Life after 40 doesn’t have to suck. It’s time you took back control of your passions, your time, your energy. Here’s the plan to help you reinvent your life.

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It was one of the darkest periods of my life.

On the surface, it looked like I was just vibing and living my best life.

But on the inside, it was a constant mental battle to struggle to find more fulfillment in what I was doing.

It was 2009. My father passed away less than a year prior.

The stinging reality of immortality and the abruptness of losing a loved one far too soon made me question everything. Including the career that I had pursued since I was a kid.

Being a television sports anchor seemed pretty awesome. And most of the time, it was.

But long hours, crazy backwards schedules and constant work relocations made the career path quite difficult if you ever wanted to settle down and have a family.

And after losing my dad, I was seeing a life that I did not want to live unfold before me.

Not being able to settle down in a desirable city for at least another decade.

And the Recession of 2009 made it difficult to find new work and better pay.

But even more troubling was my once burning passion to talk about sports quickly faded. Dad was the one that got me into sports.

My fondest memories with him are when we’d sit down and watch Tampa Bay Buccaneers or Lightning games together. We talked about sports whenever given the chance.

He was my biggest fan and would watch all of my sports broadcasts.

When I was in front of the camera, to make it easier to present in front of a live viewing audience of thousands, I’d imagine quite simply that I was just having a conversation with my dad.

And then he was gone.

My desire to continue in this career was gone, too. In its place was a whisper calling me to do something else.

You may have a similar whisper. One that is telling you the life you’re living right now is one you’d like to change.

So many people are stuck in an endless loop of suck. You don’t even realize that your normal days are just scraping the bottom of the barrel. There’s more. 

And if you’re reading this, you’ve likely decided that now is the time to try and reinvent yourself.

In 2009, I left my career in broadcast journalism. Sold my car. Packed my bags.

My future wife (also a broadcast journalist) and I moved to New York City from Jacksonville, Florida.

I hopped around public relations and marketing firms and a major nonprofit until I realized that the whisper calling to me was screaming this time.

I needed to do more. I could do more. Life was still not awesome because I wasn’t pursuing the actual dream that evolved right before me.

It was time to reinvent myself.

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How to know when you’re ready to reinvent your life

I woke up one morning with a clarity that I’d never realized before.

It was 4:00am and I was fired up. Awake. Alert. Ready. I knew this was what I needed to do.

After all of the frustration and the heartbreak. All of the setbacks and failures and second guessing as to whether what I was doing made sense for me.

I almost quit. But on this particular morning I had clarity.

I knew the path towards my rebirth and reinvention.

It was no longer a life of being dictated how to spend my day making sure someone else was collecting a check much larger than mine.

No more hoping for menial raises after spending countless hours doing nonstop busy work.

I wanted control of my own destiny.

The whisper that I heard several years earlier was not about leaving journalism. It was much bigger than that. It was about charting my own path.

What started was a decade-long quest to do just that.

I’m going to share what I did and how you can do the same to finally reinvent yourself.

Envision what it would mean to actually reinvent your life

A life that you dictate. You take back control of your health and your wealth. You have the chance to be a completely different person by this time next year.

It will not be easy, but it will be the most rewarding experience of your life.

Get really clear on what that dreamscape would be for you if actualized.

Write it down. Go for a long walk unplugged from technology and marinate on it. Then take some deep breaths and meditate on it, too.

This is your life’s work or passion.

Don’t expect it to be some fleeting little exercise that comes to you from a pretty Instagram quote during a commercial break.

Map out exactly what you want.

For me, I knew I wanted to write about my interests and passions.

This would definitely include fitness. I had been a personal trainer on the side of my journalism career and would train coworkers and friends after midnight when my nightly news show would wrap.

My passions also included fatherhood. Shortly after leaving corporate America, my wife and I found out we were expecting our first child. Navigating parenthood while trying to start a business would be a fascinating case study.

