Discovering Creativity and Meaning at Midlife and Beyond
Is that me?
…Midlife
Once upon a time, midlife amounted to 35 years old.
“Midlife Crises” as we experience it now can affect 45-60 year olds facing job/career/relationship disappointment, empty nests, ageing parents and their own greying hair and stiffening joints.
Consider this for perspective – we invested a decade in our late teens and early twenties preparing for careers that would last for 30-40 years.
If we retire at 60 – an active retirement could last 20-30+ years. If we’re even younger and ready to pivot into entrepreneurship, flexible work schedules, work and life abroad – well, we could be starting over in our 40s or 50s.
Hence, “Rethinking Retirement” is the message colleges and universities have used for years in attracting ‘mature students’.
Older populations themselves are ageing… the 80 or over age group is growing faster than any younger segment of the older population.
With decades at stake, consider committing 12 weeks to explore what could be next!
So, how to prepare? Where and when do I start?
Here and now is as good a time and place as any.
Fresh endeavours and the humility to begin again…
Consistent throughout Cameron’s many works is the simplicity with which she presents exercises and tools designed to focus and keep us in service to our best selves.
The tools offer a means of gaining insight into our existing patterns, whether in tasks that encourage us to take baby steps toward our goals, Morning Pages which help us identify and prioritise the patterns or by the Walks & Artist Dates which take us outside of our routines long enough to imagine and embrace new possibilities. The newest tool is a Memoir exercise – a chance to mine the past for clues about the future.
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The Method
I’ve referred to the methodology established in The Artist’s Way work as a “personal change management program“.
Beginning three decades ago, millions have gone on to put her methods to work and have discovered and recovered their creative selves.
When introduced, the tools and disciplines she employed were seen as an unconventional.
Thirty years on-
Group process is well respected outside the framework of traditional recovery programs
#MorningPages – her version of “meditation for Westerners” – is mainstream enough to for a hashtag following.No longer “out there” – it’s a method well respected and recommended by coaches & writers. Thanks to Guardian journalist, Oliver Burkeman‘s This Column Will Change Your Life: Morning Pages – thousands have come to the discipline having never read the book!
#ArtistDate – arguably once the most resisted tool now has a wealth of Twitter & Instagram endorsements of the process
Since 1992 – Cameron has written books on bringing the process to building resilience, persevering, writing and even getting our eating and spending under control – now she invites us to ‘begin again‘.
The powerful new tool Cameron introduces here is Memoir.
The Memoir
Over the course of 12 chapters – or weeks in a facilitated group – we will have explored what it takes to keep moving forward with the ‘humility to be a beginner‘.
Take heart, it’s not as intimidating as it sounds – as best described in one student’s story:
I was scared to do the memoir because I thought I’d left myself behind. p.150
There is nothing to fear and no writing skill is required. Just make a commitment to take pen to paper do a weekly “jot list” answering questions that help you gently revisit your life – in four to six year intervals (your age divided by 12).
Exactly what does “gently” mean?
The questions asked frame and highlight experience, they are not digging and intrusive. Early ones include – Where did you live? What is your earliest memory? Describe a smell? What was your favourite food? Describe a sound? You’ll revisit some of the questions in each decade and explore others.
The outcome is that “you will trigger vivid memories, discover lost dreams, and find unexpected healing and clarity.”
I found the idea of the exercises intimidating, but started. What I discovered is best expressed by “Maggie” a student of Cameron’s:
“Looking back at my younger self is actually giving me patience with my current self.” p.127
or Lynn for whom:
“demystifying her patterns empowers..” p.106
…and Beyond
“What brings you true joy?”
As you explore this is Week Eight, you find it is not the daunting question it seems to be today.
Jot Lists & #MorningPages, Walks and #ArtistDates will have brought insights into where you’ve experienced or even just glimpsed joy before and where to look for it again.
So whether you’re looking for a second career, an active retirement or simply a fresh endeavour – in this process you are simply “laying the foundation for tomorrow”
Taking Action
Our capacity to create is tied to the faith & optimism it takes to begin. Julia Cameron
