Life is full of intentions, actions & consequences. You choose to either play it, or sit on the side and watch everyone else.
©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>I am really busy right now, hence the reduction in my postings. However the main thing I keep on thinking about is around creating a simple outlook on life. I feel very strongly that getting one’s self in a state of simple living enables one to be completely at one with yourself & be completely aware of who you are. This then gives you the greatest opportunity to have an open mind to think creatively about yourself and how you live and create things around you. Be that creative output an art, relationships or your job, you are the best placed to make this a success.
I need to think more about this but am very busy right now. If anyone wants to chip in, please feel free.
©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>I’m experimenting with a new way to write today. I want to write it as it comes rather than collect and organise, which may work for other articles I want to publish to you.
Nostalgia is something that once in a while really hurts. Its not something I can put a finger on and say, “owch” like, I miss a person, or I wish I had done something specific 20 years or so ago.
But its a general feeling of missing so, so many opportunities in my life that I want to just run out there and gather up all the remnants of the past and sit looking at them.
It wells up inside me until I see myself sitting on this planet with absolutely no idea why I am here and what to do about it. Yet I feel that there is so much, so much that I could, and can do. So why am I not doing it, why have I never found it?
I feel like trying really hard to go back in time even though that sounds so absurd, then, when it does I feel like working out what it is that I need to do to create something that feels like what I am missing.
Its almost like a ‘past life’ experience where I feel there are or would have been so many other ways my life could have run. I sit here now thinking, am I watching it, STILL, watching it flow away, flow out of me when there is so much more I want to do.
What is it that I really want to do with my life? have I really found that yet? will I? how long will it take to happen? is my path right now the path for me to take, or is it just another diversion, just another ‘take one step at a time’ not knowing where I will end up, and if this will be anywhere nearer something I can take a deep breath and say, this was my destiny.
I have had some chances in my life to do some interesting things with it. Im sure we all have and I can imagine that for a lot of us, many of those chances are not even realized. We never saw them coming and we never saw them go either.
So how does that help me? how does that help you if you feel the same way?
Well, maybe. Maybe we don’t have to try that hard. Maybe we just need to know who we really are and be passionate about that. Don’t let anything else get in the way of you being who you are all your life. Don’t stop being you. Do more of you, make more of you. Then, that destiny will come, because you certainly won’t be able to see it come, or grab it if you can’t see it go away. If you are being passionately honest with yourself, you will FALL into it. You won’t need to grab it, you won’t need to hang on to it as it flies by.
That’s the best I can offer myself today. And to you too.
Fall into your opportunities big and small and ride them as they take you on your wild journey to your destiny.
I’m off to see the B52′s
©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
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.]]>Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last
My dad tells me his thoughts on the way home. “when you get old it all starts happening to you. I was ok until I got to around seventy-five then everything started to happen. I’ve lost an ear through skin cancer, I can only see clearly in one eye and I’ve had my bladder and prostrate removed.”
“Old age is horrible really. Live each day like it’s your last and make the best of your life”
I felt this is a good message to everyone. If only we all could live with this rule, really live with this rule. Only a few people I have ever met live with this in mind.
They don’t take the cautious route, they follow their dreams and don’t take the easy and safe route. They follow their hearts and do what it is that they feel they were put on this earth to do, (whatever their religious beliefs are or are not).
When you are at mid life, and wondering how much time you have left it’s a good time to consider your life past, present and future.
Life really is too short, you probably never thought about it before when you were young, but now, you can see age coming soon. You might have a bigger sister or brother who is now close to their 50’s and are trying to accept that you are next for the big five – zero .
At the end of the day my mother gave me a birthday card that my Aunt had written for my daughter. My aunt had written ‘Happy Birthday” from Sally and Peter”.
The card was never put in its envelope or sent to my daughter because she died 5 days before her birthday.
It was as if whilst she looked for the envelope her life had ended, half way through the sending of that card and felt like a sound way to end a day of reflection on the value of life and how things can change for us at a moment’s notice.
One minute she was writing the card, the next her long life was over.
How do you deal with the cycle of life ?
If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>Live Each Day Like It’s Your Last
My dad tells me his thoughts on the way home. “when you get old it all starts happening to you. I was ok until I got to around seventy-five then everything started to happen. I’ve lost an ear through skin cancer, I can only see clearly in one eye and I’ve had my bladder and prostrate removed.”
