Ep 144: Transforming Midlife Crises into Opportunities: Reinventing Life on Your Own Terms

It's about having the clarity , self-confidence and unstoppable belief to go after and get everything you want . If you'll come with me , I'll show you how Well . Hello friends . I hope you had an amazing week Today . I'm going to do something a little different and this is probably something that I'll do periodically , moving forward .

Probably once every couple of months , I will be sharing on-court episodes from earlier in the podcast , only those that are the most listened to , the most downloaded and the ones that have the most repeat lessons , because I've got almost 150 episodes now and I have a lot of new people starting to listen and even people that have maybe started to listen just in

the past year or something . So if you go back before that , those are just episodes that people haven't really had a chance to listen to and enjoy . And I don't know about you , but I do follow a lot of podcasts . Some of them have been around for five , six , seven years .

There are hundreds of episodes that I have not had a chance to listen to , even though I might very much enjoy them . So I had another podcast that I follow and they've started doing this , and I thought what a good way to serve the listeners , because who has time to go back and listen to everything ?

And so what I'm going to do , going forward , like I said , probably at the most once every couple of months , I'm going to bring you an on-court episode , and there are only going to be those episodes that have the most downloads , the most repeat lessons , and I think it's a way for me to help people who might be joining more recently just enjoy some of the

wisdom from some of the earlier episodes that other people thought highly of .

So this episode today originally aired about 10 months ago and from the time that I released it it sort of just took off and it is now one of the top three depends on the week and what's going on , but it is definitely one of the most popular episodes of the podcast and when you hear the topic , you'll understand why I specialize in mid-career and mid-life and

especially reinvention at mid-career and mid-life , and this particular on-court episode is about what to do when you find yourself in the middle of a mid-career or mid-life crisis and this , I think , applies across the board , not just for those of us at mid-life , but there's a lot of people who go through those existential moments at age 25 .

So a quarter-life crisis , and some people go through it later , like in their mid-60s , mid-70s , as they're heading into retirement . So these crisis points in our lives , these big moments of change , I think we can all relate to , and I think some of us probably experience all three of those , and some of us might only experience one .

But I think the perspectives and the thoughts around that that are shared in this episode I think you'll find useful . So with that , I will leave you to enjoy what to do if you're experiencing a mid-career or a mid-life crisis .

Today I want to talk about something that I think is really interesting , and it's this idea of what to do if we find ourselves in the middle of maybe a bit of a mid-career or a mid-life crisis . Now , having a mid-life crisis is kind of a cliche , and where cliches come from , they come from the truth .

So it's a thing that happens to people sometimes when they get into the middle of their career or life journey and we kind of wake up somewhere in the middle of that journey sometimes and look around and say how did I get here ? Is this it ? Is this all ? Well , there is Now .

When we ask questions like that , it basically means that behind that sentence is a follow-on thought . That's probably the answer to it , which is something like I really hope not . I hope there's more than this for me , right ? Because if we're asking ourselves that kind of a question like is this it ?

It suggests that wherever you are , it's probably not everything that you might want it to be . And I don't know if you can relate to this or not . It happens to a lot of people , a lot of people that come to me in their mid-career .

Many of them , even if they have a very successful career , sometimes not always , but sometimes for some people they stay too long on that path , right , they stay too long at the party , and it's been good to them . It's something they worked really hard on . They climbed that ladder and most people looking at them would think they've got it all right .

But I've coached many people who are like I want off this ladder . I want to be on a different ladder now . I want a different path . They might want to leave their corporate job and become a teacher , or they might want to leave their law career and become a coach .

They might want to stop being a stay-at-home parent and start their own business , just because the things that came before that took you down this path . Even if it's a very successful path , it doesn't have to be a path that others would look at and say , wow , they could have done so much , why didn't they apply themselves ?

You might be really successful to the outside world , but if something new calls to you at midlife and you've been pushing it down year after year after year , I believe that's how we end up in a midlife or a midcareer crisis , and I think there's lots of reasons why this happens , and so that is what I want to explore on today's podcast episode .

You know , when we ask ourselves questions like is this it and is this all there is , that question mark behind that phrase basically means that right behind that question is another thought in your brain . That's the answer to that , which is probably something along the lines of I really hope not , I really hope there's something more for me .

