Midlife Mastery Journal

Everybody makes a mess from time to time. It’s the price we pay for growth and progress. If we’re wise, we learn from our mistakes; if not, we can wind up paying for them over and over again. In this first of five articles, Les Brown looks at how guilt can become a positive experience.

Learning to live life on life’s terms is the great spiritual lesson of midlife: allowing us to transition from the adult attitude of self-willed self-determination to the more mature and realistic attitude of acceptance and trust.

‘Getting stuck’ at midlife means only that you’ve stopped believing in yourself, and have started down the road that’s been paved for you by those who have given up on themselves. Hope is a very fragile thing, and can be damaged or destroyed by trusting those who have already lost faith rather than paying attention to your own God-given destiny, purpose and value. Who you are and who you shall become can never depend on what others think of you.

Acceptance of the changes and vagaries of the seasons depends upon our capacity to keep those changes in perspective; so the changes from youth to adulthood to maturity demands a perspective that only spiritual insight can offer.

You may still think that, when circumstances change drastically (like they do at midlife), reinventing yourself would seem to be a very wise thing to do. I say ‘seem to be’ because that’s all based on your set of assumptions. You assume that it’s possible to ‘reinvent’ yourself, and you further assume that you know how to do it.