Skip the Midlife Crisis and Choose a Midlife Evaluation Instead

“Life coaching is really about increasing your awareness about what you’re thinking, and looking for a disconnect between the life you’ve created for yourself and the life you want,” says Suzy Rosenstein, a Toronto-based certified master life coach. “This helps you get more clear about the changes you may want to make.”​

Benz’s life coach had him define his core values, write a mission statement, consider how other people view him, and reflect on ways he could turn what he likes to do into something that’s valuable to him, his family and the world.​

He now takes on occasional projects only when he wants to (as a people-pleaser, he used to feel guilty for turning down any request) and feels much less stress and anxiety.​

“It helps talking things through with a neutral third party who isn’t emotionally involved,” Benz says. The life coach “helped me spend energy focusing on something constructive versus ruminating, which was not a good strategy for me.”​

Not too late for change​

Midlife can be an excellent time to make big decisions and take control of life’s path. Sometimes outside events force those reevaluations. ​

Two months before turning 50, Rosenstein got laid off after 19 years as a health educator and content developer. After the shock wore off, she thought about how unhappy she’d been over the previous five years and how she hadn’t done anything about it. She hired a life coach, gained “massive insights” and decided to start a new profession as a life coach herself, focusing on women in midlife.​

Her clients often feel stuck and unclear about what they want in their next chapter of life. They commonly are empty nesters searching for more purpose, needing more self-care, and wanting to be more intentional.​

“It can be a frustrating time,” Rosenstein says. “I often hear how strange it is to be so responsible and competent in many areas of life but confused and unclear about what they really want. They don’t want to have regrets.”​

Aside from private coaching, Rosenstein has a weekly podcast and runs an online program and community for midlife women. Her recommendations for reinvention include:​ ​

• Decide you don’t want to miss out on new opportunities.
• Seek guidance from your future self.
• Be curious about fear.​
• Choose to focus on what you can do with the time that you have.​

“It can feel indulgent to think about what we want, because we’re so used to putting others first,” Rosenstein says. “Thinking about what you want may be something you haven’t done since you were much younger.”​

As people age, it’s common for them to feel that time is running out to accomplish goals, “but time has been ticking since the moment we were born,” Rosenstein says. “It’s only our awareness of the passage of time that has changed.”​

Like Rosenstein, Anissa Buckley has been on both sides of the midlife transformation model. At 50, in the middle of grieving four significant losses simultaneously — the death of her parents within eight months of each other, a divorce and the sale of her nutrition company — she began traveling the world to complete extreme physical challenges.​

Out of those experiences, Buckley, now 55 and based in Tucson, Arizona, founded B-Untethered. The company, which features the tagline “rule midlife,” offers an online lifestyle program around healthy aging and a place for women to build community at a time when their estrogen levels are dropping, their children are leaving the house and other changes are afoot.​

“There is always an opportunity to change your situation,” says Buckley, whose book Midlife: Turning Crisis into Quest is set to publish in late February. “Acknowledge that this is a great time of life, as we are typically more established, knowledgeable and in a position to take a few risks. I’m a big fan of the statement, ‘If not now, when?’”​

While women often find themselves needing a midlife evaluation, men do too. And men generally tend to have more limited experiences expressing and processing emotions, which can make the process challenging. ​

“The midlife passage can bring tremendous self-questioning, a deep crisis of meaning and much-needed change,” says Nathan Hunter, a men’s life coach in Southern California.​

Becoming curious about why you haven’t prioritized your happiness can be an emotional process.​

“Most of us don’t question why we do what we do,” Rosenstein says. “Now’s a great time to ask, ‘What are we waiting for?’”