How refreshing to be surrounded by women at all stages of personal development like I was the other night! It reassured me once more that the soul surgery I have done on myself, which then led to the creation of my various books on midlife transformation, was truly not in vain.
Here’s an example of that writing from my book: Find Your Reason to be Here: The Search for Meaning in Midlife
Often we need to feel our deepest pain before we are willing to risk the painful process of growing up. Breakdowns can empower us to grow into our highest self. A few years ago I presented a talk to a group of unemployed people in their middle years. When I was finished, the first person to raise her hand asked me, “Do you believe we have to hit bottom in our lives before we truly begin to change?” My answer at the time was, “I did.”
The fact is that most of us will not begin to change until we become uncomfortable enough to admit defeat. Most of us need to be absolutely convinced that the “plan” we’ve had for life is simply not working. The way this usually comes about is through major life changes that demand our complete attention. Divorce, serious illness, the death of a loved one, and long-term unemployment, especially in our 40s and 50s, seem to be the most common events that lead to the end of our naïve belief that we have control over everything that happens in our lives. And these events become ever more common as we age. These unforeseen and often unforeseeable occurrences can inform us in no uncertain terms that changes in our plan are now in order.
Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences.
Brava for looking deep and doing the work needed to lift yourself up and put yourself on a new path. I’ll add that many of us need some guidance, perhaps counseling. Profound change is one of the hardest things we’ll ever do. In some ways it can be like a 12-step program where we slide back to our old ways of doing nothing and not moving our selves forward, so it’s helpful to find like-minded people for encouragement and reassurance we’re not the only ones going through this. xoxox, Brenda
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Yes Brenda,and those are the reasons why I wrote my books and became a therapist!
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