Sally “I’m fine. Just a bit… beige.”
That is how quite a few women describe this stage of life. Nothing is necessarily wrong. The days are simply doing that annoying trick where they look busy in the diary but, when you think back, you cannot remember enjoying much of them.
You are still getting things done. Of course you are. Yet the version of you who used to have daft ideas, ring a friend on a whim or become completely absorbed in something has gone rather quiet.
Which brings us to the obvious question: how do you get your spark back after 40 without lumbering yourself with another impossible routine? I would start by interrupting the beige once or twice. Nothing heroic. Just see which change makes you look up.
Lost your spark — or simply shattered?
Worth asking, this one. Sometimes a flat patch is really a shortage of sleep, time alone or proper help. After all, a new hobby cannot mend a diary that is impossible to live with.
There is no single “lost spark” feeling either. You may be bored. You may feel as though everybody gets the lively bits of you while you are left with the dregs. Or perhaps you cannot decide what you fancy doing, so you scroll for an hour and go to bed vaguely cross.
Life can shift quite a lot in our forties. A job wants one thing, teenagers another, and an elderly parent may need the afternoon you had mentally reserved for collapsing. Hormonal changes sometimes pile in as well. Sleep goes peculiar; concentration wanders off; a previously steady mood becomes less predictable. Sound uncomfortably familiar? Have a read of this plain-English NHS menopause and perimenopause advice.
Before drawing up a grand plan, finish one sentence: I would feel more like myself if I had a little more…
What popped into your head? Quiet, mischief, company, colour, a challenge? It is your answer. Leave everyone else out of it.
How to get your spark back after 40: where I would begin
Make the change almost ridiculously small
Waiting for motivation sounds reasonable. I would not risk it. Motivation is unreliable and, frankly, has terrible timekeeping.
Do the two-minute version instead. For example, put the swimming timetable on the fridge. Send “Fancy a coffee next week?” Then book the ticket before you can produce twelve sensible reasons not to go. Tiny actions are useful because they leave very little room for an internal committee meeting.
Go back to an old pleasure — just once
Cast your mind back to the days before every pastime needed a useful outcome. Sunday-night nail painting, dancing while the pasta boiled, poking around jumble sales, reading in the bath, taking photographs of odd little things — did any of those once belong to you?
Have another go. One afternoon is enough. Besides, you are not signing a lifetime contract with watercolours; you are checking whether that old part of you still answers when called.
Blank mind? Browse these hobbies for women over 40. Ignore the worthy option. Pick the one that makes you think, “Ooh, maybe.”
Write a list that is not a to-do list
Take a clean page and write “More of this” at the top. Underneath, put actual moments you would happily repeat: early tea in the garden; music in a tiny venue; lunch that accidentally lasts until six; the green jumper; flour or clay on your hands.
A vague wish such as “more fun” tends to float away. “See a comedy show with Clare” can go in the diary.
Alter one boring bit of the week
You do not need to move to Lisbon. Instead, rearrange Tuesday.
Shop on another night and rescue Saturday morning. Work in the library for an hour. Walk home through the park instead of past the same row of parked cars. Eat at the table, turn the big light off and put some music on. The aim is merely to make an ordinary day noticeable again.
Routine is helpful; it keeps the wheels attached. But when Thursday feels exactly like the previous four Thursdays, no wonder the month seems to vanish.
Pay attention to how people leave you feeling
Somebody can be perfectly nice and still leave you feeling smaller. By contrast, someone else makes you funnier, braver and more yourself. That matters.
Give a bit more time to the second sort. Need to meet a few? Our guide to making friends in your 40s does not expect you to stride into a room and instantly charm everybody. Thank goodness. Grown-up friendship tends to sneak in sideways, after the fourth or fifth easy chat.
Be new at something
By now, you probably spend much of the week being capable. You know the job. The dentist appointment is in the diary. Somehow, you can sort a problem while holding a bag of shopping and finding somebody’s missing charger.
Being a beginner is the opposite. Try a pottery taster, paddleboarding, salsa, Italian or growing tomatoes. Be a bit rubbish. Ask the obvious question. Make the bowl that looks like an ashtray from 1976. For once, competence is not required, which is precisely the charm of it.
Put one lovely thing in the future
Anticipation is half the treat. A day by the sea in three weeks gives you three weeks of picturing chips on the promenade.
The plan can be cheap. Perhaps it is a free exhibition, a new walking route with a pub at the end, or the film you have both been meaning to see. Either way, choose it, name the date and tell whoever needs telling. “We should do that sometime” is where good ideas go to die.
Stop keeping everything for best
Wear the earrings to buy milk. Spray the expensive perfume before a normal lunch. Drink tea from the cup you are frightened somebody will chip.
I am not suggesting a shopping spree. Quite the opposite: use the nice things already sitting in cupboards. After all, ordinary Wednesday is your real life. It is allowed the good candle.
Waste an hour properly
This may take practice. It is alarmingly easy to turn an afternoon off into a tiny performance review: steps completed, vegetables chopped, educational podcast consumed.
What would an hour with absolutely no result look like? A bookshop browse, perhaps. A coffee and a bit of shameless people-watching. Some nonsense doodled on the back of an envelope. You could even drive past the supermarket turning and stay out for another song. Nothing has to come of it. That is the point.
Use your lively hours wisely
The diary says you have two glorious hours at 8pm. Your body says you have half a toast crust and precisely no sparkle left.
Could the class happen on Saturday morning? Could drinks become breakfast? Let the alert version of you have first go at anything needing nerve or curiosity. The laundry can wait; it will not take the hint and leave home.
Remove one regular drain
Getting your spark back is not all about adding things. What could go?
Perhaps there is a commitment you accepted years ago and now dread. Or the family birthday admin has silently become yours for all eternity. What happens if you halve it, hand it over, or say, “I cannot do that this time”? There might be more breathing room on the other side than you imagine.
No New You required
Do not announce a New You. She sounds exhausting. Give yourself a month to test one idea, with no solemn promises attached.
You might take a daily picture of whatever catches your eye, nip around the block after lunch, or let a strange-looking recipe into the weekly rotation. Perhaps say yes once when your usual reflex is “another time”. Thirty days later, take stock.
If it did, keep a manageable version. If it did not, drop it without ceremony. Either way, you have learned something; that counts.
A seven-day “less beige” plan
Not in the mood for a full life audit? Good. Neither am I. Try this instead:
- Monday: name three things you miss.
- Tuesday: message somebody who brings out a good side of you.
- Wednesday: wear or use the thing you save for best.
- Thursday: give 20 minutes to an old interest.
- Friday: book one small plan.
- Saturday: go somewhere outside your usual circuit.
- Sunday: keep what helped and forget the rest.
Miss a day? Carry on. There are no gold stars and nobody is taking attendance.
A quick, important note about low mood
“I have lost my spark” can describe an ordinary slump. At other times it is the tidier phrase we use because saying “things are not all right” feels too big. Please talk to your GP if low mood has stuck around for two weeks, is interfering with the day-to-day, or is becoming hard to carry. For other routes into help, start with NHS Every Mind Matters.
At the appointment, jot down anything else that has changed — sleep, periods, temperature, anxiety or concentration. Those details matter. Nobody wins a prize for muddling through perimenopause without information.
You do not need to become a different woman
Your spark may be tucked underneath tiredness, responsibility and years of putting practical things first. Tucked away is not gone.
Choose one idea that makes your shoulders drop or your curiosity twitch. Then do it before you have made it complicated. A class. A phone call. Red lipstick on a wet Thursday. The long route home.
That is enough. A spark was never meant to be enormous.
