The Reverse Midlife Crisis That Changed Everything

Around my 40th birthday, I had what I can only call a reverse midlife crisis. I woke up one day and realized I was living a life I never actually chose.

At the tender age of 20, I had made one misaligned decision after another, reacting instead of choosing. It felt like I blinked and suddenly found myself in someone else’s life two decades later.

This can’t be my life, I thought. I had so many dreams. So many plans. How did I get blown so far off course? Somebody stop the bus and let me off!

If you’re new here, let me paint you a quick picture of what life at 40 looked like for me:

• Just wrapping up a Chapter 13 bankruptcy
• Divorced after 17 years of marriage
• Single-momming without child support
• Living in a crappy apartment and driving a string of unreliable beaters
• Ending a messy on-again/off-again post-divorce relationship
• $0 in savings, $0 in retirement, no real assets besides the hoopty car
• Piecing together low-paying jobs and offering night/weekend massages to make ends meet
• Laughably trying to become a “life coach” while my own life was basically a smoldering crater.

After taking that harsh inventory, and doing the inner work to make peace with it, I asked myself some hard questions:

~If this is where I am at 40, where do I want to be at 60?
~Will I ever own a home again in this economy?
~Will retirement even be an option?
~Is travel a total pipe dream?

Based on my trajectory at the time, I didn’t like the answers. None of it aligned with who I wanted to be, or the life I wanted to create. I realized it was time to get my ass in the pilot’s seat and intentionally choose where I’d land this plane twenty years from now.

The Phobia of Desks and the Addiction to Scrappiness

I had spent most of my adult life avoiding desk jobs. The 9–5 world felt like a prison sentence. For years, I zig-zagged between short-term 9-5’s, part-time gigs, cleaning houses, raising kids, partnering in my ex’s businesses, and chasing dreams through coaching programs and passion projects.

I was proud of being scrappy and resourceful. I was able to stretch a dollar farther than anyone I knew. But beneath that pride was an unconscious loop: the belief that to be truly “free,” I had to stay broke.

This belief ran deep. Any windfall received was quickly burned through. Any period of stability was sabotaged by risky, underfunded investments that I convinced myself were a strategy. I used to joke that my financial plan was to “buy high and sell low.”

The Realization: This Isn’t Working

I’d always hoped something would shift: a coaching business would take off, a windfall would stick around, a shaky investment would be the ticket. But hope isn’t a strategy and neither is waiting for a TikTok to go viral (especially when you’re not on TikTok).

What I needed was a real plan.
What I wanted was ease.
And what I finally realized that I craved most of all was stability.

I Made a Bold Claim and Let Go of the Hustle

Last November, I completed an intake form for a complimentary life coaching session with a highly successful coaching brand I’d been following for years.

In the goal-setting section, I declared:

“I want to double my income in the next year.”

This wasn’t the first time I’d made an ambitious financial declaration. In the past, I’d set some pretty pie-in-the-sky goals with more of a hope-and-pray mentality. I once followed a book’s advice to write down what you want thirty times, three times a day, for thirty days. The idea was to train your reticular activating system (RAS) to notice opportunities and reduce resistance to a big new idea. Well, it’s been over thirty days, and I’m still not making $16,000 per month, despite having written it 2,700 times…

But the declaration to double my income felt different. It was more grounded. I didn’t pair it with frantic attempts at manifestation or desperate action. I didn’t chase it or try to “earn” it in the traditional sense. Instead, I chose to open, to align, and to let life meet me where I was. Even though it was a bold claim, I wasn’t making much at the time, and doubling my income felt achievable if I stayed intentional and persistent.

Based on my research into the job market, I knew that doubling my income was very possible. I could make a relatively simple career shift that would turn my goal into reality. The real cost wasn’t just time and focus—it was letting go of that pesky belief that a desk job was basically a prison sentence.

I had to face the story I’d been clinging to for years: that joining the corporate ranks meant selling my soul and betraying my dreams of endless creativity, freedom, and travel. You know, those dreams that were so effective at keeping me broke.

Embracing this transition meant admitting that stability and security didn’t have to be the enemies of freedom. That maybe, for me, freedom right now looked like building a foundation that supported ease, flow, and alignment instead of constant survival mode. Don’t get me wrong, plenty of the successful coaches and creatives I admire have found ways to design abundant lives on their own terms. I realized that for me it wasn’t about abandoning those dreams, but about finding a path of least resistance (aka ease and flow) and tapping into what is available right here and right now rather than chasing and striving for the pie-in-the-sky.

During the complimentary coaching call (back to that part), the salesman did the usual thing: pitching me on their program to help me “make it happen.” You know the script: “you need accountability, structure, expert guidance.” But for the first time ever on one of these calls, I actually stopped him mid-spiel and said, “No, this doesn’t align for me.”

Sure, I’d just set a big goal, but I’d also promised myself that 2025 would be the year I quit chasing. I was done with the traditional, nose-to-the-grindstone approach to goals. I was planning to take one year off from the frantic white knuckling. I wanted to see what would happen if I opened myself up to something more easeful, simply trusting the process and letting go of the fixation on destination-at-all-costs.

If I’m honest, I’ve already spent a small fortune I didn’t really have on programs like this, because I was desperate for someone to save me from myself. I’d hand over my credit card and my sense of agency in one go. I don’t regret those investments—they always taught me something—but I have no need to repeat the experience. That chapter is complete.