And if we're asking ourselves that kind of a question , is this it ? It suggests that probably the place where you are , no matter how successful you might be , is probably not everything that you wish it was right

.

The outside world might think that you're incredibly successful , but if you are not aligned with the thing that's really calling to you , if you've been telling that calling no over and over and over again , that , I believe , is one of the biggest reasons why we wake up and we find ourselves in a bit of a quandary , a midlife crisis , where we start to feel this

building sense of panic that we've said no for so long that it's too late to say yes or to choose a different path . But today , what I want to talk about is all the things behind that , because I think it's really important to understand what gets us to that place and , most importantly , how to change that .

Some of it's perspective and some of it is taking different actions . So that's what we're going to talk about today , because in my practice , I teach what I call cognitive-based coaching , and that's based on the cognitive behavioral therapy approach , which is a discipline within psychology .

So this isn't psychological treatment , but what it shares with that form of psychological treatment is that we coach based on trying to get underneath the hidden patterns of thought that are stored away in your mind and that sounds like , especially in the career realm . It can sound a little woo-woo , but it's important to understand that .

The thoughts that we think , those are the things that drive us to feel the emotions that we feel , and in our career there's endless opportunities for us to feel a lot of emotions that are well , really the full range of emotions , but for many of us , emotions that are on the more negative end of the spectrum , like fear , uncertainty , perfectionism , panic , doubt ,

lack of belief . Those are the things that , as we move through our career , can crop up . A lot of folks I know and coach are dealing with persistent feelings of imposter syndrome , the feeling that maybe they're a bit of a fraud and that they're going to be found out .

It's all of those kinds of emotions that can really get us trapped in this endless cycle of thinking thoughts that don't serve us , because the thoughts that we think drive us to feel what we feel and the emotions that we feel are the reason why we do and don't do everything that we do .

So for thinking a thought that's on the more positive end of the spectrum , we're probably going to take a set of actions that are more productive , that probably better serve us , whereas if we're thinking something on the more negative end of the spectrum , we're probably going to take a set of actions that maybe don't serve us , and that's important , because all of

the actions that we take over time are what actually create our life .

So if we're at midlife and we're feeling a general sense of malaise or hopelessness or self-doubt or angst or any of those emotions that are on the more negative side of the spectrum , you can be sure that it's going to lead you to take a bunch of actions or in actions that don't serve you . Now let's just take it out of the career realm for a minute .

Let's think about the cliche of a person in the throes of a midlife crisis .

On the personal front , when that happens and I don't know if you've known anyone that's gone through this , but it's generally categorized as a person who makes a series of drastic changes in their life to kind of shake things up they trade in maybe the practical sedan for the bright red sports car .

Nothing wrong with the sports car , but if it's completely out of character or maybe an ill-advised moment in your financial life or something like that , that's the cliche of the midlife crisis . Another one is people who trade in a decades long , seemingly happy marriage for the single life or a different partner .

When people we know and love , or even if it's ourself , start doing extreme things that are totally out of character , and we maybe look at that person and wonder what happened , it's like they've become someone else . You can be certain that there's something driving all of those confounding actions .

They might not make sense from where you sit , but you can be sure that inside of that person is a set of thoughts and beliefs that are driving emotions that are on the more negative end of the spectrum maybe angst or stuckness or desperation or hopelessness and it's those emotions that are causing those unexplained behaviors that seem so extreme or out of character .

They didn't just become a crazy person or an evil person or whatever . They're doing those things because of how they feel , and that feeling came from what they're thinking .

So that's what I want to explore today , because I think it's really interesting when you think about getting to that place where you're looking forward into the future and , instead of feeling hopeful like many of us would do in our younger years , sometimes we get to midlife or older and we look forward and there's this general sense of there's not much hope for

the future or that the future will be any different or better than the present or the past has been , and that can lead if that's what you think or believe when you look at your future , it's probably going to lead you to feeling some pretty negative things , and those pretty negative things will probably lead you to doing something rather extreme to shake things up

, because maybe you're worrying , it's going to be too late if I don't do something right now . And that's never going to drive behaviors that serve you .

