Book Commentary: Learning to Love Midlife by Chip Conley
❓ How much do you define your opportunities today based your sense of how much time you have remaining, in your career or in your life?
Many clients come to me for coaching with the same underlying motivation: A fear that “time is running out,” that they’re allowing opportunities to pass them permanently by, that there might only be “one or two moves left on the chess board” that they need to optimize. Typically ranging in age from mid 30s to mid 50s, these clients are stressed and uncertain about the moves they feel they should make and seek help understanding and untangling their options.
When we dig a bit deeper, we often find these anxieties have to do with our beliefs about getting older and the passing of youth.
That hypothesis leads me to Chip Conley, author most recently of Learning to Love Midlife : 12 Reasons Why Life Gets BETTER with Age and a co-founder of the the Modern Elder Academy. In this book, Mr. Conley examines and reframes some of the anxieties of the “midlife” period and helps us see the rich potential of the next segment of our adulthood. Just because we see our youth passing us by, our productive life isn’t ending. In fact, we are just getting started.
Chip Conley structures the book around his 12 reasons to love midlife, grouped into the physical, emotional, mental, vocational and spiritual aspects of life. As I read these 12 reasons, I paid attention to which ones felt most real to my own experience, which ones I still feel resistance to, and which ones reminded me there are neglected areas of my life begging to be given more space. I’m sure everyone will react differently, because we have all gotten here by a different path.
From the afterword: “Midlife is not a crisis, it’s a crossroads. But, unlike the well-marked and well-tended road that we have taken up to this point, midlife is bereft of road signs to help us navigate the next stretch….Most of us rely on speed bumps, or life circumstances … to slow us down so we can find out way.”
For those of us feeling pressure to rush into action because time is “running out” or that we are “getting to the end of the road,” what would happen if we replaced that reactive, and defensive, belief with an acknowledgement that we see an approaching crossroads? Don’t you think we might slow down to look for road signs and take action to set ourselves up for the productive journey ahead?
As a coach, I believe that before we take important decisions, we could all benefit from a healthy examination and challenge of the assumptions behind our beliefs. With this examination, we promote confident decisions that set clients up for fulfilling life over the longer term.
If you’re curious how coaching can help you make important career and life decisions, connect with me here or at john@aconnectedcoach.com.