I had a conversation recently with a doctor who runs her own women's health clinic. She told me she sees a lot of midlife clients who don't believe there is anything much to look forward to. Get through the sandwich years, survive the empty nest and the departure of elderly parents, and then...

I find that really sad. Yes, you've spent the last twenty years or more looking after other people, one way or another. You've worked hard to build a career. Maybe you feel you've reached a plateau there too, that no one is going to promote a woman in the second half of her life.

But you could have another thirty years ahead of you. That's perhaps a third of your life. What are you going to do with those years? Some dusting?

You've lived life. You have all that experience. You've been through joys and traumas, love and heartbreak, realised ambitions and abandoned dreams.

Now, as the final third of your life approaches, as many of your responsibilities drop away, perhaps as your pension investments come good, surely, maybe, possibly... you get to do what you really want?

When I was made redundant after 20 years of full-time employment, an outplacement coach asked me what I really wanted and what was stopping me. She had an answer to every obstacle. And I gradually realised the only thing stopping me was my attitude. Not because what I wanted wasn't possible, but because I didn't believe it was possible.

Life is there to be lived.

It might be a career change. Maybe you want to step away from chasing the hierarchy. A sideways (or even a downward) move into something you find more motivating or meaningful. Start your own business. Leave the corporate world and run a charity or take on non-exec roles that use your experience in a different way. Maybe you want to go travelling. Or set up a garden centre. Or go and shake up your local Citizen’s Advice Bureau. Or maybe you want to push for the top. Why shouldn’t you be CEO? Given everything you have to offer? (Yes, I hear the voice in your head arguing with that statement. Let’s argue back!)

Transitions are not easy. It’s hard to let go of your familiar world, the sense of identity you have from your work, the expectations of those around you. It’s a risk. Of course it is. But not doing it is also a risk. The risk of a life unfulfilled. An abiding sense of disappointment, that you let yourself down, that you had something else to offer that you kept safely locked away in that dark mental cupboard.

There are consequences whichever way you go. Why not shoot for something you really want, rather than what you think you “ought” to be doing?

What's really stopping you?