Which led to an interest in productivity.

And a baked-in idea of minimalism that was not the rigid “never own shit but a black t-shirt” kind like you see from the gooroos on YouTube preaching about selling all of your things.

Over several years, I played with creating content on each major interest of mine.

It’s finally led to this iteration where I feel free. Free to talk about my passions in a way that makes sense for you and for me.

But it didn’t come overnight.

Reinventing your life starts with momentum

Changing anything from bad habits to an entire life overhaul requires determination, for sure.

It requires clarity on what it is that you truly want, of course.

You’ll need to go on walks, meditate, journal and get real deep in your thoughts to finally get that “aha” moment that sparks the path forward similar to my own epiphany.

But, I also truly believe that reinventing your life takes something perhaps even more important: momentum.

I tell my Lean4Life students that learning to build a healthy and active lifestyle will mean prioritizing momentum over motivation.

Because the motivation to reinvent your life is fleeting

Let’s take this from the lens of getting healthier, since lack of motivation is one of the biggest obstacles for so many people.

In reality, the truth is that you won’t always be motivated to exercise or eat another vegetable.

You’ll have to do it anyway. The goal is to build a sustainable system that helps keep you consistent with your exercise and healthy eating habits. A system that allows you to carry the momentum on those days when you’re not motivated.

The same applies if you want to reinvent your life.

You’ll need to build a system of habits that keep you going on the days when you’re feeling stuck and unmotivated to spend a little extra time working on yourself.

This is not a newsletter about getting in shape.

But, I’m going to make the argument here that one of the most important things you should be doing if you want to reinvent your life is to commit to consistent exercise habits.

Exercise is going to release dopamine, lower stress, improve sleep, and help you think more clearly. All things you’ll need in your toolbox to complete this challenge of rebooting yourself.

The best way to do this is through simply picking up a better walking habit.

My mini-monk mode sessions include several long walks per day.

Every morning, I pop out of bed at 5:15 a.m. and walk for 30 minutes. Most mornings, I’m listening to an audiobook on topics I’d like to write about in the future.

But, I’ll also walk with no technology at all. Just me and my thoughts.

The benefits of this promote more clarity and creativity in my thinking. It wasn’t until I started these more introspective walks that the ideas started flowing and directing me to this reinvention of my life that I’m writing about today.

Bonus, the extra steps have also helped me lean down even more over the past several months.

Start by incorporating a daily walking habit.

Watch as the brain shifts into its Default Mode Network where it is processing like a computer in the background.

You’ll be more clear. Conscious. Creative. Ready to tackle all of your goals.

If you’re stuck at home most of the day, building your business or creating content, take regular breaks and get the hell outside, in the sun and walk.

For the office workers, do what you can, when you can to get outside in the sun and go for walks without the pull of music, audiobooks or podcasts.

Just you and your thoughts.

Build the momentum here and watch as the path to reinvention kicks into overdrive.

You’re ready to get clear on what you need to do in order to reinvent your life

In order to reinvent your life, you must first create the life that you’d actually want to live.

Take note of how you feel.

What are you doing on a daily basis?

Write this all out.

Get down to the specifics and jot down your habits and how you feel about those habits. Are they doable? Can you sustain them for the foreseeable future?

Expand your mind to get super clear on what you want, and what you don’t want.

In a perfect world, with all of the money and time that you need, what would you be doing?

And no, it is not just relaxing and doing nothing. That’s a slow death.

The mind needs stimulus and challenge. It’s through that stimulus that play and rest become that much more effective.

It doesn’t have to be grinding at your 9-5. But it should be some sort of engaging practice that challenges you.

So … what would that be for you?

Where do you want to live? In a house? High-rise condo? In a city? Or the countryside?

What does your average day look like?

How many hours do you work per day?

Do you have a family? Or a bigger family than you have now?

Map out anything that helps paint the picture of the perfect dream lifestyle that you’d like to build.

