Despite the volumes of books and magazine articles advising midlife baby boomers how to prolong or renew their health, happiness and vitality, I continue to hear many of them tell me about feelings of stagnation and loss. Or worse, a sense of being on "a long slide home," as one 50-something put it.
For example:
I think there's a core reason why such feelings and experiences aren't helped all that much by the midlife guides and programs out there: We've learned to experience midlife through a mentality that keeps us frozen within feelings of loss, regret and fears about change. That paralyzes our capacity for consciously-created actions, ones that can generate renewed energy, creativity and engagement in the period of life we're now living through.
What can help free you from that sense of sinking, sliding and stagnating -- the "big three" of midlife despair -- is first, learning to mentally reframe your current experience of loss, regret and the like. And secondly, using that new perspective to identify and undertake actions that serve something beyond preoccupation with yourself.
Reframe Your Perspective About Loss, Regret and Change
In our culture, we tend to equate change with loss and therefore experience it as painful and bad. Most of us can recall something that we wanted to "possess" forever -- a special moment, a period in a relationship, a particular experience. The difficult part is accepting those feelings while also embracing the reality that all life is in a state of transition, from one state to another. All is impermanent. But that awareness will activate your capacity for engaging life and creating positive experiences with what now exists at this moment in your life.
What we call "loss" is the conventional emotional experience of change, transition and the impermanence of life. It's your response to the desire to stay attached, holding on, to something that's ended or evolved in a different direction. It may be a relationship, your growing child, your physical state or some experience you once "had."
It's hard to see or accept the other side of that coin: that every "loss" contains a new experience as well, that you can do something with or learn from. For example, if you accept that your son or daughter is no longer a young child, that opens the door to building a different kind of relationship as he or she grows and matures. But you won't see or embrace that side of the coin if you're fixed on fear of letting go of what you've "lost."
The key, here, is to fully absorb your emotional experience of what's changing or evolving, including feelings of sadness or regret. But, at the same time, accept and feel gratitude for what now exists in the life you have at this moment in time. This enables you to continue to evolve, as I've written about in a previous post.
Fear of letting go and accepting change is powerful. It can fuel a desire to stay fixed, just as you are, even as you suffer -- whether from a specific loss or a sense of life having gone awry. You might feel as though it's safer to suffer, because at least that way you feel alive. Or worse, as one midlife person told me upon learning that he had a serious illness, "I don't mind dying, because I've never really lived."
Learning to reframe the experience of loss is hard. It requires embracing the unknown, what can look like darkness and uncertainty that lies in front of you. That fear can freeze you into unhealthy nostalgia and fantasy about what you once "had" or embellish in your mind a time in your life that might not have been quite as positive as you now want to recall. I frequently see examples of aging baby boomers who retreat into such nostalgic paralysis.
Fears of loss and change often lead to trying to cope with and manage decline, an attempt to slow down the impact of the involuntary events that are part of midlife change. You're probably well-acquainted with them: children growing up and leaving home, unexpected changes at work that impact your career, an aging body that doesn't look or act the same as it used to, unexpected injury, illness or death of friends or family members. Involuntary events and experiences are part of life in general but are often more visible and pronounced at midlife. However, when you equate managing involuntary events with a healthy midlife, you remain mired in fear and stagnation. You're unable to become unstuck and engage life with passion, energy and gratitude.
In contrast, healthy midlife builds from voluntary events and experiences that you set in motion. That builds the positive resiliency you need for life in today's world, as I've written about in some previous posts. It involves reframing how you envision loss and transition -- away from fear and holding on, away from a coping, reactive mentality in which you keep looking at what's behind you and toward a conscious vision of how to engage your powers and energies towards something larger than your self-interest. As the novelist Graham Greene wrote in "The Heart of the Matter," "One small act of daring can change one's entire conception of what is possible."
Live for More Than Your Ego
Much fear, sense of loss and focus on the involuntary events of life is rooted in fixation on your self, your ego, in the sense of too much self-interest, self-absorption and perhaps self-pity. What helps is expanding your perspective beyond that preoccupation and engaging your energies with a purpose or aim that's larger than just "you." In that sense, learn to "forget" yourself.
This is a shift toward being highly engaged with your mental, emotional, creative and other powers, yet disengaged at the same time. That is, you let go of ego-expectations for "getting" something for yourself because of your acceptance and awareness that change is ongoing and continuous. Of course, psychological health throughout adulthood, not just midlife, includes flowing with the involuntary changes and experiences but, more importantly, focusing your powers on voluntary actions. The latter enable you to continue evolving all of your life's dimensions -- emotionally, spiritually, creatively, spiritually, intellectually.
Ironically, the failures and losses you experience along the way into midlife are helpful allies. Those experiences can strengthen courage to undertake new actions because you've learned something about what works and what doesn't, and why. A healthy midlife perspective is to think of "failures" as ineffective solutions to problems at the time, and "losses" as a transition into a new opportunity contained within the reality that now exists.
