Key points

• You are not your history. You are what’s trying to find expression through you today.

• Loss is a normal part of everyday life for everyone.

• Failure to accept and then grieve your losses stunts your ongoing life.

• Midlife is a time of significant change for many so your second half depends on successful psychological transition.

• Why some midlife men get a red sports car or big motorbike.

• A recommended process to face your losses and become okay with them. And move on in a healthy way.

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On real life, acceptance, and letting go regardless

Look back on the year behind you and what do you see? Lots of good, no doubt. Maybe a goal reached, fun had, things that surprised you, great experiences, or celebrations of birthdays, babies or weddings.

Maybe, like us, having had a wonderful 6-week trip to Europe seeing new places, people and histories.

But chances are, you'll also look back and see the not-so-good.

Perhaps things like:

• A big disappointment

• Perhaps an opportunity missed

• Loneliness

• An unexpected expense

• Illness perhaps.

These ebbs and flows in the tides of life are normal, quite natural, although they don’t feel good nor fair at the time.

However, they're evidence of being alive. Being human.

So, okay.

But as you look forward to the next year of your life what do you see? Well, for one thing, new experiences of course, both the good and the not-so-good.

Expect them both.

I have something I'd like to talk about that, if you're prepared to face it square on, will enable you to move on into next year and well beyond with less baggage and a kind of lightness. More freedom in your soul, as it were.

And it's to do with leaving things behind especially the things you no longer need or that no longer serve you.

Something that’s very necessary in order to live a life that truly matters to you.

Let’s talk about loss

When you look back on your life to date, you no doubt see losses. But, have you grieved your losses properly?

• Loss of a career you hoped for.

• Loss of your marriage.

• Loss of your physical strength.

• Loss of prestige after retiring.

• Loss of your parent dying.

• Financial loss due to someone else’s fault.

• Or your health?

Grief is a normal part of life and to move on, which you need to do eventually in order to have a healthy psychosocial development, you need to grieve your losses.

Grief doesn’t necessarily go away completely but it should diminish its impact on you.

Red sports car? Really?

The problem begins in not properly accepting your losses (or those things you can no longer do or no longer have). Failure to accept them means you don’t properly grieve them either, and therefore cannot let them go.

They prevent you from growing up fully.

They can prevent you from fully moving into the new.

You feel stuck.

This is why some midlife men go out and buy a red sports car, or big motorbike and start acting like they were 10 to 15 years younger.

It can look faintly ridiculous.

They’re sub-consciously trying to re-capture that sense they had when they were younger of being fearless, carefree and able to do anything. Or so it seemed.

They probably haven’t worked through the reality that they’re older, have moved on, and are now in a new later phase of life.

Sometimes it can be benign like wanting to dust off the old record collection. But even then, that’s more about trying to recapture the feelings those records brought years ago.

Feelings of youth, fun and forging your own path.

(Wasn’t that a fun time?!)

What you may need to do now is find new ways to forge your own path.

Ones that are relevant to your life today.

Let’s recap

The key thought in this article today is this: Come to terms with your losses, and move on in more psychosocial and age-appropriate ways.

Leave them behind where they belong.

You are not your history. You are what is trying to fully express itself in your life today.

Over to you

Here’s a process that may work for you:

1. Spend some quality time with yourself, find somewhere you can quietly reflect.

2. Ask yourself, what losses have I experienced in my life? What do I no longer want? What can I no longer do in the same way?

3. Identify the losses.

   • You may find them in work, wealth, health, relationships, opportunities gone, dreams you once held, and so on.

4. Take one at a time.

   • Accept it.

   • Grieve for it. Anger, tears included.

   • Resolve to let it go once and for all.

   • See the loss as something in your past history, not your present life (although there may be ramifications you still need to deal with).

5. Reflect on what it is you fundamentally want in that realm from now on, if anything. What is the essence? (E.g. Freedom in work, or Restricted health and getting out into Nature.)

6. Begin looking for relevant ways to build it into your life from here on. I.e. what new forms will it take? (E.g. Setting up a part-time side business, or driving to nature reserves if you can no longer hike for hours).

Listen, let it speak, let it find a form of expression relevant to who you are today.

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