“Old age is horrible really. Live each day like it’s your last and make the best of your life”
I felt this is a good message to everyone. If only we all could live with this rule, really live with this rule. Only a few people I have ever met live with this in mind.
They don’t take the cautious route, they follow their dreams and don’t take the easy and safe route. They follow their hearts and do what it is that they feel they were put on this earth to do, (whatever their religious beliefs are or are not).
When you are at mid life, and wondering how much time you have left it’s a good time to consider your life past, present and future.
Life really is too short, you probably never thought about it before when you were young, but now, you can see age coming soon. You might have a bigger sister or brother who is now close to their 50’s and are trying to accept that you are next for the big five – zero .
At the end of the day my mother gave me a birthday card that my Aunt had written for my daughter. My aunt had written ‘Happy Birthday” from Sally and Peter”.
The card was never put in its envelope or sent to my daughter because she died 5 days before her birthday.
It was as if whilst she looked for the envelope her life had ended, half way through the sending of that card and felt like a sound way to end a day of reflection on the value of life and how things can change for us at a moment’s notice.
One minute she was writing the card, the next her long life was over.
How do you deal with the cycle of life ?
If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>What Is Your Role In A Changing World?
This is the second part of a series of articles about my perception and experience of witnessing the cycle of life and dealing with the changes of life around me. My first article that focuses on the cycle of life and witnessing the loss of some of my closest relatives… is here
Where I grew up was slowly being erased as new buildings were put up and the people were being changed for new people.
As life continues, children grow up, new people move into the area and with it, the culture was changing. Every face to me was a stranger.
I wondered where the people who I once knew were now. My parents told me of a few that stilled lived around the area, and I could make contact with some via Internet sites such as FriendsReunited .
I felt in a muddle about my feelings. I was feeling the effects of change from a number of sources and it took me until I returned home to work it out. It was as if my own life was being erased.
All that I knew was slowly being erased from existence and turned into a memory.
My Aunt was gone, my Uncle was now in a home and perhaps soon to follow. My father had gone through a lot of surgery and I wondered what was next for him. They had watched their friends start to die too.
I wondered if when I finally died, would anyone notice in this busy suburb of a city?
Therein lies my life. A speck in the time of great change. Have I accomplished nothing that would make a difference to anyone, except perhaps raising my children to be successful.
That’s what I had for my forty plus years on this planet. I had left London and moved to the countryside. After thirteen years there I had moved on again with no impact on my surrounding society.
Now, living by the sea I wondered what was next, what could I do to make a difference and make my life have some reason, some benefit for my world.
These are the feelings of a person in midlife crisis. Someone who is feeling the need to create self actualization for themselves.
The level of crisis element to this situation depends on how stable your foundations are as a person. How much trauma and suffering did you experience when you were a child? How did your parents treat you? Were they abusive, violent? Narcissistic?
These conditions, common across the globe make a considerable difference to the stability of a person when they develop into an adult.
After many years of adjusting to cope with the effects of a hard upbringing that structure you have built up that you now sit on top ofnow can look very shaky once someone removes some pieces from underneath you.
So, with my aunt, lost, my uncle loosing grip, my roots disappearing I have some of my structure being removed from me. What does that leave me with?
How will I cope with these things now removed? For me I am willing to set out to look at life with optimism and as an opportunity to build myself into the person I want to be.
I have a vision that keeps me going whilst I cannot fully achieve the person who travels and explores the world as I nurture my children to an age of independence.
Having said this I am interested in the opportunity to involve my children in an exiting life of adventure that inspires them and opens their eyes to the wonders the world has outside the cosy office career that will be the destiny of many an average person in the western world of the future.
How do you deal with the cycle of life ?
If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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The third and final part of this series on the cycle of life and dealing with mortality is here
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>Recently I drove along a road that I had not followed for more than 18 years.
It was an opportunity to reflect on the changes of my life in that time and consider the people I had not seen since those times.
I past a house where I dropped off a lovely girl who wanted to date me, almost 20 years ago. Why I had not dated her is beyond me now. Notched up as one of life’s regrets.
I watched the houses and shops of this suburb of London go by. So many of these average looking houses now hosted luxury cars parked outside where before would have been an average family saloon.
