Midlife can sometimes feel like standing in the middle of a rapidly moving train.
Your body is changing. Your relationships may be changing. Your career might be changing. Your parents are ageing. Your children may be leaving home.
And then you look at the wider world and think: What the hell is going on?
Technology is changing faster than most of us can keep up with. AI is transforming the way we work and communicate. Social media is full of increasingly convincing misinformation and artificial images. The wellness industry is booming. Political debate seems more polarised than ever.
So, in a recent episode of The Midlife Mentors, Claire and I got into some of the issues we’ve been thinking and talking about recently.
Here are 10 things that stood out.
1. The menopause industry is booming — but more isn’t necessarily better
Menopause has gone from something rarely discussed publicly to a huge commercial market.
That’s broadly a good thing.
More awareness means more women are asking questions, seeking support and getting access to information that previous generations often didn’t have.
But there’s a downside.
We’ve now got an enormous number of products being marketed specifically at women going through menopause — from supplements to clothing and everything in between.
The issue isn’t that these products are necessarily bad.
It’s that marketing isn’t the same thing as evidence.
Research from UCL highlighted the sheer scale of the UK menopause supplement market, examining 201 different products.
That’s a lot of choice.
And when there is that much choice, it’s worth becoming a little more sceptical.
Before buying something because it says “menopause” on the packet, ask:
What is actually in it? What evidence supports it? What dosage am I getting? Who makes it?
Your health deserves more than a clever marketing campaign.
2. Don’t confuse menopause with the entire experience of midlife
One of the things we talk about regularly is the danger of reducing midlife to hormones.
Hormones matter.
But they aren’t the whole story.
Your psychology matters.
Your relationships matter.
Your sleep matters.
Your stress levels matter.
Your sense of purpose matters.
Your work matters.
Your financial situation matters.
And so does the story you’ve been telling yourself about who you are.
This is particularly important because it’s very easy to look at a difficult period of life and assume there must be one simple biological explanation.
Sometimes there isn’t.
Midlife is complicated.
And treating it as a single medical problem can mean we miss everything else that needs attention.
3. Men need their own conversation about midlife health
The conversation around women’s midlife health has rightly grown enormously.
But men need a conversation too.
I’m seeing more and more organisations wanting to talk about men’s health, and that’s encouraging.
There is growing awareness around testosterone, the ageing process and what is sometimes called the “male menopause”.
But terminology matters.
Men don’t experience menopause in the same way women do.
Andropause and menopause are different biological processes.
Testosterone can decline as men age, but that doesn’t mean every symptom a man experiences in his 40s or 50s is caused by testosterone.
Low mood, poor sleep, loss of confidence, relationship problems, stress, lack of exercise, alcohol, poor nutrition and a loss of purpose can all play a role.
The danger is that we find one explanation and stop looking.
For men especially, there is another issue:
Many simply don’t talk about what’s happening to them.
They struggle privately.
They keep working.
They keep drinking.
They keep training — or stop training.
They tell everyone they’re fine.
And eventually something breaks.
We need to make it easier for men to ask questions before they reach that point.
4. Beware the “wellness” arms race
One of the recurring themes in all of this is the commercialisation of our insecurities.
Feeling tired?
There’s a supplement.
Not sleeping?
There’s a gadget.
Going through menopause?
There’s a product.
Trying to lose weight?
There’s a programme.
Want to look younger?
There’s an entire industry waiting for you.
Again, some of these products can be useful.
But there is a simple question worth asking:
Do I actually need this?
Sometimes the answer is yes.
But sometimes the answer is:
Get outside.
Go for a walk.
Lift some weights.
Eat decent food.
Drink less alcohol.
Go to bed.
Talk to someone.
And stop scrolling.
The boring stuff still works.
5. AI is going to change far more than the pictures on your Instagram feed
AI has become part of everyday life remarkably quickly.
We can use it to write, research, create images, analyse information, automate tasks and dramatically increase our productivity.
But the conversation around AI shouldn’t simply be about whether you can use ChatGPT to write an email.
We need to think about the wider implications.
What happens to work?
What happens to education?
What happens when we can no longer easily distinguish between something created by a human and something generated by a machine?
