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Are you thriving or are you just surviving? If you feel like you are just going through the motions, just surviving, this is one sign you might be having a mid-life experience. I prefer to think of this as a mid-life opportunity than a mid-life crisis. Here are 13 ways to make it so, because you don’t just want you to survive your mid-life experience, you want to develop new ways to thrive in the second half of life.
1. Realize it is normal. Almost everyone has some form of mid-life experience that separates the first half of life from the second half of life.
2. Find something you love doing just for the joy of it, and make time regularly to do it.
3. Avoid comparing yourself to other people. This may mean stepping away from certain people and almost certainly means avoiding the land of comparisons - social media.
4. Reconnect with your values and priorities. Make what matters most to you a priority. Even if you discover you have abandoned your values and priorities, realign yourself with them now.
5. Acknowledge the ways that life has disappointed you and take time to mourn those disappointments.
6. Make some small changes to your habits, but avoid making rash decisions.
7. Pray, meditate, read, reflect. Rediscover the spirituality of your childhood. It’s impossible to thrive in the second half life if you ignore your soul.
8. Talk to someone. Find someone who is a great listener, someone who won’t judge you, someone who doesn’t have an agenda, someone who only wants what is best for you. You may want to consider therapy or coaching.
9. Rediscover the simple pleasures in life.
10. Try to stay in the present moment. Be present to whoever and whatever is before you right now. There is a time to think about the past and the future, but all the time is not the right time.
11. Listen to that gentle voice within you. You may have been drowned it out over the years. Your inner critic may have grown so loud and obnoxious that you can no longer hear the voice of the-best-version-of-yourself. Take a few minutes each day to listen to that voice of wisdom.
12. Be patient. It takes as long as it takes. Impatience will almost certainly lead you down the wrong path.
13. Dream. Many people discover during mid-life that they stopped dreaming years ago. Our dreams animate us, they literally breathe life into us. Your dreams are your dreams for a reason. Dreams some big dreams and some little dreams, they will help you live the second half of life with passion and purpose.
It’s Not a Mid-Life Crisis, it’s a Mid-Life Opportunity.
In part five of this series we will explore the man who first wrote about the mid-life crisis and what we can learn from him today.
Matthew Kelly
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