It seems the houses themselves had been promoted to luxury status just by being so in demand from the large number of people who wanted to live in the area.
What was drawing them to the area were the large office blocks being build where before were until only recently just simple shops and pubs from pre and post war suburban growth.
These survived the recent decades where others were replaced with wine bars and luxury clothing stores only to end their days being squashed by high office blocks designed to impress.
These offices house thousands of people, many new to the area that also would need housing and entertainment when not at work.
In the mid last century there were three cinemas. By the time I was walking the streets there were two, and soon after only one. That was altered to accommodate three cinemas of smaller audiences. This too was closed by the time I was in my twenties. Ten years later a new one was opened with thirteen cinemas.
The change I have witnessed, many have also seen in their towns across the globe for this isn’t particularly a western happening, its about the growth of people and the move towards living in cities for the majority of the world’s population.
I had to keep in mind that there was continual change, and that when I was a child what I saw was part of that change. To expect everything to stay the same, to comfort me in its stability was unrealistic.
The world is still changing, perhaps faster now than ever before. How long would these new buildings last? Perhaps hald the time, or less of their predecessors.
The end of my journey took me to where my Uncle now lives. A home for the elderly. My uncle now suffers from altzimers dementsia and has been here since he could not be looked after by his wife, my aunt around a year an a half ago.
Recently my Aunt has sadly died and now my parents are involved in spending their time with legal representatives dealing with assets and wills.
Seeing my Uncle was more of a shock than I had expected. He looked a lot older, although I had not seen him for quite a while since I live a long way away and find it hard to travel because of child commitments.
He looked confused and didn’t seem to recognise that we were there, let alone who we were. It was Peter but he was thinner and stooped where before he was always bright and alive and in good humour.
So quickly that had changed. His wife, noticed his confusion and he struggled to make sense of what he was trying to say when he got involved in discussions with others.
He got up from his chair, turned and walked to a door to fiddle with it. Turned around and walked to the window and touched the sill, turned around slowly, pointed to the floor and muttered something and then shuffled out of the door to go along the corridor.
He looked confused and unable to understand how to express himself. He looked as if everything was confusing him, as if life and objects around him consumed his mind with confusion.
I felt a rush of emotions myself in that room. I was warned that he had deteriorated and in fact everything was exactly how I was told but yet the emotions about Peter, about his late wife Sally, about my own father’s health and my own midlife position all welled up inside of me. I struggled to hold back the tears.
The cycle of life was laid out all in front of me on that journey. The girl I remember on the journey there, what had she done with her life? Was she successful and contented? What about me? I have so much more to do.
What about my father? I read a story about a couple who lived together for 55 years until one of them had to go into a home to be supported. My parents had celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary last week. So to compare my parents to this story they have 5 more years to go?
How do you deal with the cycle of life ?
Do you want to know how my thoughts progressed? Check out the second part of my midlife crisis thoughts and the effect of seeing the cycle of life had on me here.
If you feel this article has been useful to you then please donate something to help me keep this site alive for others. Thank you.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>I’ve been working hard these last two days. The kids have been off school so its been hard for me to get the time to work for any length of time.
Plus I’ve been away to see my parents as well. So I felt pleased with the progress I have achieved with all my work, I wrote a couple of pages of ‘to do’s’ that was beginning to look daunting.
However, I am ploughing through it nicely, even the bits I don’t really want to do.
So, I’m getting close to my objectives, I don’t think it will be long before DiscoverAid reaches a good part of its community which is one of my objectives.
Why am I telling you all this? Well because as I get closer to my goals, I’m wondering what it really will feel like to be finally there. What will happen on the other side? Will my objectives actually change anything for me at all?
It’s a bit of an old cliché but fearing that your dreams may actually become true is a real threat that might inspire you to subconsciously try to hijack your success.
For instance I might decide that half of my objectives are not worth the time and go off in another direction, and continue, forever to change my direction, never getting to the end and completing anything, getting bored (so I might tell myself) before I get to completion.
As part of your midlife transition you might have come up with some plans that end with a ‘happy ending’. Take for example the image of yourself driving off into the sunset in a new sportscar, hood down and looking good to boot!
Well, as you get closer to the dream you start to realise that maybe the new sportscar looks odd with you, and driving it along alone makes you look a bit of a loner and somewhat stupid that you are trying to drive with the hood down when everyone else has theirs up.