When it comes from a place of panic , and when you have a thought like my future is just going to be a continuous replay of my life today , or there's no hope , or if I don't do something right now , it's going to be too late , that's going to cause feelings of anxiety , panic , despair , which , of course , are going to lead to all kinds of extreme and

probably poorly thought out or incompletely thought out actions , and those might be actions that you live to regret later , leaving a great career , leaving a great partner .

So today I want to explore the idea of what happens to us in the middle part of our life , and this could be any part of our life , career , relationships , finances and I want to explore the causes behind those thoughts and how to change them .

If it's something that you're feeling right now , if you feel a little caught up at mid-career in this feeling of regret or angst . So let's start by exploring some of what I believe are the biggest contributors to this midlife crisis mental state that some of us can find ourselves in at midlife .

In episode 100 , where I talked about refiring at mid-career , I shared some statistics about mid-career from the Gallup organization and a few other sources , and one of the ones that really stood out to me was that the point at which most of us start to feel a little unhappy or not entirely satisfied in our career is around the age of 39 .

And that by the time we hit age 47 , we are at our peak stage of unhappiness . So the period where most midlife or mid-career crisis happens is usually from the late 30s to the mid 50s , and it can vary a bit by person , but in general , that's the age range when we start to look at our life and think what in the world Like ? What was I thinking Like ?

Why did I make all of these decisions ? Or how did I get here ? And of course , like I said earlier , behind those thoughts is another thought to the tune of because here isn't that great right . And I believe that what's behind all of this is kind of how we're all socialized to look at life , and here's what I mean .

From the time we're born until about the age of 40 , life for most of us consists of a series of firsts , but also for many of us , those firsts start to decline in frequency as we get closer to the 40 year mark . And let's think about it for a minute .

In general , birth to 40 , that path is a long one and it's packed with all these things that we have to learn and experience and do in order , to quote , create whatever the life is that we envision . So when we're very young , we're learning how to talk and walk and interact with people . We learn how to feed and close and care for ourselves .

We learn all the school things from preschool all the way through high school graduation , and then many of us will go on to college or do postgraduate study . We choose a career path and then we start that first job . Along the way , we do other firsts like buy our first car , maybe our first condo or house .

We might choose a partner and we might choose to have children . All of this takes place in a never ending stream of firsts , from zero to 40 . So I believe it's no big surprise that the Gallup poll says that around 39 is when most people wake up and think Now what ? It's ?

Because we've checked all the boxes in the socialization of what life is supposed to look like and we've got all the stuff . Now whether we're happy with it or not is a different question . But we look ahead and we think is there anything else ? Like now , what comes from this place of uncertainty ? When the children grow up and leave the home , now what ?

When you have the established career path but you're not entirely sure it's the one you want , now what ? What else is there for me ? And I believe that when we get to 40 , that question even though it's very scary and many of us go through that when we're 22 , getting out of college , and we look ahead and think , oh my gosh , now what ?

I'm out of school . There's possibility there because we know the whole thing is in front of us . But when we're at 40 , and we've got all the markers in our life to prove that we're pretty far down the path at this point .

Right , we've got obligations now , people counting on us , a partner , maybe kids who need to go to college or whatever , and we start to think of our life going forward in a very different way . There's no defined 40 to the end , not in the same way that there is from zero to 40 .

When we think about society's perspective , right From midlife on , from 40 to the end , there's not a lot of new boxes to check from a society perspective . If we have kids , we look forward to grandkids . When we have a career , a lot of us look forward to retirement . And then what ? Death , right , travel Like I don't know .

I think that's where a lot of the angst in the middle years and the later years comes from . Now , granted , it doesn't have to be that way . Life can continue to be a never-ending exploration and series of new things that you try and master . It can be an entirely new career that you refire into at midlife . Retirement can really become a refirement .

It can be your second act , a time to explore and try and do all kinds of new things .

But most of us aren't trained to think about it that way . Most of us are socialized to think about all the firsts , all the things that we're trying to tackle as it relates to the new and unknown .

Most of us believe that's what we do when we're young and that when we get to midcareer or midlife , something big changes in our mindset and our purpose shifts from tackling new and exciting new things to taking care of the life that we've built . It becomes about protecting that life , maintaining that life , doing the responsible thing .

