my hair. I had awareness that I did not want to continue coloring my hair for the rest of my life. I had a number in my head initially.

And then during the pandemic, I became aware of what seemed like more women letting their hair go natural. I saw a lot of women on social media. I had friends that were doing it, and it inspired me to start to move to that choice phase of change.

And the final thing that pushed me over the edge from awareness into choice into execution was having an amazing hairstylist that I had been with for years that I did not want to take this journey without, and she announced she was moving. I made the choice very quickly that I was going to make it happen, and started taking those steps to move quickly into the execution phase where I did stop coloring my hair and I took steps to move to my natural color.

Now that's my example. I encourage you to stop and think about a change in your life and look back so that you can notice yourself going through those phases. Your awareness. Your choice. And your execution of change.

I hope this new awareness of the cycle of change helps you along the way as you make change in midlife and beyond.

Thanks for listening, my friend. If you have any questions or want to reach out, please do so at karli@flipsideofmidlife.com. I'll be back in two weeks with another MIDLIFE MUSINGS until then don't miss my regularly scheduled episodes of FLIPSIDE OF MIDLIFE®️ every Wednesday.

{MUSIC OUTRO}