Do I Have A Midlife Crisis? (And What To Do About It!)

What is a midlife crisis, and how do you know if you have some of the symptoms or a full-blown affliction? Oh, and what do you do about it?

Let's be clear: I cannot hope to fully address this topic, especially the solution, in this short article. What I hope to bring to it, instead, is a perspective or way of looking at it that is different from what I have seen before. With that said…

To have a midlife crisis requires you to have some self-awareness so that you can notice that something is “off” and “off” by enough that it is significant. This can occur either because the affliction grows to the point that you can’t ignore it anymore or because the affliction has not changed, but your self-awareness has increased such that you now notice something that has been there for a while/all along. Certainly, some of both could be occurring. We certainly all see other people walking around that, metaphorically, are in a bit of a daze. They don’t seem to notice that their house is on fire even with all the smoke and heat. This is lack of awareness. When the heat or smoke get significant enough, all of a sudden they notice. That is the affliction growing to the point that it gets noticed. So, what are the heat and smoke?

In my metaphor, the heat and smoke represent significant unmet expectations and needs leading to dissatisfaction. When the dissatisfaction gets significant enough we wake up to it. But the dissatisfaction can also occur upon achieving our goals when we discover that something is still lacking, missing. For many this realization occurs midlife, hence the midlife label, but it can happen at any age. But whenever it occurs, we become, in a word, lost.

So, the basic symptoms are dissatisfaction with life coupled with the awareness that one doesn’t know what to do about it. One can feel “flat”, without zest. The things that once fed you don’t seem to anymore. There can be an increasing focus on things in the past, nostalgia, remembering the “good times”. Whatever the specifics might be, the key point is the dissatisfaction one is experiencing.

Life dissatisfactions affects both genders. We see both men and women attempt to address the void by filling it with things or activities. Behaviors change, wild expenditures are made, marriages left in tatters, and attempts are made to turn back the clock and recapture the hope we once had in earlier times. These efforts not only do not produce lasting solutions, they may amplify the dissatisfactions. People can and do fall into depression. The failed attempts are born out of a lack of self-awareness, a lack of understanding of what is really going on and what to do about it.

The only solution to lack of awareness is to grow it, increase it, expand it. For many, perhaps most, there is a complicating factor. They really do not yet know what they want. They just know what they don’t want. To the degree that this “crisis” took time to develop, it will usually take time to resolve. This is perhaps an overly simplistic (not necessarily helpful) explanation for the solution, but it is accurate: One needs to “grow.”

What seems to be an almost inevitable “error” in the approach to “growing” is the expectation that the desired fulfillment will appear as one crosses some static finish line. No. At least in my experience, displacement of dissatisfaction with fulfillment is not the result of crossing some finish line. Instead, it is about engaging in a never-ending journey. And, again, in my experience this journey is more internal. For me any external, tangible goals I might set are always in the service of the internal goals and expansion.

Are you connecting with any of this? Do you feel dissatisfied despite achieving what you’d hoped to? Is the dream that got you to here, not enough any more? Are you spending too much time just going through the motions? Share in the comments below your thoughts on dissatisfaction and achieving what you thought would bring you happiness. Or, share what you needed to do to resolve the voids and regain what was missing. Let me know if you would like a part two on how to begin a growth journey.