So maybe the reality of your dream is safer and more complete when its not real. Perhaps you should keep on living in the future and not for today?
Perhaps that is safer and in that way you will never fail the dream, even if you forget that you are actually never getting to complete anything.
But fear not! You have forgotten that other cliché; enjoy the journey not the destination (or something like that).
Only use your dreams to motivate you to move on when things are hard.
Make sure you complete your objectives and keep those motivational dreams that are the rewards as a separate part of the dream that you can decide what you want to do when you get there.
Maybe you will choose to go scuba diving in the Caribbean for six months instead of driving that sports car? Either way, when you get to your destination, its time to plan for your next.
Keep going and keep knocking off those achievements now you are fully empowered at your age to do so!!
Have you got any advice you would like to share about your situation? Please post your comments below.
Guy
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>In this article I write about your identity in the context of a midlife crisis. Quite simply, a midlife crisis more often then not, is about how what ever has happened or is not happening for you and how that doesn’t fit with what you want for you. Many times this is about things that are going on that you feel are not in control of and how it effects how you would like to see yourself or how you wish that things could be different for you. Sounds like a mouthful, but that is part of the complication of what is going on for some that makes it hard to put a finger on it and work out how to deal with it. So, for example, an individual could be thinking all this at once. No wonder a midlife crisis is a hard time to deal with.
As you get to midlife you may find that you are reflecting on your life, missed opportunities & perhaps what you would have expected to have achieved by now. You may also be thinking about how you are starting to age and are having to address that you are looking older. Some try to cover up, well, perhaps most of us do to some degree but others really try to cover up buy wearing clothes that were destined for a younger generation, dying hair to an unnatural colour for example.
Others might reluctantly feel they need to start to dress to match what they feel is right for a person of their age.
What you are trying to do is adapt as much as you can to the change in your physical identity plus also consider the changes to your personality whilst struggling to remember & retain what is the core of you.
Added onto this, as discussed in the What Is A midlife Crisis? Article there comes some trauma that affects you even more and pushes you towards some thinking in a fundamental way. For example, a lost close one can push you towards feeling that death is closing in on you.
Maybe you feel great, and want to continue to prove to the world that you are as functional as you were ten or twenty years ago. Maybe you are trying to kid yourself, or trying to prove to yourself, as well as others that you are far from being over the hill. So maybe you get a sports car next time you buy a car, maybe you remember the great days you had on your motorcycle and so go off to purchase one. Maybe you go for a few cosmetic alterations or even get a kick by flirting with a younger woman or man.
All these events makes its mark, tells you that you are out of control and that there is no way to avoid the ultimate demise of your physical being. Morbid as that sounds I am trying to explain the depth of feeling that can come over some of us at least some of the time.
On a daily basis as you get up and look at yourself in the mirror, as you walk to your work and mix with others of various ages your own view of your identity begins to be questioned. Are you really now a fattening middle-aged person? Can you run like you could when you were younger? Can you play the sports you used to love still? How does it feel to get extra tests by your doctor on a regular basis now you are over a critical age?
This is all about trying to take control of your identity. Waking up one morning and finding you are above the average age of your workplace means that you have to readjust how you see yourself. That’s probably going to be an uncomfortable transition. Being seen as a middle aged family guy or girl just isnt the same as the free and easy dynamic professional who lived from one shopping spree or adventure holiday to another.
An affair resulting in full infidelity happening for the first time at middle age is a sign of someone who is out of control with what is happening to them. It is a sign that the individual is unable to cope with the responsibility of being trusted by those close to them but is more addicted to the excitement and ego lifting feeling of a new relationship. This outweighs any responsibility the person has for others. Since there can be a very complicated range of thoughts and feelings going on for the person, as described above, it is not surprising sometimes that some fall to having affairs and become serial adulterers. Perhaps as their own relationship dulls they find that a good excuse to carry on with their infidelity, justifying it with the actions of others. However some will find a new relationship wakes them up from years of sadness, even abuse within a relationship. Perhaps they had not the confidence before to escape the situation, fearing the effect on children and heroically putting this above their own needs.
So the challenge is to keep in touch with who you really are whilst accepting changes are inevitable. We need to find time to rediscover what it is to be ourselves, that part of our personality that although maybe mellowing, is still part of us whatever age we are. Loosing that is really loosing yourself and loosing the battle to stay mentally healthy.
