One Person's Midlife Crisis Is Another's Midlife Reassessment

One Official LifeTwo Tenet™ (kidding about the ™) is that a midlife crisis is usually not a crisis, and is often a catalyst for positive change.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review has a nice piece this week that supports our view. Their Kellie Gormly writes in "Midlife Minus the Crisis:"

... midlife doesn't have to mean a negative crisis fraught with tension and life-shattering events, experts say. In fact, the psychological itch, introspection and tension that tend to occur in middle age can be channeled into wonderful life transformations and new beginnings.

"I don't really see it as a midlife crisis," (Pittsburgher K.J.) Bryant says. "I see it as a midlife adjustment."

One psychotherapist interviewed for the article said that midlife sometimes brings a second identity crisis, similar to a teenager's "what do I want to do with my life?" But the middle-aged person asks themselves "who am I, and is that really who I want to be?"

... they naturally do soul-searching, or maybe panic and make destructive choices with bad consequences, such as the stereotypical married man taking up a young lover.

The key, experts say, is reacting in a healthy and positive manner: thinking hard about what you want to do and who you want to be, and then taking steps of action to fulfill goals.

The article has several examples of people who changed direction in midlife: a woman who left corporate life to write; a dentist who went back to school; a marketing person who became a teacher.

Here at LifeTwo, we assess these stories this way: these people didn't have crises -- they went through a common, healthy process of analyzing how to make themselves happier, then they followed through. Gormly's piece supports the notion that this is a positive; most of her interview subjects felt they were better off for making their changes.