From Midlife Crisis to Midlife Awakening

For the last couple months, my nighttime dreams have been about travel. I’m always trying to get somewhere, but have missed my flight, lost my luggage, or can’t find my driver’s license (well, that’s true) and I’m stuck trying to figure out how to get from A to B.

In other words, the route I’d planned didn’t work. It’s easy for me to see the metaphorical implications: I’ve lost my way, I’ve got baggage I can’t even see, and I need a new plan.

Sound familiar?

It’s a theme I hear a lot: I feel lost. I don’t know what I want anymore. But what people are really saying is: I don’t know who I am anymore—or, who I am isn’t who I want to be.

And that, my friends, is the perfect place to be for an “awakening.”

When the foundation we’ve built our lives on and the path we’ve planned no longer takes us where we want to go, it’s time for an awakening. We may realize we no longer want the life we have, or the rules we’ve been following don’t serve us any longer. It shakes us to the core so we remember what our core is.

This is not a party. These awakenings are often precipitated by earth-shattering life events: a job loss, a divorce, a health diagnosis. As horrible and painful as they are, unfortunately, they are often necessary to create an awakening. We don’t change a damn thing about ourselves and our lives until we have to in order to survive.

If life events are unfolding such that your world is well, imploding, it might be time to ask:

How is this happening FOR me?

What are the rules I can let go of?

Who (not what) do I want to be