Malcolm’s Miata Dreams Fulfilled. And yours?
I just received this from Malcolm Munroe and thought that you’d enjoy reading it. It’s inspirational and follows the thought of my last post - go for the dream now cause now is the only time you have. I’m sure that he is not the only one who is feeling car lust (or travel lust or…) and living his dream. If you have fulfilled some wish, please share it. For more from Malcolm visit his blog at http://www.careerfitnesscoach.com.
This week, the buzz in my neighborhood is over my new car, a 2008 Mazda MX5 (the new version of the famous Miata.) Seems a 43 year-old bald guy can’t drive a sports car without someone accusing him of being in a “mid-life crisis.”
Truth be told, I’ve wanted one of these cars since they first came out about 17 years ago. It’s just now I can finally afford one. And the music playing loudly on the stereo as I drive through your neighborhood with the top down? It’s the same stuff you’d hear if I was in my conservative Mazda Protege’ (a car more suited to 43 year-old bald guys I guess.)
It does bring up an interesting question though: What is a mid-life crisis and is it real? While some may dispute its existence (much like the oft-scrutinized Restless Leg Syndrome) I suggest it’s real and experienced by many folks. I see it often in my clients who are at a crossroads in life brought on by job loss. It’s the thought that maybe everything they’ve experienced so far doesn’t have a purpose and they are wrestling with the question of “who am I?”
While I don’t have a clear cut answer for you, let me suggest that mid-life crisis can be best managed by asking the following questions:
* What are my short, long, and very long term goals in life?
* What are the strengths and liabilities of my personality preference?
* Has my work life so far been in alignment with my goals?
* Have I allowed outside factors (health, relationships, finances, family) to derail my career aspirations?
* How can I get my entire life to align with both family, relationships, and career to achieve those aspirations?
You see, in my experience having goals without a plan to achieve them relegates them to the status of just a dream. Everyone can have dreams, few actually achieve them. Mid-life brings a new focus to unrealized and unmet goals. It’s the discovery that perhaps most of a working life is over and those dreams we had early on won’t in fact be realized. Rather than sit in frustration, why not take some action to turn the dreams into realized goals?
Mid-life should be nothing more than a checkpoint. If you’re there right now and sitting in frustration, why not refocus on those early career dreams? You can in fact be far more productive now at this life stage because you have the wisdom of time to draw from. If you’ve just begun a career, you can think about what life will be like at the mid point and begin to track the time accordingly so as to easily navigate this phenomenon when it occurs. If you’ve successfully passed that stage, why not reach back and assist those who are embroiled in its confusing influence.
This week, take a look at your goals. Remember, a goal without a plan is just a dream. Anyone can dream, but successful people know how to make it reality.
…and remember, that bald guy in the green MX5 on the road next to you might just be celebrating a dream that hard work turned into a reality.
Malcolm Munroe
About the Author: Author and Consultant with over 20 years of executive coaching, workforce development and building leadership development programs around the world.
Judy | Aug 22, 2007 | Reply
At age 42, I picked up a guitar for the first time and decided to start a rock band, or make that, a “mom” rock band. Surprisingly, the one thing in my life that I didn’t consider myself to be an expert at made me infamous. The Mydols, my band of four Midwestern housewives/mothers drew the attention of the national media and soon I found myself in the pages of the supermarket tabloid The Sun whilst shopping for Lunchables.
My husband’s reaction to me starting a rock band in my 40s (having never played an instrument) was “She’s having a mid-life crisis.” I denied it. Then, much to my surprise, I found out there were other mom bands (Housewives on Prozac, The Lactators, Frump) all across America with similar stories. Was my my husband right? Is Mom, like her counterpart Dad, suffering from a mid-life crisis?
I think Baby Boomers (like myself) might be the first generation of married women who work because they feel they have to, not want to. Years in the rat race have left us tired and fed up, but with cash burning a hole in our purses. Dad has a sports car; mom gets a shiny new drum kit.
I am now 47 and The Mydols are still going strong. We’ll be playing at the Oakland (CA)Art & Soul Festival on September 1. Not bad for the little band (from Detroit) that thought it could.
I am also embarking on a new career as an author too. My memoir, “Rock Star Mommy”, will be published next April by Citadal Press. My “Mid-Life Crisis” (I can admit it now) was the best thing that ever happened to me!
Check out The Mydols at http://mydols.com
Ian Glendinning | Sep 11, 2007 | Reply
I think mid-life crises are real - though, except for some sad cases no doubt - buying a sports car is not necessarily a direct result. I’ve done that twice since my mid-forties, I’m now 51, first a bright orange “VX200″ and now a British racing green “Sky” and I’ve lived a second childhood through the rock-and-roll of my teenage now 20-something sons) No that’s not it, that is just a sign or having the opportunity to do what you enjoy. (Open-topped sportscars, like motorcycles have another attribute - they get you closer to experiencing the real environment as you travel in it rather than simply being coccooned through it, but I digress.)
No, the actual crisis is when you realise your day job is not your life’s work (your dream) and the crisis is that your responsibilities, including a family, depend on the ongoing day job income, unless you planned for the crisis, and set yourself up as financially independent of the day job - I wish. When you hit that crisis, of course it’s possible that being unable to follow the dream directly, spending some hard-earned cash on a new toy or fun hobby is really a displacement activity, a substitute or perhaps denial. But it’s a secondary sign I suggest.
I agree - deam plus planning equals a goal - but realistic planning depends on the wherewithal. I suspect people for whom it becomes a real “crisis” are those who realise too late that such a dream requires the practical planning.
Personally, I believe people should be educated whilst young that a career or paid job is only ever a means to an end, and it’s worth having ends in mind early on. And for the same reason, education should aim at teaching what is really of value, rather than “equipping people for jobs”. (Of course this whole subject only arises in a culture where this level of “self-actualization” is a more significant concern than survival itself.)
Ian Glendinning | Sep 11, 2007 | Reply
That should read “VX220″
Joel | Sep 16, 2007 | Reply
Hi Judy thanks for stopping by. How did the gig go in the Bay Area? We will be looking forward to seeing you and the band in Phoenix, I hope. Sorry for not responding to this post earlier, but if you don’t mind I would like to share your story in one of my workshops that is subtitled thanks to Cindy Laufer”Girls Just wana Have Fun” .