Midlife Mastery Journal

The holidays can be particularly challenging for men and women at midlife. There are attitudes that you can adopt that transform your holiday season into something very special.

Accepting that every single thing that has occurred in your life amounts to little more than an opportunity to grow into a stronger, more responsible and wiser person, can release you from the corrosive effects of playing the blame game. Resentment and revenge always compound your pain and injuries and make your condition worse.

Whenever we engage in any creative endeavor, we make a withdrawal from our own emotional bank account. If we’re not making periodic deposits, sooner or later, the well will run dry and we’ll find ourselves working harder, enjoying it less, showing less creativity and poorer results.

What sets you apart from every other creature on the planet has little to do with your relationships or even your progeny. What elevates you above and beyond pond scum derives entirely from the creative contribution that you’re willing and able to make to the furtherance of humanity. It’s all about your creative legacy.

There’s a hunger in the human soul that material things just cannot satisfy, and it’s only at midlife, when you’ve done a good deal of your accumulating, that you begin to notice it. It’s a hunger to create as well as to be nourished by deeper — soul-stirring — meaning.