Mid life crisis or mid life breakthrough?

Hello Gorgeous Soul,

This week I have done something that I have thought about all my life, it’s something that I’ve been toying with for a long time but always managed to talk myself out of.  Yet all of a sudden I just got hit by a thought wave that asked, ‘If you don’t do it now, when are you going to do it?’ So. overcoming my fears I jumped out of my comfort zone and landed deep into challenge and adventure.

Having made my decision I joked that I was having a mid life crisis but then I sat and thought about all those urges I’d been feeling for ages that I’d been pushing away and really paid attention to what they were.  They were all connected to making my life and work bigger and better.  And that made me ask the question, is this really a mid life crisis – or am I having a mid life breakthrough?

It actually felt like a watershed moment in which all of the ideas I’d been working with suddenly broke free and made a quantum leap away from any lingering insecurity that I’d been dogged by as a child and teenager.  Because really, if I don’t do it now, when am I going to do it?

Mid life crises get a bad press.  Yes, sometimes they mean that people do things that do seem wild and crazy.  Maybe they leave long term relationships, quit jobs to follow their dreams or up sticks and move over the other side of the world.  Maybe like me they suddenly decide that they are going to push forward on what they do, or, like my friend, just dye their hair the pink they’ve always admired on other people.

The gift within the mid life breakthrough (as I’m going to call it from now on) is that you get a sudden overwhelming connection with the truth that – well, if not now, when are you going to do it?  Life is a precious gift and there to be cherished and lived fully.

As an impulsive, fiery Aries, well used to upping sticks and moving on when necessary (but even so sometimes leaving it far longer than I perhaps should) I was slightly shocked to find that I’d been holding myself back.  Sometimes the urges we feel at any age force us to ask questions about where we need to compromise for the sake of others and where we absolutely have to dance on to the beat of our own drum.

Maybe the real problem is that we leave it too long.  As years go by, bit by bit, day by day and decision by decision, our lives get pushed away from our authentic course until we wake up one day and realise that we are on alien ground and the atmosphere doesn’t suit us.  But then it’s a lot harder to up rip up our roots and make our way forward or back to our native land.  We can end up feeling trapped and resentful.

Mid life breakthroughs are far too valuable to be left until we are forty or fifty, sixty or seventy!  Being acutely aware of this incredible gift that we have been given – the chance to make this journey here in a world that has its fair share of problems but is also still beautiful, incredible, amazing and full of possibility (even the possibility that we might work together to solve its problems) – keeps us awake at the wheel.   Maybe the real question is about how we can ingrain this crucial awareness into ourselves before we find ourselves hundreds of miles off course.

So if you suspect that you are also having a mid life breakthrough, at least listen to the truth that you are discovering about yourself.  Don’t be too quick to push it away.  You may just be missing out on the most important piece of wisdom echoing through from your very soul.

Wish me luck!

Loads of love,

Michele x