Now , don't get me wrong taking care of and protecting our life is not a bad thing , but if it's the sole lens that you have on your life , if you believe that all the new choices and possibilities are basically behind you and that now you need to live in those choices or take care of those choices and that that's it , well you can see why that would lead

many people to feel stuck or desperate or unhappy . So that's what I mean by this idea of our socialized view of life being a driving factor for what we think of as the midlife and midcareer crisis . If we think that our purpose has shifted from becoming and actualizing and achieving into maintaining , then the future is going to look a lot less exciting .

So when we feel , new things start to call to us like a new hobby or a new career path , or a new city , a new business , a new relationship . That's why most of us won't ever answer that call .

That call because we tell ourselves it's too late , we tell ourselves we should have done that when we were younger , or we tell ourselves we can't because we have too many responsibilities , we have to take care of our life and we can't afford to do anything that jeopardizes that .

And at the same time , midlife is when most of us look into the future and we also are more aware of our mortality . We start to understand that our time here on earth is not infinite .

And while that might lead some to settle into this feeling of stuckness and hunkering down , it causes others to go straight into panic mode and blow things up in a big , dramatic way so they can grab that new thing before it's too late .

So I believe the reason the midcareer and midlife crisis is such a thing that it's so widely understood and experienced is because of the societal programming that we all get about . Early stage of life , from zero to 40 , is for achieving and the rest of it is for maintaining . In general , not everyone is this way for sure .

But many people are , and when people get to midcareer from , I would say , late 30s on , I've coached so many that are starting to kind of pack it up right , just mentally , they're like it's too late . If I wanted to do that , I should have done it sooner . Now my life has to be about something else .

Our individual paths and choices will be different for all of us for sure , based on who we are , what environment we're raised in and just what we want right . But in general , most of us believe that it's okay to learn and try and do up until the age of 40 .

But then for most of us we believe that's it and that now it's just about coasting to the end or maintaining right and taking care of all the things that we've built .

A lot of us won't articulate it that way and you may not even be thinking of it in that way , but I would challenge you To explore your own thoughts about if you're in your mid to late 30s or older , how do you think about going after something big , bold and new at this age . What do you think about making a huge change at 40 , 50 , 60 ?

My guess is you'll be contending with a lot of thoughts , some to the tune of I can't do that , it's too late , I should have done that when I was younger . That's not a great set of thoughts to have when it comes to shaping the rest of your life right .

When we're 45 , most of us will still have that much time left ahead of us on this planet 45 more years , and if you believe this cognitive-based approach to living the quality of your thoughts , we'll direct that remaining 45 years .

So why would you want to have a future informed by thoughts like it's too late , or I can't do that , or I'm too old , or I've never done that before , or whatever ?

The solution to the mid career or midlife crisis is a simple shift in thought , and I think it's about a more empowered chapter . Here's what I mean .

If society gives all of us a loose checklist of the things that we need to do from zero to roughly 40 , some will do it a little faster , for some it takes a little longer , but around the age of 40 , we are the ones who are responsible for giving ourselves the checklist From 40 on .

When you look into the future at 40 , 50 , 60 , 70 you get to decide when you go from here , and it doesn't have to mean Blowing up your marriage or your career or your finances . It doesn't have to have anything to do with crazy risk but at the same time , your life can continue to be , be everything that you want it to be .

It can be a choose your own adventure , completely on your terms . But you have to choose it , and I know when I say that you might be thinking , I know , like , of course I can live life on my terms . I get it . But I really want to challenge you . I think we all get that when we're young . I think now that 40 isn't young .

But when we get to midlife , I think something subtle shifts in many of us Maybe not most , but cliches or cliches for a reason . Mid career and midlife angst is Definitely something that is a widely experienced phenomenon . So I would challenge you to really explore your own thoughts on what 40 and Onward looks like . What should it be as a chapter ?

I want you to explore that and challenge it . Do you really believe that you can still do anything when you think about the age of 40 onward Like , would you really do it ? Would you really sign up to write that novel ?

