A MIDLIFE CRISIS is the sight of a middle-aged man who thinks he can be Tom Cruise buying a sports car/fast motorcycle, dating a younger woman, and clubbing. The term has become a socially acceptable label for this behaviour which is more pitying than anything else.
In reality, a midlife crisis is a dip in happiness – you start to feel inadequate and resentful. You have a job and paycheque. There is a challenge between being satisfied with your life and wanting to do something more meaningful.
We were all brought up within our individual cultural norms and behavioural tendencies. We were all taught the expected communication techniques and the standards of acceptable behaviour. Modern education aims to produce so-called ordinary people who can contribute to society.
The typical person's life cycle is to go to school and university and borrow money to pay for their education. Following that, you become an employee and work your way up the corporate ladder.
You meet someone and get married, and you are now an excellent employee, person, wife or husband, and mother or father. Meanwhile, your true self becomes lost because the system set your goals for you and convinced you that they were your goals.
Your marriage is a social construct with culturally defined rules, expectations, and boundaries. Governments support this social conditioning by instructing people to perform in ways that society approves of to keep control.
You pay your taxes and insurance, and you can't remember your childhood ambitions or how you wanted to spend your life. You're wondering where your life has gone because you've spent the majority of it doing monotonous and repetitive things that you didn't want to undertake in the first place.
For some midlife crisis is a realisation that something is lacking from your life – your spark, your edge, or your vitality. You had achieved what society considered the ultimate goal: family, money, a car, a home, and job. Yet, you're still feeling hollow. They seemed genuine at first, but once you got them, they felt pointless. You had succeeded while also failing yourself with artificial ambitions.
You are bored. What to do now? Where to go? It is the reason why many successful people have a midlife crisis. They reached a goal that was not theirs. They were conditioned by the culture, seduced by the marketers and mind-washed by the society.
I have had a full life, and I tell people why finding their intrinsic goals in life is so important. If you don't, you will keep fighting meaninglessly for a meaningless result like buying a sportscar, leaving your wife and clubbing.
Stop limiting beliefs. I read, "It takes just as much work to dream a big dream as it does to dream a little dream." You have nothing to lose in dreaming of achieving a little dream. Today, make up your mind that you will have a mix of purpose and pleasure and live your experiences, never letting your dreams go unfulfilled.
Being authentic is a sign of spiritual awakening, with no meditation or drugs required. It gives you freedom, but it needs to be practiced every day.
