Thinking, Doing, Being

Lessons from a Midlife Recalibration

For much of my life, I lived in the land of doing.
Ticking boxes, hitting goals, building businesses.
Work hard, get results. That was the mantra.

It served me well for a time. I built a digital agency. I poured myself into projects. I stayed busy, productive, “successful.” But beneath it all was a quiet unease — the sense that all this doing wasn’t really for me.

That unease is what eventually led me to co-create The Happy Startup School. On the surface, it was another act of doing: build a new business, create a community, design retreats, launch programmes. But underneath, it was fuelled by a deeper question — not just “what am I building?” but why?

And it’s during this process when I realised something: my compass had been spinning between thinking, doing, and being, and I hadn’t learned how to integrate them.

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Doing: The Comfort of Productivity

Doing has always been my default setting.
If there’s a problem, solve it. If there’s a gap, fill it.
If I feel anxious, well, there’s always more work to be done.

But I’ve come to see how seductive productivity can be. It looks like progress. It feels safe. Yet without prioritisation, doing becomes busyness.
And in midlife, I’ve learned that productivity without meaning is just… noise.

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Thinking: The Inner Narrator

Then there’s thinking.
Running a business — especially one built on vision and values — demands reflection.
I’ve spent hours strategising, analysing, replaying stories in my head, imagining what might be possible.

At its best, thinking has given me insight. It’s helped me make sense of who I am, and how to help others do the same.
But it has its traps. Overthinking. Perfectionism. Paralysis. IFS (Internal Family Systems) calls these “protective parts” — the voices that tell you to plan every scenario before you take the leap. Jung might say it’s the shadow of intellect, cutting us off from action.

I’ve had plenty of moments where thinking was really just fear in disguise.

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Being: The Invitation to Presence

And then there’s being.
This is the part I used to neglect. Meditation, presence, stillness — these felt like luxuries when there were emails to answer and workshops to design.

But the work of The Happy Startup School has taught me the value of presence. Sitting in a circle with strangers who become friends. Walking through the Alps with no agenda but conversation. Holding space for people as they navigate their own transitions.

Being is what reminds me that I’m enough even without another achievement.
And yet, being can also be avoidance. A way of saying, “If I just stay still, maybe the hard decisions will make themselves.”

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Midlife: The Recalibration

Midlife, for me, hasn’t been a crisis. It’s been a recalibration.
Doing wasn’t enough. Thinking wasn’t enough. Being wasn’t enough.

The challenge — and the gift — is in the alignment.

• Doing with intention.

• Thinking with clarity.

• Being with awareness.

When those three line up, I feel a different kind of success. Not the success of more, but the success of enough.

And maybe that’s the deeper work of midlife: not abandoning thinking, doing, or being, but learning how to let them work together. A kind of internal ecosystem, or a stage on the Hero’s Journey, where the call isn’t to slay dragons, but to come home to yourself.