Perhaps there is a way for you to review what it is to be you, what is the essence of you, irrespective of what age you are. What are you passionate about? What do you enjoy doing, what silly things do you do that make people that know you well remember you from the crowd? Can you take a break? Go on holiday for a few days if not a couple of weeks to get a full break. Spending time alone for that long will give you a lot of time to remember who you are. Perhaps this will be the first time for a very long time that you have had time away from practical as well as emotional responsibilities. I can assure you that taking yourself properly away from these responsibilities (so turn the phone off otherwise you will waste your chance!) will enable you to feel what is different, feel what is taking you away from yourself, feel what is pressuring you so that you can make a choice when you return about what needs to change.
What have you done with your life that got you to where you are now? Surely that is a more positive way to view your life than think of the regrets and missed opportunities.
You might like to take this opportunity to think about things you’ve never achieved, or never even considered doing before, maybe uncovering a new passion that may make your life today and in the future a more rewarding one than you might have been able to imagine. I have heard of a highly paid professional who left his career behind him to start up a scuba diving school. For his family the need to adapt to the changes in finances hit them hard at first. After a while, and with some compromise and adapting, seeing quality in life in other things than just money made the experience rewarding for all.
Define who you are and celebrate that as you move forward, making every year a new challenge and pushing yourself to look back and see that each year moved you forward achieving your goals.
Guy
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>When You Can’t Cope Anymore
I could have headed this, ‘When The Way You Deal With The World Comes To An End’ but that’s probably not what you are feeling however the second heading is possibly more suitable. Consider this, as you grew up you built your personality around the environment you lived in. If it was a hostile environment you would have naturally built yourself up with behaviours that protected yourself as best you could. If conversely you were protected by your family and sheltered from some or all of the natural things that should happen to a growing person, you might find you didn’t need to protect yourself so much. And of course there are many variations in-between. Now project this forward to your mid life, at a time when perhaps things are changing for you that are hard to deal with. For example, your career is slowing down? Your partner is maturing and becoming a different person?
I see and hear many people experiencing this. For instance, let me introduce a man (I shall call him Roger) who was in a senior role in a large bank. He was a trouble-shooter who had achieved a good reputation for himself and developed up the career ladder to a position of authority and status in this large corporate organisation.
As a boy he was bullied a lot for looking odd, however he learnt that by sharing interesting facts studying hard people started to treat him with some respect. So, instead of the goofy looking kid, he was the geek, and that was ok. He became a geek and started to use his intellect to get him through life, influencing and protecting himself.
Roger had a successful career ten years ago, yet like many of us, he had some weaknesses in his personality that weren’t being highlighted in his life at that time but was there to cause him trouble when the situations aligned.
This maybe why you are where you are now. Perhaps you are in a situation that highlights your weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Another example of this is the young woman who never was strong enough to terminate her relationships when she felt they had run their course. Fast forward to her fifties and she has been married for 20 to 30 years to a man who also will not be proactive and terminate his sour relationship with her. Their relationship has lasted that long because they both don’t have the will power to do something about their relationship. Both wishing for a better life but an-able to accept the uncertainty of life and separate to find the life they really want. Depression has set in now and she is doing everything in her power to avoid taking that uncertain plunge. Why? Because she was well protected as a child and never really grew up with a strong ability to take control of her life herself. She looks to her counsellor to collude with her on her inability to make decisions herself and always asks her counsellor for his opinion. Her counsellor tells her its not for him to advise and realises that she is looking for a father figure in him to replace the father she lost a few years back. The lady is balancing on a edge, trying to find a way to replace the missing father that told her what to do and yet trying to separate from her husband yet avoiding it at any opportunity because the uncertainty of the situation is far from her comfort zone where mum and dad made everything right for her.
Back to Roger.
Roger chose to leave his large bank and go to work in a small bank. The differences within large and small organisations, as many of us know, are that you can be less ‘specialised’, i.e. you have to do your own photocopying, you don’t have a tea lady coming around the vast corridors of your large corporate, you have to go to the shared vending machine yourself or make your own coffee. Such cultural changes seemed to have challenged Roger because he lasted 6 months in the job and left abruptly, never clearly admitting to what exactly happened but I would guess it was something around the cultural difference and that Roger was always keen to demonstrate a high level of status as we shall see further on.
