Thanks everyone, for reading! I am curious to hear, for anyone who has a "Midlife Crisis" (or like it) before, how did it affect you? Was the result a net positive or negative?
P.S. I also created an addendum of "5 specific ways I got through my own Midlife Crisis" that people seem to find helpful:
Great piece! A few thoughts I had around this topic, just throwing them in. I think the whole midlife crisis term could get a reframe if we normalized that life is a continuous reinvention of oneself and that usually comes with some hard work at the beginning. Also probably the ‚default path‘ story plays its role that it happens in such a scale - so many find themselves on paths not made for them and hopefully the big awakening comes at some stage! I think the thirties is where for most people everything comes together and life just gets so overwhelming, forcing some to stop and rethink. Can we not design life differently so that not all factors hit in the same ten years?
Funnily, also all the default path milestones get reached until in your thirties. And then? You‘re out of a blueprint if you’re on it.
Iwana - it's very ironic that, for some (many?), when you arrive at milestones, they lose their value. I wrote 2 weeks ago: "There’s nothing quite like spending decades building a fortress of identity, only to have it crumble once you finally settle in."
I also agree that normalizing these type of times in our lives, almost to be expected, are a key way we can flourish during these periods. We might be better at managing them too...
Rick, you’ve painted an interesting picture of what goes on for many. Yeah, we need to remember that we create our lives, for better or worse. We are all “nobody” in the grand scheme of things, so we need to make sure we spend our days doing things that make us proud of who we are, despite that. And, I do think that when we are young we may chase financial independence to the exclusion of other fulfilling things like relationships, health, etc, thinking we will have time for those “luxuries” when we aren’t “poor”. Peter Attia has a great idea to plan for the centenarian decathlon by writing down what you want to be able to do when you are 100, and start training now. That’s kind of how I’ve been thinking about all aspects of my life since deciding to reinvent myself. As my nobody self, what do I want my life to look like and what do I have to do today to start moving toward that vision for myself. So far, it’s meant spending a lot of time laughing with my husband, eating better, going to the gym, getting outdoors several times a week, hanging out with my kids (when they aren’t too busy), and spending countless hours drawing and painting.
Thanks Sara for sharing your personal story and perspective.
I love the Attia's "backcasting" exercise. I've thought about that myself, too, in terms of: "if I wanted to have the most fulfilling/enriching/meaningful life possible (before I die), what would that look like? Where would I focus? Where would I avoid?"
I frequently get caught up playing small, insignificant games that won't matter when my time is done. Or I'll really go overboard over-optimizing one thing, at the sacrifice of many others.
That's why think important life moments, like a midlife crisis (but there are others before and after), where it's important to take stock of where you've been and where you want to go.
Funny, isn't it, to have Sara's and my perspective side by side here! (I just noticed that she had commented to.) Sara really has it figured out and I admire her a lot for how she is working through her life right now. Me? A lot of what I'm doing is farting around, trying to find places where I can engage in the flow of life in ways that feel right (I'm assisting in a community college math class right now and really enjoying that). One of them is to provide as much support to Sara as I can: I do the cooking, the shopping, much of the yard work, because it allows her the mental space to focus on developing mastery in this new area, and I have such a huge respect for this process of developing mastery, even more as I watch it unfold in her studio.
But for me, there's no "right" way to do this, there's just the right way for you.
(I never imagined being in the middle of a married couple's comments... quite the responsibility here 😅)
I do think there is space to find meaning through others' pursuit of meaning. Think of all the greats who needed assistants so they could focus on their tasks. I don't see anything wrong with that or even lower.
There might even be good reason to help the greatest among us thrive more. Raise the ceiling of some instead of raising the floor of everyone.
Yeah, it’s over-indexing on one thing that I think we get better at not doing as we age…mostly because things start to break down and we just can’t ignore them as we try to push forward monomaniacally.
