Last Updated on July 13, 2025 by Michelle
Why is it important to consider a mid life habit reset for anyone over 40? Because ‘95% of our mind is controlled’ per Dr Joe Dispenzam a lecturer, researcher and a scientist. What we do everday is out of our control. Our brain is lazy and out of efficiency, we make similar decisions on what we do during our free time, what we have for lunch or dinner etc. We do not make fresh decisions, our brain gets us to do the same thing over and over. Over time, these habits become us.
So while we are in our 40s, when we have another half or more of life to go, it’s about time we reflect on a reset. Even if we do not need to change any, it’s good to reflect so we are at least aware.
1. Purposeful Planning
Let’s start with an overall aspect of your life. Rate yourself on how you feel about your overall life at this moment. In whatever areas that matter to you, for eg. Financial aspect, Relationship aspect etc and what you will get to is an overarching Happiness index. How happy are you with your life at this moment?
In a scale of 10, if you are 7 and above, congratulations! This means your habits have been generally good for you. Unless you are at 10, I think the 5 step mid life habit reset is going to be helpful.
So think about which aspects of your life you would like to improve on and plan out.
I’ve laid out 5 easy success in progress steps to take today, this will give you an idea to how to think about purposeful planning for yourself.
2. Sleep
Regardless of step 1, I would urge everyone to reflect on your sleep schedule or duration. If you are having less than 6 hours of sleep, no matter if you are someone that doesn’t need that much sleep, you need to sleep more.
Do an experiment during your vacation, with how much time you feel the best. For me it’s 8. Hence, this year, my new habit I’ve started is to sleep by 1030pm daily so that I can have 8 hours of sleep with my morning alarm at 630am.
Adult humans are built to sleep at minimum 8 hours for optimal overall health, that gives sufficient time for cells to regenerate, the brain to organize what you’d learned and experienced into compartments and generally for all your organs to function normally. Prolonged sleep deprivation below 8 hours a night leads to multiple health issues including mental.
This is the simplest yet one of the hardest habit to sustain. Just start the habit today, this is for your health. Trust me, you’d feel amazing during the day after sustaining 8 hours/night sleep.
3. Movement
Again, humans are built to move. Not to be seated. As someone said, seating is the new smoking.
At mid life, we have a little bit more time, we have a bit more stable income, family and hopefully relationships. This is time for us to reflect more on our well-being and see where we are lacking. Speaking for most adults at mid life, we are probably not moving as much as we should.
Walking is the simplest. Start with slow walking, then speed up to brisk walking to get your heart level up.
Our brains get more oxygen as we move vs when we aren’t moving. This is why you feel instantly better after moving and why you hear of people getting out of depression after moving about.
4. Morning Routine Upgrade
Another underrated habit reset reflection point is on morning routines. What do you do when you wake up everyday? I’m sure there’s a routine you do most mornings. Is that looking at your phone in bed? I’ve recently got out of that bad habit and replaced with stretching while lying down. Then, I added on opening up my curtains to admire the view outside the window and to stretch while standing up. All these 3 steps put together takes about a minute. On the weekends, I also add on step 4 which is to make my bed.
Why are morning routines important? Because morning sets the tone of the day.
You get a sense of achievement satisfaction first thing in the morning and you start out happy.
Looking at your phone, looking through messages or social media would definitely not give you a sense of achievement.
5. Financial Check In
Financials…Ensuring you are well on your way to financial independence towards your retirement is critical. If you have not started, look at earlier posts on financial independence retire early – make the game winnable and 7 fundamentals to financial independence to get the exact steps to include financial check in in your mid life habit reset.
I check in on my financial spreadsheet every month (actually about 6-7 times a month) as I am so excited to see how I’m tracking. I realised that as I stare at the spreadsheet more, I question myself on how to reach my financial goal by the specific time, I come up with new ideas on how to grow my money.
Remember, no one can continue working forever. You need to think of the time when you won’t be working. However, when you’ve stopped working, you would still be spending. So you need to ensure you have ways to fund your expenses evern when you aren’t working in the future.
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