Why Midlife Reinvention

We tend to move through stages in life. When you are just starting out you focus on the future. Who do I want to be? What do I need to learn? You work your way into a routine that seems to be working and finally your brain enjoys the dopamine of growing mastery, and you ride that well-deserved wave for a bit. Maybe you also start a family, and whoa, brother, it's deep survival time for a while.

All of those phases are worthy and challenging, but my heart belongs to people in midlife for this reason: when you step out of these phases that involve a bit of personal stasis, a change in outlook has happened. You no longer consider all the possibilities for your future like you did in your 20s, instead you fixate on your past. "This is what I know. This is the experience that's on my resume, and I'm supposed to know who I am by now. I should have tried other things in my 20s, now I have to stay put or I have no value." Midlife's love for "should have" and "supposed to" can single-handedly tank your life or lead to that midlife crisis cliche.

What I'd like to offer is that humans have a unique ability (need?) to reinvent themselves every so often, and the middle ages are no exception. As we used to say in my tech career: "This is a feature, not a bug!" You are not a stone that was carved in your youth and is now set. You are able to remake yourself cyclically, growing in mastery or becoming something entirely new. Don't shut this process down because our culture imagines that people over 40 should obediently merge with the wallpaper or pretend to be 30.

Apart from being absurd, it's frankly a disservice to our youth to not show them unapologetically that the learning and the transformation doesn't stop. That they don't have to know it all right this second to avoid locking in to a life they hate. No, you make and remake your life over and over. You are capable of so much more than you imagine, and it maddens me that people stay trapped simply because they don't know the language of the brain.

You can go any number of paths forward. This isn't some sick, rigged game where only one path leads to happiness and every other in a dead end or a pit full of snakes. Once a week, let's slow down and take a look at what is going on in your mind. Let's open up to all the possibilities and ask the kind of questions that help you see your next step. No, I'm not here to promise an easy journey with unicorns at the end of it, but imagining you are trapped and that it's pointless to change paths is just as distorted.

Your thoughts can make you feel like you are here:

They can also make you feel like you are here: