Having spanned several decades in life, I’ve concluded that there are life passages during which a calling or sense of purpose is and is meant to be non-existent, evident, evolving and/or center stage in our lives. I notice that when people in mid-life and beyond begin to get sparked by their existential sprite and ask a lot of “Who am I” and “What to do to be more fulfilled” questions, they also think, with deep regret, that they ignored the self who “didn’t go for it” when opportunity may have presented itself, or that they followed paths suggested by others, rather than their own inner voice. There is a sense of having wasted time and energy going in other directions, only to find themselves at a crossroads of angst and frustration. There is a sense of deep guilt and even anger for not having taken another road. “There’s gotta be more than this.” Or, “It’s too late to recapture those early dreams.”
Surely, that is what happened to me in mid-life. After years of an Ivy law and business education, followed by 15 years in competitive law firms and legal departments as a corporate securities and contracts lawyer, I had hit a wall. I felt enormous guilt and self-blame for having done it all because I wasn’t happy. When the company I was working for was bought and the parent wanted to reassign me to another job in another state, I bailed with a package, and ended up taking off a significant amount of time to figure out my life. Some time with a Nicholas Lore-trained career coach, I was able to confidently call out my own innate gifts and talents, reconnect to and recover my soul’s roots and allow that inner voice to guide me to my true interests – self-development and empowerment, creative writing, psychology and spirituality.
During a 3-year period, I allowed myself to immerse in all sorts of learning and experiences, which eventually led to my developing an approach to career coaching and launching my own practice, tailored for dissatisfied lawyers. After a few years of that, I felt too alone and wanted more, and ended up back in a corporate legal department, but this time it was different. I brought to bear all the learning I had about myself and how I wanted to practice law. I realized that I loved advising and supporting individuals and teams and others achieve their goals, using my intellect, intuition and imagination. I reimagined my own identity as someone who had a great deal of unsupervised freedom immediate access to anyone to help me in the company because I was its lawyer.
Once I fully understood my deepest values and the opportunities I had to be impactful, I fashioned my legal career to support those values. When new positions or opportunities came along offering promotions or more money that did not enable the full bloom of my gifts and talents, or my need for freedom and creativity, or which required me to manage others, who manage the administrative aspects of a legal department, I was able to respond with a hard, but polite, “no thank you.” I made those decisions as a confident professional who had learned, through her own purpose process, to “know thyself.”
Having now retired from that phase, I return to honor those same values. However, and even more importantly, I have forgiven the young self who stepped through the hallowed halls of law school. It was that young self who had wanted to go to New York to pursue fashion design, and later to pursue a degree in Clinical Psychology. The strong values of her family to pursue higher education overrode these leanings, especially since she was not wholly confident about her other aspirations. Taking the “safer” route felt better at the time. Rather than chide her, I now applaud her. She made a decision at the time, being who she was, with all that influenced her at the time. She pushed through, gained resiliency, and ultimately became successful enough to be strong and financially independent, and at choice most of the time regarding her decisions.
Much later now, I got to review my childhood, the issues that held me back from full expression and confidence, and have made peace with the past. Those early wounds now fuel my coaching practice –in working with people seeking to recover their own essence again, and nurturing it back into their lives with meaning.
So, getting back to “passages.”
Once we are born, we are meant to be guided by our parents, caretakers, ancestors, culture and the various others who play significant roles in our lives. We are deeply reliant and attached to these people. While certain of our talents and gifts may appear and are either recognized and developed or lay dormant, a sense of knowing what we are here for (or “calling”) is usually hibernating waiting for Spring.
As pre-teens and teens, we begin to question everything and our egos strengthen immensely with a glee of being self-led and oftentimes, even rebellious. However, without life experiences significant enough to shape us and fine tune our judgments (barring traumatic events), at this phase, we largely wing it, and go with our hormones and the leanings of our social communities.
As emerging adults in or 20’s, we begin to recognize the need to make hard decisions about our futures, with little information to go on. Depending upon our personalities, some decide to figure it out along the way while others start planning a future based on either a passion or a direction often suggested by their own influencers – whether parents, teachers or heroes. The world is a big unknown and there is some fear and uncertainty about to make it on one’s own. It’s a time to navigate and learn, and develop skills and experience to build one’s value and confidence. We also develop relationships which lead to marriage and more family.
In our 30’s, we seek to hunker down and achieve our goals – to “make it” in the world. We may want things that money has to buy – be a home, car, the right school, a higher cost of living, or even more personal freedom. We do what we feel we have to do to move our lives along. We don’t see ourselves as conformists during our 30’s, but rather, we want to ignite our choices with energy and conviction that we can get to where we want to go. However, we do begin to notice those days which de-energize us, and those which do, and acknowledge that we want more of the latter.
So, as the 40’s and 50’s land, you may recognize that there is something missing. You’ve crossed the middle of the productive years of your lifeline. You’ve done all the “right” things, and yet, perhaps there is not enough to show for it. You’re bored, disenchanted or operating at a burn-out level, and the ROI isn’t there anymore. Something inside begins to nudge you to begin to ask some pretty deep questions about how you are living your life. You have lost some energy and enthusiasm. Perhaps you cannot remember the last time you were in a joyous flow at work, or the last time the vacation really was a vacation. Your work environment may not be changing for the better. You begin to feel out of sorts. What is the meaning of all this? What really matters and much more is there to life?
When your 60’s land and possible transitions are ahead (including retirement or the Next Act), you notice that you value more of the intangibles than the tangibles to use your time. Peace, Nature and familial relationships take on a higher luster.During these later decades, purpose and meaning extend to the world around us? What is your legacy? What value are you bringing to the world. You can begin to care more about that. You are heading into Elderhood. That’s a whole new world I am beginning to explore. (More on that in another blog!)
So, I suggest that a preoccupation for purpose and meaning most often appears after our 30’s (but younger generations are susceptible to it, based on the state of world events). After our 30’s, we have learned “the ropes” of navigating our lives, and while not necessarily masters of it, we now care after that phase of life about the ways we want to be more masterful and fulfilled, and to lives to carry more meaning at a higher, more expansive level. If there is a “calling,” it’s an urge to be more awake, aware and alive.
While I don’t offer these passages as hard and fast rules, it is certainly one I’ve observed in my own and many others’ lives. We do get that “wake-up” call at some point, and it’s a call that is meant to be, at the time it comes. The timing is always perfect. To have expected it at very early touch points in our lives is likely unrealistic. You did not miss the boat. It’s time to take yourself off the meathook if you are nursing regrets about your life decisions. Each decision is meant to groom you for the day that wake up call comes. Calling takes center stage. Then, the fun really begins!