6 Relatively Painless Ways Men Can Prevent A Mid-Life Crisis
It can be the best time of your life, or you can mess everything up like I did.
Peopleimages by Yuri A: Shutterstock | Evgeniia Iushkevich via Getty & Nurnazrhia: Canva Pro Imagine if you came into the physical world with all the preconditioning you have today. Many of us would probably still be crawling around and messing our pants after a few failed attempts to walk to the potty. This world sometimes makes it easier to quit than to keep trying and growing.
Letting go and retraining your subconscious mind requires the determination you use when you first learn to walk, and there's no better time to do this than when you hit midlife — especially if you are a man.
You’ll fall and get back up many times, but once you’re finally up, you’re in for the time of your life. And then you hit midlife. This is the best time of life if you live it right. Or you can do what I did and mess everything up with self-destructive habits. I want to help you avoid that, if possible!
6 Relatively Easy Ways Men Can Prevent A Destructive Midlife Crisis
1. Develop a meditation practice
This is the first step for a reason. You must let go of the beliefs and judgments you learned from your outer world. You’ll need to sit quietly and learn to be an observer rather than a first responder.
You’ll then begin to differentiate the values that are true to you from the ones that were conditioned in you by some outside influence. You see yourself as two entities. One which is pure potential and one which responds to past conditioning that used to keep you safe but now inhibits you.
2. Talk to yourself
Once you’ve connected with your true self in meditation, you can create dialogues between your true essence and your conditioned ego. Expect some resistance early on because you’ve been conditioned to believe this is what crazy people do. (Robert A. Johnson describes this in detail in Living Your Unlived Life.)
Developing your active imagination will allow you to resolve conflict between the self and the ego the same as you would with another person in your outer world. You may find these dialogues are the most profound and enlightening conversations you’ve ever had.
This is because you’re tapping into a source of wisdom that can’t be found in the physical world. If this is starting to sound silly to you, know it’s your ego talking right now. Try asking what it wants. You might be surprised by a response.
3. Confront the Grim Reaper
Do visualization exercises around your death. Learn to embrace the reality that you will one day say goodbye to everyone you’ve ever met and loved. This may be scary but, consistent practice will move you from fear to gratitude, appreciation, and higher consciousness.
4. Trust your gut
There is scientific evidence that our guts are lined with neurons that correspond with our brain. The gut makes our first judgment intuitively, which means it hasn’t been manipulated by conditioned rationalizations. Often, we hear of people changing their original gut decision only to find out it was right all along.
This is why we’re taught to stick with our first answer on a multiple-choice question that we’re unsure of. A good way to begin practicing this is with Mel Robbins’s 5-second rule, where you respond to your gut within five seconds before your head can talk you out of it. Try it on some safe things first and gradually work your way up.
5. Get support from a trusted group
As I said earlier, you’re recovering from an addiction. The most effective thing I’ve found is a community of peers. If you can’t find one, start one. Meetup.com is a great place to find or start any group.
6. Practice gratitude
This is a tip I include in everything I write about because it works, plain and simple. Gratitude is my secret sauce for everything. If you’re like me, you’ve lost loved ones along the way. The fact that you’ve been hand-picked to fog up a mirror for another day is a miracle.
Practice daily gratitude until it becomes an automatic response for you. That alone will be a game changer.
Finally, permit yourself to feel the fear. As they say, “Everything you ever wanted exists on the other side of fear.”
Greg Boudle is a recovery life coach, published author, and professional speaker.