The Midlife Opportunity: A Second Career Chance

Madhuri* is a senior vice-president in one of India’s leading banks. For more than fifteen years, her primary focus was working her way up the ladder in the Credit Risk department of her organisation. Day after day, she worked hard to meet the demands of her superiors and colleagues until one morning when she woke up with a sickened, sinking feeling in her stomach.

?It was her career, she realised. She no longer wanted to work in a job where she spent nearly half of her life, the only job she had ever worked. With the goals of her youth long forgotten, Madhuri had reached a point of midlife crisis in her career, and didn’t like it.

That was the point when she came to me. During our coaching association, we first worked on time management—how she could spend more part of her day on strategic thinking and focus more on those aspects of her job that she liked. We then explored the way ahead for career transition. To alleviate the feeling in her stomach, Madhuri began consciously paying more attention to the gap between the reality of her life and the dreams and passions she once had. She was determined to capitalise on career avenues and paths that could make the second half of her life more meaningful and fulfilling.

?At 40, Madhuri decided to nourish her passion for cooking varied culinary delicacies, painting and handmaking bookmarks. She is still in her current role, but there is a concrete plan to quit after 18-24 months, once she achieves financial independence, with plans to take up professional courses and start a small venture to give wings to her passions. She makes it a point to spend some time during the week painting, cooking and creating bookmarks —which makes her day job ‘bearable and tolerable.’

Stories, Statistics and The Great Resignation

Is Madhuri’s story unusual? Not really. A LinkedIn study that came out in the early days of the pandemic found one in three professionals in India were ‘career sleepwalking’—feeling stagnant in a continuous treadmill going nowhere, with 57% considering career pivoting to build a more fulfilling career. This percentage had gone up to a whopping 97% of the Indian workforce, as per another Business Today study that came out in the last quarter of 2021. A large percentage of Indians are holding back owing to financial struggles and a lack of clarity over the next move.

?Until early last year, I was one of those Indians referred to in the above statistics.

?After struggling with myself to abandon a path of unfulfilling success, the pandemic finally gave me the impetus to pursue my passions. Finding no guidance before embarking on a career pivot, I decided to charter the path and navigate the rough waters on my own. Today my passions are my profession, and the personal story of my career pivot is on Addicted2Success, the world’s #1 personal development and motivation site. You may read the story of my pivot here .

?Globally too, Madhuri is the rule rather than an exception. According to a pre-pandemic study reported in Prevention Magazine, not in the slightest; “79% of baby boomers will expect to work at least part-time well into their golden years,” the study has revealed. “A growing number of adults are looking at their 40s, 50s, and 60s as the right time to start fresh in an entirely new field.”

Leaders and the organisations employing them either ignored or failed to take note of the cold hard facts resulting in the wave of The Great Resignation that we are seeing today. While the pandemic might have accelerated the timeline, statistics show that Great Resignation was something waiting to happen.

Midlife…More of an opportunity rather than a crisis

?So, what drives adults to change their careers in midlife? The answer is the changed priorities. We are all different at 25, 35, 45 and so on. What held good ten years ago may no longer hold a candle at the present. And while the youth in their 20s may be more willing to compromise on their passions for earning a living, an adult in his 40s will be far less inclined to do so.

In fact, craving a more fulfilling and meaningful career is just one area of focus during midlife adjustment. As adults reach midlife, at a time when parents and older relatives begin to die, the realisation that their lives, too, will come to an end starts to hit home. Suddenly the importance of achieving goals and doing what makes us happy becomes much more significant. This is when closet authors, entrepreneurs, musicians, and artists begin thinking about careers to match their energy, vitality, and passion for life.

?The life cycle is, for most of us, fairly predictable.

From adolescence to age 30, most of us are consumed with learning how to become what we think we want to be. We go from our 30s to our 40s working and living that role. But at age 40, midlife, after reaching this goal, many discover it wasn’t what we wanted to do after all.

At this midlife point, after having worked so hard only to find ourselves wanting, the more courageous of our lot are willing to take on the challenge of more risk and free ourselves from the burden of others’ expectations.

Longer life expectancy plays a part, too. People realise they still have about half a lifetime yet to live in midlife and wonder how they will spend those years. They know they’re going to have lots of healthy years, so it’s a period of making choices to live out one’s dreams that got put on the shelf during younger years.

Women are well represented in this mindset, with more women than ever using their midlife as a springboard to experience positive career transformations. They want a career that matches their energy and allows them to be successful as individuals. You will often find women starting businesses, gaining respect, and finding purpose in their midlife.

The lesson we can take from Madhuri’s story is that midlife should be welcomed rather than feared and that you should not ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach. Both are an accepted call to action. Changing your job, career, or lifestyle may take some work. But if you truly follow your passion, the effort will provide infinitely positive results and you will be able to charter a new career path.

6 Tips to get started on a successful career transition

?Are you ready to make a change? Read my blogpost here for a detailed step-by-step guide to successfully build a new career path.

Below are a few quick tips for getting started on a successful second career.

?1.??Make a list of the things missing in your life

Do you long to revive a passion from your youth that you never found time to pursue? Is it music, a sport, writing, cooking, or entrepreneurship? It doesn’t matter what, as long as it’s something you genuinely have a desire to do. If you’ve already got a clear picture of the passions you’d like to pursue, then identify small, achievable ways you can start incorporating them into your life.

?2.??Imagine that you already have one crore rupees (or whatever your financial target is) in the bank

How would you spend your time each day? Think of the environment you’d like to be in, the people you’d want to know, and how you would relate to them. What activities would you engage in? Chances are of your passions coming to the surface when you play out your “winning the lottery” fantasies.

Although we’re not all destined to be millionaires, that shouldn’t hold you back from following your desires and placing more value in yourself, regardless of your bank account balance.

?3.??Tap into your wisdom and experience to re-evaluate your current career

Ask yourself what’s not working and what you want to change. Use this time to reflect on your life. Are there any passions or dreams that you abandoned in your youth? If you don’t know what you want to do, try volunteering as a way to develop new interests. Find a way to live your passion every day. Someone once said, “You don’t get what you want out of life, but what you believe.”

?4.??Understand your passion, but also where your strengths lie.

It’s critical to take an inventory of your life and determine what is really important. Make a list of the things you are passionate about, and then narrow the list to items that present an opportunity to generate income. If you’re not pursuing your passion, what’s in the way? What do you need to do to move forward with following your plan?

?5.??Keep your day job

I quit my day job to pursue my passions. But that is not what I would suggest to most. You don’t have to leave your day job to focus on your passion. It’s not an all-or-nothing proposition.

I meet clients and people working full-time and pursuing their dreams on the side, in their free time, which I help them find. You may still need to earn a living while transitioning onto your new path. This is true whether you’re planning to start a business or preparing to transition to a new industry.

?6.?Start right now

Over the next 30 days, commit yourself to identifying one thing you can do to begin pursuing your passion—and start doing it! Research ways to integrate your passion with your current obligations and take those first steps into your second career with achievable goals. You’ll soon discover that living and working your passion is being in control of your own life.

Make a start. Do it trembling if you must, but do it.

Need support in pursuing that second career? Want guidance to transform your passions into a profession? Reach out and book a complimentary session with me here .

*Name changed to protect privacy.

Smita Das Jain is a certified Executive Coach, Personal Empowerment Life Coach and NLP Coach Practitioner. Smita’s ‘Empower Yourself’ Personal Clarity Programs help busy professionals unhappy in their jobs transform their passions into professions so that they work because they want to, not because they have to. ‘Empower Yourself’ Performance Enhancement Coaching Programs enable executives to communicate with influence on their way up the corporate ladder and emerge leaders. Visit www.lifecoachsmitadjain.com to know more about Smita’s Empower Yourself Coaching Programs. Take the Free Empower Yourself Best Career Fit Assessment to know if you are in the right career.?

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