Women at Halftime: Principles for Producing Your Successful Second Half

By Deborah Johnson and Paula Miller

One day you wake up and the world has changed. Your body changes, your relationships change and even your work changes. Your coworkers are starting to call you ma’am and you no longer feel relevant. You’re not dead, but there is a tuck of urgency when you’re suddenly acutely aware of that change. As you reassess and evaluate, y

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deborah Johnson
• Release date: Jan 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780988587991

Deborah Johnson

DEBORAH JOHNSON, M.A., creator of Hero Mountain® and former president of Los Angeles National Speakers Association, is an international award-winning music artist, author, speaker and National Media Commentator. She also hosts the popular podcast "Women at Halftime" and is the creator of "Hero Mountain Summit." Deborah provides tools to create your ideal lifestyle and work at mid-career or during the halftime of life, getting unstuck. You can live your second half fulfilled, focused and free! Up for multiple GRAMMY Awards and spending over 20 years in the entertainment industry, she's an expert on how to constantly reinvent yourself in a gig-economy. She is also the recipient of the Women's Economic Forum Exceptional Women of Excellence Award. Deborah is the author of multiple books, over twenty albums and musicals and speaks and performs in both live and virtual events.

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INTRODUCTION

MY STORY

In 2007, I was finishing a wonderful year in the music business. While still in my forties (sort of), I had successfully filled 1,000-seat auditoriums for solo concerts over a dozen times in twelve months and my 2008 calendar was filling up. Those were exciting days. After spending extensive time and energy—not to mention tons of emotion—I had not only developed a rewarding music career, but I had also successfully launched three sons into young adulthood. In those crucial years, from 2007-2008, my empty nest meant I had crucial time to invest in my career—finally! Life was good.

Then everything changed when the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression hit. Suddenly all that extra cash audiences had been spending on concert tickets evaporated. Performance halls and local auditoriums found it difficult to sell seats. Various venues all cancelled their bookings with me, so by April of 2008, my calendar became suddenly empty. I felt stuck, and my career horizon showed no quick turn-around.

Welcome to my life at half time. With my career path interrupted. I found myself at the base of what I like to call my Hero Mountain®. As I gazed at the climb before me, I knew I needed preparation for some rocky paths ahead. In that process, I saw many other women facing similar challenges.

HALFTIME

So what is halftime? It’s that period in the middle of a game where players reassess their first half, then make adjustments for their future success. It is a brief recovery time to refocus on the most critical action points. An effective halftime in a game occurs when it is dedicated exclusively to identifying and counteracting the most disruptive forces to a team or player’s success.

Just as there is halftime in sports, most career professionals need time to reflect on critical talking points and disruptive forces in their lives at halftime, too. Those half-time decisions will largely determine one’s remaining life path. Will we merely fade into the second half of our lives, operating a tired, outdated strategy, living on autopilot? Or will we successfully reinvent ourselves to ascend to the personal peaks of our own Hero Mountains®? Only those who reach the top can experience and claim the vistas at the peak.

Identifying and counteracting the most disruptive

forces is important in Halftime.

THE GAME PLAN

This book is about both reassessing then re-developing a strategy to succeed in life’s second half. Like me, many women manage careers, raise kids, satisfy husbands, serve as volunteers, feel their bodies change (then slip away!) and fight culture’s incessant attempts to make them invisible.

For it happens that one day, women like me suddenly realize the world has changed. Coworkers start calling us ma’am and viewing us as irrelevant. Awareness of that change brings with it tugs of urgency. It is a time for reassessment and evaluation, but where do we start?

Women at Halftime are not dead! They still have a tank full of energy and tons of skills, experience, and perspective. However, negative self-talk screams out questions that can tear them down:

Can I really start over?

Does anyone still want me?

How much more can I learn?

How much longer can I keep myself together before I lose my mind?

Can I ever be as good as (insert a colleague’s name here)?

Women at this stage often describe their feelings in the following ways: Stuck, Lost, Slogging uphill, Completely unsure, Ready, but not ready, Exhausted, or Trapped in neutral. Further, each is fearfully asking, Am I enough?

SUMMARIZING THE SOLUTION: CABLES OF SUCCESS

Cables One and Two: Mindset and Purpose

Effectively confronting negative talk and bad mental code are necessary for a half time effort. An adverse mindset will negate everything else a woman builds as she climbs her personal Hero Mountain®. Remember the 1930s children’s story The Little Engine that Could? Its theme is the value of optimism and hard work. The story’s signature phrase, I think I can first appeared in a 1902 article, then in multiple sermons, stories, and tales until it became part of that memorable book.

Like that little engine, when we climb our Hero Mountains™, we can change that statement I think I can to I know I can! As in any mountain climbing effort, the climber needs skills and tools to ensure a successful journey. Similarly, as we define our purposes and gather our gear, we are gathering our climbing cables of success. To build our confidence and maintain our enthusiasm, like that little train engine, we need a positive, confident mindset.

These efforts will establish a focused purpose that brings a woman new energy. Whether that purpose is to build an existing business, start a new business, or give more time to a worthy cause, that purpose will provide women reasons to wake up enthusiastically each morning. A well-defined purpose or mission, along with a solid plan will be the turbo engine that propels and empowers all the other cables for a successful climb.