If that's what's calling to you , would you really sign up to go back to school and chuck the current career path that you're on and go back to school and pursue what you really want to do next ? Would you really allow yourself to do that ? Or would you say no ?

Because I think that we tell ourselves a lot of stories about what our possibilities are based on our age , based on the societal checklist that runs out at 40 . And if we're not careful , we start to look ahead and see very little new and exciting things ahead of us .

We start living in a maintenance mode and sometimes because of that , we start to get more obsessed with looking at our past . We're either longing for the past or , in some cases , we're regretting the past that led us here .

Very few of us in the middle part of our life naturally embrace a focus on the future unless we actively choose it , unless we actively choose to believe that the future can be just as or maybe even more exciting than the past .

I think part of it , too , is that society does have a youth bias , especially in the United States , but the truth is , we can decide how we want to think about what it means to get older and how to approach midlife and beyond in a way that's full of possibilities and new things . It doesn't have to be a time of shutting down or saying no .

It can be a time of continuing the climb up , and , of course , the answer to what that means will be different for each one of us .

But what I want you to see is that it is a choice , a choice in how you choose to think about it and what you decide to believe is possible for you from 40 onward , because there are so many stories that we tell ourselves about what's possible in our life and our future and we're not even aware that these stories are in our head .

We think they're just truths , these thoughts of it's too late and I can't do it , and I might try and I'll look foolish or it's too risky . Those things are programmed and we're not even aware of it .

And I believe that a continued future focus , 40 and beyond , is very important because , even if you like where your life is right now , love where your career is right now , allowing yourself to continue to learn and grow and enlarge and build in every area of your life is going to be the key to staying happy with your life , and that's what we're doing .

We're doing it for the sake of our life , listening to the interests that call out to you , pursuing them and giving yourself the opportunity to experience those things and letting that exploration shape who you continue to become and the idea that at 40 , you'll be becoming is not a crazy thought .

You don't have to coast the rest of your life , and this doesn't have to be hard or scary . It can all be done from a place of ease and interest and joy . That is the solution to the midlife or mid career malaise that hits so many of us .

Let me give you a very simple example for my own life , and this is not anything incredibly profound , but I had a series of thoughts that were keeping me from doing something that I've wanted to do really for almost my entire life since I was very young , and that is I've always wanted to spend some time in Paris , and even though I've been to Europe several

times , I never allowed myself to go to Paris because I don't speak the language and I never really even thought about it until my birthday this past fall in October , and that birthday came in the middle of what , for my family , has been a very tough year .

I've shared on previous episodes about some of the things that are going on in my family , with my parents , my dad's health and losing my mother in August . It's been a very challenging year year of adulting , I would say and not in a pleasant way .

So this birthday caused me to do more thinking than I probably would typically do about what it all means and where I want to go from here , and it caused me to look at and think of 2023 differently , and I decided that I wanted to add some things to a typical year that are beyond achievement .

That's usually what I lean into and that maybe would add a little bit more sparkle back into my back into my life . So Paris immediately came to mind , like first , I've always wanted to go and I've always told myself no , because of the language thing .

But what was really interesting is that when I started to think about it and I started to put this list together of all the things that I want to do next year , that was at the top right , but I had some resistance to it and I did some self coaching .

You know I practice self coaching on a daily basis , which is what I teach my students to do , and what immediately came up for me was this idea of oh well , that would be really nice , but I can't do it .

And that's probably the same thought that shut me down for the past several decades and , being the cognitive coach I am , I explored that thought and what was behind it was this idea that it's too late to learn to speak French .

And when I saw that sentence down on paper , I was shocked , like I generally like if I really think about , of course , I don't believe it's too late to do anything . But as I explored that in my daily self coaching and I asked myself , well , why would I believe something that crazy ?

Why would I believe it's too late , what came up for me were thoughts like Well , I should have taken those classes in high school or college and I didn't , so now it's too late . Now , of course , that's ridiculous , right , but listen , I'm telling you this for a reason . That is what we do to ourselves .

We have all of these thoughts and beliefs that if we were to be able to take them out of our head and let them see the light of day , we'd be like Well , I don't believe that , you know ? Like , where did that come from ? And if we don't , if we just leave them in there . They're the thing that holds us back .

