Midlife Mastery Journal

I’ve been working on a program to help guide people who are recovering from a serious (perhaps painful) life experience and are having trouble getting back up on their feet. It gave me the opportunity once again to explore the grieving process. Keep in mind that almost all life transitions result in the grief process, [...]

Nobody sets out to ruin his or her life; that outcome only results from a steady stream of small, seemingly insignificant poor choices that eventually lead to a bad end. We call this an error cascade: when a series of small, almost unnoticeable missteps conclude in catastrophic results. For the person entering the midlife transition, it most often begins with the mistaken belief that he or she is ‘going downhill’ and that somehow the process is reversible.

Change yourself, and everything in your life will change. It seems so simple, but so few people are willing or able to actually do it. You have the choice; you have the chance. It’s your life; you can make of it what you want.

In my estimation, there exists only four ways of dealing with the midlife transition situation, and, of the four, the only one that actually alleviates the situation is an attitude of active and committed acceptance. That, in effect, is the road that women, by nature and by culture, normally take.

Ladies, the guys had their chance to handle this themselves, and they’ve pretty much blown it, haven’t they? I think those rare and courageous men who’ve ‘gotten’ what I’ve been writing and talking about over the last number of months will ‘get’ it, too.