Cables Three and Four: Competency and Skills

A careful, honest, impartial evaluation of a woman’s competencies is another cable of success. Trying to digest the many self-help books on finding strengths and identifying a passion can be overwhelming, but this process doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out activity. We begin by finding the pattern and Core Common Denominator™ of all we have accomplished so far. Many times it’s surprising! Halftime can be an affirming time of life when we understand who we are, matched with what we truly want to pursue.

After we successfully define our core strengths or competencies, acquiring additional skills based on those competencies will increase success in our second half. With the increase of technology and artificial intelligence, many economists claim the need for skilled workers will only grow because more automated tasks can be programed, giving individuals a chance to use their higher-value skills. This is great news for us because developing new skills based on our competencies will increase opportunities to work in a field we love.¹

Cables Five and Six: Habits and Relationships

With our purpose and competencies ascertained, we must develop healthy and consistent habits in order to effectively execute a plan. Reinforcing good habits will help us learn new skills effectively and competently while repeating bad habits will only lead to deeper ruts. To repeatedly practice unhelpful strategies that don’t work only brings frustration and defeat. However, a well-defined, healthy habit or routine will act as a management tool to bring success.

In order to keep from falling backwards on our ascent to Hero Mountain, we also need a healthy application of the relationship cable. Productive, healthy relationships feed our energy with understanding and support for the climb. Even though it’s emotionally difficult to implement, we must let go of toxic relationships that tear down our confidence and hold us back from trying new ventures.

This book is an introduction to the essential cables needed to ascend one’s Hero Mountain peak. In addition, Hero Mountain® online and live summits provide further training to maximize the climb for both men and women. This book is designed to help readers escalate their journeys, and then serve as a tool to give ongoing reminders to reflect and evaluate what practices to keep or discard and what approaches to adopt in the future.

Are you ready to get started? Let’s go!

ONE

AT THE BASE OF HERO MOUNTAIN®

Change, it sneaks up so gradually that we hardly notice until one morning, we wake to face a strange image in the mirror—not just any mirror—that magnifying mirror mounted on the bathroom wall. While our mind’s eye pictures a high-spirited, young woman with vibrant eyes, who’s ready to face another day, the image before us requires a squint, then second or third looks.

Are those deepening crow’s feet spreading? Are those actually permanent bags beneath our eyes? Several splashes of cold water cannot rinse away the creases around our mouths that have deepened from smile lines to fissures. We lift sagging cheeks to produce a momentary youthful expression. But wasn’t it just yesterday that we were nominated for college homecoming queen?

Gray hairs betray us too. We love our mothers, but we don’t want to look like them yet because they are older than we are! However our aging faces reflect a maturity of their own. These realizations alarm us.

OUR WORLD IS CHANGING

It’s one thing to look old and another to feel old. Yet at work, a competent career woman in mid-life may notice that the new employees and younger talent at the company, are beginning to tell her what to do. Some have good ideas, yet their methods and management styles are making the older woman feel isolated and irrelevant. She wonders if she should just retire or just hang on a few years more. What else could she do at her life stage? She actually starts feeling like she can’t keep up. Is this what old feels like?

These mid-life shifts bring biological changes, too, that may beget night sweats, hot flashes, pudgy waists, and stubborn pounds. Midlife women may feel like the last runners in a race, trying to stay ahead of the support vehicles, but even then, unable to keep up. At home, as her children leave the family nest, bedtime stories, school activities, needy teenagers, and other mom duties are no longer required. Who needs women like them at this stage when the forties turn to fifties and beyond?

Welcome to halftime.

HAIRPIN TURNS

In order to thrive in mid-life, women must get ready for sudden changes as well as gradual ones. Some can be like those hairpin turns in Stelvio Pass in the Alps of Northern Italy. At an elevation of 2757m (9,045 ft.), it’s the highest paved pass in the Eastern Alps and the second highest in the Alps with forty-eight hairpin turns. Similarly, Alpe d’Huez in the Western French Alps, with twenty-one hairpin turns at an 8.1% grade, hosts the Tour de France cycle race, testing the athletes’ skill and agility.²

Near our home is Mt. Baldy, a mountain in Southern California whose roads share the length and steepness of Alpe d’Huez. Like those Alpine peaks, in fact, the last few miles of a Mt. Baldy climb are quite steep. I have personally experienced the tight switchbacks at the crest of Mt. Baldy Road. Further, I have attended and performed at the sobering memorial services for those unfortunate ones who misjudged those sharp mountain turns and plunged to their deaths down Baldy’s steep cliffs.

We don’t have to stay on a road of hairpin turns.

We may feel like we’re on a road with forty-eight hairpin turns like Stelvio Pass, the steep grade of Alpe d’Huez or even the tight switchbacks of Mt. Baldy. To remain on a treacherous course like those means taking drastic turns to change direction. If we don’t fall off a steep cliff on our way, we will eventually reach our destination.

That route may be okay for those motivated and intrigued by the challenges of steep windy roads. However, for women at midlife who have twenty years or more to be productive, traveling on a steep road with hairpin twists is not the optimal choice. Climbing to a new place in life doesn’t have to be a difficult journey or even a long one. We can choose a different path.

There is