For a long time, change came after something had stopped working.

My corporate career is probably the most obvious example. I was good at it. Very good at it, actually. I had the title, the salary, the responsibility, the international career and all the other things we're taught to recognise as success.

I also knew what it was costing me.

Eventually, the equation stopped making sense.

So I left.

That was a big edit. A necessary one.

And for a while I think I carried that same idea of change with me. That reinvention happened when something was wrong. You identified the problem, made the brave decision, tore something down and rebuilt.

It's a compelling story. It's also exhausting.

And at 56, I've done enough fucking dismantling.

I don't want every new chapter to require the destruction of the previous one.

I want to keep the good bits.

The question isn't whether something asks anything from you.

Everything worthwhile does.

The question is whether what it brings is worth what it asks.

I created The Life Edits after leaving corporate life.

It gave me somewhere to put twenty-plus years of experience, a slightly obsessive interest in why we do what we do, and everything I was discovering about midlife as I lived through it myself.

It gave me purpose.

It made me think.

It made me write.

It introduced me to women I would never otherwise have met.

Most importantly, I could build it around my life rather than building my life around my work.

That mattered.

Then, as businesses have a habit of doing, it started acquiring stuff.

Funnels. Offers. Products. Coaching. Content schedules. Calls to action. Things to launch. Things to promote. Things to optimise.

Suddenly this lovely thing I'd created to enhance my freedom had developed quite a lengthy list of demands and things to do to prove I could...

There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those things.

They are exactly what you are supposed to do when you're building a business.

The problem was much simpler.

That took me longer to admit than it probably should have.

Because once we've invested time, money and identity into something, changing our minds can feel suspiciously like failure.

Surely I should grow it.

Surely I should monetise it.

Surely the next goal should be more clients, more revenue, more reach.

Surely I shouldn't dismantle something I'd worked so hard to build.

And then I realised I was asking the wrong question.

It wasn't:

Can I make The Life Edits bigger?

Of course I could.

It was:

Ah.

Different question.

I think this is one of the more liberating things I'm learning about getting older.

Capability and desire are not the same thing.

You can be good at something and not want to do it anymore.

You can succeed at something and decide not to take it any further.

You can achieve the thing you once wanted and later discover that you want something else.

You can change your mind.

We give ourselves permission to leave things that are obviously awful.

The terrible job.

The disastrous relationship.

The business that's failing.

The life that makes us miserable.

It's much harder to give ourselves permission to change something that's perfectly fine.

Because then there is no villain. No dramatic breaking point.

No story about finally choosing yourself after years of suffering.

Sometimes the answer is simply:

That's enough.

Not with people. With possibilities.

There was probably a time when a new opportunity could seduce me simply because it was exciting.

Now I'm much more interested in the small print.

What will this require from me?

What will it give back?

What will I have less time for if I say yes?

Will this create freedom or quietly start consuming it?

Am I doing this because I genuinely want it, or because some previous version of me decided I should?

That's the filter I'm increasingly applying to everything.

And, inevitably, what comes next.

Christophe and I have started talking seriously about our next chapter.

France keeps appearing in those conversations.

There are ideas involving houses, businesses, different ways of living and an alarming number of French property websites currently open on my laptop.

I can feel a spreadsheet coming.

Obviously.

But we're not trying to escape the life we have.

That's what makes this next decision so interesting.

We love where we live.

We have freedom.

We're happy.

So whatever comes next has a fairly high bar.

And perhaps that's the biggest way I've changed my mind.

I used to think reinvention meant having the courage to change your life.

Now I think sometimes it means having the confidence not to disrupt a perfectly good one simply because you can.

To become more selective.

To stop confusing bigger with better.

To recognise when enough really is enough.

And to leave enough room in your life for something unexpected to arrive and make it richer.

There is an entire industry telling women that this stage of life is our opportunity to reinvent ourselves.

New career. New body. New purpose. New confidence. New bloody morning routine.

Apparently we can't just have a coffee and see how the day develops. But I'm increasingly unconvinced that we need quite so much reinvention.

Maybe midlife isn't about becoming a completely different woman. Maybe it's about knowing yourself well enough to become a much better editor.

Keep this. Lose that. More of this. I've had enough of that. This still matters. That doesn't anymore.

And occasionally, well, I didn't see that coming.

That's certainly where I am.

The Life Edits is changing because I changed. I'm keeping the writing, the curiosity, the conversations and the things I've created that I still believe are useful. I'm letting go of some of the machinery that grew around them.

And I'm making room for whatever comes next without demanding that I know exactly what that is yet.

Because perhaps the biggest thing I've changed my mind about is the idea that the next chapter always needs to be better, bigger or more impressive than the last.

It doesn't.

It just needs to be worth what it asks of me.