What You Need To Know About Your Mid-Life Crisis. It’s Not What You Think.

One of my good friends is going through a mid-life awakening.

He just turned forty, he isn’t satisfied with his job and he thought he would be “further ahead” by the time he reached this stage of life. He doesn’t sleep well and lies in bed at night with his mind racing, getting even more anxious when he thinks about how exhausted he will feel the next day (which he does).

I was referring to his situation as a mid-life crisis when it struck me how absolutely awful that sounds. Language is important and has a large impact on our psyche and how we frame our lives. Just saying the words “mid-life crisis” out loud made me feel more anxious when describing my friend’s situation. It made things worse.

I decided it’s time we rebrand the mid-life crisis. Because what’s really going on is that my friend is having a mid-life awakening.

He feels that life is passing him by, and he’s reached an age that makes him less willing to sacrifice or be miserable for the sake of some promised future with greater stability. He’s living the impact of his previous choices and realizing there are some things he wants to change.

He might not put it this way, but in my opinion, his soul is shaking him and asking him to WAKE THE FUCK UP.

I once had a spiritual teacher tell me that for many women, our soul starts to wake us up in our thirties or forties, and for men, this happens in their forties or fifties.

To me, this explanation always made a lot of sense and it is very much what I experienced in my thirties. I suddenly felt like I needed to be living a more meaningful and purposeful life. I had no idea what that meant or how to do it, but it was pulling and tugging on me and wouldn’t stop. I had to acknowledge that some aspects of my life weren’t working.

This did lead to a bit of a “crisis,” but really, it led to an awakening. An awakening to who I really am and what really matters to me. An awakening to the fact that life is short, and if I can’t be honest about what I’m feeling, it’s going to make me miserable.

They say that pain pushes until pleasure pulls.

This has very much been the case on my journey and that of thousands of others I’ve coached and witnessed.

Mid-life awakenings are hard, especially in the beginning.

We resist, we don’t want to deal with the truth of what’s not working, we cling to what we have and go fighting and screaming into the abyss.

But then something magical happens. After a period of struggle, we finally surrender. We realize we can’t go on this way anymore. We decide ENOUGH.

This is the crucial turning point. This is when the magic begins. After the pain and suffering.

Many people miss the best part, because they do whatever it takes to avoid the pain and suffering — buy a Porsche, date someone twenty years younger, quit your job or marriage and fly off to Paris. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but if you don’t also do the work to look at your pain and suffering, those difficult feelings will follow you wherever you go and show up somewhere else down the road.

A mid-life awakening is an opportunity. It’s a call.

A call to face your shadows, your biggest fears, move through them, and shed parts of your ego and your story about who you think you are in order to step into more of who you BE. It’s the hero’s journey.

There’s research on post-traumatic growth that has demonstrated that after a period of trauma, most people experience tremendous personal growth. If you think back to some of your most memorable experiences in life, the things you’re most proud of, you will probably see a pattern of intense struggle or difficulty that stretched you in a new way and preceded your proudest moments.

This is what is happening with a mid-life awakening. You’re being asked to step into the world in a bigger way. In order to do that, you must first shed a lot of what is no longer serving you.

You must walk through your own darkness and experience a certain amount of struggle to learn and grow as a human being.

So, instead of running off with a younger version of your current partner, or buying a fancy new car (who wants to be a cliché anyway?!), why not ask yourself; “hmmm, what am I most afraid of?” and sit with that fear, become it’s friend.

Then ask; “what is it I really want?” See if your heart can open to the answer, rather than your mind or what you “should” do. When you find your bigger why, take a small step to create it.

Here’s the main difference; in a mid-life crisis you say; “Oh no! This is awful. I’m going to distract myself from this pain by doing xxx.”

In a mid-life awakening you say: “Oh, this hurts. This is suffering. I’m going to surrender to it, breath. Then ask; ‘what can I learn from this?’”

You have a choice. You can have a mid-life crisis or a mid-life awakening.

Which sounds better to you?

About Vanessa

Vanessa Loder is a women’s leadership expert and renowned speaker on Women and Power, Mindfulness and Entrepreneurship. She has been featured in Fast Company, Forbes and Glamour Magazine. Her Tedx talk “How To Lean In Without Burning Out” has over 100,000 views.

If you’re at a crossroads or in a career transition, get Vanessa’s Free Webinar: 9 Steps to Create Work You Love HERE.