If you do not take action to reinvent your life, what would that look like?

Now to make this even more effective, you will flip the script and create the opposite of vision.

We call this the anti-vision.

What would life look like if you do not follow through on your goals?

How will you feel?

How will the four crucial pillars of happiness (Health, Wealth, Play and Relationships) suffer from your inaction?

Here’s a guide to creating that anti-vision for yourself.

It’s a powerful exercise that works hand-in-hand with your true vision.

It’s the yin and yang of goals and dreams. Each working with and against one another to help you realize where you are going and where you most definitely do not want to be.

Now the important part: Before jumping into the planning phase, embrace the concept of rest.

Take a break from this project for a day. Come back to it later after you’ve gone on some more walks and meditations.

Allow your mind to really find the clarity needed and you’ll unlock a superpower to start realizing the full potential of your vision.

Create the roadmap to change your life

Now that we have a course, let’s chart the destination.

Where are you heading?

What is the goal?

How long do you think it will take to make it to your dreamscape?

Of course if you’re just starting out and have never engaged in anything then this is going to take some time.

What are your 10 year goals? 5 year goals? 1 year goals? Quarterly goals?

Now comes the crucial part to reinvent your life.

The part where most people mess up, especially with fitness goals.

They create some unattainable goal of losing 30 pounds in 12 weeks. Don’t understand the proper levers to pull to make losing even 5-10 pounds a reality.

They don’t see the results. Then get mad, blame the diet or the workout (or themselves) and give up.

Having long-term goals is fantastic, but in order to achieve them, you must break those goals up into tiny, sustainable behaviors that will lead to success over time.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”
– James Clear, Atomic Habits

What are the habits you must create to reach this reinvention of your life?

Let’s say you’d like to have six pack abs.

And you’d like to do this within the next 12 months.

Depending on your starting point, this is totally doable, if you move the right levers of consistency with your habits.

So the first habit might be, including protein at every meal you eat. Simple. Effective. One that allows you to build momentum and can be a foundational habit that allows for more progression as you solidify the behavior.

Next, you’d like to add a physical activity habit.

Perhaps that’s as simple as committing to a 30-minute morning walk, like I did.

And then you can add 1-2 strength training sessions per week.

This is how you reinvent your life, too. One small and simple habit at a time. Then add layers as you keep up that momentum.

Do you want to start a business? Write a book? Advance your career?

What are the small habits you must incorporate now to make this possible?

Find the books, YouTube lectures, online courses to develop the knowledge or skills necessary.

Commit to writing one page per day. Or just 350 words. Or even one sentence.

Block out 15 minutes per day to read, study, research.

Make it small. Make it attainable. And then make the time to do it.

Reinventing yourself happens from the systems you develop for accountability

Now you have a baseline for behavior and you’ll need a system to track it and hold yourself accountable.

We know that from a consistency standpoint, 100-percent perfection is never the goal, instead a solid target is 80-percent consistency.

I like using a simple desk calendar to mark the days you hit your protein and daily movement requirements with a big “X.”

If you do not hit that goal, you leave it blank.

That breaks down to about 24-25 “Xs” per month or 5-6 days per week. If you manage to do that, you’d be well on your way to actualizing a complete health overhaul.

Do the same for your goal to reinvent your life.

Maybe it’s a goal to start a business or write a book.

What are the lever-moving tasks and habits you’ll need to incorporate daily in order to get one day closer to those 1-5-10 year goals you laid out?

Goals without an action plan are why so many people end up with the same lame-ass Resolutions every January.

They have no idea how to map out a real action plan based on trackable behaviors.

And by all means, keep this as simple as possible.

If you’ve never really trained consistently before, do not expect that in month one you’ll be performing a Daily Undulating Periodization workout routine made for a Powerlifter. You’ll never keep up with it.

Keep your workouts simple and minimal (like mine) and you might end up getting into the best shape of your life (like I did).