I agree. Over-indexing seems to be the heart of the matter. The difficulty is we barely even know we're over-indexing. We probably THINK we are doing the right thing. Thus, the importance of pulling our heads up at some point.
This is dead on. Glad to have found my way to your work, Rick. I was hit hard at 38 too, as a banking executive husband with two young kids. Then again at 42–44, which is now. Guitar/playing live music: check. Wrote book: check. Do I feel like more of a nobody than ever? Check. 🤣
I see it as more of midlife realignment than a crisis, although it definitely can and does show up that way. As you say, the real risk is in not feeling it.
If you’re interested in a more esoteric take on how midlife may be a natural biological phenomenon, check out Astrology and Kundalini by Barbara Hand Clow. It’s chock full of fascinating insight, don’t let the woo title fool you.
Dude, your blog has nailed it again, and it is almost like you described me 2 years ago!
I was aged 37 in a good role, stable position, really good wage. Just had a boss who was tyrannical micromanager. So I left, took a 20% pay cut, and I'm now taking even more of a pay cut with a cool thing we have in the UK called "Unpaid Parental Leave", where any employed parent can effectively take 4 weeks off per child, per year and it just comes off their wage. So I'm taking 8 weeks off unpaid, as well as my normal 27 days holiday so a) spend more time with the kids, b) spend more time with the wife and c) spend more time on myself (which lack of is probably the biggest cause of a Midlife Crisis in the first place!)
- Tends to happen to men who were pro-social, responsibility orientated for most if not all of their adult lives. Boys who made their parents and teachers happy, then they were long working hard working employees, often-thankless servants of their wives and children. Behaving as they should, and as society rewarded them to behave. Measuring themselves by other people's yardsticks.
- The other factor is those that have a high tendance to delayed-gratification (hello!!!)
- Midlife crises are more prevalent amongst men. Not saying that women don't have them, it's just less common.
- Tends to occur around 40 as there's the first sense of mortality (elderly parents as you mention in your post).
- This then leads to the realisation that you've been living your life to the tune of other people as well as the fact that you can't delay gratification indefinitely.
- 'Fast cars and even faster women' looks like teenage fantasies because this is when these people's selfishness stopped working, most likely in their teens.
- Selfishness is not a bad thing. Yes it can be taken too far, but there's lots of people who are not selfish enough about their own happiness and wellbeing (think health/wealth over mindless consumption)
What I am now doing:
- Still working but in a much less stressful job
- Carving out my time more. Taking a lot more time off work to spend it on those I love as well as myself
- Blogging (tick!) not for profit but for connection and cathartic reasons
- Started playing guitar (tick!) I've always been a (bad) guitar player but have taken it back up in the past few years
I'm amazed that amongst the FIRE community that midlife crises are not more widely talked about, as these are a group that IMHO are the most likely to suffer from it, they have been acting selflessly, delaying gratification for a good portion of their life. Thank you again for your work!
The selfishness angle is particularly interesting. I will check out the video you sent over.
From my own side, I do think I lost touch with my own sense of happiness and purpose, in favor of "what the world wanted." Sometimes that's not bad, but when it pulls you in for so long, you can really lose touch with who you are.
My belief (slightly unconfirmed) is that we need these periods of "selfishness" that allow us to get back in touch with ourselves... and thus, be better to re-engage with the world better (Tom Pendergast made a similar point in his comments here). Maybe it's in the form of more weekly sabbaths, a longer sabbatical, or points of stillness where we can pick our heads up from the busyness to really assess what's going on, and recalibrate if necessary.
"Oh, they're just having a mid-life crisis..." I've heard this said. But who says it. SOMEONE ELSE. Also, likely someone who wants the actor to stay status quo. Great essay - you hit on this point, but I continue to discount the issue at play here. My mission is changing, and it challenges other's script of who I am. Thanks for the excellent writing.
