Is the World having a midlife crisis?

After posting about the midlife issues I'm going through, I couldn't help but comment on an observation that is seems like The World's Having a Male Midlife Crisis. We've built up a tremendous amount of wealth and military power, and are now asking "Was this really worth it? Are we on the right track?" Now more than ever, the world is questioning the behavior that got us to this present state and contemplating the need for a change.

The analogy isn't perfect though. You can also argue that the world more closely resembles an irresponsible self centered teenager coming face-to-face with the consequences of his actions. The teen is being forced into the transition to adulthood where they need to face the consequences of their past actions and start taking responsibility for their future. And big part of the transition to adulthood for each individual nation is to view itself as becoming a responsible and contributing member to the larger (international) community.

Or perhaps elements of both transitions are taking place simultaneously. Nobody ever claimed that simple analogies were always perfect.

A midlife crisis, or something else?

It occur ed to me that a desire for a life transformation was similar to having a midlife crisis. I did some reading on this and learned that the most common times for this to happen is around the age of 50 now. Since I'm 51 it seemed that I was on to something here and I wanted to learn more.

I turns out that the classical stereotype middle age crisis (picture a man becoming depressed and anxious about growing older, divorcing his wife, buying a red corvette, and marrying a woman half his age) is actually very rare. The best data suggests that between 5% - 12% of middle aged people suffer a "classic" midlife crisis. Most people, on the contrary, find life very satisfying and content around the age of 50.

I found that there are multiple different types of midlife crises. For example, it's possible to assess one's life and future without becoming clinically depressed. In fact it's quite common and appears to be a healthy thing to do. This is more accurately categorized as a "midlife assessment" possibly leading to to a "midlife transition". This is covered in more detail on Life Two, an excellent blog about midlife improvements. This is a more accurate description of what I'm going through than a midlife crisis.

How you deal with the desire for change makes all the difference. You can take a harmful approach in a vain attempt to show some sort of youthful vigor. This often results in pursuing change for the sake of change and make radical changes without thinking them through. Such impulsive behavior can seriously damage or destroy relationships or a career.

On the other hand, a midlife assessment can come about when you have a feeling of disquiet brought upon by a sense that you are living your life in a way that is out of alignment with what deeply matters to you, or that you are failing to live up to your potential. When handled properly, this can result in some very positive changes in how you live the rest of your life.

One of the tricks about this process is to be realistic. To the extent that you've come to terms with your life and your limitations and accept yourself as you are, you can enjoy the accomplishments and successes that you have achieve. Many of the people who find themselves very unhappy turn out to be out of touch with reality with unrealistic goals and fantasies. They're disappointed at not becoming the president of their company or a world famous best selling author. In a study on midlife crises, Orville Brim advises people to "live a life of just manageable difficulty. Goals set too low often lead to a boring life; those set too high can produce bitter disappointment."

Some positive constructive magazines

In a spurt of optimism this morning, I subscribed to ODE and GOOD magazines. That will commit me to some positive constructive reading in the coming year. I could find most of the articles online, but I figure this helps support the magazines financially. And besides, I can give copies to others when I'm done. By the way, I'm already subscribed to YES! and Tikkun magazines, two efforts which I highly support.

A Virtual Retreat

I've been giving more thought to what would be the end goal of a life transforming change. I have some initial thoughts on this that I'll post later. One of the things I have decided upon is to spend the next month conducting a "virtual retreat" to take some time to focus on this question. I started a few days ago and will continue to Jan 20th. Besides being one month from today, that just also happens to be the end of the transition period for our nation and the beginning of a new era as we change leaders.

During this next month, I will:

• Read as much as possible about life transformation and finding a purpose in life.
  
• Spend the first and last hour of each day journaling, reading, or thinking about life transformation
  
• Put off watching almost all TV or attending non-work events of questionable value.
  
• Get up at 5am to start early when the house is quiet and my family is asleep
  
• As a discipline practice: Eat only 3 simple healthy meals a day. No snacking before or after meals.
  

