Are you approaching 2025 with enthusiasm and expectation, or trepidation?
A new year can be an interesting, exciting, inspirational, but also tricky time for many people. We’ve said farewell to the previous year, and – ready or not – suddenly find ourselves into the next. Other than the usual flurry of articles and conversations about resolutions, no one really talks about this; we just move on and get on with it.
The weather can be fairly drab this time of year, or bright and beautiful but bitterly cold as in the image shown, taken on Saturday morning. Long, dark nights persist, which may affect our feeling of wellbeing, and as the excitement and sparkle of the Christmas period moves further out of view, we focus on our priorities for the coming 12 months. As January starts, and then progresses, we often ask ourselves:
Where am I in life, and
Where do I want to be?
This can bring excitement and things we look forward to, it can also bring reality into sharp focus. For me personally, it has struck me that I will turn 49 later this year, and therefore my 50th birthday is NEXT YEAR. This personal milestone seems both an impossibility as well as, conversely, an inevitability.
Having been immersed in the topic for a number of years now, I’m really pleased that men’s mental wellbeing is being increasingly spoken about. The latest article I’ve read on the topic and worth sharing is from Happiful Magazine this week – A deep dive into men’s mental health with professional coach, Steve Maher
In it, the author and coach Steve Maher describes a changing landscape for modern men in which they can retreat from life, due to various reasons, something he terms the ‘Great Male Withdrawal’.
Midlife is a uniquely challenging time. It’s a period of life when many things can conflate – be it caring responsibilities, parenting, career, relationships, finances. Changes in our circumstances might include redundancy, divorce, loss of friendships, and health concerns. From a male perspective, it can cause uncertainty, dissatisfaction, and we can lose ourselves.
I work with men in midlife to help them understand their purpose, formulate their priorities, overcome challenges, and empower them to make their lives great again. I ‘get’ some of the issues, because I’ve been through, and continue to go through, them.
If this resonates, two ways you can get engaged further are to:
1. Complete the ‘Understanding Men in Midlife’ survey, which is quick, easy, and open until the end of January. The aim of the survey is to find out more about the unique challenges of midlife and help us to design solutions that might help you, and men like you, in the future. You can take the survey here - https://forms.gle/MymwmQmFTv5aZ2Q98
2. Work with me! I have a number of tried and tested coaching packages that I have developed over the last year, focused on key areas including – career, midlife, transition and navigating change.
Midlife for men can certainly be a challenging period, and in my opinion can involve unique issues unlike any other time in our lives. But if we can take time to reflect, understand our challenges, whilst identifying and taking positive action towards a renewed purpose, we can move into the coming months of a new year and beyond in a much better place - both mentally and physically.
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