5 Symptoms of a Mid-Life Awakening

Definition of ‘Awakening’: a recognition, realization, or coming into an awareness of something.

I was born in 1975, which makes me 42 years old. Right about the time for us Generation X’ers start experiencing the good old ‘Mid-Life Crisis’.

Throughout the past decade, I have experienced several events which have lead me to my own crises of sorts, such as:

· My boyfriend of four years committing suicide outside my office while I was inside working.

· Having several friends pass away from cancer, drug-overdoses & heart-attacks.

· Becoming sick with an auto-immune disease which left me struggling to walk and dependent on a cane.

These were just a few of the highlights (or more accurate low-lights) which led me to develop a certain maturity and awareness that my days are limited. My life will end someday, and the overwhelming pressure to make the most of it weighs heavily on my heart. However, rather than reacting with fear and feeling victimized by what was happening in my life, I decided that I would allow myself to experience a ‘mid-life awakening’ instead.

As the journey of my mid-life awakening unfolded, I recognized the following symptoms in myself:

A FEELING OF RESTLESSNESS & DISCONTENT

It started with that nagging feeling when I looked at myself in the mirror, and I truly didn’t recognize the person I had become. I started waking up and asking myself, “what am I doing this for?” The job I was doing felt so meaningless; while it was an important job, it didn’t fulfil me. The things that used to bring me happiness no longer did so. There was this feeling of restlessness and discontentment with the way things were sitting in my life. I had this overwhelming sense I was supposed to be showing up in the world in a ‘bigger’ way than I previously had been.

DESIRE FOR GROWTH

This showed up in the most inconvenient of ways, such as a desire to quit my good job. I no longer wanted to spend my hours feeling anxiety and stress at my job. I no longer cared for the good money the job brought. I left the corporate world and moved to a part-time position at a local dance studio. This allowed me to have more time for the things that are most important to me like my family and growing my life coaching business. I also had a desire for growth in my relationships. I desired depth and sincerity in my relationships and I reached a place where I was ready to move forward. Happily, my partner felt the same. He moved forward with me and we got married. I desired connection with other women, and so I began to attend ‘Red Tent’ ceremonies. I took risks and started an uncommon dialogue with my friends and opened up expressive and genuine conversations. This has led me to cultivate friendships that will last the rest of my life!

BECOMING OBSESSED WITH HEALTH

As a part of my awakening, there has been a revelation that the stress and unhappiness I had been creating in my life was causing me to be very sick. Despite being a very healthy person my whole life — I still became ill with a serious auto-immune condition that left me using a cane and part-time wheelchair user. There is now an absolute unwillingness to stay in situations that cause me to feel ‘stressed-out’ for long periods of time. My body craves whole foods that contain ‘vital life force’. My mind craves meditation and the peace that comes from long periods of silence. I am now in remission from my auto-immune disease and enjoy treating my body to daily yoga and allow the gift of breath to fill me with energy.

EMBRACING FREEDOM

As I awaken more, I am motivated more and more to express myself from an authentic space, owning the parts of who I really am. I feel freedom when I am allowing all of myself to show up. And what is freedom? Freedom expresses itself through our ability to choose freely. Freedom of choice is our gift. The freedom to choose how I want to live my life, to just BE MYSELF! Freedom is about not feeling enslaved in dead-end jobs I hated and feeling trapped in lifeless relationships. Freedom is choosing how I want to respond to what is currently happening in front of me, not out of reaction from what BS I’ve learned in the past. Freedom is about not giving a WHOOT about what anyone else says or thinks about me. Freedom is about becoming fully secure in who I am as an individual so I can build and develop an unshakeable foundation for the next phase of my life.

A STRONG DESIRE TO LIVE LIFE WITH PURPOSE

I have often daydreamed about my funeral. I think this is a natural occurrence when experiencing a mid-life awakening. Having a marker for where I want my life to go from here on out will help me to stay focused on ‘What it’s all for’! After exerting effort, and working with my life coach, I’ve come into the awareness that my purpose in life is to “AWAKEN AND INSPIRE JOY!”. Because of going through this mid-life awakening, I have questioned everything I was doing. I used to spend my time shopping online for hours, now I’ve lost the desire for ‘stuff’. I used to escape for hours on end in Netflix binging, and now that desire has completely left me. In fact, my need to endlessly meet the desires of my racing thoughts is becoming less and less. I have embraced the minimalist movement and have found such joy with keeping my focus on those things that matter most. In all areas of my life, I have realized how my purpose in life ripples into all of my roles. As a wife, mother, employee, friend, daughter, life coach, I see how I am here to awaken and inspire joy. When I remember that, life flows easily and now when I look at myself in the mirror I recognize the light of fulfilment that shines through.

So if you are having a recognition, realization, or coming into an awareness of who you really are then I encourage you to embrace that! Celebrate your newly found wisdom! Enlist support as you transition through your changes! Accept that there may be times when you make mistakes, but so long as you are walking the path of staying true to who you really are, there really is no getting it wrong.

In closing, my final thought is this: you could choose to label your current transition as a crisis, as a dramatic, emotional, or circumstantial upheaval in your life. Or you could choose to brand your awakening as an evolution in your growth, recognizing, realizing, and coming into an awareness of who you really are and what the purpose is for your life. The choice is yours.

The Achologist is the official online publication for Achology, the Academy of Modern Applied Psychology for professional practitioners and life coaches.