I started a few days ago and I already like the routine. I haven't made 5am every day, but I've always been up before 6am. Taking an hour or more of undisturbed time in the morning to read and write down your thoughts is wonderful. I've already finished reading two books on the topic, which is amazing progress for me.

Christmas vacation with the relatives will be a challenge for both the TV and eating discipline practices, but I want to try to stick as close to the guidelines as possible. Following a guideline to avoid ALL between meal snacking over the holidays could have some very practical benefits. I'm not sure if my relatives will be impressed, or just consider my behavior to be very odd.

Why pursue a life transformation?

Elisa asked some really great questions in her comment to my last post about what is the end result of a life transformation, what is the goal, and what does it get you? Indeed, I could ask why pursue a life transformation at all? I have a quite comfortable and productive life by most standards. Why not just continue living the contented life I have now? I’ve been giving these questions some thought, and let me try to address that last question first.

I agree with the many people who claim that true fulfillment comes from finding something that you are passionate about and that you can devote your time and energy towards. We all have a built in desire to be engaged in such a task, and to be part of something bigger than yourself. Some would call this a desire for finding meaning in life, and some would call this a spiritual longing. We also all have a built in desire to grow as a person, and to me this period represents a tremendous growth opportunity if I can successfully exploit it. Living an undisturbed contented life is just not fulfilling in the same way.

So I’m not really content just sitting back and doing what I’m doing now without any more growth until I die. Even when I think I’m doing well at making a contribution to the world, I know that I am doing only a small portion of what I’m capable of. I also know that according to the latest estimates, as an average American I’m consuming about 5x my fair share of the world’s resources. That could be justified if I was using this consumption to make some sort of exceptional contribution, but I’m not.

I’m not even sure I could continue living an undisturbed contented life much longer if I wanted to. I believe that the world is on the verge of undergoing a set of tremendous transformations in the coming decades, either for good or for bad. This will affect all of us more than we care to admit. The current economic turmoil is but one early example of what will be happening. The effects of peak oil and climate change are rapidly approaching. There is much work to be done to direct these transformations to a positive direction, and I feel a great desire to be part of that effort.

Besides, there’s a sense of adventure in contemplating big changes :-)

Transforming Your Life - Part 2

Here is a summary of some thoughts on what a life transforming process is like, and how a significant life revolution is different from a more gradual life evolution. Most of this description is base on ideas in the ebook Life Transformations by Michelle L Casto. Once again, the key to a life transformation starts with your inner attitude, not necessarily your outward behavior.

The first thing you need to learn about change, is that in order to change your outer reality, you must transform you inner programming. By changing your thoughts, you change your feelings, and thus change your actions. Your thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about how life works or doesn't work determine what you will create in your outer world.

Evolution is the process of gradual growth and development. Revolution is taking an incredible direction, often abrupt and sharply different form the past. To experience a life revolution, you need to see with new eyes, to experiment, to learn, and to flow with life. To experience a life revolution, you have to first bring to completion old patterns and processes and then create something radically new.

Get a life makeover. If you want to renovate your life, begin with how you feel on the inside. Have a deep conversation with yourself. strive to know yourself better through self-discovery activities, such as regular journaling. Become a student of your own life - questioning and reflecting on what who you are and what you do.

"We cannot become what we want by remaining what we are" - George Bernard Shaw

The Wal-Mart Stampede, and Reconsidering the Liberal vs. Conservative Debate

I was recently reading a commentary by Ken Conner on TownHall.com, a web site that offers a collection of conservative opinions. ( Two of the personal commitments I'm working on since the election are: 1- read a wider variety of thoughtful opinions from different viewpoints, and 2- stop participating in the bitter partisan divides and demonization of those who think differently.) This particular commentary by Ken Conner dealt with the recent death of a young man, Jdimytai Damour, who was killed in a stampede of shoppers at a Wal-Mart. Ken's "conservative" commentary included some of the following statements:

"This tragedy points to the selfishness of the human heart and demonstrates that greed is not confined to the scions of Wall Street. Quite the contrary, these Main Street shoppers pursued their own materialistic impulses at the expense of the needs of those around them. They were focused on themselves, intent on getting to the deals first. Their trampling of Mr. Damour, each other, and the employees who were trying to help him, exhibits hearts that care more about saving $50 on an HDTV than about the health and safety of their fellow man....

