What the Wilderness Taught Me About Life (You won’t find these slogans on an inspirational coffee mug)

If you really want to understand who you are, and I mean beyond the polished profile headline, or your domestic role assignment try spending a few years living on a remote island in the middle of the Okavango Delta. With no “round the corner” conveniences, no Wi-Fi, and a commute to work that was like running the wildlife gauntlet. Things get clear fast. Sometimes terrifyingly so.

I didn’t move to Africa looking for a spiritual awakening. I went because I didn’t want a 40-year career in teaching. I went because I was in love, and stupid, and wanting to make his dreams come true. I went because it sounded fun and exotic, who wouldn’t want to be a safari guide at least once in their lifetime!!! The reality was a little different to the romanticized version I had created in my imagination. From the FGASA training to eventually managing luxury safari lodges in Botswana, it was also wildly uncomfortable, gloriously unpredictable, and deeply revealing. If midlife is a masters in letting go of illusion, then this was the preceding degree in home truths.

Reflecting on that time and lifestyle, cut off from the world, embedded in an unfamiliar culture, and surrounded by wild animals was a crash course in many of the same lessons my coaching clients now face as they navigate the wilderness of midlife. It is when you are in the middle of nowhere that we face the fragility of our life and its circumstances and realise we are seriously overdue a more honest conversation with ourselves.

Here’s are some of the lessons I got taught along the way:

1. Courage doesn’t feel brave at the time. It feels like showing up when you’d rather run.

Whether it was fielding yet another staff complaint over pilchards and corned beef, diplomatically managing the expectations of luxury travellers furious that their showers weren’t working after elephants dug up the water pipes, or coaxing a sluggish Land Rover through deep sand while an irate bull elephant reminded us who was really in charge in the delta; I learned that courage doesn’t look the way you think it will.

It’s rarely dramatic. There is no rousing soundtrack or the hero speech. It’s quieter, less glamorous. It’s getting out of bed on the 87th consecutive day of 5 hours sleep at 5am, getting stung in the throat by a scorpion hiding in your towel, brushing your teeth as if that was normal, managing the fear of going into anaphylactic shock and preparing as usual to lead a team and host discerning guests, all while feeling frayed to the edge of your own sanity. It’s finding ways to stay present, to stay kind, and to stay functional, when everything in you wants to shut down, check out, or scream. It’s facing a 3 month stint with no exit plan, no contact with your friends and family, and nothing but bush radio for inter-lodge communication and your own self-regulation skills to keep you company when the overwhelm creeps in.

What I learned out there, and what midlife continues to teach, is that courage is often just your capacity to stay and show up when you want to run. In the wild, panic gets you hurt. In midlife, it just gets you stuck.

We don’t have the luxury of bailing when things get hard, at work, in relationships, with family, with ourselves. There’s no cavalry coming, terrifyingly we are the grownups. We show up. Heart racing, knees shaking, not because we’re unafraid but because facing up to the noise and nonsense is the only way through. That’s adulthood. That’s leadership. That’s real-life bravery.

Courage, at its core, is about choosing presence over panic. It’s about breathing through the discomfort instead of numbing it. It’s about acting with strength from a place of grounded perspective. It’s about choosing to take personal responsibility and to stay conscious. It’s about staying in the conversation, the relationship, the process, even when every part of you wants to press “eject”, until it is resolved.

2. All your senses matter. Especially the sixth one.

Out there, trusting only what I could see would have been the fastest route to a medevac. In the bush, your eyes will lie to you. The rustle that sounds like wind might be a predator. The stillness that looks safe might be a setup. I had to learn to listen beyond the obvious, to tune in to the sounds, the smells, the subtle shifts in energy. I had to notice pattern disruptions, track the things that weren’t where they should be, and sense what wasn’t being said aloud. Safety relied not on sight, but on sensitivity. It wasn’t about control, it was about environmental attunement.

Midlife calls for that too.

Because this is the season where logic, once your most loyal tool, starts to not appear quite so logical. Things that used to add up, don’t. Things that once defined you, now feel irrelevant. What once felt like solid ground now feels strangely unfamiliar. You begin to realise that the road you’ve been following, career ladders, relationship norms, societal timelines, may no longer take you to where you now would rather be.

