Midlife

Wow, I’ve been looking for this particular report to help make sense of the angst of so many white-collar workers 45 years old and older. Highly recommend you go to this website and download the report.

What if I have become all that I am meant to be? When this question wormed into my subconscious, I pretended not to notice. I put a little more effort into my omelet. I have countless strategies to stop the tape from looping in my head.

On the one hand, it’s depressing to read the stats of this Fast Company article on how many Americans are struggling with midlife. On the other hand, it’s encouraging to see this kind of sociological overview in a popular business magazine.

Many of you are familiar with recent social science research that has shown a U-curve of happiness in which adult life satisfaction supposedly dips to its nadir around age 47.2 (your mileage may vary). The forties have been a historically treacherous and ultimately triumphant decade when mid-lifers feel a declining sense of happiness, only to start improving in the latter part of that decade.

I have finally moved into my new digs, smack bang in the middle of the city and it feels good.... but if I’m honest, it also feels a smidge confronting. Maybe that’s because I have officially stepped into that ‘new chapter’ that I’ve been pontificating about for the past few years and now I need to actually make good on all those grand plans I have for the second half of life.

The onset of a healthy midlife is that moment when you fall into joyous relief that you don’t have to define the second half of your life based upon someone else’s definition of success. You’ve come to realize that “pursuing” happiness is not nearly as prudent as “practicing” contentment.

In the course of three days, two well-known NY Times Op-Ed columnists recently wrote columns that sounded like they were written on the beach in front of MEA’s campus. David Brooks pondered the value of wisdom and deep listening, Wisdom Isn’t What You Think It Is.

Thank you to so many of you who send me gems like this one from Wisdom Well subscriber, Michael Louie, who found this lovely poem written by Mario de Andrade (San Paolo 1893-1945) who was a poet, novelist, essayist and musicologist. He was one of the founders of Brazilian modernism.

...Unceremoniously stripped naked and laid bare for all to see (or so I thought). It doesn’t always happen in midlife. I’ve spoken to many who have themselves experienced this very same event in their thirties, some even in their late twenties, but for me and thousands of others all over the world, and my guess perhaps some of you reading this, it happened in midlife.

I love this TEDx UCLA talk from brand strategist Pash Pashkow, who humorously helps us see that a company rebrand isn’t all that different from the rebrand we might want to experience in midlife. He reminds us that many companies come out stronger on the other side of a rebrand based upon asking the following three questions: