A Midlife Awakening
The pandemic has changed everything for me.
My diet…. my workout schedule… the books I read… the podcasts I listen to… how frequently I travel… the people I spend time with… how my business operates… on and on.
And it has served me with several of the most difficult challenges of my lifetime. My company’s revenue dropped 40% when the first wave hit in March 2020. My father-in-law died of COVID, alone in a hospital, in July 2020. One of my longest-tenured work associates died of a heart attack the day after returning from his COVID quarantine in December 2020, and my father’s life-partner Jackie died in January 2021.
I have felt sadness for kids whose coming-of-age years have been stolen from them. I’ve gotten worked-up over hate and political divisiveness. I became preoccupied on the health of my 80-year-old father, family and friends who are immunocompromised and I have stressed-out over my own unshakable long-term COVID symptoms.
With less travel and more time in my head, I’ve broasted myself in shame over the many bad habits I’ve accumulated over my lifetime… always trying to control the narrative… exaggerating for the purpose of making myself look better… the compulsion to compare myself to others who are what I perceive to be smarter, funnier, more enlightened, richer, whatever… the fear I have of disagreeing with someone simply to avoid an uncomfortable conversation… taking my body and mind for granted… so many things.
Thankfully, I had a timely conversation with my dear friend Rand Stagen who suggested that I give myself grace and that I be grateful for the depth of my awareness.
I now have the perspective that the pandemic is quite possibly the best thing that has ever happened to me. And awareness was merely the first step.
I wasn’t going to step off of the path of complacent living without a gale force wind to push me. While my logical brain knew that growth comes only through effort and struggle, my heart and pride created resistance. I needed to figure out who I wanted to be when I grow up instead of continuing to live my life as the reflection of what I believed others want me to be.
So, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing the past year and a half.
Shortly after we lost Jackie, I was recanting my frustrations and losses to Rand, and he reminded me that I have 100% control over the path that I choose. After years of hearing about the profound impact that the Stagen Leadership Academy has had on my friends, I enrolled in the 12-month program in February 2021. As fate would have it, my cohort of 22 leaders from across America was named after Carl Jung — the founder of analytical psychology. I had no idea how much insight and clarity I’d gain from Rand, my coach Paul, my cohort peers, and from Yung’s published works over the next year.
While my initial intention was to become a more conscious leader, I learned quickly that conscious leadership was an inside job. The only person I really needed to affect was myself. And I leaned into the understanding that we are all learning as we go, stumbling, working through insecurities, wanting to love and be loved.
I started to practice mindfulness and learned how to meditate. I began to study consciousness and learned about research in psychology and neuroscience that offers new ways of understanding what makes us human.
NOTE: The author suggests the 8 episode podcast “Where is My Mind” for anyone wanting to learn about scientific evidence that the consciousness actually lives outside the body.
I got to know myself as a conscious being. And, on occasion, I was able to identify when a circumstance was triggering my brain, and then make a conscious decision to apply the Zen practice of slowing down and responding instead of mindlessly reacting.
My newfound mindfulness, combined with the tools that I learned through the Stagen program, gave me the foundation that I needed to begin enacting real change.
I learned to listen more and talk less. To be present in every conversation. To be intentional.
I started to make healthier choices with my diet and get more consistent with my workouts.
I researched my family tree — and found a trail going back more than 1000 years in one strand of my ancestral lineage. My wife Tawnya and I took our RV to more than 30 states exploring our heritage and meeting her extended family — many of whom we’d never met before.
For the first time in my life, I now have a connection to my past and present. I feel rooted to the earth so that I am free to explore and expand my consciousness.
Midlife Crisis
A few months into 2021, I was having a conversation with a friend who joked to me that he was suffering from his “midlife crisis.” It got me wondering what that even means.
According to Wikipedia, a midlife crisis is “a transition of identity and self-confidence that can occur in middle-aged individuals, typically 45 to 65 years old.” Most typically, the symptoms are psychological in nature and lead one to question his or her own mortality.
My awakening has indeed led me to question my mortality. But not in the way that the statement is typically intended. Instead of leading me to feel that I’m running out of time and will never have enough — I now feel that if today is my last day on earth, all is good. For the first time in my life, I am comfortable with who I am, where I am and that I am enough.
We all experience emotional evolution in our lifetimes — transitions that cause us to take stock of where we are and make adjustments. In my case, I’ve chosen to frame my pandemic transition as a midlife awakening — rather than a midlife crisis — as it has facilitated my journey of wading deeper into my own consciousness.
When I commenced from my Stagen Leadership program in February 2022, I shared with my cohort that my restated life’s mission is to “curate my own consciousness and be a catalyst for others to do the same.” Note that this expression of my mission is bereft of my old conditioning. It requires surrender, openness, acceptance, gratitude and vulnerability. But it does not invoke my old habits of exaggeration, control, or comparison. It is not about how “enlightened” I may feel that I am (I bristle when I hear that word). It matters only that I seek to awaken myself. And how through my actions (not my words) others may be inspired to seek their own awakening.
No judgement, no prodding, and no expectations… of myself or others. Only love and acceptance. If it is true that it’s never too late to become who you might have been, I feel like I’ve finally found the path that will get me there.
Jay Wilkinson is the founder of Firespring and Cofounder of the Do More Good Movement. His life’s mission is to cultivate his own consciousness and be a catalyst for others to do the same. He’s got a lot of work to do.