You want to find your Goldilocks range.

In the pursuit of getting shit done and crushing your goals, if you make the challenge too difficult, you’ll get overwhelmed which leads to anxiety and then you’ll quit.

On the flip side, if you make it too easy, you’ll get bored, develop more anxiety because you think you should be doing more … and then, yes, you’ll quit.

Find the sweet spot in the middle (this might take time so pack your patience).

Learn every single day

The mind needs stimulation. Daily.

But if you’re like me, you got burned out by the constant drain from school which took the absolute fun out of learning and expanding the mind.

I wasn’t a huge fan of reading books in my 20s because I was so burned out by being forced to read “the classics” that didn’t interest me at all (looking at you, The Scarlet Letter).

If your goal is to get in the best shape of your life, you should develop a learning habit around finding the proper tools so you can execute more efficiently.

Or you can hire a coach to help you learn the inside and out of building a long-term healthy lifestyle based on minimalist fitness and nutrition practices. I happen to know a guy.

If you’re building a business, use this as an opportunity to learn more about the profitable skills of marketing, public speaking, copywriting and closing/sales.

Those are the four recession-proof skills that if you master even one, you’ll be charting a course to unstoppable success for yourself.

But that won’t happen if you just sit around scrolling Instagram assuming that one day, you’ll learn how to write compelling copy that would make someone want to hit “Buy now.”

The next part is to understand that the path towards learning anything is through doing.

Put this newfound knowledge to action.

Stop waiting for the perfect moment where Venus aligns with Saturn’s moon in some astrological vomit. Get up and take messy action right now. Right now.

Not Monday or the first of the month. Right. Now.

Document your progress

Treat this reinvention as a science project.

Write down your goals and what you think is the right path towards reaching those goals. You are 42-percent more likely to achieve goals if you write them down.

Map out the behaviors and habits that you’ll need to adopt in order to reach those goals.

Journal your entire process.

Throughout the journey of reinventing yourself, you’ll make mistakes. Perfection is not the goal. Mistakes will be made.

How you recover from those mistakes is what will determine whether you can actually reinvent your life.

Write those mistakes down. Then get real clear on the steps you did to solve the problem.

This serves two purposes:

1) You might run into the problem again in a different form or context, but your notes might be useful to help overcome it with less mental energy.

2) One of the most profitable paths forward in business is through documenting your own struggles and how you overcame them (like my own story at the beginning of this article) … this can be useful content and coaching material going forward.

To summarize the path to actually reinvent your life

Expand the mind and realize that reinventing your life is possible, but you must get super clear on what it is you want (and do not want) to do with your life. Take some time to focus, journal and meditate on this vision for yourself.

I. Create the roadmap.

Craft your vision for a more meaningful and fulfilling life.

Then break down the necessary habits you must develop in order to make that vision a reality.

II. Never stop learning.

Do you need a coach? Or a course? What skills do you need to practice and master to be successful?

Learn each and every day about the path to your reincarnation (even 15 minutes is enough to keep up the momentum).

III. Document.

Journal about your entire process and you’ll identify key learnings and see where you might need to make necessary tweaks.

You’ll thank yourself six or even 12 months from now when you have:

1) valuable insights and your own little FAQ

and 2) it’ll lead to incredible content if you’re open to sharing through writing.

IV. Make this your Life’s Work.

Show up every single day and fight like hell to make this vision a reality.

It won’t be pretty or perfect. And that’s okay because “perfect” is not the goal.

Just keep in mind: all of the videos, coaches, courses and tutorials will help, but you’ll ultimately learn by doing.

Now … go take action.

I hope you found this useful. If so, I’d appreciate it if you sent this newsletter to one person you think would benefit from my writing today.

And as always, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out.

I answer all of my emails at pete [at] petecataldo [.] com … Hit me up with the subject line “reinvent your life” and I’ll answer any questions you have to make this work for you.

Until next time,
Pete