Feeling a bit blah these days? Your retirement account is starting to grow, but the day you get to hand in your retirement notification is still a distant goal. You are diligently working away, but nothing seems exciting any longer. You may not be in the position you had hoped to be in by this stage of your career. Or, you may have achieved more than you had hoped, but it all feels meaningless and you are privately questioning moving on to something else. These signs point to a potential mid career crisis. Here is how to recognize a mid career crisis, manage a mid career crisis, and refocus your career goals.
What is a mid-career crisis?
A midlife crisis is when someone in between the ages of 35-55 starts to feel bored or empty with their current situation, so intense feelings of nostalgia, impulsiveness, constant comparisons to others, and even infidelity start to creep in to cope.
The difference with a mid career crisis is that you may start feeling stagnant, burnout, or twinges of regret about the career choices that you have made.
The challenge is that we may be overly optimistic when we are young and starting our career. So confident that the future holds promotions , interesting projects, and meaningful work for the next 30 years. When the reality starts to creep in that not everyone can be the CEO and have projects that constantly challenge them, they are right in the sweet spot of the natural midlife crisis range of 35-55 to get a full dose of career regret, and “what-ifs”.
How to recognize a mid career crisis
A midlife work crisis may feel and look a bit different for everyone. It’s important to understand that this is a natural part of biology to feel a slump mid life, and taking a close look at your career progression and satisfaction is understandable.
Here are some signs for how to recognize a mid career crisis or a midlife crisis at work.
Feelings of regret creep in
Are you starting to feel nostalgic about your old job or a role at a previous company? Do you think about how different your life would be if you were brave enough to move to a new city or tick a different box when it came to your undergrad?
It’s easy to fixate on the road not taken if you feel dissatisfied with your current position.
From time to time I feel nostalgic about former positions I used to have. Those days were simple, right? You just came in, did your job by following what someone else told you to do and left it all at work when you went home.
Risks don’t seem as risky anymore
If you find yourself taking bigger risks at work just for some excitement or to shake things up, this is a warning sign of a midlife career crisis.
In a regular mid life crisis, you may go and get the sports car you always wanted or start dressing differently. In a mid career crisis, you may start to get bolder with your department’s goals, vary your hiring practices for riskier candidates, and go after bigger fish clients.
Realization that the glamorous promotion… isn’t so glamorous
What happens when you achieve your goals, but the prestige or career ladder climbing doesn’t feel as you hoped it would?
The hardest part of this mid career dissatisfaction is that you feel unjustified with this feeling and ungrateful for what you have achieved so far. It’s a double down of misery that you WANTED this, and you are still not satisfied and you need to suffer through.
Don’t feel embarrassed when you achieved your goals and it isn’t making your happy. You tried something instead of staying stagnant. That’s great! You probably learned some things along the way.
Fixating on “if only”
Our level of anxiety creeps up in our 30s and 40s, so we tend to focus more on missed opportunities and questioning many previous life decisions.
Blaming your current feelings of dissatisfaction on “if only” statements about missed educational opportunities, picking the wrong partner, decisions to start a family, or getting stuck in the wrong position will start to occupy thoughts in your head more than they previously did.
Steps for how to manage a mid career crisis
Now that we can recognize the specifics of what makes it a mid career crisis, it’s time to figure out some options for how you can manage this mid career crisis.
Biology will find a way
You need to recognize that biology plays a role in this dissatisfaction- not necessarily your job itself.
You need to get to the root cause of what is causing the unhappiness. Do you feel stuck and unmotivated or truly unhappy because of elements that impact your job – like a terrible boss, commute, or coworkers?
Be honest with yourself, if you were fulfilled in your role, would your coworker who talks on their phone way too loudly really matter? There are the same cast of characters at every workplace and leaving for a fresh start may not have the impact you want after the novelty wears off. Focus on finding projects or ways to motivate and challenge yourself again to try and pull you out of your mid career crisis slump. The science says that this will get better!
Recognize that success is not always linear
Stop fixating on the stories of seemingly overnight success. The truth is some people need to work their butt off to reach mid level management. And that’s OK! We can’t all be CEOs (and I’m thrilled with not having that burden).
Having peaks and valleys is a normal part of career development. You will have successes and failures. Much like the peaks and valleys of a mid career crisis where you can feel unfulfilled, despite having success.
Managing the anxiety
The feeling of “going nowhere” in your career can be hard to ignore.
Don’t compare your journey to others. You don’t have the whole story. In fact, a study demonstrates that people often misrepresent their success stories to overstate the obstacles they overcame to achieve their goals.
It’s never too late to figure out how to plan and achieve goals
Perhaps you inadvertently set yourself up for failure, despite having lots of drive to accomplish goals. Some of your missteps may include not planning for all of the steps to achieve a goal, you get discouraged easily, or your final objective is too vague.
Take an honest and confidential look to assess your leadership skills and abilities using the SWOT analysis tool.
Abandon the unrealistic expectations
The goals that you may have set for yourself early on may no longer be important or relevant. Alternatively, it may be time to be alright with the fact that you are not going to be running a multi-million dollar start-up.
Instead of giving up completely, it’s time to set new goals for your professional development and career path.
Re-frame your goals and identify the strengths that you now posses to achieve them, such as better experience and wisdom. Identify your new goals that align with who you are now and are relevant to who you are now.
Facing the regret
If the person who forgot their password to their bitcoin account and can move on – so can you.
First things first, you shouldn’t feel bad that you are doubting your current career path. Yes, you may have worked very hard and been single minded about your career goals, but you are allowed to have your doubts or question why you have not achieved them all.
Instead of fixating on them, identify new goals that could fulfill the parts of you that is dissatisfied. For instance, if the people management that came with the latest promotion has got you down, remember that this role could be a stepping stone in a long career that can get you to a different role where this is less of a problem.
If you regret not getting that degree, work on courses or carving out a niche for yourself where the letters after your names can come from certificates that you do at your own pace, not an expensive and time consuming degree.
Fresh start elsewhere
Drastic career changes during this time of a mid career crisis are not necessarily your friend. Dissatisfaction may follow you elsewhere and simply changing companies may not be the magic pill to cure your midlife crisis at work.
If you feel taken advantage of, have a bully of a boss, limitations on stretching your creative side, or unrealistic success metrics that you drown under, then a new organization with a new company culture may help. You need to ensure that if you decide to seek a fresh start elsewhere that you have addressed the root cause of your dissatisfaction. The novelty of a new office will wear off and the regret about leaving your current job may follow.
How to refocus your career goals
Do you cope or quit and move on? Plan for realistic goals or continue to shoot for the stars? There are some decisions to be made to combat a mid career crisis.
Use feelings of nostalgia to your advantage
Embrace those feelings of nostalgia and become a mentor for someone else. In discussion of your career steps and advice with another, you will remember things or projects that you may have forgotten about. Chances are your career has been more interesting than you give yourself credit for – you just need to see it from someone else’s perspective.
Focus on new and relevant goals
Ensure that you are setting relevant goals by completing a self assessment using a classic SWOT analysis. Using these guided questions, you can use the threats and opportunities to find new things to work on that are probably way more specific and relevant to what you need.
Use the ‘what if’ to as fuel to complete goals
Take those feelings of regret or dissatisfaction, and use them as fuel to find a passion project, complete a course, or start job hunting if your work environment is the problem.
Instead of focusing on your perceived missteps in your career, decide to do something about it by focusing and achieving your next career goals.
When it comes to how to manage a mid career crisis, remember this feeling of midlife crisis at work is not forever. According to this study, life satisfaction starts to decrease in late 20s (like when the novelty of being an adult wears off), bottoms out in mid 40s and increases again in your 50s.
The silver lining is that by the time you completely come out of the mid life crisis in your 50s, you have learned from your overly optimistic ways in your 20s and underestimate your future happiness. That way you are pleasantly surprised what lays in store for your future.