That’s when it gets disorienting. And that’s when it gets real.

You can’t just think your way through it. You can’t spreadsheet your way out. The way forward won’t be found in someone else’s five-point plan. You need something deeper, older, and infinitely wiser. You need to learn to feel your way.

That means tuning into your gut, not the anxious voice of fear, but the grounded pulse of inner knowing. It means listening to your body, which often senses misalignment long before your mind is willing to name it. It means trusting your emotional barometer, even when it doesn’t come with a clean explanation.

And at some point, you have to stop looking outward, for permission, for clarity, for someone to blame. The hard truth is: there is no “they” coming to fix it, change it, or explain it to you.

This is your life. No one else can walk it. No one else lives with the impact of your choices.

Midlife demands that you shift from measuring your reality against external frameworks to cultivating the quiet, steady confidence it takes to navigate by internal reference. That’s the real work. Not more effort. More listening. More honesty. More inner congruence.

It’s about unlearning the reflex to defer. The habit of doubt. The urge to explain yourself into acceptability. It’s about recognising that you are the compass. And even when the way forward feels uncertain, that compass still works. And once you start listening to it, really listening, you realise that the way forward may not be obvious, but it’s never unknowable, you had just temporarily stopped trusting the part of you that always knew the way.

3. You’ve got your answers. You have to claim your sovereignty.

At first, it made perfect sense to look to others for guidance—to learn how things were done, to lean into their experiences, to take advice and follow the well-worn paths. Mimicking what had always worked for others felt safe, even wise.

But the longer I stayed, and the more I paid attention, the more I began to question the assumptions behind the rules, the routines, and the systems. And that one word kept rising to the surface - why. Midlife brings a lot of “why” questions. It forces you to re-evaluate not just what you do, but how you think.

The therapist, the mentor, the podcast—these can be supportive. But eventually, you have to stop outsourcing your thinking and sit in your own chair of truth. Because no one else wakes up inside your life each day. No one else carries the weight or the consequences of your choices. This is your life. If you want it to feel aligned, it has to be authored by you.

That requires letting go of the pull toward certainty and instead cultivating discernment. It means noticing when you’re trading your own knowing for the comfort of reassurance. It means building the clarity and courage to make decisions that honour your values, even when they’re inconvenient, misunderstood, or not easily explained.

That’s when something shifts. That’s when you remember: you can trust yourself.

This isn’t about going it alone. It’s about recognising that inner leadership is a necessity. It’s the one thing solid enough to hold you steady when the external scaffolding, roles, identities, rules, start to fall away.

The most powerful transformations I witness don’t come from finding better answers. They come from stepping into the personal power it takes to navigate life in your own way, at your own pace, and on your own terms.

4. Reacting gets you eaten. Responding keeps you alive.

In the bush, a knee-jerk reaction can get you into serious trouble. Sudden movement, panic, or overcorrection are behaviours that escalate danger. You learn quickly that stillness is a strategy. You pause, you assess, you read the moment before you make your next move. It’s not passive, it’s precise.

Midlife requires the same approach, though the threats are more psychological than physical. The “predators” might be workplace politics, family conflicts, ageing parents, or the unexpected emotional ambush at the dinner table. The stakes feel high, the pressure immediate and our default is often to react from old wiring: defensiveness, emotional explosiveness, over-explaining, or retreat.

But here’s the thing: reacting is usually about protecting the past. Responding is about shaping the future. Reacting is survival mode. Its fuel is fear, shame, or ego. It’s impulsive. It’s loud. And it usually leaves a bigger mess to clean up.

Responding is emotionally regulated and considered. It requires pause. It asks you to get curious before getting caught up. To notice what’s really happening, internally and externally, and then choose action.

Our over complicated environments are a minefield of triggers, the partner, the boss, the teenager, the taxman, Mandy in marketing, your own reflection, and they can feel like they’re conspiring. It becomes hard to find the space between stimulus and response.

The truth is that wisdom isn’t measured by how fast you act. It’s measured by how intentionally you act. And once you learn to detach from the drama you’re no longer at the mercy of your environment. You create the calm in the storm. You choose what gets your energy.

5. If your values don’t evolve, you won’t either.

Living in a deeply communal, culturally complex environment forced me to reevaluate everything I thought I knew and dismantle a lot of what I assumed or took for granted. I was constantly confronted with alternative perspectives on fairness, responsibility, leadership, respect, and even what it meant to care for others. What I once unequivocally knew was “right” or “true” began to feel less certain. And that uncertainty, uncomfortable as it was, became fertile ground for deeper awareness and personal transformation.

Midlife invites—sometimes forces—a similar reckoning.

The things that once anchored you may start to feel irrelevant. What you used to strive for may no longer feel worth the cost. You may start questioning if the version of success you’ve been chasing was ever really yours. And that can be profoundly disorienting.

It’s common to feel like you don’t recognise the world around you anymore. People react differently. Conversations feel harder. The culture has shifted and you’re not sure whether to catch up or walk away. You may wonder, Have I become out of touch? Am I the one who’s changed? Or has the world moved so fast that I just haven’t recalibrated yet?

Here’s the truth: It’s all of the above.

And it’s not a problem, it’s a threshold.

Values are not fixed. They are meant to grow with you. To stretch. To deepen. To adapt to your lived experience. If they don’t, you end up clinging to outdated beliefs that no longer match your life, or who you're becoming.

In midlife, what was once black and white turns grey. The rules blur. The absolutes dissolve. The questions get louder: What do I really stand for now? What matters most to me, truly? And what am I willing to let go of—even if it once defined me?

This is where the real growth happens in the friction, in the ambiguity, in the not-knowing. It’s not about finding quick answers, but about learning to live with the complexity. About being brave enough to revise your worldview without losing your centre. And about holding space for others to do the same even when it challenges you.

Growth lives in the questions that don’t have easy answers. Growth requires that your inner framework adjusts with the changing shape of your reality. That your beliefs serve who you are now, not just who you used to be.

And that’s not betrayal. That’s integrity.

The wilderness taught me a lot, but perhaps the most enduring lesson was this: you are not separate. You are not separate from your environment, you are not separate from your relationships. You are shaped by them, undone by them, and, if you’re paying attention, remade by them.

Midlife is its own kind of wilderness.

It’s quieter. Less obvious. The threats don’t come with tusks or teeth, but they still rattle your nervous system with uncertainty, change, loss, responsibility, grief, invisibility and disconnection. It’s wild in ways you can’t always articulate. You look around and realise the old rules don’t apply. The familiar roles don’t quite fit. And the story you’ve been living may not be the one you want to keep telling.

But that’s not a disaster. That’s the work.

This stage of life isn’t asking for your perfection. It’s asking for your presence. It’s asking you to slow down enough to hear your own voice beneath the noise. To recognise where you've been living unconsciously. To notice the places where you're still waiting for permission. And to reclaim your authorship, not by being a blunt object and bashing it down, but by bringing more of you into every choice.

It’s not about finding “the answer.” It’s about getting honest about the questions. The real ones, the ones that make you uncomfortable, the ones that wake you up in the early hours, the ones you’ve been quietly avoiding to keep the peace and uphold the status quo.

This is the territory where your deepest growth lives: not in certainty, but in sovereignty. Not in speed, but in alignment. Not in who you’ve been expected to be, but in who you aspire to be, and who you’re becoming.

Yes, it’s hard. But it’s also liberating. Because when you stop performing the life you think you should have, and start living the one that fits your soul, things begin to shift.

Not all at once.

But enough that you feel it. Enough that you trust it. Enough that you start to come home to yourself, gently, unapologetically, and on your own terms.

Midlife is not the start of the next slog into old age.

It’s the moment you stop reciting the script and start curating your next chapter with your own words, in your own voice, expressing your own style.

And therein lies the biggest lesson, the wilderness taught me to look beyond human constructs and relax into the natural order, acknowledge and appreciate the beauty, be grateful for life and respect its fragility. To go into every day wanting to improve on yesterday, to positively contribute and to always keep sight of the bigger picture.

A Quick Note:

Thank you for taking the time to read this blog - I know your time is precious and I am grateful you chose to invest some of it here with me.