114. What Are You Waiting For?

In episode 114 of the Curate Your Life podcast, Temetria urges midlife women to stop waiting for circumstances—relationships, money, energy, weight loss, kids growing up, a better job, or the “perfect time”—before they start living. She shares her own experience of marrying at 37, divorcing in her early 40s, grieving the life she expected, and realizing she had to turn from “why did this happen?” to “what do I want now?” She explains that acceptance is not giving up but stopping the fight with reality and choosing what comes next, emphasizing intentional “curation” by identifying what you want more of and less of. She offers an exercise: complete “I will really start living when…,” identify what you hope it will give you, and find ways to create that feeling now, ending with prompts to choose one thing you’re waiting for and one small step to begin today.

00:00 Welcome to Curate Your Life
00:34 Stop Waiting to Live
01:15 When Life Doesn’t Go as Planned
02:16 Grieving the Life You Expected
03:36 Turning Toward the Path Forward
05:32 Acceptance Isn’t Giving Up
06:50 Curate Your Life on Purpose
08:04 Midlife Is Your Advantage
08:45 The Waiting For Exercise
09:54 How I Rebuilt After Divorce
11:42 Create Your Life Now
12:34 Final Questions and Wrap Up

Click here for Two Simple Steps to Love Your Life.

Join the waitlist now and get the first steps toward creating a life you love!

Note: In older episodes, I mention other offers; they have evolved and changed over time, and the Two Simple Steps to Love Your Life is the perfect place to begin. If you have questions, please email info@coachtemetria.com 

Website: coachtemetria.com

Join the Facebook Group

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the Curate Your Life podcast with Temetria, episode 114.

Temetria 0:06

Hi, I'm Temetria a single woman in midlife. But not quite ready for the Moomoo life. I'm focused on curating a life that I love. A life that is bold and vibrant and full of purpose. And I'm passionate about helping other women do the same. So join me. If you're ready to create curate a big, bold, beautiful life that you love.

