Article:

Not feeling quite “yourself”?
Relax. It’s natural.

Do you find yourself bored with things that used to excite you? Having urges to behave in ways you wouldn’t have dreamed of a few years ago?

Welcome to midlife! It’s natural that after 20 or more years as adults, doing certain things and acting certain ways, our psyches want to shake it up a bit. Think of it this way: we’ve been putting a lot of energy into achieving particular goals in our careers, relationships and family life. To do that, we’ve developed and used some aspects of our personality, while other parts have got short shrift. Now that we’re in midlife, the neglected parts may want more airtime.

Example: a high-energy, career-driven businessman starts becoming more quiet and introspective. To the astonishment of family and friends, he learns meditation and starts spending weekends at a yoga retreat.

Or there’s the full-time mother who has devoted years to creating a nurturing home for her children. Once the nest is empty, she’s out in the world launching her own successful business. And while she used to be noted for her quiet patience, she now acts like a deal-maker in a hurry. Who knew?

Like finding new rooms

Sometimes these changes feel exciting, satisfying, even liberating. They can also be surprising, disorienting and scary. Psychologist Carl Jung called the previously unexpressed parts of ourselves, “the shadow”. Sounds ominous. But here’s an alternative metaphor: at midlife, you discover your house has a number of rooms you’ve never been in before. Their function and style of decoration are very different than the rooms you’ve been inhabiting for the last two decades. How fresh and exciting to have these new options of places to spend your time.

Sometimes these new “rooms” are more aligned with who we really are. Earlier in our lives, when setting out on our careers, many of us made choices that were highly (even totally) influenced by parents and others, and by our sense of what “society” expected of us. As we rediscover ourselves at midlife, we have the chance to reassess how much of what we’re doing and how we’re being is meaningful to us now—and how much is ready to be discarded.

Successful strategies

A few words of advice from folks who’ve already been through this:

  • Accept that these changes are a natural part of the midlife process. There’s nothing wrong with you.
  • Give yourself time. Don’t expect yourself to solve “the rest of your life” overnight.
  • Allow the grief. You’re saying goodbye to some old aspects of your life so that the new can unfold.
  • Ask yourself: What’s truly meaningful to me now (rather than what used to matter)? Get up-to-date with yourself. It’s okay to have changed.
  • Explore. Experiment. Try new things; test having different priorities; be yourself in unfamiliar ways.
  • Find understanding support—whether from an older mentor, friends, or a professional coach. You don’t have to do this alone.