We must encourage midlife personal growth - It’s certainly not a ‘crisis’.

Overcoming Negative Social Stigma

Making major changes to your life circumstances, can be a difficult process to go through. It’s often easier to stay with familiarity and the comfort of what we already know.

This can be even more challenging when you have an established career, family-life, home location, social group, hobbies and interests. These criteria are seen by many people to define who you are. But is that really ‘you’?

The term ‘midlife crisis’ is often banded around when someone at a certain stage of life, takes it upon themselves to make significant changes to their circumstances. It can cover a variety of transitional and transformational choices, taken by people typically around their 40s, give or take a few years.

It often revolves around adjustments in personal relationships, career changes, taking up new (often unexpected) hobbies or interests, or even returning to previous ones from childhood or adolescence. People may exhibit signs of existential uncertainty, or erratic behaviour, as a ‘midlife crisis’ is generally seen as a socially undesirable phenomenon.

Let’s look at what we mean by the term ‘crisis’? It has been defined as ‘a crucial or decisive point or situation, especially a difficult or unstable situation involving an impending change’.

It’s clear from this description that it is seen as something you may not choose to experience, or at least is not celebrated or encouraged in a socially acceptable way.

But what if we reframed the process of a ‘midlife crisis’ as a positive transitional period for people who are remembering their true nature, and rediscovering their purpose in life?

What if we can completely reframe this period as a celebration of embracing and seeking new experiences, personal growth, and new challenges? A period of rediscovering a sense of purpose and a self-identity which is truly aligned to the person you are truly meant to be.

Institutional Conditioning

We are all deeply conditioned, as humans living in a modern capitalist society, whether we can see and acknowledge this or not. If we consider that most people enter the institution of the education system aged four years-old, without any consent or understanding of the long-term impact and consequences of doing so. For a minimum of twelve years (fourteen+ for many), we are subservient to the rules and processes of this institution for a significant proportion of our existence. It’s essentially socially accepted brainwashing, in plain sight.

It's easy to normalise the education process, which everyone must experience. However, look at the impact on someone’s sense of identity and wellbeing from spending time in the prison system or serving in the military. We observe how this can affect people’s thoughts, behaviours, personality and consequently their life choices. It’s fair to say that spending at least twelve years in an institution from early childhood, absorbing behavioural and cultural ‘expectations’, is inevitably going to have a major impact on the foundation of all aspects of an individual’s self-identity. Their thoughts, beliefs, and behaviours.

The time it takes to ‘decondition’ from this intense process is likely to vary for everyone. For many people, they never will, or at least won’t consciously be aware that they can. The nature of many careers in many industries involves working within organisations that replicate the key aspects of the education system structure. That’s the purpose of the education system after all. To support a capitalist economy with obedient workers, following rules, processes, and being told where to be at what time, and what to do, during each working day.

These behaviours are so ingrained in many people, that the idea of making any significant, conscious changes, to move away from some of the established habits in everyday life, is unsettling and can induce a fear of the unknown. So, is the way we, as a society, term the phrase ‘midlife crisis’, something to be socially frowned upon? Should we be ashamed of experiencing it?

Celebrating the Liberation of the Soul

I’m in my mid-forties and having experienced my own profound transformational period, over recent years, I see the process as a wonderful, empowering transition. I feel like I have remembered my reason for living, and who I was when I was a primary school aged boy, without a care in the world. I really like that person and like spending time with him.

The transition I have been through has felt very natural to me. I feel guided by my own intuition, to consciously choose a different path. I feel a powerful desire for growth, for learning new things, for experiencing new situations, rejecting some societal expectations, for testing myself and going way outside of my comfort zone. However, I also know that some family, friends, and acquaintances, have at times reacted with ‘surprise’ at certain choices I have taken throughout the process. As if I have taken huge risks. Like I’ve changed, and they don’t know me anymore. I don’t see it that way at all.

My midlife transition is certainly not a ‘crisis’. It has been a rediscovery of my own individuality and an empowerment of my soul, from the constraints placed on it through years of absorbing beliefs that weren’t mine. Finding my true purpose and a way to connect to the purest, most deconditioned, version of who I am, is something to be cherished, nurtured and celebrated. I recommend it!