Get Proactive or Face the Consequences

I'm putting out a warning call that the wise (especially wise men) will want to pay attention to: get proactive about midlife or face the consequences. For almost 20 years, author Stephen R. Covey (The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People) has been trying to convince people that taking a proactive stance toward life's problems works, whereas being reactive just doesn't work. Yet, folks still play the odds and hope they won't have to deal with the consequences. If you're one of these gamblers, 'risk' is the name of the game, but, in this case, it's a risk that's being swept under the carpet and ignored so long as you can dodge the bullet. This is precisely the attitude that brought us the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans: "Don't worry so long as it hasn't happened . . . yet."

What I'm finding as I pursue my studies on midlife issues (particularly for men) comes down to the same sort of attitude: "The midlife crisis only happens to other people." People seem to think that just because they don't sense trouble in their relationships and their family, and just because they feel relatively secure in their careers and financial situation, and just because they haven't experienced any serious problems with their health or sense of well-being that things are going to continue along without much change or difficulty indefinitely. The bad news is, they won't! That's guaranteed. The midlife transition will occur, regardless of how happy or content you feel, regardless of how smoothly your life seems to be progressing, and regardless of how unprepared for it you may be. Like Hurricane Katrina, midlife is no respecter of persons. Whether or not you weather the situation depends entirely on how proactive you choose to be.

I'm discovering that people would generally prefer to take their chances living their lives with blinders on (oblivious to signs of trouble on the distant horizon) than to spend time and energy doing the challenging work involved in taking a close look at themselves, their situations, their goals and purpose and, particularly, feelings of uncertainty or discomfort that they may be experiencing. It's way too easy for people to dismiss these danger signals — whether it be in their relationships, in their careers, or in their personal sense of well-being — as being just normal signs of anxiety or stress. The worst choice that you can make when faced with these symptoms of free-floating anxiety or dissatisfaction would be to dismiss them because you're too busy with other things to pay attention. Think how absurd it would be to ignore an order to evacuate your waterfront property in advance of a hurricane's landfall because you had an appointment to have your new big screen TV installed. Yet, people make these sorts of absurd decisions every day.

There's nothing quite like a small-scale crisis to divert attention from bigger (and potentially more devastating) issues. In the 21st Century, with the information explosion and business traveling at the speed of the internet, there's no shortage of minor crises to divert our attention. The higher the levels of socio-economic concerns we have to face on a daily basis, the more urgent these pseudo-important issues become. To return to Covey's insightful work, we spend more and more time in Quadrant 3: not important but urgent. The more claim that the unimportant imposes on our time, attention, and energy, the more that really important issues get thrown into Quadrant 1: important and urgent.

One of my clients works for a government agency. She's nearly burned out because every day, when she comes into work, there's at least one new crisis facing the office. Even if she's not directly involved in the solution of any given crisis, she's being exhausted by the emotional energy pouring out from her fellow-workings and inundating the entire office with stress. They lack planning; they lack systems in place to handle new issues; they're understaffed and overworked. As a result, there's no way that they can distinguish between what's critically important and what's just apparently important. It's a house of cards that needs only a really important issue to bring the whole thing down.

Pretending that things are fine will not get you though the midlife transition unscathed. You can count on three things: 1) your relationship will transition from being externally-focused (on building the family and creating a stable life together) to becoming inner-focused (on communication and issues of emotional connection and depth of understanding), 2) your career will transition from being focused on doing a good job to being focused on doing something that makes sense in the context of the rest of your life, and 3) your sense of health and well-being will be shaken by the wear and tear of life and those secret inner doubts that you try so valiantly to ignore.

So, once again, the choice is entirely yours: you can face these challenges of midlife up front and early before they become critical issues (Quadrant 2: important but not urgent), or you can deal with the (possibly) catastrophic results of ignoring them and hoping for the best. It takes a combination of courage, insight, sensitivity and humility to take a proactive stand: take the little bumps in your relationship seriously and deal with them openly; address your career, make sure it fulfills both your values and your emotional needs, build a sturdy financial reserve in advance of some probable career changes to come; and take care of yourself, not putting yourself and your own well-being last. What this all entails is creating a truly spiritual environment for yourself so that you become sensitive to those issues that really matter, while allowing you not to sweat the small stuff. You're not a victim of circumstance: you can face these coming challenges head on and with confidence so long as you're prepared for them. What changes are you going to make today so that this can happen?