So much advice about why we should change.

At 49, I am surrounded by advice about what I should change. This month, I tried a few things that made me feel more like myself instead.

March has always felt like the month when the world hits refresh.

The mornings are lighter. The coffee tastes better because you can drink it beside an open window without freezing, which feels like a small miracle after winter. Cyrus is still building inventive Lego creations across the house, although I have yet to work out why every construction takes 400 tiny bricks. There are currently several unfinished inventions on the living room table, which is oddly appropriate for this post.

There is just something about March that makes you feel you should be doing something, isn’t there? Clearing things out, starting again. Getting organised, and suddenly deciding that this is the month you’re going to sort the cupboard under the stairs, answer all your outstanding emails and finally work out a system for keeping track of the things you keep losing.

Give me the slightest whiff of a fresh start and I’m off to make a list, then I’ll make a better list because the first list was a scribbled note. I’ll find a notebook I bought, write beautifully in it for three days and shove it in a drawer and forget about it. I’ll spend 45 minutes reorganising something, before wandering into the kitchen and completely forgetting why I’m there.

In our Persian family, March also means Nowruz. There are flames to jump over, sabzeh to grow and traditions that have survived long before any of us started worrying about protein intake, 10,000 step counts or whether our jeans are getting smaller or we’re getting bigger….

Which got me thinking about midlife because as women, we are absolutely surrounded by instructions about it. It takes me back to the days of having a baby, when everyone wants a piece of you. Change your diet, change your body, change your hormones, change your mindset. Get stronger, sleep better, buy the serum that will smooth your crows feet. Buy the expensive leggings. Apparently there is a version of me out there who has sorted her hormones, strengthened her pelvic floor, perfected her morning routine and drinks something green before everyone else wakes up … but she sounds absolutely exhausting! I am beginning to wonder whether we could just occasionally have a nice time instead of trying to fix everything about ourselves all of the time.

I set fire to the garden and started worrying about my parenting skills

Take Chaharshanbe Suri, the Persian fire festival. As part of my 50 in 50 Challenge, I decided to jump over some flames in our back garden. The idea appealed to me because there was something wonderfully impulsive about it. Build a fire, jump over it, laugh, repeat. I admit, it was a slightly ridiculous thing to do on a Tuesday night after finishing work, but it also sounded considerably more sensible in my head than it did once there was smoke drifting across the garden and we had, apparently, upset the neighbours. All in the name of tradition, of course.

Then I started thinking about Cyrus. More specifically, I started imagining what he might tell his teacher and his friends at school the next morning.

“My mum made a fire in the garden and made me jump over it.”

Except he probably wouldn’t say made. He’d say something far more dramatic.

And then there was the small matter of explaining it to other parents. In this day and age of sustainability, recycling and everyone being encouraged to think twice about what we’re burning, I’m not entirely sure “We had a lovely evening setting fire to things in the garden” is going to land well at the school gates.

Suddenly I was imagining the teacher’s face, the questions, the possibility that someone would decide I was a terrible parent who casually sets fire to the garden for fun. I could practically hear the WhatsApp discussion I hadn’t actually been invited to.

This is the sort of thing my brain can do. One minute I’m enthusiastically thinking, Brilliant! Let’s jump over a fire guys! The next I’m mentally rehearsing a conversation with the headteacher that hasn’t happened, defending a parenting decision nobody has actually challenged. I ruminated on it for far longer than was necessary.

Meanwhile, H was, naturally, filming the whole thing because the in-laws in Iran were going to want to see this. Eventually, I stopped worrying about what everyone else might think and just did it.

I squealed like a startled cat as I launched myself over the fire, flung my legs up, tried to remember what I was supposed to be chanting as I jumped and at the same time, tried not to scorch either my jeans or what remained of my dignity.

You jump, land, laugh … then H tells you to do it again because he forgot to record the video properly the first time. You jump again.