Did I still think I might need help? Absolutely. Just not from a life coach selling a mindset bootcamp. If I was going to spend money, it would be on someone to clean up my resume, or maybe a local career coach who actually knows the job market I was looking to tap. I didn’t need more accountability or pep talks about discipline and grit. At this stage, I’m trying to dial down my inner David Goggins, not give him a megaphone.

That was the shift: I stopped trying to prove my worth through overwork and endless self-improvement. Instead, I chose to trust my own readiness, and to take the next practical steps without obsession or pressure. Letting go of the hustle didn’t mean doing nothing. It meant doing what mattered, with clarity, ease, and enough self-belief to know I didn’t need to be “fixed” before I could shape a different reality.

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Three Shifts That Changed My Relationship with Abundance

 

1. I Stopped Equating Hard Work with Deservedness

I realized I’d been carrying this belief that abundance had to be earned through sheer exhaustion. As though the universe kept score and only paid out once you were thoroughly worn out. But nature doesn’t hustle. Air is abundant and free. I also didn’t do any work for the heart beating in my chest; it just does its life-giving work because I’m here. I don’t have to earn the right to breathe or pay for every heartbeat. Those are freely given simply because I exist. It’s a radical script-change but maybe, just maybe, money, abundance, worth, and stability don’t have to be “earned” in the traditional sense either.

I know that might sound like wishful thinking. But look around. Some of the hardest-working people in society are doing the most exhausting, back-breaking labor for the least pay. Meanwhile, plenty of people live abundantly on money they didn’t personally “earn:” a trust fund, an inheritance, a smart investment, or a wealthy partner.

When I really step back and observe, the rules of the game aren’t what we were sold. We’re told that being industrious and achievement-oriented is the sure path to success. But if success means actually being able to relax about money, that formula starts to look mighty suspicious.

I started letting go of the idea that suffering proves worth, that struggle builds credibility, or that constant striving is what creates real value. Turns out, those are just fairy tales that someone made up to justify their own misery and make us feel better about burn out.

2. I Untangled My Worth from My Net Worth

I’d bought into the idea, reinforced by society and capitalism, that my financial status was a direct measure of my personal worth. Bankruptcy, scarcity, and the shame that came with them convinced me that being broke meant I was broken. My self-worth and any confidence in my economic potential spent many years circling the drain.

Untangling my value as a human from the number in my bank account didn’t happen overnight. It took years of deliberate self-reflection and unlearning. But slowly and deliberately, I stopped letting my financial situation dictate my sense of who I was.

3. I Trusted Timing Over Urgency

This year, I made what felt like a pretty radical claim: I’d double my income. I didn’t know exactly how it would happen, but it felt more like a calling than something to force or grind toward. I had a general plan of shifting careers from small business into a corporate role (never mind all the resistance that bubbled up about becoming one of “those” people I used to judge as soul-less).

I shared this intention with a few close friends who kept checking in, asking if I’d started applying to jobs yet. I knew there was action to take: updating LinkedIn, polishing my resume, starting to network, but instead of launching into a frantic, pressured job hunt, I decided to honor my own rhythm. I gave myself one last month to nurture the blog I’d just started and the workshops I was planning for the year. When I finally shifted gears I marked the moment with a little sacred ritual (the way I like to do things), and moved into the flow with a sense of reverence and trust in the inevitability. I also settled in, and relaxed into the expectation that this transition would likely take 8-12 months.

Two weeks later, a job opportunity came straight to me.

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How It Happened and Why It Felt Like Magic

I updated my resume and opened myself to new possibilities. I made full peace with the idea of sitting at a desk for 50 hours a week. I avoided a “this job or nothing” approach and focused on getting clear about what I actually wanted next:

• A livable income
• Opportunities for growth and mobility
• Work that would use, build, and expand my skills

That clarity created space and right on cue, the call came. One of my long-time weekend massage clients mentioned an opening. I interviewed twice and was offered the position. And just like that, I doubled my income.

And here’s the kicker:

I didn’t have to chase it. I just had to be willing to receive it when it came knocking.

The Life I Was Afraid of Is Becoming the Life I Love

I’m six weeks into this new role now. Full-time at a desk job I once dreaded and I’m still alive. My soul is still intact. It turns out I didn’t have to sell out after all.

What shifted wasn’t just my career. It was my whole orientation toward effort, worth, and receiving.

If You’re Still Hustling to “Deserve” More…

Pause. Take a breath. Let this sink in:

What if the life you’re chasing doesn’t demand another round of burnout, another unpaid passion project, or a magic money spell?

You don’t have to stay in struggle to prove you can handle it. What if ease isn’t the reward for your suffering, something that you earn in the end?

What if ease and flow and peace are a valid strategy on their own?

I doubled my income not by grinding harder, but by softening. At the start of 2025, I radically changed my whole approach.

I let go of the belief that stability, and acceptability, had to be earned through ferocious willpower and striving.

And, By Golly, it worked. Even I’m blinking and asking: Why in the hell did it take me so long to let life be easier? Heaven help me.

If you’re still with me, dear reader, is there a part of you that believes you have to prove your value?

What might happen if you stopped trying to chase your worth and simply embodied it gratefully, the way you might take a deep, full inhale of precious, royalty-free, untaxed air, or place your hand over your unearned heart and feel its steady beat in your chest?

At the risk of sounding cheesy and trust me, this one has been hard for me to wrap my feeble brain around…. You are worthy simply because you exist.

Ease and flow are your birthright.