Midlife Transformation

Do I love the fact that I am fifty years old. As the clock ticked past midnight on my last second of being in my 40’s I knew that the time had arrived for me to embrace change to become someone greater than I was at that point. Wow there’s someone ready for a midlife transformation. Now I know that sounds like an over the top grandiose dream, but when you are inspired to create your legacy it really does give you an inner fire.

And isn’t that better than many who when they arrive at this point in life they are now driven by fear, regret, and sorrow. They experience something generally referred to as a “mid-life crisis.

Midlife is often regarded as the beginning of the end of one’s meaningful part of life. Death is no longer hidden on the horizon, it’s something we now can see creeping up on us. . Scarey thought if you allow yourself to look at it that way.

I was chatting with another 50 year old and he asked me with complete sadness ‘Do you realise we have lived more years than we probably have left to live?” I must admit my answer wasn’t the one he expected from a life coach, or necessarily the one he wanted to hear, because I said “Well I hope so, I really don’t want to live to a 100, so I’ll take another 40 years happily.”

I admit the last couple of years have seen dramatic changes in my life. My marriage broke up, my daughters no longer live with me, my eldest daughter has now had her own beautiful little girl so I’m a grandfather, my health for a while was pretty bad, and as a consequence my body is in its worst condition it’s ever been.

Admittedly, getting older isn’t always easy: all kinds of changes, good and bad, deliberate and accidental, go hand-in-hand with aging, which can often be so scary, but nothing should stop us from moving forward.

It doesn’t matter whether you have achieved every goal you’ve made for yourself to this point, or whether life has not worked out the way you thought it would when you were a youngster. Being in your 50’s doesn’t mean life is over, you have time to set new goals or to make those old one’s still come true.

I took some time to assess my successes, failures, triumphs, and disappointments. Now that wasn’t a short process, after all I had fifty years to cover. Taking time out to reflect on what brought us to the point we reached is an excellent us of your time, but only if you are doing it to see what you can do to deliberately move your life forward in the direction you want it to go.

So then I look ahead into the future. After all there’s no point living in the past. I want to be inspired by the days I have left. I want to make the most of what ever time I have left.

So I began to analyse all the skills and experience that I have acquired so far and considered how I could use them to design and live life far more the way I wanted from this point forward. Whatever age we have reached, no matter what are achievements, each of us can do things to make everything even better.

You have a set of unique gifts and passions central to who you are that make you an invaluable asset to the world, if you make the most of them. So push yourself, get out and meet new people, and be creative.

I may be 50 but I still have the time to ensure I die with no regrets of what I could have done

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. Henry David Thoreau

No matter how old we may be, we always have an opportunity to transform our lives. But we have to take full responsibility and go for everything we are worth until our last breath. Do that and I guarantee you will live life fully and have no regrets at the end of your journey.

Sometimes younger people around me look and wonder why do I still aspire to achieve so much more. I explain to them that with the opportunities available to live longer, healthier, more active lives than ever before, we’re all capable of achieving so much more with the time we have. But we have to make the effort to fulfil our potential, not just sit around counting the days until we pass away. Why would I do the latter when I have the chance to make a greater contribution to the world as a whole.

At midlife time many of you will feel like you’re standing at the crossroads of life and a new, unknown road lays ahead. I choose my words here deliberately because midlife is a crossroads, not a crisis. It’s not something to fear, or to arrive at and see only that your end is near.

It’s a great time. Our past experiences have paved the way for us to better know ourselves and our capabilities, particularly our desires, to be able to determine the direction we want to take our life.

Carl Jung referred to this transformational process as individuation . He says that the first half of life is dominated by making decisions, then do everything we can to enforce what we’ve decided. Ww keep ourselves so busy that it leaves no time to question ourselves or what we’re doing.

This all changes, he says, in midlife. It is here that we re-evaluate our life. We identify and release what no longer feels authentic or meaningful. It’s at this powerful, vulnerable moment that individuation begins.

For some this may be an uncomfortable period. Waking up to the fact you may be on the wrong path, not doing the things you’d value the most. I know I want to make something truly meaningful of myself . Since I have thought like that, the strangest thing is, fate seems to be sending me in the right places at the right time.

Sooner or later, every man has to come to terms with whether he is happy with life up to now, or whether he wants to make big changes for his future. The greatest challenge you have to overcome is the human reluctance to change. But my view is, nothing ventured nothing gained. If you’re not happy or fulfilled now what possibly could hold you back from trying to make the life that could make you feel this level of satisfaction.

One major challenge that we face is the task of imagining and defining our future. Deciding what we want to do, be and have.

If this post has encouraged you midlifers to look ahead and bring about life changing midlife transformation, I will write a post next week about how to create in your mind a picture of the life you want to lead.

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