There is something quite lovely about a family tradition that requires you to stand freezing in your garden in the dark, jump over a fire and send a video of it to family members hundreds of miles away. It was just something our family does, and I got to be part of it. I liked that.

Feed me! The breakfast I actually have time to make

My mornings are a bit of a circus despite waking up with really good intentions. I start thinking about what needs doing, remember something I forgot yesterday, get distracted by something completely unrelated, make a coffee and then realise I’ve been drinking it for 45 minutes without actually eating anything.

By about 10.30am, I’m suddenly ravenous and wondering why I am standing in the kitchen eating crisps that were never intended to be breakfast. So I tried Linwoods Chocolate Protein and Strawberry Energy Oats.

They take about two minutes to prepare, if you can remember to make them the night before! They provide 11g of plant-based protein per serving, which suits me rather well. I need breakfast to be easy enough that I can make it before the crazy side of my brain wanders off to deal with something else far more exciting.

There is also Cyrus, who seems to need feeding with the same increasingly desperate urgency as Audrey II in Little Shop of Horrors, only instead of demanding “Feed me!” from a giant plant pot, Cyrus tends to appear beside me the second I’ve sat down with my own breakfast, looking at me as though I have personally forgotten to feed him for three days. Mum guilt all the way.

So these protein oats are brilliant. They didn’t require much thought and there was no complicated recipe and no blender to wash. I hate blender washing. There was also no standing in the kitchen chopping six different things while mentally running through the rest of the day’s jobs. Two minutes. Breakfast. Done.

I can’t even grow grass without overthinking it

The sabzeh growing on the dining room windowsill was another reminder that I am spectacularly impatient.

You plant the seeds. You water them … and then … you wait. Or, in my case, you plant the seeds, water them, stare at them several times a day and quietly tell them to hurry up and do something. Come on. GROW!

I have actually found myself talking to them to speed things up, then I start worrying. Have I over-watered them or worse still, under-watered them? Is that a normal bit of green or the beginning of mould? Should I move them closer to the window, turn the bowl around? Have I ruined them? Should I just check with ChatGPT to make sure I’ve done it right. Perhaps I should …. just leave them alone. Which, of course, I then struggle to do.

Sabseh sprouting is an annoyingly good metaphor for the human body. You cannot demand visible results on a timetable just because you’ve bought new pair of Sweaty Betty leggings and, in my case, have already mentally planned the new, improved version of yourself.

I have spent plenty of time exercising because I wanted to change how my body looked. I still notice my stomach though every time I do a sit-up. I still have moments when a pair of leggings can also ruin my morning before breakfast. That hasn’t magically disappeared.

I can also be really impatient about progress. I’ll have a few good weeks at the gym and then start wondering when, exactly, my body intends to show me the official confirmation that all this effort has been worth it.

But increasingly, I’m interested in a different question. What can my body actually do? Can I lift heavier? Can I get through a class without wanting to collapse dramatically onto the floor and can I punch harder, move faster, run a little further? Can I surprise myself?

Those things give me something my bathroom mirror never quite manages to give me: evidence that I’m moving forwards. Perhaps the sabzeh is trying to teach me something after all.

Give things a bit of time, stop poking them, nagging them. And for Goodness sake, definitely don’t give them a drink when they might not need it…. just before a gym class.

Body Combat has become one of my favourite ways of finding out what my body can actually do … and what it absolutely can’t right now.

Tuck jumps, for example. Hear me out, I am trying. I know what I’m supposed to do. You jump, bring your knees up, land as gracefully as possible and carry on. And burpees? I’m trying with those too. Although I have developed my own technique, which involves getting my legs as wide apart as physically possible. I’m not even sure why I do this. Nobody has taught me to burpee like a frog, but my legs just seem to have decided that this is the safest way to get back up. There is clearly a technically correct version of a burpee, and then there is whatever it is I’m doing. I’m still doing it, though, because the crazy bit of my brain tells me I can do it.