The thought only has power If you don't know it's in there . If you know it's in there , like I did , you take it out and you look at it . You can decide to just say I don't believe that and I'm not going to do that , right , we all have those thoughts and beliefs that get programmed in Clearly .

One of them for me was hey , listen , if you're going to learn to speak another language , you better get on that train when you're young , because otherwise it's too late . I don't even know where the belief came from . It's certainly not any advice I'd ever give to a friend or family member or a client . So why was I giving that to myself ?

Kind of doesn't even matter where the thought came from , but what does matter is I chose to think something from which is of course , it's not too late , I'm just getting started and I want to go to Paris , so let's learn French , right ? So what did I do ? I signed up for a French class and now I'm learning to speak the language .

It doesn't even feel that hard , it feels fun . I can speak some basic words and phrases . I've only been at it for a month and a half , I can construct some sentences and I'm working on the pacing and the correct pronunciation of how the words come together , because I think that's what makes that language so beautiful and lyrical .

And the Rs for me are kind of tough . You know from this podcast . I'm from the Midwest , so I've got a bit of a drawl . So the whole thing pushes against my natural way of talking and thinking . But I'm determined to not just learn it .

My goal is to become fluent , probably not for my first trip , but by the time I take my first trip I will be speaking and ordering and I will be like conversing to everyone in French . It might be a little awkward , but I'm going to do it and eventually I'm going to become fluent . I've just decided that's what one of the things I want to do .

And next up I'm going to turn my one semester of high school Spanish into a fluency in Spanish as well , super important to me . I love both languages and I want to do more traveling and I want to be able to be conversant in those two languages .

So if I hadn't challenged that inner belief , I probably would never would go to Paris , because my unwritten rule is why shouldn't go to a country where I can't speak the language and converse . To me it just seems like not a great idea , and that's just one of my things .

It doesn't have to be true for you , but if I had never gotten in touch with the silly little belief I had that belief that I don't even buy into that it was just too late for me to learn a language should have done in high school . It would keep me from doing something that I think is probably going to be very meaningful to me .

So I told you that story for a reason . We have thoughts stored away , and those are the thoughts that can get us stuck in midlife and beyond , and so I want to challenge you , whatever age you are right now . If you're somewhere in the middle 35 plus , when you look at your future , what do you see ? What do you want to see ?

Do you believe that the second half of your life , your career , can be just as exciting and fulfilling , maybe even more so , than the first half ? Do you allow yourself to pursue new interests or do you tell yourself no ? Do you see yourself as a person who will continue to grow and evolve , or a person who's maintaining who and where they are ?

How do you want to define what's possible for you from here and wherever you are , whether it's somewhere that you're really happy with or somewhere you'd rather not be ? I'd like to challenge you to reset how you look at the second half .

If society gives us our standard life checklist from zero to 40 , we are the ones who give ourselves the checklist that we want to follow . From 40 and beyond , our life can continue to be that never-ending series of firsts that it was in the first half of our life , if we choose for it to be .

And think how much more interesting it would be to view life in that way . Suddenly , you give yourself permission to change career paths , if that's something you really want .

Instead of dreaming of going back to school for the masters but not doing it because you're telling yourself it's too late , you'd simply enroll , like me , if you want to learn the foreign language and travel a bit to those countries , you take the foreign language course and plan the dream trip . You'd start writing the novel , you'd start the business .

You'd pursue the relationship . Instead of a life that's about maintaining , it can be a life that's always growing and changing , and that doesn't have to mean that you've blown anything up Doesn't have to mean letting go of everything you have .

It just means you can keep going and be an inspiration to the people around you who might be too afraid to try it on their own .

Suddenly , the mid-career and the mid-life crisis dissolves . There's no more crisis , there's just a future of endless possibilities waiting for you to explore them . And with that I'll leave you till next time . Make it a great week . My friends , do you have a life coach ? If not , I'd be so honored to be your coach .

I've created a virtual coaching program and monthly membership called Next Level . Inside , we take the material you hear on this podcast , study it and then apply it . Join me at thepurposefulcareercom backslash next level . Don't forget the purposefulcareercom backslash next level . Join me and together we'll make your career and life everything you dream of .

We'll see you there .