Midlife Is Not a Crisis — It’s Clarity
Making the switch starts with removing what stops you
Update: Along with Devon MacDonald and Bernhard Schluga, I’ll be hosting a 5-day retreat at the I AM ESCAPE Retreat and hotel, in Austria on 7th-13th July, 2025. Entitled, Second Harvest, this retreat is for individuals and couples navigating a major life shift, whether personal or professional (or both), who are ready to leverage their experiences, wisdom, and resources to create a life of deeper meaning, fulfillment, and alignment. You can learn more or apply here or join one of our informational calls.
Midlife has long been framed as a time of decline. As your body naturally changes, you notice that there’s a lot that’s different. Your metabolism slows, your energy dips, and your desires shift. Every podcast, doctor, and well-meaning friend will tell you this is just the way it goes. “You’re in the autumn of your life,” is the refrain. But that narrative is only part of the story, and for people like me, it’s an outdated one that doesn’t serve me anymore.
I’ll be turning 55 this year and in spite of what the topics in the AARP mailing suggest, I’m at the prime of my life. After my wife died 3 years ago, I decided that to honor her I was going to make the second part of my life the best part of my life. Her death woke me up the fact that I was falling into the trap of thinking I had more time. She was 39 when she died.
If you think you’ve got lots of time left, you don’t.
We might assume that those midlife changes are inevitable and negative. After all, we call it a crisis. But change in your middle years isn’t synonymous with decline. Midlife is not an automatic slide into depletion — it’s an opportunity to reset, refine, and, most importantly, remove what no longer serves you. This isn’t a crisis. This is clarity.
So You’ve Checked All the Boxes — Now What?
You know the script: Work hard, make money, build a family, retire, and finally, do whatever it is you’ve been waiting to do. You busted your ass and invested time and effort to make this plan work, only to discover that somewhere along the way there’s not going to be a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Life is not what you thought it would be.
Maybe a spouse passed away, or the market collapsed. Life took a turn and now you don’t have the support, love or money you expected. You realized that planning for retirement is a procrastination of life. But now you’re at some midpoint in your life and you’re tired of waiting.
But here’s the twist, the program was faulty from the start.
The job was never going to love you back. The money? Nice, but not the magic bullet. Retirement? A out-of-step concept based on the assumption that we’d all be too broken down by 65 to do anything meaningful.
And now, you’re here. Possibly even successful, but still staring down the second half of life, wondering why the hell the reward doesn’t feel as good as promised. Maybe something went sideways. A divorce, loss, burnout, a business exit that left you wondering what to do next. Or maybe nothing bad happened at all — just a nagging sense that you’re coasting, and the next 30 or 40 years is a long time without purpose.
The Power of Subtraction
A gardener was once asked why his plants flourished so beautifully. His answer: “I don’t force them to grow. I remove what stops them.”
Midlife clarity operates the same way. Growth isn’t always about adding more — more routines, more responsibilities, more goals, more supplements. Sometimes, it’s about stripping away the unnecessary: the outdated expectations, the draining obligations, and the toxic relationships that do nothing but erode your energy.
This is where the concept of via negativa comes in: Instead of looking for solutions to “fix” your life, start by removing what’s holding you back. Ask yourself, what habits or behaviors are aging my body unnecessarily? What activities deplete my energy without adding value? Which relationships create more stress than joy?
By clearing these obstacles, you make space for vitality, not decline.
The Midlife Lifequake
There’s a term for those seismic shifts that shake up our lives in midlife — lifequakes. They arrive suddenly, often in the form of job loss, divorce, an empty nest, or even a realization that the life you built no longer fits. At first, these moments may feel like destruction, but they are actually the foundation for transformation.
With midlife clarity, you gain the wisdom to distinguish between what is truly yours and what was imposed upon you. You start to say no — not just as an act of defiance, but as an act of self-respect. You set boundaries — not to shut people out, but to create space for those who genuinely belong in your life.
The Clarity of Knowing What You Will No Longer Accept
Midlife clarity means you finally understand what you will and will not tolerate. You no longer seek external validation at the cost of your own peace. You no longer feel obligated to maintain relationships that drain you. You no longer force yourself into roles that no longer fit.
Instead, you make the choices that enhance your well-being rather than diminish it. Define your worth by your own measures, not someone else’s expectations. Commit to loving yourself wholeheartedly, not conditionally.
This is not a time to shrink — it’s a time to expand, on your own terms.
A Life of Less, But Better
Midlife clarity is about refinement, about keeping only what is essential. And when you do, you’ll find that everything becomes lighter. Your body, no longer burdened by stress and neglect, starts to move with more ease. Your mind, freed from the noise of unnecessary obligations, begins to sharpen. Your life, no longer weighed down by distractions, starts to feel like your own again.
This is not a crisis. This is a rebirth.
And it begins with one simple act: removing what stops you.
Update: Along with Devon MacDonald and Bernhard Schluga, I’ll be hosting a 5-day retreat at the I AM ESCAPE Retreat and hotel, in Austria on 7th-13th July, 2025. Entitled, Second Harvest, this retreat is for individuals and couples navigating a major life shift, whether personal or professional (or both), who are ready to leverage their experiences, wisdom, and resources to create a life of deeper meaning, fulfillment, and alignment. You can learn more or apply here or join one of our informational calls.
