How to recognise and beat a mid-life career crisis

MANY working professionals, even those with successful professions, can start to feel unsatisfied with their employment when they reach their mid-forties, according to research

They might feel stuck in a rut, wondering: “Is this all there is to the rest of my professional career,” or they might regret the earlier decisions they made, like the route not taken.

Sawan Kapoor, a career coach, advises on how to navigate your midlife career crisis.

Reasons why

Working professionals who have a mid-life career crisis often become disengaged from their jobs.

Professionals who chose a career path that is not their genuine calling are most likely to experience this. This is known as being in a misaligned career. In other words: “I’m in the incorrect field or position, now what?”

And the remorse starts to be seen as the cause of the mid-life career crisis as you decide what to do next.

There are six main stages to a career that lasts three to four decades. The beginning phase of one’s profession offers the greatest potential for misalignment.

The first stage, which is referred to as the aspiration stage, usually starts when you receive your higher education, or college degree.

To grasp what you want to become involved in, in terms of the sector, role or function you want to take on, serious introspection is necessary at this stage.

The time must be taken by young people who are going to enter the workforce to work on their personal awareness.

If they don’t do the necessary introspection, they frequently end up choosing a career that doesn’t fit who they are. They might have selected their occupation because of

familial, cultural or peer pressure to imitate successful people who don’t reflect their unique personalities.

The situation then only gets worse when one advances in their profession, furthering their discontent.

Professionals work most of their waking hours, thus their profession they enter into should not be taken lightly. Fundamentally, it will have an impact on a significant portion of your quality of life.

Unmet career ambitions are a second factor that contributes to a midlife career crisis. The expectation that one has of progress might not have been met.

Professionals might have expectations in terms of designation, salary, scope, learning and the responsibility with which their career allows them to engage with the working world. These factors are often the root causes of the second reason.

They frequently transition into going through a mid-life career crisis when these expectations are not satisfied.

By this point, the reality of family obligations, the lack of free time, and the weight of work can make it nearly impossible to get out of this catch-22 situation of “I need the job to power the financial engine of my life, but I have no interest in the job-situation”.

The signs

A mid-life professional crisis has distinct symptoms that start to emerge in several facets of a person’s life. This covers a person’s mental health, psychological equilibrium, emotional problems, physiology, relationships and more.

The symptoms could include a lack of drive, a hit to one’s self-esteem, and a lack of enjoyment in one’s profession. It might also manifest in other ways, like resentful behaviour toward new recruits, clients, vendors and other service providers.

It affects one’s mood, and a negative outlook is similar to a flat tyre – if you don’t fix it, you won’t get far!

Chronic fatigue is another sign of a mid-life professional crisis, which is caused by the endorphins, which used to be released when one made progress and felt successful, no longer being released.

Dealing with the problem

A working professional must understand that, more often than not, they are going through a midlife career crisis for the first time. The future route is unclear, and it is this unknown that might cause us to adopt a mindset that is not appropriate for dealing with what we are going through.

In addition to being something that one might not have previously dealt with, the worry it can cause can make things even more difficult and leave one unprepared to handle the barrage of emotions that a mid-life professional crisis can cause.

And, in many cases, it leads to odd behaviours and even to “quiet quitting”. Quiet resigning refers to doing only the bare minimum required by your employment to keep you employed, and even that is done reluctantly.

People who withdraw in this way show little initiative, avoid taking on responsibility, and try to strictly adhere to the parameters of their job tasks so that no one can openly criticise them.

Quitting quietly has the drawback that it doesn’t remain silent.

Taking action

Hiring a career coach is the best course of action for a mid-life professional crisis. First, by developing an awareness of why this is happening, a career coach could assist you in diagnosing the issue.

Understanding the source of the imbalance enables us to create a meaningful strategy for resolving the issue.

Second, a career coach will help you address your personal growth, so that you can deal with walking the trip to emerge from this cloudy thinking. They will also address any unsuitable career choices you might have taken and which allowed the problem to have surfaced in the first place.

They will discuss your personality, self-awareness, alignment with your mission, and the reason you get out of bed every morning, as well as the tailored career strategies you must take to put this behind you.

In order to achieve this, a career coach will address four crucial windows into who you are: your open self, or aspects of who you are that are known to you and to others similarly; your blind self, or aspects of who you are that are unknown to you but visible to others; your hidden self, or aspects of who you are that you hide from the world so that you are known to you but not to others; and your unknown self, or aspects of who you.

They bring the necessary solutions to these four facets of your personality in order to help you get back on track, personally and professionally.

Once they are able to solve the issues and establish alignment between what you are passionate about, what the world needs, and what you can be compensated for, they assist you in developing a doable plan of action, so that you won’t have to start from scratch again.

They assist you in making the move to a meaningful career, one in which you could contribute meritoriously and earn the financial benefits you are capable of while enjoying a work-life balance that complements your overall life goals. |