How to Rediscover and Reinvent Your Life in a Changed World

What do you do when your day-to-day life vanishes?

Thanks to the cornovirus, many of us are asking that question.

What can we learn from people who have endured trauma and emerged whole on the other end?

In researching my book, Thriving at 50+, newly published on Amazon, I discovered an amazing resilience among people 50+ who lost their jobs after years of work.

I tell the story of Rita G (she asked that her full name not be used) who lost a job she had held and enjoyed for 30 years.

“All of a sudden, you lose your sense of self. I wasn’t who I was before,” Rita G said her voice filled with emotion. Sixty to 70% of that is gone."

As director of a university counseling and advising center, her identity was tied to being a professional in higher education, helping students, and interacting with other education professionals and faculty. “I was with smart, interesting people,”she said. “People used to say to me, ‘You’re one of the few people I know who really likes her job.’ I did really like my job, so giving that up was hard.”

Like so many of us today, Rita's routine had disappeared. “I’m goal-directed. I like to have structure,” she said. “So all this free floating is tough. Getting up at a different time every day, having each day different.

I look at my calendar a thousand times during the week. I don’t love that. It makes me anxious.”

She didn’t have the luxury of lolling around. For financial reasons, she needed to work at least part-time. Trying to find a job, she’d been smacked down by ageism. Putting herself out on the job market was especially hard “as a quote, unquote old person,” she admitted. “It made me more aware of how old I am.

We baby boomers don’t think of ourselves as old.But then you go and talk to people, and it’s usually indirect, but they will say they aren’t looking for someone with my experience. And if you look around at the other staff, everybody is younger,” she said dejectedly. “I feel like a misfit.”

Discarding expectations

To move on and find her purpose, Rita had to understand and view her experience differently. It meant changing her attitude and strengthening her coping skills, which took time. She found it “hard to get the motivation to look for something else until” she processed what was happening to her.

Processing for Rita was analogous to going through the five stages of grief. Over the last two and a half years since she lost her job, she has experienced denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and now acceptance.

Along the way, she learned to discard expectations of finding another job or living a structured life. In other words, she altered her purpose and her sense of self. They were no longer tied to what she was and her old job, but to who she was now.

“I’m more used to my life now than before. I feel like I’m moving in the direction of getting my purpose back,” Rita said, her voice strong.

At this life stage, she knew her purpose wouldn’t feel the same. “You know it’s different, so your expectations and your sense of purpose have to be different,”she said. “You have to change your expectations of who you are and what defines you and see how that works out rather than recreating the past.” Rita’s gradual self-acceptance helped her redefine her purpose.

Stumbling to find ourselves

The Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr, in his book Falling Upward, talked about our staggering to find ourselves in the second part of our lives. We have “a sense of necessary suffering, of stumbling over stumbling stones and lots of shadowboxing, but often just a desire for ourselves, for something more, or what I call homesickness,” Rohr wrote.

“The first half of life is discovering the script, and the second half is actually writing it and owning it.”

Rita was in the process of writing her script. “I’m adjusting.I’m working part-time, I’m taking a class and volunteering,”she said, sounding surprised by how far she had come. “I’mr redefining what my roles are and how that can also make me feel more purposeful.”

Rita’s day-to-day life was a far cry from her previous structured days. But she had grown more comfortable.

“I don’t have to get up at a certain time,” she said. “Today I woke up at nine thirty. I still haven’t put on my makeup, and it’s now twelve o’clock. And it’s doable. I’m walking around the house and I’m dressed, but I’m wearing clothes I wouldn’t wear outside. I have to go do a few things. But it’s OK if I do it at two o’clock in the afternoon instead of at nine o’clock in the morning. So it’s just more fluid.”

Rita's story is but one of many I share in my book which develops a frameworks based on 7 principles to reinvent your life. Check it out here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wendy Marx is a marketing and branding authority sought after for her ability to turn virtually unknown people into brands of distinction. As founder and president of Thriving at 50 Plus, her proprietary coaching program is designed to help Baby Boomers discover their point of differentiation, then rebrand and retool themselves while finding more purpose and meaning in life toward a more rewarding “Second Act.” Check out her new book Thriving at 50+.