The Midlife Odyssey

The Midlife Odyssey: When the Old Map No Longer Works

Midlifers often ask me, ‘What should I change to be happy?’

I wish I had an easy answer. Unlike Odysseus, most of us don’t have a guide. There isn’t a map, a sat nav, or a checklist telling us which direction to take. Most of us have to work it out as we go along. And if I’m honest, that can feel surprisingly lonely.

So where do you start when the life you’ve built no longer quite fits? You may not even be able to explain what’s wrong. From the outside, your life looks successful enough. You have a relationship, a family, a career, a nice home. Nothing has dropped off a cliff as such.

Yet something feels off. Many people describe it as feeling restless, flat or unfulfilled. Others talk about feeling as though they’re living someone else’s life. They know something needs to change, but they don’t know what, and they’re frightened of making the wrong decision.

This is usually where I ask people to stop looking at what they should do next and start thinking about what matters to them now. Not ten years ago, not even five years ago, life can change a lot year to year, and our experiences, losses and triumphs shape what’s important to us now – what we value.

Our values begin taking shape when we’re children. We take them in, or ‘introject’ them like osmosis from parents, teachers, religion, culture and society. We learn what success looks like. What a ‘good’ daughter does. What a ‘good’ husband does. What a successful career looks like and the kind of person who is admired or deserves approval.

But at this young age, we don’t consciously choose these values. We inherit them and crack on with life. We study, choose a job, often settle down and have a family; we stay in our lane; we don’t venture off-script. And everything is fine, until it’s not. And then….

BANG, we’re in midlife, which has a habit of slowing us down just enough to notice our unsettled feelings, how lost we feel, how unfulfilled we are. This might be as the children become more independent, our careers become established and we’ve got a bit of breathing space, or as we find that our parents need us more than our children do and life feels like a pressure cooker and we’ve entered the sandwich generation club we’ve read about!

You can find that when you stop for a moment, you start thinking about what you’re doing and how dissatisfied you feel, so you keep busy and avoid those thoughts, but they don’t stop; they become louder when you’re alone or at 3 am, when the world is asleep.

I think this is where the real midlife odyssey begins, as we start trying to connect life with who we actually are now. That often means making changes that seem quite small from the outside but feel enormous on the inside. You might stop saying yes because you always have. You might answer back or stand your ground when asked to do something you’re uncomfortable with. You might finally stop rescuing everyone at your own expense. You might let your adult children solve problems you would once have fixed and start questioning family expectations. Or even stop pursuing goals that your dad might have approved of, but which no longer resonate with you.

People often say, ‘If not now, when?’ as a starting thought, and I think what they’re really saying is, ‘I don’t want to spend the next twenty years living someone else’s version of my life.’ But…

There is a cost to this.

Whenever one person changes, everyone around them has to adjust.

The version of you that always kept the peace, never complained, always turned up, always said yes- that version was familiar, liked, predictable, comfortable, reassuring. But guess what?!  Not everyone will welcome the new you.

Sometimes you’ll experience pushback; people become distant; you find you’re left out of things, events, family plans. Maybe you’re accused of being selfish and that you’ve changed- and they’re probably right.

You are changing; you’re becoming the newer, up-to-date version of you; you’re more focused on your needs, not selfish but more self-compassionate.

The people I admire most in midlife aren’t necessarily the ones with the most impressive careers or the busiest social lives. They’re the ones who seem lighter, more connected to themselves, easier to be with, who carry an inner sense of calm. They’ve stopped ‘performing’ the life they thought they were supposed to want and started building one that reflects who they are now.

Perhaps that’s what the Odyssey was always about. Not simply getting home. But discovering, after all the detours, who you really are when you finally arrive. That’s the true midlife individuation odyssey that’s often needed.