When Work Isn’t Enough

One of the things I’ve noticed about midlife is that people often assume something has gone wrong because they no longer feel the same drive towards work. They worry they’ve lost their ambition or become complacent. Some even wonder whether they’re becoming lazy.

I’m not convinced that’s what’s happening. Something new is taking centre stage!

When we’re younger, work quite naturally occupies a huge part of our identity. It gives us purpose, structure, financial security and, for many of us, a sense of achievement. We build careers, buy houses, raise families and prove to ourselves that we’re capable. Hard work serves us well because, at that stage of life, it often aligns with what we genuinely value.

The difficulty is that values don’t stand still.

Many of the values we live by in early adulthood were firmly in place long before we consciously chose them. We learned what success looked like from our parents, teachers, workplaces and the culture around us. Achievement was admired. Productivity was rewarded. Being busy became a sign that we were doing life ‘properly’.

For many years that worked perfectly well. Then something interesting happens in midlife.

You can still do your job perfectly well, maybe even better than ever, you might even be enjoying it. But it no longer gives you everything it once did.

That’s because other parts of you have been waiting patiently for their turn.

Values change throughout the lifecycle – of course they do; a main driver in our 20s rarely gets us out of bed in our 50s.

For me, it was writing and being creative.

I’d built a successful psychology practice, employed other psychologists and had achieved much of what my younger self had worked so hard for. Yet I found myself thinking less about growing the business and more about having the space to think, write and express ideas. It wasn’t a strategic business decision. It felt much deeper than that. The need to write simply refused to go away.

I see something similar in many of my clients.

• The CEO who suddenly becomes passionate about completing an Ironman. On the surface it looks like another achievement to tick off the list, but I often wonder whether it’s really about reconnecting with health after years of neglecting the body in favour of work.
• The teacher who starts lifting weights and becomes delighted by reaching a personal best. Perhaps it isn’t about the number on the stack at all. Perhaps it’s about discovering strength in a completely different part of life.
• For somebody else, it might be painting, music, gardening or travelling. For another, it may be becoming the grandparent they never had time to be as a parent. Others realise they want fewer responsibilities rather than more, and begin protecting time for family, friendships or simply silence and solitude.

None of this means work has become unimportant. It simply means work is no longer expected to meet every psychological need.

I sometimes think we misunderstand this stage of life. We assume we’re having a crisis because we’re no longer motivated by the things that once drove us. But perhaps nothing has gone wrong at all. Perhaps another part of us has simply reached the front of the queue and is finally asking to be heard.

The task in midlife isn’t necessarily to abandon everything we’ve built. More often, it’s to notice what has been hanging around backstage for years and to ask whether it’s finally time to pull back the curtain and let it take the limelight.

Perhaps that’s what growth looks like, not becoming a different person, but allowing more of yourself to exist.