how to set goals in your 30s & 40s (new paradigm)
JUN 12, 2026
Something I think about a lot is the access to spiritual qualities implicit in pain, grief and unhappiness. Often my darkest moments ~ heartbreak, loss or rupture in the fabric of my life ~ impose a sort of presence that melts down the world around me.
The moments that bring me to my knees are also the moments that bring me closer to my faith. They crack me open in ways that innocent happiness and joy rarely do.
During a particularly difficult breakup in 2018, I sat on the living room floor of the Italian-style bungalow we had bought together. It had a peach tree and plums, raspberries and wild roses in the garden that I still think of fondly. I loved this man so thoroughly but love it rarely enough. I knew I had to leave to give us both a chance at the lives we dreamed of and deserved. The grief was all-consuming that afternoon.
As I wept, my face pressed down on the antique rug I had imported from Morocco, I decided to go all-in with feeling the pain. It was either repress or feel, and we all know what happens when we do the former. The latter chases us until we let ourselves be vulnerable enough to go there. So I let myself feel the pain at the deepest level of my aching heart until I was one with it. And then something beautiful happened.
I found joy. I found joy inside the pain, so generous and broad and soothing, it made the pain worth it. I found clarity and comfort and understanding for the human experience and our internal technicoloured emotional worlds. There is poeticism to our suffering.
Right now so many people are aching deeply for a life that is yet unknown. So many people I know are renegotiating the terms of their existence. They are pivoting and choosing a new path even though it is painful and uncomfortable. These moments tether us to the truth, and in their greatest intensity, can feel more intimate than anything else in the world, bringing us closer to our faith.
Faith in life, in god(dess), in the universe, in ourselves, in the good of others… whatever speaks truly to you. Built into the other side is some kind of transformation. We are in that transformative process right now.
When I was trying to summarise what I was saying in this video, what came through and landed for me really clearly was the following:
We have faith in a future that resembles us more accurately than the past has. It is the only thing that carries us through. It is an initiation. We feel the pain and fear and confusion and still move towards it knowing that this is the only way.
Pragmatically, the ways that we relate to one another, the ways that we make money, the value of things, the things that we call our work, our relationship to our homes, to our lands, to our earth, are all changing, and rapidly now. We have long known the need to. As I say in the video, it’s an exciting time.
𓂃 𓈒𓏸 𓇼
VIDEO TIMESTAMPS
0:00 Almost full moon — new bangs, sunset walk
0:14 So many people are going through big life transformations right now
1:08 It’s a weird and destabilising time — but also really exciting
2:42 Sunday morning beach day
3:22 Monday — construction chaos, escaping to a secondhand bookstore
3:46 Finished Alias Grace and The Luminaries — thoughts
4:06 What this video is actually about: pivots, dreams, aligned goals
5:23 My story — the dream I had 13 years ago
5:32 Psychology degree, music festivals, starting a blog
6:22 How the blog became a business and the traveling began
7:26 Back when travel was still inconvenient — and I loved it
8:28 The dream came true — and then I had no idea what came next
8:51 The global panini and everything that changed
9:21 Years of feeling unanchored and disconnected
10:11 This is happening collectively — so many people are pivoting
10:34 Busy work vs real impact — what are we devoting our lives to
11:25 Three questions to ask yourself right now
11:31 Question 1: How do I want my life to feel?
11:41 Question 2: Who am I becoming?
11:54 Question 3: What is the next aligned step?
12:57 The old way vs the new way of setting goals
13:25 It’s about our becoming — not where we arrive
P.S. This one has a slow and gentle start. I like to think I’m helping you stretch your attention span. (You’re welcome.) I am still very much a beginner at making videos, and spent this week inside the very sharp (and frustrating) learning curve of editing with DaVinci Resolve, so thank you for your patience with me as I master this particular form of expression.
Last week I opened up enrolments to going pro:
A live six-week writing course for women who want to use a newsletter or substack as a functional brand-building tool.
After years of working with and watching women build businesses online, I’ve noticed it comes down to this:
1. build something with your name on it
A product, a project, a body of work. This forces you to persuade people to care, which means learning rhetoric. It forces you to understand what others actually want, not what you think they should want, which means practical psychology. It forces you to act without permission and iterate based on what reality gives back, which means real agency. You learn by making something and putting it in front of people.
2. write publicly. consistently
Writing compresses your thinking into something others can hold. It builds an audience, a reputation, and proof of work, all three of which compound over time. A newsletter is where both of these things happen at once: you are building something, and you are writing about it, and the writing itself becomes part of what people buy.