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