How To Have A Better Second Half of Your Life & Your Year

Turns out your second act can turn the whole story around. The second half of the year — or second act or half of your life. 

And as long as there’s breath in the lung and any time on the clock, there’s always still time for the dream, for things to change, and there’s no such thing as too late.   

Sure, the calendar may say that we’re just now half way through 2024, and who knows what your last birthday cake was saying about where you are in life, but the reality is that you can still all the regrets — because even now there is still time. 

Nola Ochs was 95 years old – just shy of a whole century old, having raised 4 sons, had 15 great-grandchildren, and had buried her beloved husband — when she finished her last course, donned gown and cap, and graduated with her bachelor’s degree with an emphasis on history from Fort Hays State University, Kansas in 2007, becoming the oldest university graduate ever. She graduated with one of her granddaughter’s – and then returned to earn her master’s, graduating when she was 98. 

Hope doesn’t have an expiry date. 

Hope doesn’t have an expiry date. 

Gladys Burrill – nicknamed the “Gladyator: – was 92 years old when she grinned and raised crossed the finish line and raised her hands in the giddy joy of becoming  the oldest woman ever to complete a marathon. 

The hands of the clock cannot tie the hands of your prayers.

Pablo Picasso, at 87, engraved 347 engravings in just one year – that’s almost one engraving every single day for a year, when he’d already out-lived past the average life-expectancy. 

Old men and women still get to dream dreams. 

Tolkien took more than 12 years to write Lord of the Rings – abandoning writing it for more than a full year –  taking another 5 years to publish it, when he was 62 years old.  

Success isn’t being fast, success is being faithful. 

Success isn’t being fast, success is being faithful. 

A tech founder who is 50 is twice as likely to start a successful company as one who is 30.

The time you’ve spent learning what doesn’t work is actually part of the time needed so things work out in the end. 

Time is never wasted; time is always soil that’s growing everything that’s needed for the whole story. 

True, some proverb gurus may say that the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the second best time is now — but I’m not always so sure that’s true. 

First the soil may have needed to be cleared and worked and thoughtfully, over time, nurtured with nutrients and carefully prepared and tended, before that tree could ever be successfully planted and survive. 

You may think the best time to plant that dream was 6 months ago at the beginning of the year, or even 25 years ago, but time was needed to grow you in all kinds of ways, so the best time to actually plant the dream is when the soil of your life is surrendered to the way the Spirit moves.  

Grace always offers you a second chance and whispers that it begins right now. 

There isn’t a second best time to plant the tree. There is only now — and it’s always the best moment because it’s grace. Time isn’t made for regrets; time’s made for possibility and praise.

Yep: Turns out your second act can turn the whole story around. The second act of the year — or second act of your life. 

I’m halfway through the first year of my doctorate, and flew a few weeks ago for my first residency on campus. Turns out you can be diagnosed with panic attacks and agoraphobia in your teens – and yet still end up getting on planes and flying to the coast on the other side of the country and walking into a classroom where you don’t know one solitary soul. 

Change is possible, when you embrace the God who doesn’t change and can do the impossible.

Turns out you can have ended up dropping out of university at the beginning of your third year when you were just 20, because you were only married a handful of months and were sick green with what turned out to be first trimester (!!) nausea – and yet still end up one day starting your doctorate. 

Change is possible, when you embrace the God who doesn’t change and can do the impossible.

All the timelines can change in the hands of a God who holds you and all of time. 

Turns out you can have been raised in a non-believing home, and still end up studying for your doctorate of ministry in spiritual formation and soul care because there’s nothing that matters more than the growth and trajectory of one’s soul. 

Never focus so much on growing a better life, that you miss out on how God’s growing your soul in the best ways. 

Turns out that you can fail, fall, flail, mess up all the things and get more than a million things terribly wrong, and God never gives up on working all things into good and making things right. 

In my classes, day after day, I sit beside the most eloquent student, commencing her doctorate in soul care and spiritual formation too –  and she’s just turned 76. 

Grace always offers you a second chance and whispers that it begins right now. 

So how do you change things now? How do you let grace open the door so you can begin now? How do you stop thinking it’s too late and plant the dream and change now? 

Never focus so much on growing a better life, that you miss out on how God’s growing your soul in the best ways. 

When you want to change, you want a new way of being. Which is to say: You want to become a different kind of creature. 

And when you want to discover a new creature, what you do is track it. Because what you track, you begin to understand, you begin to master, you begin to capture. Like any birder, like any animal conservationist — if you want to discover a new creature — you track it. 

Which is to say, and I write this down in my journal at the six month mark of the year: if you want to become a new creature, begin tracking things. 

Want to pray more? Track it. Want to read more? Track it. Want to move more? Track it.  

What you track, takes a better track. 

Begin to track your time, and you take a better track with your time. Begin to track how you’re prioritizing that new calling, and you take a better track toward that new calling. Begin to track how you prioritize meditating on God’s Word, and you begin to take a better tact with all the things distracting you from prioritizing God’s Word.