Thanks Jason for sharing your perspective. It's so wild we dismiss these type of periods of questioning and confusion. Okay, fine, not everyone experiences them and certainly they won't happen at the same time. But c'mon, we know enough about how people evolve over a lifetime to know these type of challenges are expected. It's a shame we're all so unprepared for the obvious.
Without a doubt a net positive. I think now that I was fooling myself about my importance, and though it was hard to give it up, I feel that my current sense of my own importance (or lack thereof) is far better attuned to reality and far healthier for me and my relations to others. In other words, I feel utterly content with my own insignificance and thus better able to interact with others in a more authentic way.
Hmmm... that's interesting how being honest regarding your own level of significance could improve your life (rather than send you into despair).
It's a bit counterintuitive. Because someone else would never tell you that! Say, for example, you were anxious about it, someone would reassure you with a: "no, no, Rick... you ARE so important to this world!" And you'd go back to believing, or wanting to believe, in that illusion.
Yeah, I see what you mean about that .... I think a really big component of my post-work adjustment was becoming brutally honest with myself (or, to put it another way, to stop bullshitting myself). I simply can not sustain the illusion that I'm anything special. But this is not self-pity and I will not countenance being consoled about my belief. It doesn't bring me down. If anything, it makes me feel like anything is possible.
This article came at the right time for me. I’ve been struggling for 2 years with increasing physical issues and aches. The issues won’t quickly go away but last night I decided that I really need to deal with the mental implications. And then this article showed up in my inbox!
My wife and I have been plowing money into improving our health. It’s probably been our biggest increase in expenses the last 2 years (e.g. quality food, trainers, supplements, avoiding microplastics, testing, you name it).
But like the longevity movement, I wonder how much of it is true wellness vs. denial of death…
Thanks everyone, for reading! I am curious to hear, for anyone who has a "Midlife Crisis" (or like it) before, how did it affect you? Was the result a net positive or negative?
P.S. I also created an addendum of "5 specific ways I got through my own Midlife Crisis" that people seem to find helpful:
https://substack.com/@rickfoerster/note/c-116773073?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=3uceyo
Great piece! A few thoughts I had around this topic, just throwing them in. I think the whole midlife crisis term could get a reframe if we normalized that life is a continuous reinvention of oneself and that usually comes with some hard work at the beginning. Also probably the ‚default path‘ story plays its role that it happens in such a scale - so many find themselves on paths not made for them and hopefully the big awakening comes at some stage! I think the thirties is where for most people everything comes together and life just gets so overwhelming, forcing some to stop and rethink. Can we not design life differently so that not all factors hit in the same ten years?
Funnily, also all the default path milestones get reached until in your thirties. And then? You‘re out of a blueprint if you’re on it.
Iwana - it's very ironic that, for some (many?), when you arrive at milestones, they lose their value. I wrote 2 weeks ago: "There’s nothing quite like spending decades building a fortress of identity, only to have it crumble once you finally settle in."
I also agree that normalizing these type of times in our lives, almost to be expected, are a key way we can flourish during these periods. We might be better at managing them too...
Yeah I agree, thanks for sharing! Happy week!
Rick, you’ve painted an interesting picture of what goes on for many. Yeah, we need to remember that we create our lives, for better or worse. We are all “nobody” in the grand scheme of things, so we need to make sure we spend our days doing things that make us proud of who we are, despite that. And, I do think that when we are young we may chase financial independence to the exclusion of other fulfilling things like relationships, health, etc, thinking we will have time for those “luxuries” when we aren’t “poor”. Peter Attia has a great idea to plan for the centenarian decathlon by writing down what you want to be able to do when you are 100, and start training now. That’s kind of how I’ve been thinking about all aspects of my life since deciding to reinvent myself. As my nobody self, what do I want my life to look like and what do I have to do today to start moving toward that vision for myself. So far, it’s meant spending a lot of time laughing with my husband, eating better, going to the gym, getting outdoors several times a week, hanging out with my kids (when they aren’t too busy), and spending countless hours drawing and painting.