How did we get to this point in "the home of the brave"? Why do so many Americans exhibit so little concern for their neighbor? Doubtless, there are many causes, but prominent among them is our willingness to sacrifice core principles of human dignity on the altar of convenience...

The trampling of Jdimytai Damour should be a wake-up call to each one of us. It should cause us to pause and consider whether we place too high a value on our own convenience and our own possessions. We should examine our hearts and ask ourselves whether we any longer have the capacity to sacrifice our own desires for the good of another. We are missing the big picture if events like these capture our attentions just long enough for us all to gasp and say, "How awful!", then turn back to our shopping carts and our self-centered lives."

Wow, this was appearing on a conservative web site, but my first thought was that such commentary would just as easily fit in at any liberal web site. This appears to be an area where many conservative and liberals people can find some real common ground. (The article later goes on to criticize abortion, but let's focus on the above thoughts for now.)

When I was reading the above comments, I must confess that my first thought was that Ken Conner was going to admit that liberals were right about some things after all. Community spirit and caring for your neighbors was more important than the blind pursuit of individual self interest that is so often associated with conservatism. How could anyone possibly interpret what he was saying differently?

The comments section for the article contained an amusing spectrum of views. One common thread really grabbed my attention though, because it was the exact opposite of what I was thinking. For many people, the motivations and actions of the shoppers at the Wal-Mart were a perfect example of why conservatism was morally superior to liberalism. To them, liberalism represented a culture where "The right to pursue unrestrained pleasure is all that matters" and "responsibilities and duties are onerous and inconvenient concepts". This results in a decline of moral responsibility that the "sense of entitlement at the foundation of the welfare state certainly exacerbates".

Oh my, each side has such a dramatically different view of what the other side stands for, yet each side equally deplores what happened. It's clear that trying to characterize this incident as a liberal vs conservative thing just doesn't cut it. If anything, the resulting argument over ideology destroys any insight, agreements and common ground that may exist. Both the "liberal view" and the "conservative view" each contain a complex collection of differing attitudes that cannot be done justice too by the simple categories we tend to use. We need to move beyond these characterizations if we're going to move beyond the bitter partisanship of the past.

A good friend once told me that if you're going to break the world into two groups, don't do it along the conventional political spectrum. It's more useful to divide the world into people who care and people who don't. While that's not entirely correct since we all exist along a continuous spectrum of caring and our positions change with time and circumstances, perhaps it is a more useful way to look at things sometimes. Perhaps it can lead us to some common ground and common work on ways forward despite other differences.

By the way, did you know that Jdimytai Damour was trampled to death at that Wal-Mart while he was trying to shield a pregnant woman against the onslaught? In all the hand-wringing over that incident, we tend to forget that there was some real heroism involved. We need to emphasize that more as the real story of that day.

Transforming Your Life - Part 1

I spent some time browsing on the web recently on the topic of "transforming you life". I even purchased and read my first eBook Life Transformations by Michelle L Casto. It was a nice short 56 page one evening read that introduced several good ideas in need to think about more.

Two important thoughts came through from several sources, perhaps best summarized by an article titled The Science Of Transformation In Everyday Life. Major life transformations are generally not characterized by big changes in outward circumstances and behavior. They are better characterized by two important inner changes.

1. Deep changes in perspective - Major changes in the way you look at the world, altering one's core assumptions about the nature of things and the way the world works. This "shifts the entire landscape and one's trajectory through it."
   
2. A Changing Sense of Self - Changes in your sense of self, who you are, and your relationship to others and the world. These changes are sometimes referred to as a "spiritual experiences involving a diminished sense of personal identity and an enhanced sense of connection to others, an experience that became an enduring part of the transformational process."
   

More insights from the Life Transformations next time.

Local Discussions - What do we do now?

I had been planning a regular series of posts on how to use the recent election as a transforming event in my life. I posted some thoughts, and then I got stuck for a while and had to spend some time sorting things out. During that time we had a series of discussion with local progressive groups on the question - “What do we do now?” (i.e. now that the election is over). Let me summarize some of those discussions that could impact us on a personal level.

• People have hope now. There's a lot of optimism. We want to put our energy into something. But many of us are not sure what to focus on now.
  
• We need to take time to absorb all that happened and consider what our individual approach should be.
  
• There was a strong desire to approach our work with a win-win attitude involving people from across the political spectrum. People are extremely tired of polarizing politics and demonizing those who think differently. If we really want to change the system, we need to change that.
  
• Realize that for some people, the election didn’t bring hope - it brought anger and fear. There are good people, often friends and relatives, who did not support Obama and expect the worse now. Understand their emotions, don’t argue with them, but shed a positive light on the future and invite them to participate in a positive way.
  
• What happened was a change in direction for the country, and plausibly for the world. Changes in direction result in very big changes in the long term, but barely noticeable changes in the very short term. Don't get discouraged if nothing major changes in the next 3-6 months - big changes often take time.
  
• Think local. This time between the election and the inauguration is a good time to build and strengthen local community groups and organizations. Do what you can to help in your local community. With the downturn in the economy there’s more of a need for help in local communities than ever.
  

To me, one of the biggest changes we have to focus on is to move from a stance of “opposition of bad policies” to a focus on “promoting good policies”. On a personal level, that means making an effort to be as helpful as possible to your community in the coming months.

Thought for the Day - Before we can lead

Thoughts for the day ---

We must be silent before we can listen.

We must listen before we can learn.

We must learn before we can prepare.

We must prepare before we can serve.

We must serve before we can lead.

~William Arthur Ward

Bye to Anger, Resentment, and Fear

Day #8 of the new world - next in an ongoing series of thoughts on how to make the Nov 4th election transformative on a personal level.

I recently had some discussions with family members who supported John McCain. I was surprised at the level of anger, resentment, sorrow, and perhaps even a little fear about the future that was sometimes expressed when talking about the election. While I don't share those feelings now, I can't be too critical of them because I've felt the very same emotions myself many times over the past 8 years. But I can see more clearly now what an unhealthy situation this is. Decisions that are motivated by anger, resentment or fear seldom turn out to be good decisions. Time to put that behind and move on.

I've decided to let go of any remaining anger at the Bush administration. I'd like to see the mistakes they made acknowledged and corrected, but I don't think we have enough time to be distracted by a focus on punishment and revenge given all the other pressing issues. And of course, there's absolutely no benefit to holding any resentment against McCain supporters, though I'm not sure I ever did at a personal level. Time to focus on win-win solutions and move forward.

Bye to Rush and Sean

Day #5 of the new world - next in an ongoing series of thoughts on how to make the Nov 4th election transformative on a personal level (it's already transformative on a national level)

A confession - I used to occasionally listen to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity out of curiosity just to see what they're saying. I know a very progressive friend who listened to them for several hours on the day before and the day of the election. He has more strength and stamina than I do.

I have decided to end this practice now. I get essentially no real benefit for the time I spend on it. I find it somewhat toxic to my spirit and emotional well being. And most importantly, unless they change their divisive and polarizing ways, they no longer have any relevance to what direction this country will decide to take. Well, at least that's my opinion and I'm sticking to it.

I want to point out that they've also come under criticism from Daniel Larison of the American Conservative:

... that audience is part of what’s wrong with the Republican Party. Part of what has been wrong with the GOP is that its rank-and-file members take their political advice and insights from radio entertainers who seem to understand little about political reality and even less about policy, and who substitute bluster for understanding....

Goodbye to hate radio, and on to more nurishing uses of my time.

Making this Election a Transformational Event

It’s Saturday evening, Nov 8th, or as some of us call it, the 4th day of the new world. Now that I'm able to focus on something other than an uncontrollable compulsion to check the latest poll numbers every 2 hours, or to read the latest episode of "The Miss-Adventures of Sarah from Wasilla" (man I'll miss watching Tina Fey), I can finally write some blog entries.