I find that the most energized, engaged and positive midlife men and women share some features. Keep in mind that most everyone has these capacities:
Here's an exercise that can help you apply an expanded perspective about loss, change and self-preoccupation to actions that serve something larger than "getting" for yourself:
Imagine that you've been informed that you have just a few years left to live. From that vantage point, reflect on what you might want to alter now -- or wish you had altered -- regarding your values, perspectives, priorities and actions. Don't compile a list of "50 things I want to do before I die." Look beyond that kind of self-interest, toward:
Douglas LaBier, Ph.D., a business psychologist and psychotherapist, is Director of the Center for Progressive Development in Washington, D.C. You may contact him at dlabier@CenterProgressive.org. To learn more about him click here.
Follow Douglas LaBier on Twitter: www.twitter.com/douglaslabier
Vivian Diller, Ph.D.: Fashion for the Ages
Baby Boomers fear outliving retirement savings - USATODAY.com
Baby boomers becoming more obese, could result in high Medicare ...
Baby boomers have nothing to fear but fear itself - Pittsburgh ...
Baby Boomers Fear Retirement: AP Poll | ThirdAge
Baby boomer cinema: Hollywood's mid-life crisis | Film | The Guardian
How to deal with Hurricanes, Earthquakes, and other Disasters here: http://newheavenonearth.wordpress.com/2011/03/26/how-to-deal-with-tsunamis-and-earthquakes/
For over 10 years I lived and froze in my darker past during the late 90s up to 2009- losing my 20-year-old son to a jet-ski accident, his-and-her cancers (my husband and I 5 years apart), financial woes caused by becoming each others main caregivers in lieu of continued working careers, social isolation through several relocations around the U.S., etc.
Finally, I understand, as you've said, that losses and failures serve no purpose moving forward - but focusing on voluntary actions and events will bring us self-satisfaction.
Now, my days are consumed with interviewing, co-writing and assembling a book about us baby boomers (my professional interest for years) as co-author of upcoming Once Upon Our Times: 65 Years Growing Up Baby Boomer.
Now, I have many positive feelings that not only will I leave my book's footprint of stories and interviews about us boomers, but that I will finally be an "author" of an idea which has swirled through my brain and body for many a year. My new M.O. is you can do it if you want to.
Thanks, Doug for being an inspiration. I've already printed your article to reflect upon as needed!
Sincerely,
Sharon Sultan Cutler
www.OnceUponOurTimes.com
There's still a lot we can do, boomers will rewrite mid-life and beyond as it's perceived nowadays.
So many of us are doing amazing things, and we continue to grow up and develop as human beings.
looking forward to reading your book.
I've experienced the feelings of loss, not knowing what to do, lack of hope, my bouts with depression, the "" what know?"question.
The solution for me has been to try to keep paddling, one foot in front of the other. In times of despair, I just "keep paddling".
I've decided to count my blessings, forget about the losses, keep my faith in the future, and leave each moment as if there's no tomorrow.
No one lives a perfect life, we all have areas in which life could have turned out better, but we all have our blessings to count.
I wake-up every day and I am thankful for another day. Hope never dies. But now, today is good as it is.
This article tells me it is time to start doing the things I've wanted to do for decades but couldn't for various reasons. Since those reasons are no longer there to stop me, I guess that means it's time for me to go ahead, follow my dreams and aspirations, but I'm scared. So maybe if I start out slowly and make one change at a time, I'll eventually get there and feel a real sense of accomplishment and fulfullment in life.
I remember not long ago a senator's husband went traveling to the Himalayan Mountains; when he got there, he told his wife by cell phone that it was the most beautiful place in the world to be and later he died there as well. At first, I thought, how sad that he died there without his wife with him and in a strange place so far away from home, but then I figured if he had not gone there, he probably would have died in a place where he would not have wanted to be, like in a hospital with tubes in his arms and hooked up to a breathing machine. He spent his last day of life where he thought was the most beautiful place in the world to be, Mount Everest.
Great stuff and it seems to me that many of the people you are speaking of are focused relentlessly on what they don't want ... what they fear ... what is going wrong in their lives. That is only natural given our shared neuroanatomy AND I find that living your best life with elegance and grace at any age depends on doing "Awareness 180". Here's what I mean ...
Focus on what you WANT ...not what you don't want. Use your Problems to find the unexpressed Dream in the background.
When you are clear on what you want ... get ON IT ... get actively involved in the act of creation in your life.
What is going right?
What are you actively creating?
Those are the questions to live in as we age.
My two cents,
Dike
Dike Drummond MD
http://www.threehourmidlifecrisis.com
thanks for your two cents, always wise comments:)
Just a quick note here:
One of the basic premises of what I teach to people in midlife is how to overcome the limitations and "presets" of this human organism we inhabit.
You may have heard the quote, "We are spiritual beings on a human journey". I think that is true AND the human body that contains us has biases based on its form and structure.
One of these is we will always be much more aware of our problems and the things we don't want ... as opposed to what we want. This is a function of the structure of our central nervous system.
And the only way to get what you want in life is to know what you want and "go for it" on some level. This flies in the face of how we are built at the cellular level. AND It is a skill you can learn.
That is the foundation for my earlier comments.
Keep up the great work,
Dike
Dike Drummond MD
http://www.threehourmidlifecrisis.com