Thanks Sara for sharing your personal story and perspective.
I love the Attia's "backcasting" exercise. I've thought about that myself, too, in terms of: "if I wanted to have the most fulfilling/enriching/meaningful life possible (before I die), what would that look like? Where would I focus? Where would I avoid?"
I frequently get caught up playing small, insignificant games that won't matter when my time is done. Or I'll really go overboard over-optimizing one thing, at the sacrifice of many others.
That's why think important life moments, like a midlife crisis (but there are others before and after), where it's important to take stock of where you've been and where you want to go.
Funny, isn't it, to have Sara's and my perspective side by side here! (I just noticed that she had commented to.) Sara really has it figured out and I admire her a lot for how she is working through her life right now. Me? A lot of what I'm doing is farting around, trying to find places where I can engage in the flow of life in ways that feel right (I'm assisting in a community college math class right now and really enjoying that). One of them is to provide as much support to Sara as I can: I do the cooking, the shopping, much of the yard work, because it allows her the mental space to focus on developing mastery in this new area, and I have such a huge respect for this process of developing mastery, even more as I watch it unfold in her studio.
But for me, there's no "right" way to do this, there's just the right way for you.
(I never imagined being in the middle of a married couple's comments... quite the responsibility here 😅)
I do think there is space to find meaning through others' pursuit of meaning. Think of all the greats who needed assistants so they could focus on their tasks. I don't see anything wrong with that or even lower.
There might even be good reason to help the greatest among us thrive more. Raise the ceiling of some instead of raising the floor of everyone.
Yeah, it’s over-indexing on one thing that I think we get better at not doing as we age…mostly because things start to break down and we just can’t ignore them as we try to push forward monomaniacally.
I agree. Over-indexing seems to be the heart of the matter. The difficulty is we barely even know we're over-indexing. We probably THINK we are doing the right thing. Thus, the importance of pulling our heads up at some point.
This is dead on. Glad to have found my way to your work, Rick. I was hit hard at 38 too, as a banking executive husband with two young kids. Then again at 42–44, which is now. Guitar/playing live music: check. Wrote book: check. Do I feel like more of a nobody than ever? Check. 🤣
I see it as more of midlife realignment than a crisis, although it definitely can and does show up that way. As you say, the real risk is in not feeling it.
If you’re interested in a more esoteric take on how midlife may be a natural biological phenomenon, check out Astrology and Kundalini by Barbara Hand Clow. It’s chock full of fascinating insight, don’t let the woo title fool you.
Best,
Eric
Dude, your blog has nailed it again, and it is almost like you described me 2 years ago!
I was aged 37 in a good role, stable position, really good wage. Just had a boss who was tyrannical micromanager. So I left, took a 20% pay cut, and I'm now taking even more of a pay cut with a cool thing we have in the UK called "Unpaid Parental Leave", where any employed parent can effectively take 4 weeks off per child, per year and it just comes off their wage. So I'm taking 8 weeks off unpaid, as well as my normal 27 days holiday so a) spend more time with the kids, b) spend more time with the wife and c) spend more time on myself (which lack of is probably the biggest cause of a Midlife Crisis in the first place!)
I remember seeing this video a few years ago (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO9SIEvxDf0) and it resonated a lot with me, especially on the prevalent cause factors:
- Tends to happen to men who were pro-social, responsibility orientated for most if not all of their adult lives. Boys who made their parents and teachers happy, then they were long working hard working employees, often-thankless servants of their wives and children. Behaving as they should, and as society rewarded them to behave. Measuring themselves by other people's yardsticks.
- The other factor is those that have a high tendance to delayed-gratification (hello!!!)
- Midlife crises are more prevalent amongst men. Not saying that women don't have them, it's just less common.
- Tends to occur around 40 as there's the first sense of mortality (elderly parents as you mention in your post).
- This then leads to the realisation that you've been living your life to the tune of other people as well as the fact that you can't delay gratification indefinitely.