Roger then chose to start up his own insurance company and opened up an office in the local high street. He employed a secretary and started to make money. However although the money started to come in, it flattened out very soon and begun to shrink. Over the following year all of Roger’s money went into the office, however, most was going out the computer in the back room as Roger had moved his desk out there and was now gambling. He told his relatives that he had devised a sure way to make profit from gambling. He tried to intellectualise (see A Thick Layer Of Denial) his way out but people were worried about what was going on, it felt very odd. His secretary sat there all day with nothing to do.
He continued to loose money until his family forced him to close down the office, sack the secretary and sell his house to pay his increasing debts. Roger had tried to re-create the world he felt comfortable in by creating an office and employing a secretary to do his tea and photocopying, i.e. to give him status. By recreating his world Roger was missing some important connections with reality, he was no salesman and he didn’t have a clue how to interface with customers because his corporate world kept him far away from the front office.
Eventually Roger became bankrupt, borrowed and lost $50,000 dollars from his brother, lying to hide where the money was going. Roger now works a couple of days a week although that is infrequent because he struggles with the low paid roles he has to endure when he feels he should be treated with far more status by being a manager at the factory where he works. He lives in a rented apartment in a cheap side of town and, whilst his wife is still with him, the strains on their marriage are showing as she is now having to work harder whilst Roger stays mainly at home and has taken up gambling again.
Roger is in complete denial. This situation is happening all over the world and effects people who on the outside are confident and intellectual, yet inside are vulnerable and are trying desperately to protect themselves from the reality of their situation.
Roger has avoided counselling, probably because he is worried he wont be able to cope with what he will have to face. Outside in the big wide world he has always been able to bullshit his way through by baffling the brains around him.
Think about yourself, what is the difference between the situation you are in and the situation you want to be in. Where does that desire come from? Is it about what you think ‘should’ be? The word ‘should’ signifies something important usually. By saying ‘should’ you are looking at the rules that you run your life by. ‘Things should be done that way, not this way, but why? Is it what you were brought up to understand and now are trying to continue? Have your rules become unhelpful or obsolete as you move through life and your environment changes? Maybe its time to question your set of rules, your outlook on life, your needs and try to adapt yourself rather than try to continually look for the world that adapts for you?
You can apply this to many things. Not being able to cope is a very broad statement that can mean you are not able to cope with many things some that can be easier to deal with than others. For example a relationship that you have tried so hard to make work but are now at a point where you cannot cope with how hard it is. Well, its time to stop denying the reality of the situation and choose to adapt yourself, not the relationship. Adapt by acknowledging that the relationship is not working as you would like and either accept it for what it really is, or ship out and separate. Are your expectations within a relationship too high, or are you trying to believe the relationship can be what you want it to be?
Are you trying to cope against the flood of challenges you have by still needing the status that you had in your last job? Maybe you are looking for some respect that your position, the name of your role gave you. Now maybe you are in an environment where respect is gained less through the name on your role and more by your abilities to succeed much like Roger.
Maybe you can’t cope because you are overwhelmed by all that you need to do in your life. You have so many plates juggling. Again, time to realise that in your world you cannot juggle so many plates. Perhaps the plates have all started to wobble at the same time so you have far more to do. Or you have been juggling for so long that you are fatigued, and feeling that you now cant carry on juggling so many plates. Therefore its time to realise this, stop kidding yourself you can continue or that you must continue as you have in the past or you will be a failure. Its time to adapt your view on the world and accept that you need to change your expectations and simplify your life.
Guy.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>When You Can’t Cope Anymore
I could have headed this, ‘When The Way You Deal With The World Comes To An End’ but that’s probably not what you are feeling however the second heading is possibly more suitable. Consider this, as you grew up you built your personality around the environment you lived in. If it was a hostile environment you would have naturally built yourself up with behaviours that protected yourself as best you could. If conversely you were protected by your family and sheltered from some or all of the natural things that should happen to a growing person, you might find you didn’t need to protect yourself so much. And of course there are many variations in-between. Now project this forward to your mid life, at a time when perhaps things are changing for you that are hard to deal with. For example, your career is slowing down? Your partner is maturing and becoming a different person?
I see and hear many people experiencing this. For instance, let me introduce a man (I shall call him Roger) who was in a senior role in a large bank. He was a trouble-shooter who had achieved a good reputation for himself and developed up the career ladder to a position of authority and status in this large corporate organisation.
As a boy he was bullied a lot for looking odd, however he learnt that by sharing interesting facts studying hard people started to treat him with some respect. So, instead of the goofy looking kid, he was the geek, and that was ok. He became a geek and started to use his intellect to get him through life, influencing and protecting himself.
Roger had a successful career ten years ago, yet like many of us, he had some weaknesses in his personality that weren’t being highlighted in his life at that time but was there to cause him trouble when the situations aligned.
This maybe why you are where you are now. Perhaps you are in a situation that highlights your weaknesses or vulnerabilities. Another example of this is the young woman who never was strong enough to terminate her relationships when she felt they had run their course. Fast forward to her fifties and she has been married for 20 to 30 years to a man who also will not be proactive and terminate his sour relationship with her. Their relationship has lasted that long because they both don’t have the will power to do something about their relationship. Both wishing for a better life but an-able to accept the uncertainty of life and separate to find the life they really want. Depression has set in now and she is doing everything in her power to avoid taking that uncertain plunge. Why? Because she was well protected as a child and never really grew up with a strong ability to take control of her life herself. She looks to her counsellor to collude with her on her inability to make decisions herself and always asks her counsellor for his opinion. Her counsellor tells her its not for him to advise and realises that she is looking for a father figure in him to replace the father she lost a few years back. The lady is balancing on a edge, trying to find a way to replace the missing father that told her what to do and yet trying to separate from her husband yet avoiding it at any opportunity because the uncertainty of the situation is far from her comfort zone where mum and dad made everything right for her.
Back to Roger.
Roger chose to leave his large bank and go to work in a small bank. The differences within large and small organisations, as many of us know, are that you can be less ‘specialised’, i.e. you have to do your own photocopying, you don’t have a tea lady coming around the vast corridors of your large corporate, you have to go to the shared vending machine yourself or make your own coffee. Such cultural changes seemed to have challenged Roger because he lasted 6 months in the job and left abruptly, never clearly admitting to what exactly happened but I would guess it was something around the cultural difference and that Roger was always keen to demonstrate a high level of status as we shall see further on.
Roger then chose to start up his own insurance company and opened up an office in the local high street. He employed a secretary and started to make money. However although the money started to come in, it flattened out very soon and begun to shrink. Over the following year all of Roger’s money went into the office, however, most was going out the computer in the back room as Roger had moved his desk out there and was now gambling. He told his relatives that he had devised a sure way to make profit from gambling. He tried to intellectualise (see A Thick Layer Of Denial) his way out but people were worried about what was going on, it felt very odd. His secretary sat there all day with nothing to do.
He continued to loose money until his family forced him to close down the office, sack the secretary and sell his house to pay his increasing debts. Roger had tried to re-create the world he felt comfortable in by creating an office and employing a secretary to do his tea and photocopying, i.e. to give him status. By recreating his world Roger was missing some important connections with reality, he was no salesman and he didn’t have a clue how to interface with customers because his corporate world kept him far away from the front office.
Eventually Roger became bankrupt, borrowed and lost $50,000 dollars from his brother, lying to hide where the money was going. Roger now works a couple of days a week although that is infrequent because he struggles with the low paid roles he has to endure when he feels he should be treated with far more status by being a manager at the factory where he works. He lives in a rented apartment in a cheap side of town and, whilst his wife is still with him, the strains on their marriage are showing as she is now having to work harder whilst Roger stays mainly at home and has taken up gambling again.
Roger is in complete denial. This situation is happening all over the world and effects people who on the outside are confident and intellectual, yet inside are vulnerable and are trying desperately to protect themselves from the reality of their situation.
Roger has avoided counselling, probably because he is worried he wont be able to cope with what he will have to face. Outside in the big wide world he has always been able to bullshit his way through by baffling the brains around him.
Think about yourself, what is the difference between the situation you are in and the situation you want to be in. Where does that desire come from? Is it about what you think ‘should’ be? The word ‘should’ signifies something important usually. By saying ‘should’ you are looking at the rules that you run your life by. ‘Things should be done that way, not this way, but why? Is it what you were brought up to understand and now are trying to continue? Have your rules become unhelpful or obsolete as you move through life and your environment changes? Maybe its time to question your set of rules, your outlook on life, your needs and try to adapt yourself rather than try to continually look for the world that adapts for you?
