Midlife "Crisis" or Midlife "Enlightenment"?
Are you a millennial at a point in life where you are trying to find your purpose? Are you feeling directionless, bored of the everyday routine and the pile of mundane chores, trying to make it big - but nothing working out?
Well, definitely you are not and you will not be the only one.
We live in such a fast paced world, where everyday hustle culture is set as a benchmark, and overworking is glorified. We are expected to push ourselves and get through the everyday grind. So we fall into this never ending cycle of constantly working towards our goals in both professional and personal lives.
At some point though, this everyday grind can get to you. You may start internally conflicting with your current-self and the idea of who you actually want to be, which could inevitably lead to losing purpose in life.
I am a millennial, and I just hit my mid-30's. I live a comfortable life, have a good career, a loving family and so - on paper, I should be leading a happy life. But I noticed in my early thirties that something was constantly bothering me - it was like a random thought that got planted in my head, and my overthinking brain kept worrying about it. This was reason enough for me to not be happy. What followed was a spectrum of emotions that I had a hard time dealing with - Anger, Jealousy, guilt, self-doubt, loss in confidence, anxiety, restlessness, fear of missing out, feeling left out. All this made me a very unhappy person.
I understood that I was going through a very commonly experienced phase in life, "The Midlife Crisis"
Growing up in India, I was always told in my teenage years, "Study Hard NOW, Work Hard NOW", so that you can be happy and enjoy life later. So I always envisioned 30s as prime years where one would be settling down in life with a stable career, marriage and kids and ENJOY life for what it is.
But here I was, in my early to mid thirties, experiencing symptoms of what was characterized as having midlife crisis. Now, CRISIS seemed like a big word to me, something like S.O.S when one is in mortal danger. Was I in a crisis?
I had this very strong urge to do something to prove myself, prove my worth - but I had zero ideas on my plate. I decided to invest in myself, try to know who I am and what I want. When I say I invested time and energy in myself, I did not take any self-help courses or seek any kind of external help. I had my family and friends to talk to whenever I needed to, but other than that I did all the work. I gave myself that little push everyday to be better, to do better, do things that really brought me joy.
In a few months, I could see the results. I was able to control my impulsiveness, I was able to think before blurting out any hurtful comments at others, I did not set unrealistic expectations for myself and I started to feel content with myself. I still had bad days, but I knew which things I did not have to take seriously and which were the things I really needed to work on.
The path I took and my journey of personal growth is unique to me and my life experiences, but I have documented a few things I did that helped me and these are the things that I would continue to do going forward.
Accepting the past and learning to move on
I was naive, I was implusive, I realized that I hurt and offended people much more than I thought, I was hurt and I had wounds and scars of my own too. All these past experiences kept running in my mind constantly making me think
why I acted in a certain way back then,
why, in the name of pleasing some people, I dismissed others.
what if things happened differently
what if I made different choices back then?
I was stuck in the past trying to find answers.
But I needed to move on, and so I accepted that I could not change the past, but I could still be better tomorrow. Sounds cliched, right! But that is what I did.
Learning to manage my emotions and deal with them
I was impulsive and would act immediately on any emotion I felt and end up regretting it later. This made me feel even low and worse about myself. So I started to understand the deeper feelings behind the very emotions I was feeling. If I was angry, I tried to understand WHY? If I was Jealous, I tried to understand WHY.
This gave me a lot of insight and I could eventually move on with those feelings instead of having them pent up inside me.
Find an outlet for my thoughts
I started blogging again after almost 6 years. I used social media to dump my thoughts. I was mindful of how I was using social media and was mindful of not getting tangled into the web of likes and followers. It was like my online journal and though I did not blog or jot down my experiences everyday, I was and am still writing on topics that matter to me. This was like putting my energies and focus into something that I like, rather than overthinking about an irrelevant useless topic.
Do something solely for myself
I did not even know what this meant. Doing something only for myself - isn't that selfish? Was my initial thought. Going through a pandemic, stuck at home all day with little kids, there was hardly any alone time left where I could do something meaningful for myself. One day we went out to take the kids to a park and that park trip turned into a hiking trip which me and my family thoroughly enjoyed. It felt like family bonding time, but also those hikes in the open outdoors helped me connect with nature and that was when I felt that this brought me joy. I decided to go on kid friendly hikes with my husband and kids whenever possible. There were days when I looked forward to the weekend so that I could go on a hike.
Few months later I came across a creative writing workshop and without any hesitation, I enrolled myself into it. This, I feel was the one thing I did solely for myself. For about 6 weeks, I worked on my weekly writing assignments with enthusiasm and also got to learn a lot about creative non-fiction writing.
Letting go of toxicity
It is hard to make friends when you are in your 30s. It is not very easy to build a rapport with someone the same way I would have when I was younger. But for some reason, I was trying real hard to make new friends, have fresh beginnings, probably wanting something new in my life. But this did not happen the way I wanted to and in turn I faced feelings of rejection or feelings of being left out of a particular social structure. These were toxic feelings that were harming me and I must say these were the toughest to fight off. I started realizing that I don't need new friends just to feel good about my self, instead what I need is meaningful connections and meaningful conversations with a handful of people that are interested in me. I started to understand my place in other people's lives and know the people who value me.
Manifestation
I used to get intimidated by this word because I did not understand what it meant. The last couple of years, I came across this word being used a lot by influencers on social media and how their daily manifestations helped them achieve success in life. When I started reading more about it, all I could think about was Shahrukh Khan's dialog from the movie OM SHANTI OM in his search for his eternal love - "Agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho, to puri kayanat use tumse milane ki koshish me lag jati hain"
which loosely translates to
"When you really desire for something whole heartedly, the whole universe will work towards helping you find it"
My interpretation of this was that once we desire something, our mind sub-consciously works towards achieving that goal". So I manifested that I wanted to grow as a person and each day become a better person than I was yesterday.
Having a positive outlook
Last but not the least, I went through all this with a positive intent, being true to myself.
Going through this really felt like a self-help exercise which I made and catered to myself. I no longer felt a crisis like situation, but instead got to learn a lot from my own experiences and hence I would like to refer to this phase of my life as my
MIDLIFE ENLIGHTENMENT
1 comments:
Beautiful write up praff !
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