There is something addictive about spending an hour punching and kicking while sweating profusely and grinning like an idiot. I love it. But I have to admit, there are people I genuinely think about when I’m blasting my way through a Body Combat class. Thankfully for them, and for me, they will never know who they are. But let’s just say the imaginary opponent isn’t always entirely imaginary.

Then there is the music. God forbid someone moves into my limited personal space at the back of the class when Scooter comes on. That is my moment. I have approximately three square feet of territory and, when Scooter starts, I need every single bit of it, which may be why I enjoy it so much.

Then came the Blaze Community Games at David Lloyd Newcastle, where my fellow Blaze Warriors and I tackled sit-ups and treadmill sprints.

At one of the classes, I went so hard on the punch-bag sit-ups that I was basically bashing my head against the floor every time I came back down. I was determined to get my reps in, but my technique was questionable.  I ended up feeling dizzy afterwards and, because apparently I am incapable of doing anything by halves, it went on for weeks. Who said exercise was good for you?

In fairness, I have since learned that getting the reps in at absolutely any cost is probably not the fitness philosophy I should be following. But this is also part of what I like about these classes. I’m not brilliant at them. Some moves look like they were designed specifically to expose my physical limitations, and occasionally my enthusiasm gets considerably ahead of my common sense when punching.

In terms of the Blaze Games, our team didn’t come first. We didn’t come last. We did, however, we did win free coffee, which is a legitimate sporting achievement as far as I’m concerned. There is something very different about leaving a class thinking, “Bloody hell, I did that.”

I have started Self-care Sunday about 47 times now

I have started Self-Care Sundays, and even Saturdays … around 47 times.

The idea is always the same: candles, which must be Eau de Lingonberry and purchased from IKEA; soothing music, which never works because my crazy brain always opts for a P!nk track; a Persian sefidab scrub, although most of the time I’ve got into the bath and realised I’ve forgotten my kiseh; and an hour where nobody needs anything from me. That last bit is just too ambitious when you have a small child who suddenly needs the toilet the second you close the bathroom door.

My ideal Self-Care Sunday would last roughly an hour. I’d be calm, moisturised and serene. I’d be the sort of woman who owns matching knickers and bras, remembers where she puts things and has never shouted “WHERE THE HELL ARE MY EARBUDS?” from the top of the stairs half an hour before a gym session.

These days, self-care simply means listening to Alex. Yes, Alex. Not Alexa. Click the link for more. Meanwhile, I’m working up to an hour of peace, but I’ll let you know when I get there.

Maybe I don’t need fixing at all. So, after all that, what have I actually learned?

That I’m still amazingly impatient, still stuff half-written notebooks in drawers, still wander into rooms and forget why I’m there and I make plans with enormous enthusiasm and then get distracted by something else halfway through them. I overthink things that haven’t happened, become completely obsessed with things that have caught my attention and occasionally get carried away with an idea before my common sense has had time to catch up.

I started this month thinking about all the things I was supposed to change about myself. My body, gym routines, fitness. My hormones. My eating and ability to be calm, more organised and capable of drinking something green before 7am.

Instead, I found myself jumping over fires, growing Persian sabzeh on the windowsill, eating chocolate oats because I had forgotten to eat breakfast, punching imaginary enemies to Scooter and attempting burpees like a frog. I even tried to have a peaceful bath, although my child and my brain had other ideas.

None of it fixed me. They did, however, make me feel more like myself.

I have learned that I want to leave some room for the woman who gets wildly excited about an idea, changes direction halfway through a list, laughs at the wrong moment and occasionally decides that jumping over a fire in the back garden sounds like an excellent idea. Maybe she isn’t the problem, she is the interesting bit.

So the answer to my original question is yes. Midlife doesn’t need fixing. It just might need listening to. And occasionally, it just needs us to stop trying so hard and have a bloody nice time being ourselves.

What small thing makes you feel more like yourself?

Tell me in the comments. I might pinch your idea for next month.

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