Mid-life Review Workbook

🧭 “Because your next chapter is your best chapter”

1️⃣ Where You’ve Been — Taking Stock

Goal: To understand your personal story so far, not as nostalgia, but as data for designing what comes next.

Prompts:

1. What achievements or experiences make you most proud — and why those, specifically?
2. If you were to describe the past 10–15 years as a “chapter title,” what would you call it? (“The Hustle Years,” “Family Comes First,” “Running on Coffee,” etc.)
3. What have you outgrown — habits, ambitions, or relationships that once fit but no longer serve you?
4. Which three life decisions shaped you most — and how might you have decided differently with today’s wisdom?
5. What have you consistently postponed “until later”? Why?

Mini-Exercise:
Write your midlife CV: not the professional version, but a personal one.
Include “roles” like “parent,” “friend,” “neighbour,” “learner,” “dreamer.” Then mark which ones you’d like to keep, expand, or retire in the next 10 years.

2️⃣ How You’re Living — The Present Audit

Goal: To look at how you spend your time, money and energy today, and whether it matches your true values.

Prompts:

1. Where does most of your weekly energy go — and where do you wish it went?
2. When did you last feel truly absorbed in something — losing track of time?
3. What part of your daily life feels out of sync with your values?
4. How well are you sleeping, eating, and exercising — not just physically, but emotionally?
5. Who are your “five people”? (The ones you spend the most time with.) Do they lift you or drain you?

Mini-Exercise:
Do a “time budget.” Over one week, note roughly where your waking hours go (work, care, leisure, screen time, chores). Then circle what you’d choose to expand or shrink by 10%.

3️⃣ Where You’re Going — Future Orientation

Goal: To consciously design what you want your next chapter to look and feel like — professionally, personally, and creatively.

Prompts:

1. If you knew you’d live to 90 in good health, what would you start, stop or change this year?
2. Which dreams have you filed under “too late”? Could they still fit in a lighter version?
3. Imagine yourself at 70, looking back: what would you want to be grateful for having done or changed?
4. Are you still in the same “career story,” or is it time to pivot — a new chapter, consultancy, volunteering, retraining, creative project?
5. How do you want your home and community life to feel over the next decade — calmer, busier, more social, more simple?

Mini-Exercise:
Make a 10-year vision sketch. Draw a line with ten marks, each representing a year. Label the milestones you’d love to reach — new skill, travel, relationship goal, creative pursuit, or health aim.

4️⃣ What’s Shifting — Roles, Responsibilities and Identity

Goal: To navigate changing roles — as parents of grown children, carers of ageing parents, partners, and professionals.

Prompts:

1. Whose needs are you serving most right now — and which of those are voluntary versus assumed?
2. How are you handling “the sandwich” (supporting children and parents at once)?
3. Which parts of your identity feel like you and which feel like costumes for others’ expectations?
4. How do you want to redefine “usefulness” — to your family, your work, and society?
5. Who models the kind of middle- or later-life you’d like to live — and what can you learn from them?

Mini-Exercise:
Draw three concentric circles labelled Me, We, They.
Inside each, list your main commitments (Me = self-care, hobbies, passions, interests; We = family/friends; They = work/community). Then colour which area is under- or over-served.

5️⃣ Staying Future-Fit — Purpose, Health and Connection

Goal: To plan for resilience — physical, financial and emotional — so that later life remains an adventure, not an emergency.

Prompts:

1. What does “enough” look like — financially, emotionally, materially?
2. How confident are you in your health span (not just lifespan)? What could you improve in the next 12 months?
3. How are your friendships evolving — are you cultivating new circles that fit this phase of life?
4. What keeps your curiosity alive — a course, a cause, a creative outlet?
5. How do you define purpose now? Is it the same as ten years ago?

Mini-Exercise:
Set three “future-fit” goals — one for body, one for mind, and one for meaning.
For example:

• Body → “Do Parkrun once a month.”
• Mind → “Start a photography evening class.”
• Meaning → “Volunteer two hours a week locally.”
  Then schedule the first small step this month.

🪞 Optional Reflection Rituals

• Quarterly Check-In: Once every three months, revisit one section and add new answers. Treat it like updating your life software.
• Letter to Your Future Self: Write to yourself five years ahead — what do you hope they’ve learned, released or begun?
• Conversation Starter: Share one exercise (e.g., the Me–We–They circles) with a partner or friend and compare notes — it builds empathy and accountability.

💡 Bonus Tip

As The Midlife Mentors podcast often says:

“Midlife isn’t a crisis — it’s a checkpoint.”

And as Kieran Setiya reminds us:

“The cure for the midlife crisis is not the pursuit of youth, but the pursuit of meaning.”