I sat alone in our local curry house with tears dripping onto my poppadoms, just as the waiter arrived with our main courses. My husband, Jools, had stormed out of the restaurant, and there I was, stranded with a chicken tikka masala and a lamb balti.

We had been arguing since the pickle tray. I was irritable. I wanted more pickles, then I wanted more wine, then I demanded he give me better conversation. “You always want more/better/more . You’re never satisfied,” he grumbled. “You have so much and you don’t appreciate it,” he said, throwing down his fork. Then he walked out, leaving me with two days’ worth of calories to consume.

He wasn’t being a complete drama queen. I turn 40 next month, and with the approach of my big birthday had come the inevitable midlife crisis. It had been brewing for months.

From the outside, my life ticked all the boxes. My career as a life coach was going well (last year I was hailed as one of Britain’s top gurus), I was still married after 14 years, with a wonderful son, and we had recently moved from an East London flat to a four-bedroom house in the country. I had even written a self-help book advising people how to live a more fulfilling and meaningful life. So why did it all suddenly feel meaningless and empty? What “more/better/more” could there be?

Instead of enjoying the successful life I had created, I focused on what was missing. I became fixated on building an extension to the house just six months after we had moved in, despite the fact that it would cost £80,000. When Jools went pale at the idea, I started writing a novel, a psychological crime thriller in the mould of Prime Suspect. I felt my life was all about business.

I wanted something more.

“Should we have another baby?” I would whisper to my husband in the middle of the night. My fertility was fading fast. It was my last chance. “Panic is the wrong reason to have a child. Appreciate what you have now,” Jools would huff into the duvet.

He was right – again. I realised that I’d fallen into the trap of what I tell my clients not to do – putting your future on hold, setting “I’ll be happy when” goals. You know the ones: I’ll be happy when I’m thinner/meet the One/get a divorce/have another baby. I was just like one of those annoying people who try to focus on what the present is saying, but are constantly looking around to see if there is a more interesting future in sight. As 40 loomed, I increasingly focused on the destination, a magical place called “there”, where life would be transformed. But wasn’t I supposed to be “there” by now?

I hit the gym and started pounding the treadmill, hoping for inspiration. Afterwards, red-faced with effort, I slumped in a chair. Pam, a woman in her sixties, glowing from her yoga session, started chatting to me. “Great to stretch my aching bones,” she said. I murmured sympathetically about getting older. “Oh no, this isn’t old age,” she said. “I’ve just come back from sailing around the world.”

We talked some more and I discovered she had done everything from foster more than 70 children to fashion modelling. Oh, and she was just finishing her book. “You’ve had an amazing life,” I sighed. She looked at me beadily. “I’m having an amazing life,” she said.

And off she went for a swim.

The penny finally dropped. There was no deadline to “having” an amazing life. I was wasting my life running after the next rainbow.

I needed help, and fast. I turned to Marianne Williamson, one of my own gurus, whose new book, The Age of Miracles (Hay House £10), is all about embracing what she calls “the new midlife”.

“Once you’re past a certain age, you can hardly believe you wasted even one minute of your youth not enjoying it,” she says. “And the last thing you want to do now is steal any more life from yourself by failing to be deeply in it. This moment is all you have.” She told me to stop searching outside myself for happiness, either in the past or the future. “You are who you are now, not who you might be one day. Your life is what it is now, not what it might be some day. By focusing on that, you come to the ironic, almost amusing realisation that, yes, the fun is in the journey itself.”

Fun. Remember that? On the treadmill of “more/better/more”, one thing that had really suffered was my social life. As I ran my business and tried to be a good mum and wife, something had to give, and it was the long lunches with girlfriends, where I could just kick back and not be a “good” anything. Big mistake.

Scientists in America have shown that friendships are essential to feeling good. I have since committed to regular nights out with my friends, and the scientists are right – it does make you happier, even though it means I’m not around so much for Jools. I don’t think he has noticed – he is too busy enjoying his own midlife crisis.

Jools didn’t bother with spiritual gurus or happiness scientists. Instead, without warning or discussion, he came home with a huge motorbike and a black leather suit. I was cooking a beef stew for us all – living his “appreciate what we have right now” wisdom – when he roared up and came into the kitchen with his helmet on, grinning with pride. When my disbelief turned to fury, he had to put down his visor because I was literally spitting out the words: “More/better/more?”

By the end of my rant, he couldn’t see out. “This is not about more or better. It just makes me happy,” he replied calmly.

Jools is a professional musician and spends his time, in his words, “playing music, drinking beer”. He lives his life his way. When I calmed down, I realised he might be on to something. I realised that my reaction to his motorbike was probably so severe because his life seemed full of flow and mine didn’t. And I resented it. Yet after my initial fury, it was a great wake-up call. I needed more “flow” in my life, too.

So I made a list of simple, small, scaled-down things I wanted to do, and I am doing them. I enrolled on a screenwriting course, which makes me laugh out loud when I pitch ridiculous ideas to my class; I’ve taken up yoga (yes, I sit next to Pam); I have joined a gardening club and feel quite embarrassed at how excited I’ve been about seeing my daffodils dancing in the wind.

I love the idea of 40 being the start of a new adventure. But I realise that this adventure starts here and now. Is my midlife crisis over? Well, I haven’t bought a motorbike yet, but I did have my first lesson the other day. I’m going to “enjoy the journey” and try it on two wheels for a change. And when I wear a helmet, nobody can see my wrinkles.

Suzy Greaves is the founder of The Big Leap Coaching Company. For her free 90-day online coaching programme, visit www.thebigpeace.com

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