There is something about September that feels different.
The summer is over. The evenings suddenly seem darker. The kids are back at school. Work starts to accelerate again and, before you know it, people are talking about Q4, Christmas and the end of another year.
But perhaps September offers something that January doesn’t.
A genuine opportunity to pause, take stock and decide what you want the rest of the year — and the rest of your life — to look like.
After a short summer break, we’re back on The Midlife Mentors podcast, and it felt like a good moment to look at what has been happening in the world, what it means for us at midlife, and perhaps most importantly, what we can actually do about it.
Because there is a lot going on.
We are living through uncertain times
From politics and the economy to geopolitics, social media and the cost of living, there is no shortage of things competing for our attention.
And even if you don’t follow the news particularly closely, it can be difficult to escape the sense that the world is changing quickly.
That uncertainty matters.
Not simply because of what happens to interest rates, markets or governments, but because uncertainty can affect how we feel. It can create a background level of anxiety that we carry around with us without necessarily recognising it.
At midlife, that can be particularly challenging.
Many of us are already dealing with significant change: ageing parents, children growing up, changing relationships, career questions, financial pressures and questions about our own health and mortality.
Then we add the state of the world on top.
The temptation is to focus on everything we cannot control.
But perhaps midlife is the perfect time to turn that around.
The battle for our attention
One of the biggest changes of recent years has been something that sits in our pockets every day.
Our phones.
We talk regularly on the podcast about the impact of social media, particularly on younger people. But there is an uncomfortable truth for those of us in midlife too:
We know how addictive our phones can be, and we still struggle to put them down.
We can understand the psychology behind notifications, scrolling and algorithmic feeds. We can know that endless interruptions are damaging our ability to concentrate.
And yet we still reach for the phone.
That is the strange thing about modern technology. You don’t have to be unaware of the problem to be affected by it.
Sometimes you have to take quite extreme measures.
Time limits. App blockers. Turning notifications off. Or, in some cases, putting the phone in a box that literally locks it away for a period of time.
Why does this matter at midlife?
Because our attention is one of the most valuable things we have.
We have spent decades building careers, relationships, families and businesses. We have accumulated experience and hopefully developed a clearer idea of what matters to us.
So why would we willingly hand our attention over to an algorithm?
Perhaps one of the most useful questions you can ask yourself this September is:
Where is my attention actually going?
Because where your attention goes, your life follows.
The 100-year life changes the rules
There is another question that becomes increasingly important as we get older:
What if you have much more life ahead of you than you thought?
The idea of the 100-year life is fascinating because it changes the mathematics of ageing.
For previous generations, retiring at 60 might have meant planning for another couple of decades.
But if you live to 100, retirement could potentially last 40 years.
That’s not simply a longer retirement.
It is an entirely different stage of life.
And that means we need to rethink some of the assumptions we’ve inherited about work, money, relationships and purpose.
Perhaps the biggest opportunity is that we stop thinking about midlife as the beginning of the end.
Instead, it becomes the beginning of another chapter.
You don’t have to retire from relevance
One of the most exciting things about living longer is the possibility of continuing to contribute.
By midlife, you have something that you simply didn’t have at 25:
Experience.
You have skills. Knowledge. Relationships. Perspective. You have probably made mistakes and learned from them.
You may also have discovered that the career you thought you’d have forever isn’t necessarily the career you want anymore.
That doesn’t mean you have failed.
It may mean you have changed.
And if we are potentially going to live another 40 or 50 years, perhaps we should be asking different questions.
What am I good at?
What do I enjoy?
What can I contribute?
What would give me a sense of purpose?
Could I build something new?
Could I work differently?
Could I turn something I’ve learned over the last 25 years into something valuable for other people?
We don’t necessarily need to choose one identity and stick with it forever.
The traditional idea of a linear career — education, work, promotion, retirement — makes less sense when the human lifespan becomes longer and more flexible.
Midlife can be the point where you start designing the second half rather than simply continuing the first.
And what about relationships?
Longer lives also change our relationships.
If you’re meeting someone in your 50s, for example, you may potentially have another 40 or 50 years together.
That is a wonderful prospect.
But it also makes choosing and maintaining a relationship even more important.
Communication matters.
How you handle conflict matters.
How you deal with change matters.
And so does understanding how each of you is changing as individuals.
This is one of the reasons we’re so excited about our forthcoming book, Couplepause, which explores what happens to a relationship when both partners arrive at midlife and start changing — sometimes at completely different speeds and in completely different ways.
Because perhaps the question isn’t simply:
“Are we happy?”
It is:
“Are we building a relationship that can evolve with us?”
If we really are living longer, our relationships need to be capable of growing and changing too.
Stop waiting for someone else to fix it
There is another uncomfortable lesson from all of this.
We cannot necessarily rely on governments, employers or institutions to redesign the world around our longer lives.
They may eventually adapt.
But we can’t wait for them to do it.
We need to take responsibility for our own future.
That means looking at the things that are within our control.
Our health.
Our finances.
Our relationships.
Our skills.
Our work.
Our attention.
Our sense of purpose.
It doesn’t mean becoming obsessed with optimisation or trying to have everything figured out.
Quite the opposite.
It means accepting that we have more agency than we sometimes think.
September is your reset button
And perhaps that brings us back to September.
January can feel like a forced reset.
New year. New goals. New you.
September feels different.
There is something natural about it. A new season. A return to routine. A sense that the year is entering its final phase.
So rather than trying to reinvent yourself, why not make one change?
Just one.
Drink more water.
Reduce the alcohol during the week.
Walk every day.
Spend less time on your phone.
Have the conversation you’ve been avoiding.
Look at your finances.
Start exercising again.
Protect an hour of uninterrupted time each day.
It doesn’t need to be dramatic.
In fact, the smaller the change, the more likely you are to stick with it.
And once you prove to yourself that you can change one thing, something interesting happens.
You build confidence.
You start thinking:
“If I can do that, what else could I change?”
That’s how real change tends to happen.
Not through one huge transformation.
Through small decisions, repeated consistently.
You have more time than you think
Perhaps the biggest message from our conversation is this:
Midlife isn’t necessarily a narrowing of your options.
It could be an expansion of them.
If we’re living longer and healthier lives, we have more time to learn, create, contribute, change direction, fall in love, rebuild relationships, start businesses, develop new skills and do things we never thought we’d do.
But more time also creates responsibility.
We have to decide what we’re going to do with it.
So as we move into this new season, perhaps don’t ask yourself:
“What should I achieve before the end of the year?”
Ask something bigger:
“If I could have another 40 years, what would I want them to look like?”
Then bring that question back to today.
Because the future isn’t something that suddenly arrives.
We’re building it, one decision at a time.
And perhaps September is the perfect moment to start.