The election on Nov 4th was certainly a transformational event for our political system. It was more than just a change of administrations; it was a change of direction for the country. Changing directions means the immediate impacts may be small, but the long term impacts can be enormous.

Clearly it energized and empowered the progressive movement. There is a true sense of hope, optimism, and even renewed pride in the air. There is also a growing consensus that now the hard work begins if we really want to make this election a transformational event for the society. In that spirit, I would like to exploit this opportunity and make this be a transformational event for myself too. But how to best do that?

There is a “Coming of Age” class for teenagers at my congregation that is meant to help them in the transition from childhood to the next stage in life (not quite young adults yet, but no long a child). As part of the process, they bring in something from their childhood that is relinquished and taken away during a ceremony to symbolize leaving that prior life behind.

I thought that was a neat idea, and wondered if I could do something like that to symbolize leaving the pre-election Bush years behind, and moving into the new era symbolized by Obama’s election. The first act I’ve decided to do is to remove from my browser the pointers to all the political blogs and web sites I obsessed over before the election. I’ve wasted way too much time on them with no benefits to show for it. Time to put that behind me and move on now. Instead I'll limit myself to tracking a very limited number of web sites and blogs that I get some true benefits from. More steps to follow….

Morning Affirmation from Mahatma Gandhi

A morning affirmation from Mahatma Gandhi. The first line in particular really struck me as something profound if you were to actually follow it.

- I shall not fear anyone on Earth.
- I shall fear only God.
- I shall not bear ill will toward anyone.
- I shall not submit to injustice from anyone.
- I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

- Mahatma Gandhi

Morning Affirmation from the Dalai Lama

This is a good one for the morning:

“Everyday, think as you wake up, today I am fortunate to be alive, I have a precious human life, I am not going to waste it. I am going to use all my energies to develop myself, to expand my heart out to others; to achieve enlightenment for the benefit of all beings. I am going to have kind thoughts towards others, I am not going to get angry or think badly about others. I am going to benefit others as much as I can.” - Dalai Lama

Do five simple things a day to stay sane

We all know many of the basic daily routines needed to maintain physical health as we grow older: proper diet, exercise, sleep... As you might expect, there are a number of basic daily routines for maintaining mental health too during our lives. A recent article in TimesOnline outlined five recommended steps for maintaining proper mental health and balance. The article discussed them in more detail, but I'll post a quick summary of them below.

Connect
Developing relationships with family, friends, colleagues and neighbours will enrich your life and bring you support

Be active
Sports, hobbies such as gardening or dancing, or just a daily stroll will make you feel good and maintain mobility and fitness

Be curious Noting the beauty of everyday moments as well as the unusual and reflecting on them helps you to appreciate what matters to you

Learn
Fixing a bike, learning an instrument, cooking – the challenge and satisfaction brings fun and confidence

Give
Helping friends and strangers links your happiness to a wider community and is very rewarding

I found that I actually did fairly well following most of these in may daily life. How about you?

The 80-20 Rule of New Projects vs Maintenance

I was reading a recent article about people managing large computer departments. The main point of the article was:

IT business priority #1 - free up money for new projects.

Basically, too many companies spend 80% of their computer department's programming budget on maintenance of old programs, and only 20% of their budget on new projects. The article suggest that this ratio needs to be inverted to realize the full benefit of the computer department.

That got me wondering. Consider my "discretionary time", that which is left after my job, sleeping, eating, etc. Shouldn't I ideally be spending 80% of that time on new projects, learning, preparing for a 2nd career, or doing something else to improve myself? And should the remaining 20% be on maintenance activities? I'm sure that the amount of my discretionary time spent on routine chores around the house, running errands, going through my email, and taking care of assorted other ongoing obligations adds up to much more the 20%. In fact, it's often more than 80%.

So the question for the day is - how do I reverse that ratio? Obviously it means cutting down the time spent on maintenance chores. This summer for the first time in many years I paid a local high school student to mow my lawn. That's one example, one which I've decided was well worth the money. I'm searching for others now.

One of the big time consumers of my evenings is email. Sometimes it seems that getting that down to 20 minutes a day would be wonderful (for non-work email). I'm not sure how to accomplish this yet though.

A Big Part of Success is Showing Up

You can make detailed plans for your future, but often times the best opportunities show up unexpectedly and are not something you plan for. They don’t show up at random though. On the contrary, I’ve realized that they tend to show up for people who tend to show up. In other words, if you make yourself a visible, active, hardworking participant in some field, people looking to give someone an opportunity will be much more likely to come to you. The result can be a totally unexpected chance to move your plans forward in a new direction.

Let me give you a recent example from our town. One good friend - let’s call her Anne (because that’s her real name), was a housewife with two young children. I am on our town’s Conservation Advisory Council, and I invited Anne to attend one of the meetings. She got very interested in one of the local environmental issues and did an enormous amount of work on it culminating in a presentation to the town board. Soon after that she joined another town council and became active there too.

When people were looking for some new to run for our State Assembly seat, guess who they decided to ask? One year ago Anne was a housewife taking care of two young children and getting somewhat board with the lack of activities in her life. Now she’s busy running for State Assembly, something neither she or her husband had in their plans. If she wins, that's a start of a major political career for her. If she looses, the contacts she made and the reputation she built up in the process will open up many new doors for her.

And all because she showed up and started to get involved on a small scale to begin with.

When does mid-life start?

The following notes are from a CD I listened to a while ago on "Mid-life Issues". I'll try to dig up the author's name and post it here, but in the mean time I thought I'd share this with you.

• Mid-life starts when yo realize your time is limited and you stop thinking about how far from birth you are and start thinking about how far you are from death.
  
• Are you reaching your goals, and if not why? If you have, why aren't you enjoying it more? There is a growing need to find meaning in what you're doing.
  
• You've already proven you can make it. Now there's an awareness of legacy issues.
  
• These transitions are inevitable. Part of the normal development process
  
• An important realization is that you're never going to be famous. Sometimes this can cause people to loose their passion. Sometimes it can cause people to loose their stress over unrealistic expectations and envy, and thus to enjoy work more.
  
• You have to learn now to do things just for the sake of doing them, because they're fun or you find personal meaning in doing them.
  
• You need to let go of your younger juvenile goals. Meaning in jobs becomes more important that promotions. Much of the meaning comes from giving back to others, including mentorship.
  
• Transitions always mean a loss, a loss of "what was", which has to be given up in order to become "what will be".
  
• To examine mid-life transitions, look at three things:
  
  
  
  1. How you're doing now
     
  2. What you'd like to be
     
  3. what you need to do to get there.
     
  
  

The Role of Advertising in Free Markets

Alice Flynn, who works for a yellow pages publisher, responded to my previous appends on the evils of advertising by saying the following:

Advertising helps people find what they need. I have also seen the manipulative use of advertising, as we all have, by political campaigns, cults, con artists and quacks. But please, be reasonable. It is not advertising in itself, which is basically communication, that is the problem. Any tool can be used for good or evil.

She has a reasonable point, but let me digress a little to discuss the role of advertising in a truly free market. When I took my economics classes in college, I remember a long series of "proofs" that a truly free market would allocate goods and services in a highly efficient way in order to satisfy our needs and desires. Then, the course took a long look at the unstated assumptions needed for this to be true. One of them was that people always acted as informed rational consumers. As an illustration of how far this assumptions is from being true, the professor stated that if this assumption were accurate, advertising as we know it would not have any effect and would not exist. All that we would have are basic "yellow page" type ads offering information on goods and services available with contact information for the company.

So in a sense, I agree that with Alice Flynn that there is clearly a place for such informative type of advertising. But I stand by my argument that most of the advertising we are exposed to on TV, radio, and to a lesser extent in magazines and newspapers tends to be highly manipulative. If we were acting in our own best interests in the way free market theory says we should, we would do our best to limit our exposure to such advertising.