MIDLIFE CRISIS OR CATALYST?

Midlife is a time when stress hits new unprecedented levels. You must deal with weighty career challenges, a new more difficult middle aged body, financial struggles, the need to care for parents and older family members, and so on.

Hopefully, full-blown depression is not the result, but this new level of stress can still precipitate some form of midlife crisis. It starts with a conviction in your 40s and 50s that you have failed to reach your dreams, that your life is now short not long, and that you no longer feel “young.” This creates an urgency to do more, be more, and indulge more – right now!

Consider these fairly common indicators that you might be slipping into a midlife crisis:

You experience regret about where you are and what you have not yet achieved. You feel envy and heightened inferiority around more successful people. Drugs and alcohol become too common. Your fear of aging and irrelevance drives oddly youthful behavior (e.g., dressing too “young,” buying the sports car or motorcycle, forging associations with younger people). You might even harshly project onto your children in the hopes of helping them excel where you feel you have not.

Good news. If you engage the situation thoughtfully it is entirely possible to turn this crisis into a catalyst for change and improvement in your life. You are in a deep cognitive rut and must strive to flip the negative mental inertia on its head. The answers are not mysterious. They are not profound. They are simple and useful concepts we all too often forget or fail to embrace.

If you fear you are headed for a midlife crisis, please consider these helpful steps.

Own your reality. Start the process by reflecting honestly on how you arrived at your current spot. Choose brutal honestly and a commitment to not blaming others. Focus on the key decisions and behaviors that best explain your current position. These represent clear obstacles to avoid as you move forward and chart a new path.

Commit to change now. People are decent at recognizing the need for personal change, but too often we find reasons not to act now: the project must be completed, I need to wait until my spouse finishes school, first I want to secure that promotion, I’ll begin in the new year! There are always obstacles and excuses and they always cost you time. The “perfect time” does not exist. Act now.

Redefine today. You must make a choice about how to view your current state. Are there 45 years behind you during which you underperformed, or are there an untold number in front of you gushing with potential? To turn yourself around, you must make the daily choice not to lament yesterday, but instead to crave making a positive and productive tomorrow.

Remove toxicity. You are influenced heavily by your surroundings. To redefine a new healthy and productive path you must identify the people, projects, tasks, and processes that negatively impact you. Make a reasonable attempt to reduce, change, or remove your interactions with these influences. This is not about condemning certain people or types of work. It is simply about finding more people and forms of work that comfortably align with who you are and what you need in order to maintain a positive disposition.

Create a new plan. People experiencing midlife woes have usually stopped the type of long-term planning that was common when they were younger. Goals work. They help us focus on creating a particular future state. Stop thinking about life expectancy and begin thinking about the concrete things you wish to achieve over the next twenty to thirty years (i.e., financial goals, career goals, health goals, family goals). The more clearly you define what you are chasing, the faster it will propel you forward.

Build new skills. A new plan of action will likely require you to tweak or revamp your toolbox. Today you have the ability to step up your game without having to search terribly hard for great resources. Experts have digitized and monetized their knowledge in ways that make consumption easy. Whether it’s a book, blog, podcast, workshop, video, or some other vehicle, today you control learning like never before. Support your new plan with the skills required for success.

Boost your creativity. Give your plan an extra edge by tapping into your forgotten creativity. When you experience the mental rut that is a midlife crisis, you have succumbed to horrifically routine daily thinking. It’s time to shake things up. Make a choice every day to do something different: what you wear, when you eat or with whom, the music you enjoy, the order of your daily events. Your day is dominated by utterly predictable routines. When you intentionally violate the routines, your brain kicks out of unconscious rule-following mode and wakes up – drastically increasing the chances you experience novel ideas and insights.

Don’t ignore your health. It’s ironic. The time we need to focus on health the most (i.e., high stress periods) is the time we often ignore health the most. Instead, do yourself a favor and start now by making one small change. Gain comfort with that one change, then give yourself permission to start a second change. Maybe it's mandatory daily walking or restricting beer consumption to Friday nights. Who knows – but start now, because when your body feels better, your mental game is stronger too.

Embrace a bigger identity. One challenge in defeating the midlife crisis is often a myopic identity. People over identify themselves as some type of professional (e.g., accountant, engineer, executive) while under identifying themselves with other positive labels (e.g., parent, volunteer, artist). When professional life delivers peak stress and it’s the only major label defining you, it can feel like the weight of the world is crushing you. Make the choice to be more than just a competent professional. When you care about your other important identities as much as the professional ones, you often gain the perspective needed to break through the mental obstacles holding you back.

Help someone. It goes without saying that you’re not alone in feeling the burden of a midlife crisis. One way to gain perspective is through multiple healthy identities. Another is by seeking to help others. Find someone who is stressed or in need of guidance – listen, advise, offer a helping hand. It feels good to help. It also results in you feeling less isolated and alone. Finally, it often creates a bigger picture within which you can more productively evaluate your own situation.

We all experience odd and difficult mental challenges as we age. The key is to choose to grow, not simply age. When you embrace the ideas described above you have a legitimate opportunity to turn a crisis into a catalyst.

www.drdewett.com