Mid-Life Crisis or Opportunity?

Mid-life crisis pops up in each of our lives in different ways. 

For some of us it appears as restlessness at work, a feeling that we just don’t belong there anymore; our job or career doesn’t fulfill us the way it used to. For others we start to feel dissatisfied with our partners, friends, and family.  We feel they don’t see us for who we really are; in fact, on closer look, we aren’t even sure who we are anymore. Feeling anxious and lost we obsess over our mortality and the things that are no longer working in our lives.

We can choose to react unconsciously, focusing our dissatisfaction outward and wreaking havoc in our lives and the lives of those we love by quitting our job, having an affair, spending our money on expensive toys, numbing ourselves with food, drugs, or alcohol.

Or we can choose to go through this phase consciously, focusing inward, diving deep and developing a relationship with ourselves–taking the time to get to know who we are now, finding parts of ourselves we have lost along the way, and discovering the deep desires for the next phase of our lives. We can actually experience a surge of energy and expansion, an aliveness that we have not felt so intensely before, that provides us with fuel for the journey.

This powerful phase of life, what James Hollis, author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life calls “the Middle Passage,” is a critically necessary part of our development as human beings.

The first half of our lives was formed with the heavy influence of our parents, family, and teachers. They gave us their perspective, opinions and helped us shape our lives according to what they valued.

In creating the second half of our lives, the opportunity is there to discover who we are and what we value, apart from our conditioning, to clarify what we truly need and want, and to discover parts of ourselves hiding in the shadows of unacceptance from childhood.

Carl Jung believed that we are born whole, and then, in order to survive the crucible of childhood, we lose parts of ourselves. He thought that the main purpose of mid-life was to weather the crisis that arises from this experience of loss, and become a whole integrated person again.

This power surge at mid-life is part of a grand design to wake us up, and, rather than look for easy comfort and answers outside of ourselves, dig deeply by going inward and asking the hard questions–

·      What would I love to do, be, and have?

·      What do I want my legacy to be after I’m gone?

·      Who can benefit from what I have to give?

·      What is my purpose on this earth and how, with the time I have left, can I realize it to the best of my ability?

·      How can I share the gift of who I am in a way that makes a positive impact in the world?

Our restlessness and anxiety is giving us a clear message — to wake up to the tasks of the mid-life journey.  It is telling us to use this raw energy to delve into the deep and explore the riches hidden below. It is the hero’s journey: to slay the dragon of fear and mine the gold within.  Rahm Emanuel said, “You don’t ever want a crisis to go to waste; it’s an opportunity to do important things that you would otherwise avoid.”

Use this crisis to do things you would otherwise avoid and step up to the opportunity. This is a call–a call to your heart to step up and ask the hard questions and take the courageous steps to explore and mine the depths for answers, and then to take action. The world needs your gifts. As long as you walk this earth, it will never be too late to give them.