Discovering yourself at midlife
You may be thinking there's nothing really to discover about
you. Here you are with years of experience, a mature adult with
fairly fixed habits and a routine for living life. You may say
"of course, I know myself, I know all there is to know about me!
Yet sometime, don't you yearn to be adventurous and discover
new aspects of yourself like you did as a teen-ager, or to be
called "young at heart"? I love the statement Doris uses to
describe her husband Mike, "he is just a big kid." She follows
that with "but if he ever grows up, that's it!"
As you get older it becomes more and more critical that you
maintain an aura or spirit of playfulness in your life. Part of
that playfulness is welcoming and creating change in your life.
It is literally what keeps you young. Whether you realize it or
not, all of us are in a state of becoming. You'll never reach
the point of being a finished product.
When you realize that you are always changing and always
becoming, it makes sense to have something you call "having a
team meeting with myself." Find out what is really important to
you, yet is still left undone. When you get this information you
can use it to give yourself a whole new level of control and
ability in directing the changes in your life.
To get this information can be a challenge. Like most of us you
have spent most of your adult life in a state of compliance. You
felt you had to satisfy the criteria for education, doing what
ever high school, college, or university required of you for
graduation. Then you entered the work force and complied with
the requirements of your career in order to support your family
and yourself. There are many aspects of you that can be
described using words such as perseverance, discipline and
responsibility. I ask you though, do these words really describe
you or do they describe more your reaction to what you feel you
had to do to be accepted in the adult world?
There may be a whole new set of adjectives that could be used to
describe you if you felt you were free to explore new facets of
yourself. Adjectives like adventurous, spontaneous and creative
might fit now when there is less pressure and need to conform to
external pressures.
Doing some self discovery doesn't have to be a response to a
midlife crisis, but an opportunity to express more of yourself
than what you have in your past. Now is the time to look to look
at what retirement means to you. Maybe there are new paths,
rather than the traditional retirement for you to follow that
would give you greater satisfaction and a sense of purpose.
For instance, when was the last time you pondered what you
wanted to do in life, like you did at the age of 10 when someone
asked you what you wanted to be when you grew up? Imagine
feeling like you did at the age of 15 or 16 in high school where
there seemed to be to be so many possibilities that it was hard
to focus sufficiently to make a career choice. The idea of so
many alternatives may feel onerous when you recall the idea "you
cannot teach an old dog new tricks." I assure you this saying
has nothing to do with the "old dog" being able to learn. It
does address how much desire the "old dog" has to learn!
If you are in normal mental-health there's nothing that blocks
your ability to learn, however there is the inertia to deal
with. You know the physics principle - an object has a tendency
to remain in its current state either at rest or in motion.
Applying this principle means that you naturally resist change.
You have a tendency to continue doing the things you usually do.
Your behavior remains relatively constant and your habits carry
you through a lot of your day.
This gives you considerable efficiency but remember you're not a
machine and efficiency is not necessarily your goal. As a human
being you were created with a natural inclination and purpose to
grow and expand your awareness.
So what do you need to do to overcome this inertia and allow
your desire to push you into action? Here are some points to
consider:
* You are considering changes because you want to expand your
life. Change does not have to suggest there is something wrong
with you or that you are flawed or deficient! Feeling you are
correcting negative aspects of self will cause you to restrict
yourself and to feel disempowered. What you want is to feel an
expansion in your energy and an expansion of yourself.
* Dwell on what you feel are your positive traits that can
always be expanded on.
* You can only do one thing at a time, so if you are focused on
your positive traits your perceived negative traits will not
have an opportunity to be expressed.
* You are always in a state of becoming, regardless of your age
you are not a finished product, so rekindle the sense of
adventure.
Every discoverer has to have a sense of adventure, so you need
to look at ways that allow you to open your mind to new areas of
excitement and growth. To do this it's necessary to develop a
different mindset, and the best way to do that is to change some
of your routines and do things slightly differently. Some simple
aids in doing this are:
* Return home a different route than usual.
* Put your pants or slacks on with a different foot first.
* The next meal you have out in a restaurant choose something
different from the menu that you haven't had before, or if you
eat out frequently, every third meal try out a new entr