GUEST COMMENT: Overcome mid-life angst and move from a life of success to one of significance

Many of us arrive at mid-life with a degree of success but find our fulfilment flags flying at half-mast leaving us perplexed, confused and unsettled.

As midlifers we can find ourselves well and truly caught up in life's merry go round of busyness, feeling like we're being pulled in many directions. We may find our work crosses over into our personal lives. Our boundaries become so skewed. Often we can't even remember what they were in the first place.

That overwhelmed, over-worked feeling becomes part of our everyday life. And the energy to keep going comes from the adrenaline of non-stop "doing." It's no wonder that in mid-life we begin to question the meaning of it all and think about the legacy we want to leave.

The first half of life is all about the drive for success. As young adults we strive to answer the question, "What am I going to do?".

At mid-life you may find yourself asking a very different question, "Why am I doing this? This is the time to start to listen to our souls yearning for the next stage in life - significance.

Significance means pursuing something meaningful to you, something you are passionate about, something that gives you a feeling of aliveness.

Pursuing significance does not mean you have to leave your job or be financially independent (many of us aren't). But it does mean organising your resources differently.

A closer look reveals you have four major resources you can use towards pursuing something significant:

1. Money

2. Time

3. Talents

4. Energy

Re-evaluating success

First spend some time looking at how you're currently using these major resources. Look at each one and ask yourself the question, "Why do I choose to use them in this way?"

Go through your typical day, asking over and over again about every detail of the day. Ask, "Is this really important to me?" How much of my precious energy and even more precious, time, am I wasting on things that are not aligned with what's important to me?

Once you have some awareness around these questions it's time to re-evaluate what success means to you. Ask yourself these questions to get some clarity on what 'significance' means to you.

1. Energy resource

o What am I passionate about?

o What gets me thumping my fists on the table?

o What injustices get my blood boiling? What wrongs do I want to put right?

o What are my core values?

o What legacy do I want to leave my children and grandchildren?

2. Talent Resource

o What are my strengths?

o What am I naturally gifted at?

o Who inspires me past/present? What is it about them that I find inspirational?

3. Time Resource

o How can I free up time to pursue what's meaningful to me?

o Do I need to create new time parameters around my work/business life?

o How much time do I need?

4. Money Resource

o How much money is enough?

o How can I best use my financial resources to support myself moving forward into significance?

o What can I simplify, scale down on?

There is no way of knowing how long it takes to transition from success to significance. It's a journey that can take one month or eleven years, it's unique to each of us.

Redirecting our major resources, time, energy, talents and money toward something significant is what will fill the second half of life with satisfaction and fulfilment.

Finding the answers to these questions is the easy part, living the answers however, is something very different. My advice is to take it one step at a time and walk slowly each day into more meaning.

I wish you a successful transition and I'll leave you with some wise words from Henry David Thoreau.

"If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavours to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

Colin runs retreats in sunny Southern Spain for 'midlifers' who have compelling reasons to create a new life chapter. Click here for more details.