How To Find Your Passion and Purpose In Midlife
If you’ve reached midlife and found yourself wondering ‘what next?’, don’t worry - you’re not alone.
Many women in their 40s and 50s will recognize that nagging sensation of something being missing. That feeling can be even stronger if you’ve spent the last few decades raising a family and now your empty nest has left you with time on your hands.
What you’re missing is your passion and purpose in life.
Luckily, it’s possible to find them again. It takes a little time and quite a lot of introspection, and you may not be sure if you even know how to find your passion after all this time.
But finding your passion and purpose in life will reinvigorate you and make midlife more exciting than you could ever have imagined.
You deserve to find your passion
Chances are that you’ve spent most of your adult life putting other people first. Your family, your friends, your work colleagues...
It’s OK to put yourself first sometimes!
Know that you deserve to have fun, feel good, and enjoy yourself. If you’ve spent the last 20-30 years looking after your family, it may take time for you to give yourself permission to put yourself first. But you deserve to really get to know yourself and find out what makes you feel good about you, not what society says you should enjoy.
How to discover your passion
Right now you’re probably thinking to yourself ‘OK Tera, now I know that I deserve to feel good, but how do I find my passion?’
There are many questions you can ask yourself to help find it. Questions like ‘Where do I want to be living?’, ‘What do I want to be doing’ and ‘Who do I want to be with?’ will help you to focus on how you want to change your life.
But there are two other questions that are particularly useful here:
What would you do differently if you could live your life over again?
What would you do if you knew you only had 12 months to live?
The first makes you consider what you would like to change about your current life, while thinking about your own mortality will bring your main priorities into clear focus.
Another similar trick is to try writing your own obituary. Think about what you’d like people to say about you at the end of your life, and then consider what changes are necessary to make that a reality. Ghoulish? Perhaps a little, but it’s very effective!
Follow Your Passion
You probably won’t find that the answers to these questions come easily. But take your time, listen to your inner voice and you’ll work out what your purpose in life is.
That’s the easy part.
Next you have to give yourself permission to follow that passion. Make a commitment to yourself that you’ll push past the resistance you feel, the fear that holds you back, so you can live your authentic life.
Following your passion could mean going back to college to re-qualify for a midlife career change. It could mean volunteering for a charity that has a special personal significance. Or it could mean selling your possessions and striking out to explore the world.
By giving yourself the time and space to explore your priorities, goals and dreams, you will soon learn how to find your passion in life.
It’s already in you. You just need to give yourself permission to discover it.
Share this: