Does it feel like you want to escape your life? Are you bored? Does it feel like you are stagnating? Are the responsibilities and humdrum of your life making you feel flat and uninspired?
Midlife is a time of flux. This period is often characterised by people changing or disrupting their lives radically.
The most common and familiar signs are extramarital affairs, divorces, changes in career and a desire to change or leave one’s current lifestyle. It can also be experienced as having a great sense of boredom or disillusionment with one’s life. A feeling of "is this all there is?”
We are familiar with the ageing playboy stereotyped in contemporary media, but midlife is a very real life stage, characterised by a desire for change and wanting to change the current status quo.
It is precipitated by feelings of stagnation, boredom, suburbia, a search for adventure. There is often an underlying yearning to recapture youth and youthful adventures, freedom. Caring for ageing parents is a reminder of where we are developmentally at midlife.
Seeing teenage children reach sexual maturity/ adulthood can evoke feelings of one’s own loss of youth and desirability. Reaching midlife is often a stark reminder of one’s own impending ageing and mortality. It’s also a time of reflection and wanting to leave a legacy/ mark on the world.
Career-wise, there may be a feeling of being passed over for younger talent or being dead ended in one’s career growth.
Examine when last you reassessed your goals and aspirations. Are they still relevant? Or were they set at a different life stage?
Don’t make rash far reaching decisions to spice up your life, like giving up everything to be a DJ in Ibiza! Use the wisdom and life experiences you have gained to assess what is worth changing and keeping and what needs to be discarded.
* Explore mid-life in more detail by joining Louisa Niehaus’s course on Mid-life Mastery: www.louisaniehaus.com/midlife-mastery/