You can apply this to many things. Not being able to cope is a very broad statement that can mean you are not able to cope with many things some that can be easier to deal with than others. For example a relationship that you have tried so hard to make work but are now at a point where you cannot cope with how hard it is. Well, its time to stop denying the reality of the situation and choose to adapt yourself, not the relationship. Adapt by acknowledging that the relationship is not working as you would like and either accept it for what it really is, or ship out and separate. Are your expectations within a relationship too high, or are you trying to believe the relationship can be what you want it to be?
Are you trying to cope against the flood of challenges you have by still needing the status that you had in your last job? Maybe you are looking for some respect that your position, the name of your role gave you. Now maybe you are in an environment where respect is gained less through the name on your role and more by your abilities to succeed much like Roger.
Maybe you can’t cope because you are overwhelmed by all that you need to do in your life. You have so many plates juggling. Again, time to realise that in your world you cannot juggle so many plates. Perhaps the plates have all started to wobble at the same time so you have far more to do. Or you have been juggling for so long that you are fatigued, and feeling that you now cant carry on juggling so many plates. Therefore its time to realise this, stop kidding yourself you can continue or that you must continue as you have in the past or you will be a failure. Its time to adapt your view on the world and accept that you need to change your expectations and simplify your life.
Guy.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
.]]>“Life, and an awareness to experience it with, is blessing beyond compareâ€
(The Compact Cosmos, Matt Tweed, Wooden Books)
Here are some thoughts on life that I thought may be helpful for anyone who is wondering about the point of life as part of experiencing a mid-life crisis. I hope they are helpful to you.
I regularly recall one of the last scenes in Bladerunner (Copyright Warner Bros inc.) where Roy Batty watches over Deckard as he desperately clings onto a ledge to avoid certain death. Roy saves him at the last minute, an expression of respect for life even though Deckard is his enemy. Roy knows his life will soon end. In the last moments he thinks about his life. He tells Deckard of the wonderful things he has seen across the universe and expresses sadness that these memories are now about to die within him.
I found that scene tremendously powerful and find it epitomises the value of life and the frustration I have with the waste and loss that death inevitably causes. Roy’s last words are, “Time to die”.
I believe life is the most important possession that we own.
Yet the inevitability and the lack of control we have over death, perhaps seeing it as a process that takes place which no one has any control over can create a feeling. A fundamental law of a controlling force or simply a ‘universal law’ created through the logic and workings of the universe that then means it is time to die.
When one considers our own death, and its impact on our loved ones we may feel sad for them, missing them already, as if its our loss that we are taken away from them, perhaps missing seeing young ones grow up to be great people, witnessing their key life moments, wanting to support them to become great people that have a positive impact on other’s lives, as I hope I can be too.
Yet we must celebrate what we have seen, those events that have taken place that we were part of and which may have contributed to steering our loved ones in a way that shapes them better for the future we may not be here for.
We should feel thankful for these moments, now we are more certain of their preciousness. Most of those I have known who have died have simply disappeared and never returned; somehow leaving which fate decides is the last time I see them. Then inevitably someone tells me of their death which leaves me wondering when exactly was it I last saw them and what was the last thing I said to them.
I have feelings of guilt and wishing that if I had known it was the last time I would see them I would have said something more special to them. As I left my father-in-law he squeezed my hand hard, I didn’t know he was doing to die but he did. If I had known I could have told him how much he meant to me, yet I denied myself the opportunity.
I wonder what the last thing will be I will say to my children, and to friends and people close to me. When will be the last time I travel on a particular road, when will be the last time I see the house I was born in?
I resolve my feelings about death by making sense of life and some outcomes that help me follow my own path,
I want to respect and honour those I care for, for when they are gone I want to know I made a difference in their lives,
I want to always consider the last time I see someone is the goodbye I am just about to have with them, the inspiration of those that have gone could be the universal spark of life that transfers to another person.
I believe that life is so precious that we must try our hardest to not take it, especially our own.
Guy.
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©2012 Discover Aid: The Challenges Of Living In Your Midlife. All Rights Reserved.
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