Don’t let mid-life bring you to your knees.

Mid-life is a difficult period for many men because the difficulty of balancing achievement at work with your personal life really comes to a head.

Work is challenging and rewarding and supports the lifestyle you and your family have grown accustomed to, yet it competes for the same time and energy you need to be a good husband, father, friend, and to take care of yourself physically and mentally.

In the face of so many responsibilities (and to avoid feelings of inadequacy) many men respond by narrowing their focus to a few key areas where they feel successful.

Areas that may be languishing—i.e., your relationships, your health, your interest in activities outside of work—thus fade from view and start to wither from inattention until something fails. And then you have a crisis on your hands.

It’s also around this time (35 - 50 y/o) that you may begin to question the wisdom of trading your time and energy for money, prestige, and advancement at work.

You’re noticing the rewards for professional success aren’t really translating into happiness and contentment (especially in your personal life) and this leads you to question what you stand to gain from further promotion and advancement.

These feelings and thoughts force us to take a critical look at our priorities and values—something we’re uncomfortable doing because we don’t like to admit that we may have had something wrong all this time and because making changes to our priorities and values almost always impacts other people in our life (and we hate to be an inconvenience).

We also don’t like to believe that we can’t do it all—if we just try harder, work longer, and put in more effort—we should be able to be a world-class business leader, father, husband, friend, and community leader right? False.

Life demands compromise and requires tradeoffs.

If you haven’t already, you will soon find that this strategy of turning a blind eye to areas where you aren’t ‘succeeding’ doesn’t work indefinitely—at some point a crisis (e.g., divorce, addiction, children’s behavioral issues, physical and mental health crises) will catapult these issues back into your view where they can’t be ignored.

And now, in addition to dealing with a crisis, you must also examine your behaviors, attitudes, priorities, and values that led to this crisis (or can prevent another one).

You are not alone in your struggle.

Men don’t talk about their issues.

And because we don’t talk about our issues, it leads us to the false assumption that we’re the only person experiencing our particular challenge and it makes it difficult to open up about what we’re feeling.

The truth is that many men—good, honest, successful men just like you—are dealing with similar issues right now.

In his book Modern Madness, Douglas LaBier explains how a confluence of historical, social, and economic forces are leading men to seek not only accomplishment, but also life meaning (purpose, transcendence, fulfillment) from their work.

This strategy—though honest and well-intentioned—unfortunately causes us to ignore other (often more personal and relational) areas of life that are essential for living a happy, fulfilling life.

In other words, it’s not wholly unexpected that you’re experiencing frustration, confusion, and discontent at this stage of your life.

Most men will recognize—somewhere between the ages of 35 - 50—that how they’ve been living up to this point is not how they want to live the rest of their life. Sometimes this awareness arises naturally, other times it takes a crisis to force a man to take a look at how he’s been living.

Lurking behind all of this are some fundamental questions that most of us have never really answered: How do I want to live my live? Who do I want to be? What do I hope to accomplish?

What do you really want?

What typically comes to mind first are the things your parents, teachers, peers, role models, culture, and society have told you that you should want: a college degree, a good stable job, career advancement, a nice house, paid off cars, an annual vacation to somewhere warm, lovely children, etc.

It’s not that any of this is wrong per se, but are you really in touch with why these things are important to you and how they contribute to a life well lived?

Many forces influence your desires and, over the years, these forces create confusion around what you think you should want vs. what you really want.

This is important because what you want ends up shaping your priorities and decisions, which in turn shape your daily lived experience.

Figuring out what you really want in life can be tremendously difficult, but the reward for your effort is greater clarity and conviction around what does and does not serve to build the life you most want to life.

With these questions answered, you can scrutinize your own behaviors, attitudes, relationships, and the environments you immerse yourself in, and slice away all that doesn’t align with your values or your life’s purpose.