I’m training right now to walk a full marathon, and I daily track sleep and steps – and for my doctorate, I track reading and studying,  and for all of life and vocation, I drive in some mile markers for some goals and the reality is: 

Track to change trajectory. What you track, takes a better track. Better tracking leads to better trajectories. 

Track to change trajectory. 

Better tracking leads to better trajectories. 

And alternatively: What you don’t track, you don’t have an accurate view of. When you don’t track, you don’t rightly see. You tend to think you’re praying more, reading more, moving more, working more, connecting more, sleeping more — when you don’t track at all. 

What you don’t track — you lose track of. 

I have a wall of paper, full of goals for 2024, and sure, people can say it’s best to have goals, but just having some goal, doesn’t mean you’re actually scoring any goals.

The only way any athlete scores a goal, is to have a practiced cadence, a tried and true rhythm, to get to the other end and actually score the goal.  

It’s consistent rhythms that consistently land the goals. 

To-do lists are merely about having goals. 

Just having some goal, doesn’t mean you’re actually scoring any goals. It’s consistent rhythms that consistently land the goals. 

And it’s blocking out your days into these regular rhythms that creates the cadence and winning rhythms to actually score the goals.   

When the year or this season of life is begging for some change, it’s powerful to realize:  What’s blocking your way to your goals may be a lack of rhythm blocking. True, some folks call this time blocking, but our times are not very much in our hands, and life can have all kinds of interruptions (that are often Christ-invitations) and while it’s helpful to have time markers for the blocking out the what and when for the day, it’s healthy for the soul to loosely hold the time, and more earnestly hold to the rhythm of the day. 

To remove what’s blocking you, start rhythm blocking: Always the bed made first, then the grinding of the coffee while reading today’s Psalm… or always the day’s meal prep after the first cup of coffee, while listening to the day’s Psalm… or always the reading retreat right after lunch… and it’s not so much about what time the clock says, but the rhythm of what always follows what, not so much how long is spent reading or body movement or on the new dream – just that there’s a consistent rhythm for consistently doing it for even 5 minutes a day.  

It’s almost wheat harvest here and looking out across the fields of gold from the farm windows, I think about how us farmers, sometimes after the harvest of one crop, in the same season, will turn around and directly plant a second crop.  After the wheat comes off, there are years farmers may plant a second crop like soybeans. We will have what we call a double crop year. 

All the moments compound. And it’s God who miraculously multiplies all your little loaves moments into sustaining change. 

The year isn’t over at the halfway point, life isn’t over at the halfway point  — there’s still time to plant a second crop, still time to have a double crop year, a double crop life. 

It’s terribly tempting to grossly overestimate what can be done in a day and grossly underestimate what can still be done in the last half of a year.  But a year is made up of just moments. And our change and hopes and plans and dreams are just made up of moments. And yes, it’s devastatingly tempting to think that you need a million hard moments at a time to make change happen — when you don’t. You just need one holy moment at a time. All the moments add up. 

All the moments compound. And it’s God who miraculously multiplies all your little loaves moments into sustaining change. 

Want to memorize a whole chapter of Scripture? Try just one simple verse. Write down on a few sticky notes. Hold on to one verse until it’s holding on to you. All the moments compound. Want to do 50 pushups? Set four reminders throughout the day to do just 5 pushups at a time. All the moments compound. Want the dream home? Declutter for 10 minutes a day — day after day. All the moments compound. 

The only thing you really have to get rid of is all or nothing thinking. 

The only thing you really have to get rid of is all or nothing thinking. 

All or nothing thinking is how you end up with a whole lot less than something. 

Change isn’t made of all the things. Change is made of all the small things — again and again. 

Big change is made of small reps. 

Just put in the small reps.  And see how God compounds the rest. 

Large dreams are made of little reps. 

Just put in the small reps. 

And see how God compounds the rest. 

In every head of wheat, on every single slender stalk of wheat out across our fields, is just a few small seeds, ready and willing to all matter. The whole harvest comes in just minute seeds. 

Minute moments. Minute choices. Minute surrenders. 

Because of the grace of One, there’s still time for a second act and a fulfilling double crop.

Coming Up in this Series: What To Do When Your Willpower Doesn’t Have Much Power?

Catch the Last Post in this Series: You’re Just Over 43% Through the Year. There’s Time to Reset Your Year and Do This:

And don’t miss how we started the year: You Need To Save This For When it’s Hard To Keep Going: About Resolutions & Getting Through 2024

When you’re looking for a reset, a turn around, a different trajectory…. a real change.

When you’re ready to find a new way of being…

For every person who has faced a no-way sign on the way to their dreams, WayMaker is your sign, that there is hope, that there are miracles, and that everything you are trying to find a way to, is actually coming to meet you in ways far more fulfilling than you ever imagined.

Grab Your Copy of WayMaker and the WayMaker Group Book Club Study — and begin the journey toward change you’ve secretly been hoping for.