Corporate Midlife Crisis: What Is It And How Do You Make The Most Of It?

What comes to your mind when you hear the word “midlife crisis?” Unusually happy or sad men over 40 in sports cars or riding on mean-looking motorbikes? Those are the images that pop up on Google most of the time and as someone who just hit 40 this year, I have a certain understanding of why that sounds reasonable.

This article is not about that, but the feeling that can appear anytime during your career: the sudden realization that you might be really good at what you do, but may not be meant to do it for the rest of your life. You need more, you want more and, let’s be honest, you deserve much more.

The last two years of the pandemic have given time and space for people to think about what really matters to them. When we are spinning hard in the hamster wheel of life, we have few opportunities to realize how unsustainable and unhealthy that lifestyle is; we find rational-sounding excuses why we must carry on, why it is not that bad and other people have it worse, therefore we are doing pretty well.

That might be true until we consider two concepts:

• The opportunity cost. This is about understanding what we say no to when we say yes to our current situation. Our brain is very good at assessing what it can lose, but it is quite bad at evaluating what we can gain. We are naturally loss- and risk-averse, but what if the biggest losses and risks are when we do not intentionally level up and grow by looking for challenges instead of staying in our comfort zone?

• The anxiety cost. This is often just a gut feeling, a weak voice in our head reminding us that we should be doing something else. Every single unfinished task, every act of procrastination and every lie we tell ourselves about why it is OK to stay stuck in our career fills up our anxiety tank until it overflows and we experience a corporate midlife crisis.

The slightly better option is when we do not wait until we wake up with regret and panic in our eyes, thinking we have wasted our precious time we never get back and our talent we have ignored and failed to develop.

Typically, this is when clients look for coaches as they feel like they're trying to run underwater: the harder they try it, the more difficult it is. They have a sense of urgency to do more, feel better and make their life more meaningful—but how?

To be honest, I had this feeling in my twenties when I got paid for the job I did, not for who I was or how much I knew. That feeling of frustration often turned into resentment, aggression or depression, sometimes all at the same time. This phenomenon has no age limit.

Coaching is not about fixing the past, but about building a better future. The past has meaning and the future has purpose, but that often depends on the meaning we attach to the past. That is up to us. We forge our identity through narratives that are often not even ours, but they come from our childhood, movies, social media or the norms of society telling us to keep calm and carry on.

One of the most revealing conversations in coaching is when we discuss what is natural and what is normal to someone. A corporate midlife crisis can trigger a strong sense of urgency to find purpose and request the exact steps to get there. That is a product some professionals sell when they run out of snake oil. It is something many people buy and sell even if it does not exist.

Here is a structure that can help you navigate a midlife crisis, whether for a coaching client or yourself.

Phase 1: Define the starting point. A GPS only works if you know where you start and where you want to get to; it cannot give you the route without that information, no matter how impolitely we respond to the voice navigation. This stage might take a lot of time, but it is the most important one. Most people never have enough time and opportunity to get to know themselves and find out what they really want. Regrets and painful events can reveal what matters to us. They hurt because you are not the same person anymore, so use all those experiences and insights to make better decisions.

Phase 2: Design the future. Once you take proper stock of your past achievements, desires, challenges and happy moments, start designing the perfect day in five years' time. Make it as detailed and vivid as possible. Make it realistic, not idealistic. Ditch the 10x thinking or any other ideas that can make you feel you are just a tiny fraction of who you could be. Focus on your version of success. Test the idea. How would that affect your family and friends? Would it give you the right amount of time, income and energy?

Phase 3: Reverse engineer your vision. Now that you know where to start and where you want to get to, let’s plan how to get there. What kind of knowledge do you need to make it happen? What kind of transferable skills do you already have? What could you do even today to take a step toward your destination? Follow this line of questioning and you can start to create a plan to achieve your vision.

By definition, a crisis is a situation that has reached a critical phase, the turning point for better or worse. It seems like an event, but it is always an outcome of a longer process; it builds up over time just like a corporate midlife crisis. That is actually really good news. If you know what that is, how it happens and what you can do to avoid it or at least overcome it, you do not have to wait. You can take charge of your own life right now and make better decisions that serve you instead of hurt you.

Article by Csaba Toth - Founder of ICQ Global, developer of Global DISC™, the multi award-winning solution for coaches and corporate clients to level up performance.

Published by Forbes Coaches Council