Your Midlife Crisis Results Are In. It's Bad News I'm Afraid.

Midlife crisis survey

First, a massive thank you to all who filled in the midlife crisis survey. I’m still collating responses, so if you have three minutes to spare, you can still share your experiences (anonymously).
 
What’s already clear from your answers is that when it comes to acting out your midlife, meaningless sex wins pants down over red Maseratis.
 
It looks like you’re one hell of a promiscuous bunch, and I love all of you for it.
 
In all seriousness though, and a few notable exceptions aside, a midlife crisis has been – or continues to be – a thoroughly unpleasant experience for the majority of those who responded.
 
The more I study it and talk to clients, the more a picture emerges of a necessary – perhaps unavoidable – rite of passage towards emotional maturity. That's certainly been my own messy experience of it too. 
 
For most of us, the midlife point is when we crave being part of something more significant, and a desire emerges to create things that will outlast us.
 
It often coincides with a broader identity crisis which makes us question some of the core values we've been spoon-fed by our respective tribes, families and societies.

Instead of “What will people think?”, we start asking “What will make me feel good?”.
 
If we're brave, we allow ourselves to distinguish between what our experience of the world is and what we’re told that experience should be. 

But if we cringe, we get stuck in a loop of endless hedonism which only comes to a halt when an external event forces our ego to face a hard, unavoidable truth.  
 
The truth that our time here is finite ­– too finite to squander our capacity for romance on a relationship that's run it's course or wasting our career capital on an uninspiring status job.

How to deal with it 

When this identity crisis hits, you have a choice. You can either anesthetize yourself with boys, girls, bumps, or Amazon Prime.

Or you can start showing up as the person you really are and as best as you can.
 
To quote James Hollis: “Our life begins twice: the day we are born, and the day we accept the radical existential fact that our life, for all its delimiting factors, is essentially ours to choose’.
 
And that realization, my friends, is one big giant pot of gold at the end of a very bumpy midlife rainbow.