0:34

I wanna talk to you about what's standing between you and the life you really wanna live. What are you waiting for? Are you waiting for the right relationship, more money, more energy, the weight to come off, the kids to need you less, a different job, retirement, the perfect time? What if the thing you've been waiting for never happens? Or what if it happens, but it doesn't magically make you happy? Today, I wanna talk about what happens when you stop waiting for your life to become the life you thought it would be, and you start asking yourself, "What can I create in my life now?" I got married later than I thought I would. I was 37. I knew if I wanted kids, the window was narrow, and I thought I would be married for a year or so, and then we would start trying. But things didn't work out as planned. Two years in, I was separated and divorced a couple years after that. I began to realize that my life wasn't going to look the way I'd planned, and that realization, that time of my life, came with a lot of feelings and a lot of things to work through. Because even though I didn't have a detailed five-year plan of my life, I had a picture of what my life was supposed to look like in my head. I assumed I'd be married, have children, or at least a child, and a family life. And I think most of us have ideas of what life is supposed to look like. You'll live in a certain kind of house. You'll have a particular career. You'll reach certain milestones by a certain age. And then life happens and suddenly you realize, "This isn't the life I thought I was gonna have." And that can be a hard thing to deal with. Coming to terms with the fact that the life you're living is not what you expected can be like grieving. It was grieving. I was sad about what I thought I was going to have and realizing that I wasn't gonna have it. And it was something to be sad about, but also I was technically okay. I had a job, my health, a home, and I was grateful for all of that, but I was still sad that it wasn't the life that I expected. And I was in that for a while thinking about what could have been, what should have been, at least what I thought what should have been. And then I began to realize that I couldn't keep spending my time on why isn't my life the way I thought it would be because there was no answer to that. I could go through every scenario, every what if, and I was still in the same place, wondering and sad, and I couldn't keep looking backward. I couldn't keep asking that question that kept me looking backward. I had to figure out how I was going to live my life, who I was gonna be, how I was going to be happy and have a great life. I had to ask myself, given the circumstances, what kind of life did I wanna live? How was I gonna be happy? What did I want my life to be? And those were very different questions. I felt like those questions took me by the shoulders and turned me toward the path forward. Those questions gave me somewhere to go. I couldn't go back and change certain things about my life. I couldn't go back and become the person I was at 25 or the person that I was at 35 when I was proposed to or the person that I was at 37 when I walked down the aisle. I couldn't go back and make different choices. But I could decide, what do I want my life to be now? And that was a turning point. And I want you to think about this. We don't realize how much of our lives we spend waiting. We're waiting for the right person, the right job, more money, more confidence, more energy, less weight, the kids to grow up, the parents to need us less, the house to be organized, work to calm down, the perfect opportunity. And we tell ourselves, once that happens, then I'll blank. Travel. I'll have fun. Take better care of myself. Pursue that job I really wanted. Then I'll feel better. Then I'll finally start living. But what if then never comes? Or what if it comes and you realize that you spent years waiting for something that was not the thing that you needed? So what if you gave up waiting and started living? I wanna talk about the difference between acceptance and giving up. Accepting the life you have does not mean this is all I get. It means this is where I'm starting. You can accept that the marriage ended, that you don't have the children that you thought you would have, that your career took a different path, that you made choices then that you wouldn't make today, that you are not where you thought you would be, and still ask, "What do I want from here?" Acceptance is not giving up. Acceptance is stopping the fight with reality long enough to decide what you wanna do next. Byron Katie says, "When you fight with reality, you lose, but only one hundred percent of the time." Every minute you spend thinking that something should not have happened or should have happened differently, you are fighting reality and you're losing. You will always lose because it happened, and there is no going back. There may be a lesson, and if there is a lesson, learn it. Learn it once, and use that learning to move forward, to do better. And that is what I'm talking about when I say curate your life. I'm talking about becoming more intentional about the life you want from where you're starting. You start with assessing where you are and deciding where you want to go or who you want to be from there, from the point you are in. And once you know that, ask yourself, "What do I want more of?" Maybe it's more joy, more adventure, more connection, more creativity, more energy, more freedom, more peace. And when you know that answer, ask yourself, what do I want less of? Maybe it's overwhelm, people pleasing, constant busyness, clutter, obligations, resentment. What no longer belongs? Sometimes the life you want requires you to stop carrying things that belonged to an earlier version of you. You don't have to completely reinvent your life overnight, but you may need to start making choices that reflect the life you actually want, not the life you thought you were supposed to want. And I really believe midlife is the perfect time to make that switch. Midlife isn't a time when your options disappear. It may be the first time that you have enough life experience to know what you like, what you don't like, what matters to you, what no long-- what you no longer will tolerate, what you are willing to do and what you're no longer willing to do to really know the answers to those things. You have more information now than you did when you were younger, and that information can be incredibly valuable. You're not starting over. You're starting from experience. So I want you to try this exercise. I want you to ask yourself, "What am I waiting for?" And to help you get to that answer, complete this sentence: I will really start living when... And fill in the blank. And then once you complete that sentence, ask yourself, "What am I hoping that thing will give me?" What are you hoping that thing that you put in the, in the blank will give you? So for example, it might be lose weight. If I lose weight, maybe I'll feel more confident. If I find a relationship, I'll feel loved. If I get a new job, I'll feel fulfilled. If I make more money, I'll feel secure. Then I want you to ask yourself, "How can I begin to create some of that feeling now?" And you may not be able to create the exact result immediately, but you can begin creating a mindset shift and the feelings that will move you towards the result And that's what I had to do. When I found myself divorced at 41, I had to ask myself, how am I going to be happy? I realized that my life wasn't going to look the way I thought it would, but that didn't mean it couldn't be a good life. So I did a lot of journaling and self-reflection. I started to figure out what made me happy. One of the things was volunteering, and it still is. I spend a lot of time volunteering. I had to ask myself, who did I enjoy spending time with? And I realized some relationships drained me. They didn't add anything to my life. So I dialed back on hanging out with those people. It was an exploration of self, and I know that sounds hippy-dippy, but it was not. It really wasn't. And no, it didn't involve a walk in the woods to connect with nature and find myself. I went to work every day. I paid the bills. I did the laundry, all the routine things, but I tuned out the should-haves and what could have been, and I started to tune into the whispers of my soul and what that was telling me. And when I figured out what I wanted and how I wanted to feel, I started to act and move in the direction of those things that made me happy and brought me joy. I think one of the greatest gifts of getting older is realizing that you don't have to keep chasing the life that you thought you were supposed to want. I really believe that you begin to feel the gravitational pull of your true self and your true north. And if that happens for you earlier in life, that's fantastic. But in my experience from talking to clients and friends, it starts around 40, 45. So ask yourself, "What do I want now?" And then begin creating that. Not perfectly, not all at once, but intentionally. So what are you waiting for? And I don't mean that as a criticism. I think most of us are waiting for something. But I want you to ask yourself if you are postponing your life while you wait for something to change. Your life may not look the way you thought it would. Mine certainly doesn't. But that doesn't mean it can't be a good life, and it doesn't mean you can't still create something meaningful and exciting and joyful and completely your own. You don't have to wait for permission. You don't have to wait until everything's perfect. You can start with the life you have today. So final question, two questions. What is one thing you've been waiting for, and what is one small way you can begin creating more of what you want now? I really want you to go back through this and answer those questions and think about your life now and the life that you can start creating from here. Until next time