Time to Shake Up Your Life?
How to Know If You Need A Big, Bold Change
It Was Time
The energy felt off… We had gone to a dance lesson, which I love, but I noticed that he was fighting with himself. He has a need to be perfect right out of the gate. And he wasn’t “in flow.” He was fighting himself.
It all became clear later on. As we sat chatting on the sofa he dropped the bomb. He wants to separate… 6 months… maybe a year.
Coming to Terms
What do you say when someone says they don’t want to be with you anymore? I wasn’t going to try and CONVINCE him of how great I was and that he was throwing away something of great value that we had spent the last 30 years building. He had obviously put a lot of thought into this and was finally able to verbalize his feelings. This explains why he was stumbling over his feet—he was in his head.
So my life got shaken up. Big time. Unexpectedly.
But he was right. We needed a change. The fact that I was avoiding it only added to the drama when it finally hit.
We were stuck in a pattern running on autopilot. Things felt off. There was no passion.
Probably from the outside things looked ok. We didn’t fight. The kids were great. The dogs were happy.
But it’s that deep undercurrent that something isn’t right, something is off that kept trying to surface and was pushed back down. (That was the Tower card from my Tarot deck surfacing repeatedly telling me something was fundamentally off… and I was avoiding it!)
We had gotten into a pattern of emotional numbness. We stopped feeling joy, passion, or even anger. We basically just stopped feeling.
So we made a bold change. And separation became divorce.
(Now THAT is a bold change!)
Your Bold Change
For YOU, a bold change doesn’t have to be THAT dramatic. Sometimes it is, but it can also be an internal shift.
A bold change doesn’t have to be an external shake-up like mine, but finally aligning your outer world with your inner truth.
What was my inner truth?
I wasn’t unhappy. But I also wasn’t happy. My life was great by most standards and I was productive, but I wasn’t THRIVING. We had good times, and distractions from our frustrations…. But where was the JOY?
Now that some time has passed, I’m thinking about what inspires enthusiasm? Where do I find my vim, vigor, and vitality? Where is my joy?
So I’m shaking up my life looking for the joy.
It’s not in the Yellow pages.
Since I had spent so much time prior to the separation in my head, I decided I needed to shift into my body. Yes, water aerobics brings me great joy. I do find it there. Physical activity gets those endorphins flowing and those are the happiness hormones.
I am pushing for more for me. I want to find pleasure in my body. As a woman, I have the only body part that is solely dedicated to my pleasure, and yet I ignored it for years. When you stop feeling joy, you stop feeling everything— including in the bedroom. That was true for me.
Which brings me to When Harry Met Sally where we learned the importance of being able to fake it for the sake of a man’s ego.
My girlfriend told me when she finally had a real orgasm and she told her husband, he said, “What’s new? You always have an orgasm.”
Ouch. Yes, of course he didn’t know she had been faking it for years. She couldn’t share the joy of finally achieving it because of the cost of admitting she’d been faking it.
How many of us are faking it for the sake of :
our partner’s ego
getting it over with?
(Does it help that now we can get orgasms like that from Hellman’s mayonnaise?)
And if we are faking this, what else are we faking?
Anyway, I digress…
How do you know if it might be time for a Bold Change?
There could be several signs that it’s time for a bold change. One is chronic restlessness. That feeling that you want more but aren’t sure exactly what. Or, maybe like me, you’ve stopped feeling joy, passion, or even anger. Your emotional range has become narrow, narrower, narrowest.
Or maybe you’re dreaming of escape and fantasizing about a different life.
Or perhaps it hits you differently and you feel burnt out or all-day-irritable. Everything feels like a chore, even things you used to love to do.
Or you just don’t know who you are anymore because your kids are grown, you’ve retired from your job, you no longer have a vision for your future.
All this adds up to OUCH.
Here are 5 signs it might be time for a bold change:
You feel like something is missing, but you can’t figure out what it is
Joy and passion have gone quiet– or disappeared
You fantasize about escape
You feel emotionally flat or irritable
You’re unsure about who you are without your old roles.
The Fear Factor
Acknowledging that you are unhappy, frustrated, feeling the need for a change can bring on The Fear Factor. Making a bold change can be scary. You might fear regret for instigating such a change or fear not being able to see it through or fear the judgment of others.
I know I felt like that. I definitely DIDN’T want to be the divorced woman. My mom was pretty much ostracized from her friends once she got divorced. She had only one friend who stood by her.
The story in my brain was painful. I feared being alone as an old woman. No one I would want would want to date a 65 year old woman. Only old men or men after my money. I looked at the old men on Match.com and cringed. Would I ever find someone? My mom never dated after her divorce so the picture looked grim. My fear was real.
But what if staying safe was even riskier? What if staying in a loveless marriage was worse?
There are Other Options
Divorce was my road. Your road can be different. You can shake things up intentionally in smaller ways to gain clarity and direction.
Here are 5 practical and empowering steps you can take.
Do an energy audit. I have found in my years of coaching that people don’t harness the knowledge of their energy flow enough and this is such a powerful tool. Think about what drains your energy. What fuels you? This is a key indicator.
Create a “What if” list. Let your imagination off the leash. My what if list includes what if I moved to NYC? What if I bought an apartment in Lyon? Or Paris? What if I had an orgasm? What if I wasn’t ruled by my fears and stepped boldly into my desires?
Talk to your future self. I use this tool in my workshops and I love it. Talk to your 85 year old self. What does she regret? What is she proud of? What guidance can she offer you?
Start small and be brave. Speak your truth in one conversation. Take one unusual step forward. For me, to be able to say the words, “I want to have a full orgasm!” This is very motivating and encouraging. It gives me clear direction on my actions. It gives me purpose. And so I started to talk about it and learned so much from other women. Mostly I learned that I’m not alone. It’s an epidemic. And so here I am putting the cards out on the table so you, too, don’t feel alone. (And if this isn’t your problem, all the power to you!)
Find support. Hire a coach, join a group, get into a community with bold women who support and feed each other. Sisterhood is critical!
You don’t need to wait for a crisis to reclaim your fire. You can start with a whisper, a spark, a single truth. You just need the courage to answer that whisper that says, “There’s more.” You aren’t too old. It’s not too late. Shake it up sister! Stir your soul. You’re not done yet. Live like you mean it.
General Announcements
The Bar Method is opening in downtown San Francisco on June 20th. It will be located at Bush and Montgomery Streets. Stay tuned for more updates. It’s a great workout and you get to meet my sister!
Please follow @MarloweKarl on Instagram for vegetarian gluten free recipes posted daily. This supports my son!
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