The real questions concern not what job but what kind of life we want next
Harris felt stuck. At age 39, he’d had a successful career as a regulatory affairs expert. Although at the top of his function in a celebrated biotech firm, something was missing. He yearned to run a business, to manage a profit and loss. He wanted challenge; he could do his job in his sleep. His mentor asked him (again) to be patient. His wife, at home with two young children, cautioned him against leaving for a risky start-up; he was the breadwinner after all. For him, it was now or never. In the interim, he was working night and day on a new drug introduction without a clear idea of what to do next.
Susan’s job as the head of the change management practice of a leading consulting firm fell short on two important counts: she wanted more meaningful work and a better work-life balance, with more control over her travel schedule as a single mother. At age 42, status and money, she concluded, didn’t matter so much any more. After careful planning and saving, she finally quit to search for a new career option. Two weeks later, a headhunter brought her what she called “the perfect job following the relentless logic of a post MBA CV.” She accepted. No sooner had she started that she realized she’d made a big mistake.
Gary’s CV ticked all the boxes: blue chip jobs in investment banking and consulting and a top US MBA. But behind the success, at age 35 he felt uneasy. None of his past roles were active choices but rather default options meant to keep his doors open until he figured out what he really wanted to do “when he grew up.” Two events in close sequence--falling in love with a women while being engaged to be married to another and getting a first-ever negative performance appraisal --warned him that time had come to take charge of his life and career.
Harris, Susan and Gary share much more than their obvious career dilemmas. All three have come to a turning point in their lives and the decisions they face involve much more than a job change. Having had a certain measure of career success, they must now ask themselves if they want more of the same or something different.
Complicating matters are tight links between their personal and professional lives. And, underneath the surface lurk psychological issues that, if left unexamined, can keep them from making good choices.
The real questions concern not what job but what kind of life they want next. Psychologists who study adult development provide a useful perspective on their, and your own dilemmas, by calling attention to the mid-life transition that many of us traverse around age 40, and that can spark or, alternatively, inhibit, and facilitate or block important career changes. Of course, that is not to say that we are all predictably alike. But awareness of common psychological dilemmas is often helpful in identifying and resolving our own.
Psychologist Daniel Levinson is credited with having popularized the terms ‘mid-life crisis’ and ‘seven year itch’. His theory of adult development, first published in Seasons of a Man’s Life, has become a classic. His core idea was that our life evolves in alternating periods of stability and transition. During periods of stability, which typically last about seven years, we build our lives around a few key pillars, usually our work and family life. Key decisions we have made about our careers and intimate relationships become the life priorities around which we organize and fit in (or leave out) everything else.
During periods of transition, we question the choices we have made, explore alternative possibilities and plant the seeds from which might grow a new period of relative stability. Levinson’s point is not that change is always better but that we grow through alternating cycles of commitment and doubt. When we commit to a life path without ever questioning whether it is the right one for us, we foreclose on options that might be more rewarding. But, when we question endlessly without ever committing to a career or relationships, we also forego the possibility of mastery and maturity.
To be a growing adult mean s to make commitments that are informed by prior questioning. A person may entertain doubts, however, and then conclude that he or she is on the right path, or, make changes that are not visible to the outside world. Levinson argued that every decade—our 20s, 30s, 40s, etc.—has its unique issues and transition periods. But he found that the most turbulent transition period for most is around age 40, or between 35 and 45. There are several reasons for this:
For many people, this is a tumultuous process -- a ‘mid-life crisis’. A radical examination of one’s life and career means challenging the parts of ourselves that have a strong investment in the status quo – security, certainty, comfort, perks and the like. The only way to test just how much these matter is to experiment. That is why people at mid-career actively seek out new assignments, projects, educational programs and extracurricular activities that can help them figure out what they really want.
[This article has been reprinted, with permission, from Rotman Management, the magazine of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management]