Midlife crisis is an opportunity to learn letting go!
Midlife crisis is a normal life stage which many of us go through between the age of 40 and 55. It generally gets triggered because of some unexpected event which is difficult to cope up with and makes us question everything. There can be many triggers for it including job loss, divorce, kids moving away, plateau in career, difficult career transition, parents' death, heavy financial losses and other similar reasons. The starting question could be why it happened to me, followed by existential questions like what the meaning of life is, why I am here and so on. Gradually, these thoughts start looking like a problem to be solved and can also result in continuous anxiety. insomnia, feeling lost, disengaged and so on.
Everyone approaches it in different ways depending on their mindset, maturity, life learnings so far and support they might have access to. However, some common approaches can be categorized as distracting yourself, being a victim, trying to control or surrender.
Distract — Many people get afraid of these life questions running in their head very quickly and try to distract themselves to resist these unwanted thoughts. The distractions could be in the form of drugs, entertainment and so on. The advantage of this approach is that it gives immediate relief from the overthinking mind. However, the challenge of it is that nothing gets solved unless you come back and solve. This trap is sometimes dangerous, and many gets stuck in various forms of distractions their whole life, making it meaningless at the end. The energy here is to avoid facing real issue. The way out is to ask what is important for me in the long run?
Victim — This approach sometimes comes in disguise of acceptance. One thinks it is what it is and nothing can be done, no matter what. The person resigns to make any effort to improve the situation and start living as a victim to the situation. The challenge with this approach is that the person starts finding faults in others, which many times leads to bad relationship causing even more stress. The energy here is to give-up or laziness. The way out is to go out, move more and asking what else can be true?
Control — This is where the ego tries to solve the problem and gives us random solutions. Generally, these solutions are extreme in nature like change career, change partner, change city or so on. Other implications could be increased focus on themselves in the form of grooming, shopping and achieving external goals like writing a book, climbing a mountain, trying hard for promotion etc. Sometimes these decisions feel like following your passion or living your values, but most of the times they lack holistic outlook and may miss on many important dimensions. The challenge with this approach is that wherever the person goes, he still finds himself along with his mind there. The energy here is doing, hurry up, taking actions, manifest desires as soon as possible, look at the only the rosy side and fear of success. The way out is to keep discarding these thoughts ruthlessly as much as possible and keep asking whether this action is just another trick of the mind to feed the ego?
Surrender — One of the key attributes of a midlife crisis is an overthinking mind and our attachment to those thoughts. In other words, as if our ego is standing at the peak and asking where is another peak to climb? It does not matter whether these thoughts are about to find an escape route of our existing troubles, answering profound questions of life, finding our purpose and anything else. At the end, if one pause and notice that it is all a thinking mind functioning at a full throttle. The energy here is playful, loving, thankful, grounded and so on. The way is to divert attention from answering what should I do, the question here could be what all should I balance?
The solution lies in going inside to know yourself by experimenting with new things, slowing down, meditate, center more frequently, heal yourself and carrying an intention to live more mindfully. It is about taking small steps in your vicinity, which is more natural, effortless and something which you get inclined inspite of all the problems that may come. This becomes an artful path which requires lot of patience and trusting of our own wisdom. This approach many times results in a situation, where though nothings changes, yet everything changes.
Life is short and midlife could act as a checkpoint to course correct our lives more intentionally. In the process mind plays lot of games and can make you see one option as another to suit the ego without you even knowing. To remove these blind spots, we sometimes need another human being, a friend, to help us see more clearly.
You don’t have to wait for any midlife crisis to arise to see how you are currently operating between distract, victim, control and surrender. Take a small pause and notice how you are operating right now? Then you can decide and move slowly towards how you want to operate in future. Any homework or preparation earlier always helps, however, for any real transformation, you may still need a crisis as a change agent. No crisis, no transformation!
In many ways, midlife is a transition stage of life, just like adolescence. The difference is during adherence, we use present as a means to get to future as an end result, while during midlife, we use future as a means to get to present as an end. In other words, living livelier while keep looking forward positively by trusting the universe. And we grow older, it is not too far before we reach to a point where present moment becomes both means and the end.
