THE WALK
I’m out walking my dogs. It’s something I do most days, and somewhere along the way it became more than just movement. It’s where I think. Or maybe more accurately, it’s where I finally hear what I’m actually thinking.
No headphones. No podcast. No input. Just me, Roxy and Riley, my thoughts, my steps, and whatever’s going on around me.
I listen to my head. I listen to my gut. I listen to my heart. I try to pay attention. Not in some hyper-optimized, self-help way. Just noticing.
I look around the neighborhood. There’s a guy down the block with his garage door open, working out in his gym. I don’t know him. Never spoken to him. But I see the setup—bars, weights, a rack—and it looks a lot like mine. Same idea. Same intention. Just a guy getting his work in where he can, when he can.
There’s a couple playing tennis at the park. A landscaper working on my neighbor’s yard. One house looks dialed in. The next one, not so much. You can tell who’s taking care of things. You can tell who’s letting things go.
As I walk, I think about my kids. How they’re doing. What they need. What I need to be for them right now. I shake out my arm a little, rotate my shoulder, just checking in. Better or worse today? Still there, maybe a little looser. Hard to tell. But I pay attention.
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HAVE TO VS. GET TO
I think about the things I have to do today. The things I want to do. And the things I get to do. That distinction matters more than anything, because not that long ago almost everything felt like a “have to.” Now there are more and more “get to’s.”
I’ve got a trip to Napa coming up. A 50-kilometer hike with a client to celebrate his 50th birthday. My United app is telling me there’s up to a four-hour delay because of a TSA shutdown. It bothers me, but not like it used to. When I used to travel for work, it was to places I didn’t want to go, to see clients I didn’t want to entertain. I’d look for any excuse to get out of it. Now it’s all people, places, and things I actually want to do, so I just shrug it off. I’m willing to endure whatever it takes to get where I’m going.
My life isn’t work anymore. My work is my life. That hits differently at 53 than it did at 43, and certainly at 33.
SHOWING UP IN PERSON
I find myself thinking about the last few weeks. That trip to St. Louis to meet the guys at 1st Phorm. We could have done it over Zoom. It would have been easier, faster, more efficient. But I don’t want to build relationships that way anymore. I want to meet people where they are, walk into their space, see how they operate, feel their culture.
We showed up and they had lockers set up for us like an NFL team. Nameplates, gear, energy. We trained together in one of the best gyms I’ve ever been in, toured the facility, sat down and had real conversations. That’s how you know if something is real. That’s how you decide who you want to build with.
BOULDER, WITH MY SON
Then there was Boulder. I had a window open up in my schedule, and instead of filling it with something “productive,” I got on a plane and went to spend a couple of days with my son. That’s the gift of where I am right now. Empty nesting, with enough control over my schedule to actually use it.
It wasn’t extravagant. It was simple. Long dinners where we put the phones down and actually talked. A morning workout together. Red Rocks with friends, moving, sweating, laughing in one of the most beautiful places you can be. Grocery shopping just to make sure he was stocked up. A hockey game in Denver, making the drive together.
And then one of those random moments you can’t plan. We ran into Chris Pronger, who I had interviewed months back for Midlife Male. He’s calling the game, and I got to introduce him to my son. It’s a small thing, but it’s not. These are the moments. I can’t think of anything more productive or more important than that.
THE LIFE I LEFT
It’s also a reminder of how far I’ve come and how much my priorities have shifted. Not that long ago I was living a completely different life. I was a partner in a large firm, sitting in meetings I didn’t want to be in, surrounded by clients I didn’t really want to serve, trading time for money.
I’m grateful for that chapter. It provided for my family and taught me a lot at a time I needed those lessons. But I knew it wasn’t for me. It was a chapter, not the whole story.
The most important thing I did wasn’t leaving. It was realizing that I needed to, and then doing something about it. It took three years. Three years of making changes, adjusting my life, taking ownership, and building something new before I could afford to walk away.
That part doesn’t get talked about enough. Everyone wants the clean break, the big moment where everything changes overnight. Nobody talks about the three years before that. The uncertainty. The second-guessing. The slow, unsexy work of putting yourself in a position where change is actually possible.
WHAT ACTUALLY WORKS
Since then, I’ve gone down plenty of rabbit holes. Too many, if I’m being honest. I’ve over-optimized, over-indexed, gotten pulled into things that didn’t really matter. The same traps I talk about all the time. The same traps my clients fall into. And I still fall into them.
The difference now is I catch it faster. I course correct.
I’ve found a few things to be true. Reading about happiness doesn’t make me happier. Writing down what makes me happy, and then actually doing those things, does. Watching the news, chasing every trend, trying to stay on top of everything happening online doesn’t improve my life. Most of the time, it makes it worse.
There’s also this simple idea I wish I came up with myself. Rich Roll said it better than I could: if you’re worried about your life, put the phone down, read a book, go outside, make friends, build something, push your body, set a goal, and commit to it.
It really is that simple. Not easy, but simple.
THE REAL QUESTION
Do the things that make your life better, and your life gets better. Most of us just don’t do it consistently, because it’s so easy to get pulled into everything else—the noise, the comparison, the constant question of what we should be doing.
Sometimes I think the best move is to get offline entirely. A lot of what we feel is coming from what’s being fed to us all day. Maybe the best opinion to have on most of it is no opinion at all. That frees you up to go live your life the way it’s supposed to be lived.
Be a good husband. Be present with your kids. Take care of your body. Build meaningful relationships. Do work you actually care about.
Which one is better? Spending hours consuming negativity on a device, or taking your wife to dinner, playing pickleball, walking your dogs, calling a friend, getting a workout in?
It’s not even close. And yet we still have to remind ourselves. I have to remind myself.
HOW IT ACTUALLY CHANGES
Because midlife is messy. There’s confusion, there’s noise, and there’s a lot pulling at you at once. But if you stay in it, if you keep paying attention, if you keep making slightly better choices and evaluating what’s working and what’s not, it starts to shift.
Slowly. Quietly.
The confusion turns into clarity, not because you figured everything out, but because you stopped doing the things that pull you away from what matters and started doing more of the things that bring you back to it.
That’s the work.
ONE DECISION AT A TIME
And if I can do it—if I can spend three years working my way out of a life that didn’t fit anymore, if I can build something new, if I can get on a plane to St. Louis or Boulder or Napa and create these experiences—then so can you.
Not overnight. But over time. One decision at a time. One walk at a time. One honest moment at a time.
That’s how it happens. That’s how you fix your life.
At least, that’s how I see it.
In Health,
Greg Scheinman
Founder, Midlife Male
Husband. Father. Entrepreneur. Coach.
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