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A senior reached out to ask me for guidance regarding their “next steps.” Uncertain about whether or not to continue working or stop to pursue a life passion with full attention, the most pressing question and the one that seems to be the most daunting for him is: “Why is this stage of life so much harder to deal with and feel confident in?”
G: Each decade or so of life presents us with new beginnings, some endings, many opportunities to reconsider how we are living, and presses us to re-ask a difficult question: Is this all there is?
It’s easy to get bogged down in questions like that, ones that take time to get to an answer we can live with peacefully. The answers will shift and morph as we gain more information, wisdom and experience. Not everything we have done in our past is going to satisfy us, or complete our sense of fulfilling a calling or a destiny. It’s no wonder we get periodically confused over what else there might be for us to be doing, that could or should be the next “right thing”.
It requires some looking back at the various times in our life to see how we can and do organically change. Becoming radically different doesn’t always require a tragedy or trauma, like a hearing deficit or unexpected cancer diagnosis. Our desires and tastes, needs or wants, even our sense of self can come into question at any time of day or circumstance.
If we are struggling with finances, health issues, relationships, or just those extra pounds that no longer feel or look so great, life can sure look like it’s become so much harder than it once was for us when we were in mid-life.
To be more fully accurate with our assessment of things, we have to look at what our changed expectations are doing to our mental and emotional wellbeing. Are we being real or are we succumbing to a fantasy desire? Are we chasing an unattainable quenching of a thirst, that insatiable appetite, for more?
Readers know I purposefully share what I have learned. I have found doing so helps strangers, and even people I am close to, be more readily able to accept and relate to what I say and write. It’s a hard-earned wisdom that I take great satisfaction in having attained. It is for you to benefit from, and share with others, if you so choose.
With that said, early on my career path I faced challenges, and struggled with not being able to comprehend the reasoning behind whatever obstacles I perceived were before me, that were either delaying or derailing what I “knew” to be the rightful advancement of my “gifted” work, publicly and privately.
When I write the word “perceived” I do so now with the wisdom that I have attained … “perceived” meaning, what it was I was processing within my mind and body about those confusing challenges. These perceptions were in fact not always real, but rather they were my “interpretation” of actual conditions. AKA “interpretation” being my own head spin, so to speak, of what I perceived.
Yes, some factors were truly beyond my control. But with more time and distance from the pain of that unsettling uncertainty, I came to realize that many of those ideas and beliefs were actually indoctrinations that had been formed years earlier.
Like many of you, these responses had been created out of what I had been “mistaught.” Some of that information I had assumed, expected and even hoped, would and should be the innate, or destinal, trajectory of what I refer to as “upper” abilities and “earthly” talents. Upper are the intangible or spiritual qualities that define our orientation, whereas the earthly are of the physical.
Until we achieve the distance that experience and wisdom offer, we usually operate out of a less developed or not quite fully formed mindset. That narrower mindset is often a reflex, one that consumes all happiness and trust.
It’s a reflex that will dial us up emotionally, negatively. These unpleasant reactions are mostly birthed out of fatigue. Then they amplify confusion, pain, uncertainty, doubt, fear and all other inflicted judgments. The result is a full distortion of what we are here to do that could help us attain the sustained peace we desire.
If you are to ever fully surrender to being in your life in this moment, and not be in some other moment of a “belief system or ideology” that was created by someone else, or that had unduly influenced you, it will require that you dispel any and all birthright or destiny beliefs.
As to quitting work to retire, or shifting to other work that seems to align more with our “purpose” I can say that I am of the camp that says we are here to work in any of the forms that present us with daily opportunities to be unconditionally loving. We are to offer to others what we are able to do, and for as long as we perceive and know that we are tasked to do so.
Jump into change without hesitation or fear, as long as you have crunched the numbers and you can remain financially independent and secure.
I learned through experience that we succeed on the path of peacemaking by putting aside all expectations of what “more” we are to do. To advance materially and spiritually, we are not to pressure ourselves or anyone else, to do more than what is required: sustain yourself and offer up your expertise and heart.
Email Giselle with your question at GiselleMassi@gmail.com or send mail: Giselle Massi, P.O. Box 991, Evergreen, CO 80437. For more info and to read previous columns, go to www.gisellemassi.com