The other morning, I was sitting in a bath at 11 o’clock on a weekday, coffee already cold on the edge of the tub, and I had a very strange thought. I should be somewhere. For most of my life, I always was. Wake up early. Drink the coffee quickly. Show up to the meeting. Keep the calendar full. Produce something. Fix something. Improve something. Solve something. If there was a problem, push harder. If something broke, work longer. If life felt uncertain, tighten the routine.
That rhythm carried me for decades. It built careers, organizations, relationships, and a reputation for being the person who could figure things out. It carried me through motherhood, the kind where you are packing lunches at 6 a.m., answering work calls at 8, and pretending you are not exhausted at 3pm drinking copious amounts of coffee, because there is no option not to show up.
Somewhere along the way, the rhythm shifted.
Not dramatically. Not all at once. It slipped in quietly, the way aging tends to do. One small adjustment at a time. Maybe like a dimmer switch. Or the frog that does not realize the pot is getting hotter until it is already too late.
And when I noticed, I fought it like it was the only thing that mattered.
Fighting the Current
I used to think success meant staying the course no matter what.
Push through fatigue and doubt.
Push through discomfort and pain.
Push through anything, anyone, and anything in my way.
But life has a way of eventually confronting us with a reality we cannot outwork. I couldn’t figure out what was not sitting right and a wise friend told me to read David Brooks’ book The Second Mountain.
In The Second Mountain, Brooks describes this shift, the moment when life stops being about proving ourselves and starts becoming about understanding ourselves. The first mountain is achievement. Status. Momentum. The second mountain asks a much harder question:
Now that you have climbed, who are you?
What nobody tells you is that the transition between those mountains can feel like losing your footing. The habits that once defined you stop fitting quite right. The pace changes. The motivation shifts. What once energized you starts to feel oddly exhausting. You start to notice that the systems you built your life around were designed for a version of you that no longer exists. The urgency that once fueled you now feels like noise. The structure that once held you up now feels like something you are pushing against.
I looked at my life, the one I worked so hard to build, and on paper it looked full. There was a lot to be grateful for. And I was. But I also knew something I could not ignore. I was not exactly who I wanted to be, and I was not fully where I wanted to be. Not in some dramatic, everything is wrong, way. In a quieter way. In the way where I was still saying yes to things I no longer believed in. Still showing up in roles that fit who I used to be. Still moving at a pace that no longer felt like mine.
I remember sitting in a meeting, saying all the right things, solving all the right problems, and having the very uncomfortable realization that I could do it well and not want to be doing it at all. That was new. And hard to admit. At first, I assumed something was wrong. Eventually, I realized something had simply changed. I could not quite name it, but everything felt different.
When I traveled to Alaska not long ago, I watched salmon making their final run upstream. I could have watched all day. The water was loud, relentless, unapologetic. The fish were darker than I expected, almost bruised looking, their bodies already changing. People stood quietly along the edge, watching something that felt both ordinary and profound at the same time.
The metaphors were right in front of my face. No escaping the truths I had been avoiding. Or maybe I was finally ready to listen. They only do this once, at the end of their lives, to spawn. They return to where they were born, traveling hundreds of miles upstream. They stop eating. Their bodies begin to deteriorate as they go. Everything they have is used for one final push forward.
Locals sometimes call them zombie fish. Not fully alive in the way we think of living but still moving forward. And standing there, I had an extremely uncomfortable thought. How much of my life had I been pushing that hard when I did not actually need to?
I was exhausted just watching them.
Experience, the Hard Way
Mark Twain once joked that experience comes in three forms: experience, damn experience, and more experience. By this stage of life, most of us have collected all three. Some of it came from success. A lot of it came from mistakes.
There is a moment in life when you realize you have built a considerable amount of wisdom from doing things wrong.
The wrong relationships.
The wrong assumptions.
The wrong battles.
The wrong priorities.
The wrong wardrobe.
And paradoxically, that realization does not weaken you. It strengthens you. Once you see clearly what does not work for you, your life begins to simplify. You stop forcing things that never fit in the first place.
