Life Issues In-Focus - Midlife Passage
How about living your vision and life purpose? It's never too late to live a self empowered and fulfilled life.
Are you in midlife crisis or in a midlife passage? Check the following questions:
- Are you suddenly wondering where your life is going?
- Do you feel discontent with your lifestyle or bored with activities or people that up to now filled your life?
- Are you tired of being stuck in the same old problems with your relationships, health, work, money and you want to break free of it?
- Are you now questioning decisions that you made in the past?
- Are you questioning the meaning of life?
If you answer 'Yes' to most of the above questions you have entered the midlife passage. The midlife passage is a time of reappraising your present life structures, looking back at how you got there and looking forward to where you want to go.
Midlife passage is a time where the roads of options narrow. It is a time of transition that brings with it physical changes and new responsibilities such as caring for younger children, grandchildren, or older parents.
This time of transition can also be experienced as a midlife crisis, esp. if physical health is detoriating, the workplace is in question, the marriage is unsatisfying and the future unpredictable.
Midlife passage is a universal phenomenon whereas midlife crisis mostly occurs in the Western culture. Our Western culture favours youth over old age wisdom. This makes it hard for people in their forties and fifties to look forward to the benefits of eldership.
The best way to deal with this passage in midlife is to accept where you are, find new ways to cope and remain hopeful about the future.
Those who dwell on lost opportunities or their declining physical health are in danger of a midlife crisis. A symptom of crisis is that we tend to narrow our view and look at what's lost rather than appreciating what we have accomplished.
Times of transition can be times of high stress. You may have to adjust to new conditions, let go of people, things or activities that dominated your life up to then and take on new responsibilities. You need to shift your time frame from "time since birth" to "time left to live".
If life up to then has felt like a boring unsatisfying routine, this shift in the time frame can bring up the threatening question: 'Is that all it is?'
If you want to check out your life purpose again at this point, you will find a free course to help you with it. Just click on the link in the main menu.
My Ebook: Beyond suffering (Printversion: Growing through Joy) will broaden your perspective and give you many insights into the life cycle within the passage of life. |
