LIKE the infernal midlife crisis, mid-career crisis can hit even the best of us.
People who get caught in the grips of midlife crisis find it hard to understand themselves. Those who have gone through it shared that it is a most painful and costly episode of their lives. The same holds true for those who have experienced the mid-career crisis.
The relationship between midlife and mid-career crisis seem highly interrelated. Without an awareness of this phenomenon, a stable person might misinterpret his dissatisfaction at work as a dissatisfaction for his current life and relationships leading to disastrous mistakes.
Men are especially prone to wrong choices because they have not been prepared as to what they might experience physically, psychologically, and spiritually.
Women, on the other hand, are open to the subject of menopause and all the critical changes that go with it thereby arming them with the necessary support and information to help them cope well when it happens.
The understanding that the crisis is a natural but very temporary thing can immensely help a person weather the storm.
According to Harvard Business Review, a study was done in UK by a group of economists working with Professor Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick. They found that the job satisfaction of the average employee deteriorates dramatically in midlife and that it occurs as a widespread regularity spanning more than 50 countries regardless of marital status or socio-economic standing.
However, they also found out that at the latter part of their careers, these same individuals experience a great increase in job satisfaction wherein most reported to even have higher levels than the ones they had earlier in their careers.
This phenomenon has been called the age-related U-shape in job satisfaction. It says that on the average, life satisfaction is high for young people then starts to go down in early 30s, hitting an all-time low in the mid-40s to mid-50s before going up again to levels as high as those of young adulthood.
Over-optimism or the overly positive expectations without regard to realistic scenarios can affect how a person deals with midlife adjustments. When things don’t turn out as planned or things happen too soon or too late, a person might revert to his earlier expectations and feel miserable even though they may have the most desirable jobs.
But when people hit their low and they begin to align their expectations with how their lives are actually doing, they start feeling better again. Once they cease to dwell on regrets and learn not just acceptance but a more grounded, more sublime perspective of life, they are pleasantly surprised that their sense of satisfaction goes up again.
Author Hannes Schwandt in his article “Why so many of us experience a midlife crisis” (hbr.org) shares that mid-career crisis can be attributed more to biology and natural development than specifics of particular job.
Hence, Schwandt points out that a drastic career change may not do any good for an individual. Instead, the author suggests to wait out until job satisfaction rises again.
The author also listed some strategies to overcome dissatisfaction during midlife crisis: a) acknowledging mid-career dissatisfaction as a normal and temporary stage, b) creating mentoring programs and c) learning from older colleagues who made it through such crisis.
Finally, the article leaves an optimistic note by saying that instead of being a painful time in life, midlife crisis or mid-career dissatisfaction can be maximized as a period for reflection and re-evaluate personal strengths and weaknesses.