It even shows up in your space. The closet where you keep reaching over five things to get to the one thing you wear. The kitchen cabinet filled with half-used boxes of food you thought you would become the kind of person who eats. Makeup bought for a version of you that never showed up. Socks still in the package. At some point you realize you are not organizing your life, you are negotiating with it.
And eventually, you stop negotiating.
The Hard Lesson of Letting Go
This is the most common battle cry of self-help gurus, therapists, and Disney characters, and yet it is the hardest thing to actually do. There is a quiet wisdom that comes later in life, the ability to recognize when something simply is not meant for you anymore.
There is a saying I have grown fond of:
What was meant for me will never miss me. What misses me was never meant for me.
This idea used to irritate me. It sounded passive. Too accepting. Now I see it differently.
Acceptance is not giving up.
Acceptance is clarity.
Back to those salmon, swimming upstream. They fight with everything they have left. The current is brutal. The rocks unforgiving. The journey relentless. It is the battle of their lives. Watching them, I realized something I wish I had understood earlier. Not everything deserves that level of effort. Human life is not meant to be one endless upstream battle, although sometimes it certainly does feel that way. Some fights matter. Others are simply the wrong river.
The New Rhythm of a Day
One of the strangest changes in my life has been my relationship with time. For decades my days were dictated by external expectations.
Meetings.
Deadlines.
Decisions.
People waiting for answers.
People waiting for solutions.
The structure was constant. Now my days sometimes look very different. Some nights I do not sleep well. Instead of forcing myself into a rigid morning routine, I let the day unfold more gently. Some mornings my first coffee happens at eleven. Sometimes I am sitting in a bath on a weekday morning and a small voice in my head whispers, You should be somewhere.
Then I remember. No, I should not. I climbed my first mountain. I have earned the right to a weekday morning bath. For the first time in my life, I do not live inside have to. I live inside what do I need today.
And that small shift has changed everything.
The Reality of the Body
Of all the adjustments that come with age, the most humbling is the body. I have fought my weight my entire life. That battle alone could fill a book. But aging introduces a new equation.
It is not just about weight anymore. It is about energy, recovery, stiffness, balance, and the slow accumulation of years lived fully, sometimes too fully.
Every high heel worn longer than it should have been.
Every moment I pushed through exhaustion because the job needed finishing.
Every time I ignored what my body was trying to tell me.
The bill eventually arrives. And it comes due whether you are ready or not. It is frustrating. It makes me sad. And yet I still go to the gym. I still brush my teeth. I still move my body.
Now I understand something I did not before. Maintenance is the work. I no longer expect my body to perform like it did at 30. I also know there are things I will never do the same way again. I am probably not running out at all hours of the night in high heels and pretending my body will forgive me the next day. That version of me had confidence. She also had denial.
But I can still show up.
I can hold the pose as long as I can hold it.
I can lift lighter weights.
I can honor my shoulder that does not want to move some days.
And I have learned something I did not understand before: If I do not move it, I lose it.
So the new goal is not perfection.
The new goal is partnership, my mind, body, and spirit working together to carry me through the flow of my day.
A New Reality
The biggest realization I have had in recent years is surprisingly simple. Life does not return to the way it once was.
Not after enough experience.
Not after loss.
Not after growth.
There is a new reality whether we are ready for it or not. We can fight it. Ignore it. Try to resist it. Many people do. They spend years trying to recreate the life they once had. Eventually most of us discover something profound. We are seeing the world differently because we are different.
Experience changes us.
Mistakes change us.
Time changes us.
And if we allow it, wisdom changes us too.
Acceptance
For years acceptance sounded like surrender to me. Now it feels like freedom.
When I stop fighting the rhythm of where I am in life, my days become easier. I move with more patience. I extend more kindness to others and to myself.
I stop measuring my life against outdated expectations. And something else happens.
Joy shows up in quieter places.
In a long morning coffee.
In a slower walk.
In the relief of letting go of something that was never truly mine to carry.
The rhythm of life has not disappeared. It has simply changed its tempo.
What’s Next
Learning to move with that rhythm instead of against it may be the greatest wisdom we earn along the way. Stop fighting it long enough to recognize it. Go with the flow.
Let’s Have a Conversation:
What changes have you gone through in the past decade? What have you had to accept about yourself?