- 'Fast cars and even faster women' looks like teenage fantasies because this is when these people's selfishness stopped working, most likely in their teens.
- Selfishness is not a bad thing. Yes it can be taken too far, but there's lots of people who are not selfish enough about their own happiness and wellbeing (think health/wealth over mindless consumption)
What I am now doing:
- Still working but in a much less stressful job
- Carving out my time more. Taking a lot more time off work to spend it on those I love as well as myself
- Blogging (tick!) not for profit but for connection and cathartic reasons
- Started playing guitar (tick!) I've always been a (bad) guitar player but have taken it back up in the past few years
I'm amazed that amongst the FIRE community that midlife crises are not more widely talked about, as these are a group that IMHO are the most likely to suffer from it, they have been acting selflessly, delaying gratification for a good portion of their life. Thank you again for your work!
Wow, what a valuable comment!
The selfishness angle is particularly interesting. I will check out the video you sent over.
From my own side, I do think I lost touch with my own sense of happiness and purpose, in favor of "what the world wanted." Sometimes that's not bad, but when it pulls you in for so long, you can really lose touch with who you are.
My belief (slightly unconfirmed) is that we need these periods of "selfishness" that allow us to get back in touch with ourselves... and thus, be better to re-engage with the world better (Tom Pendergast made a similar point in his comments here). Maybe it's in the form of more weekly sabbaths, a longer sabbatical, or points of stillness where we can pick our heads up from the busyness to really assess what's going on, and recalibrate if necessary.
Thanks again for the super thoughtful comment.
btw, just watched that video... it was very good!
"Oh, they're just having a mid-life crisis..." I've heard this said. But who says it. SOMEONE ELSE. Also, likely someone who wants the actor to stay status quo. Great essay - you hit on this point, but I continue to discount the issue at play here. My mission is changing, and it challenges other's script of who I am. Thanks for the excellent writing.
Thanks Jason for sharing your perspective. It's so wild we dismiss these type of periods of questioning and confusion. Okay, fine, not everyone experiences them and certainly they won't happen at the same time. But c'mon, we know enough about how people evolve over a lifetime to know these type of challenges are expected. It's a shame we're all so unprepared for the obvious.
I was certainly the same. Hopefully we all come to this realization. Keep up the great exploration. I hope to post some of my own.
Sure enough, this sounds like exactly the experience I’ve been through … and am now safely on the other side of.
Thanks Tom. Was it a net positive or negative experience, now being on the other side?
Without a doubt a net positive. I think now that I was fooling myself about my importance, and though it was hard to give it up, I feel that my current sense of my own importance (or lack thereof) is far better attuned to reality and far healthier for me and my relations to others. In other words, I feel utterly content with my own insignificance and thus better able to interact with others in a more authentic way.
Hmmm... that's interesting how being honest regarding your own level of significance could improve your life (rather than send you into despair).
It's a bit counterintuitive. Because someone else would never tell you that! Say, for example, you were anxious about it, someone would reassure you with a: "no, no, Rick... you ARE so important to this world!" And you'd go back to believing, or wanting to believe, in that illusion.
Hmmm...
Yeah, I see what you mean about that .... I think a really big component of my post-work adjustment was becoming brutally honest with myself (or, to put it another way, to stop bullshitting myself). I simply can not sustain the illusion that I'm anything special. But this is not self-pity and I will not countenance being consoled about my belief. It doesn't bring me down. If anything, it makes me feel like anything is possible.
This article came at the right time for me. I’ve been struggling for 2 years with increasing physical issues and aches. The issues won’t quickly go away but last night I decided that I really need to deal with the mental implications. And then this article showed up in my inbox!
My wife and I have been plowing money into improving our health. It’s probably been our biggest increase in expenses the last 2 years (e.g. quality food, trainers, supplements, avoiding microplastics, testing, you name it).
But like the longevity movement, I wonder how much of it is true wellness vs. denial of death…