What happens when people use AI to create fake identities, fake transformations or fake expertise?
That’s already becoming a concern in areas such as health and fitness, where social media rewards attention rather than necessarily rewarding expertise.
And that creates a new responsibility for all of us:
Don’t believe everything you see.
6. The age of the “expert” is getting very confusing
Social media has democratised information.
That’s both brilliant and dangerous.
Anyone can publish.
Anyone can build an audience.
Anyone can call themselves a coach, expert, mentor or consultant.
And now AI makes it possible to produce an extraordinary amount of content at extraordinary speed.
The result?
The loudest person isn’t necessarily the most knowledgeable.
The person with 500,000 followers isn’t necessarily more qualified than the person with 500.
And the person confidently telling you what to do isn’t necessarily the person you should be listening to.
So become a better consumer of information.
Check qualifications.
Look at evidence.
Look at experience.
Ask where the claims came from.
And be particularly careful when somebody is trying to sell you something at the same time as telling you how much you need it.
7. AI is also creating a new problem: what’s real?
One of the strangest developments we’re seeing is the emergence of entirely artificial online personas.
AI-generated images and video can now look incredibly realistic.
That creates a fascinating — and potentially troubling — problem.
You might see somebody online who appears to have transformed their body, improved their health or achieved an incredible result.
They may have thousands of followers.
They may be selling a product.
They may be telling you exactly how they did it.
But what if the person isn’t real?
Or what if the image isn’t real?
Or what if the “before and after” never happened?
This matters because midlife is already a period when comparison can become brutal.
You look at somebody else’s body, career, relationship or lifestyle and think:
Why haven’t I got that?
Before you beat yourself up, remember:
You don’t know how much of what you’re seeing is real.
8. We need to take responsibility for what we consume
This applies to health.
It applies to social media.
It applies to politics.
It applies to news.
And it applies to AI.
We’re living in an age of information abundance.
The problem isn’t necessarily finding information.
It’s knowing which information deserves your attention.
That requires a little personal responsibility.
Don’t automatically believe something because it confirms what you already think.
Don’t share something because it makes you angry.
Don’t buy something because an influencer tells you that you need it.
Don’t accept a political claim simply because somebody on your side made it.
Pause.
Check.
Think.
Then decide.
That’s not cynicism.
That’s maturity.
9. Politics matters — but so does how we have the conversation
Political debate in Britain feels increasingly heated.
Questions around political donations, influence, regulation and the relationship between money and democracy are understandably contentious.
There are legitimate questions on different sides.
How much influence should wealthy individuals have?
What rules should govern political donations?
Should residency or nationality affect eligibility to donate?
How should changes to electoral law be applied?
And how do we ensure that rules are applied consistently?
These aren’t questions that belong exclusively to one political tribe.
They’re questions about how a democratic system should operate.
And whatever your politics, it’s worth resisting the temptation to reduce every disagreement to “our side versus their side”.
Democracy requires disagreement.
But it also requires people to be able to disagree without treating everyone on the other side as an enemy.
10. We still have agency
Perhaps this was the biggest thing I took from our conversations this week.
It is incredibly easy to look at the world and feel overwhelmed.
AI.
Politics.
Social media.
The economy.
Health.
Climate.
Culture.
You can spend hours consuming information about things happening around you and end the day feeling completely powerless.
But there is another option.
Look at what you can actually influence.
Your health.
Your relationships.
Your behaviour.
Your family.
Your community.
The way you speak to people.
The information you consume.
The example you set.
The way you treat somebody who disagrees with you.
The conversations you are willing to have.
You don’t control the world.
None of us do.
But you have far more agency than you might think.
And perhaps that’s one of the great opportunities of midlife.
You’ve lived enough life to know that things aren’t always simple.
You’ve made mistakes.
You’ve changed your mind.
You’ve lost people.
You’ve rebuilt.
You’ve learned.
And hopefully you’ve developed enough perspective to realise that you don’t need to have all the answers.
You just need to decide what kind of person you want to be.
Because the world around us is changing incredibly quickly.
The question isn’t whether we can stop that.
The question is:
How do we want to show up in it?
That, ultimately, is where our power still lies.