Navigating the midlife career journey

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Midlife can be an uncertain period where work and family roles are changing and the road ahead is yet to be mapped out. Achieving work and life fulfillment for those in midlife and beyond requires purposeful and integrated career, relationship and lifestyle navigation.

The first half of life is busy — we spend years establishing a career, home and family, often leaving little time for deep reflection. These establishment roles contribute to self-identity, providing a sense of purpose and a framework for measuring personal and professional success.

In midlife, there is greater freedom from these establishment demands, but there is also a sense of dissatisfaction and uncertainty about the future. As we are living and working longer, there are choices and possibilities to explore beyond the traditional concept of retirement.

Midlife is the transition reassessment period between the establishment years, which enable career, and life refocusing for the 20-plus bonus years of the second half of life, commencing in the mid-40s to retirement in the mid-70s

Midlife transition hurdles

  • Strengths identification: The Baby Boomer generation is acknowledged as being loyal — staying in jobs for the long-term. The downside is that after years of being committed to a job or organisation, their transferable strengths are blurred and job search skills are rusty.

  • Shattered dreams: When the dream of a leisure-orientated early retirement has been shattered by financial reality, clients can resent the need to continue working, lose motivation and take time to refocus.

  • Negative climate: High unemployment, age discrimination, redundancies and talk of pension changes all combine to create a negative climate where self-confidence can be shattered — especially if a decision to leave a job was not by choice, but rather made by others as a result of a redundancy.

Midlife transition trends

Upon realising they will be working into their 70s, ‘I don’t want to be doing this anymore’ is a common sentiment among midlife clients. They want challenging work and fulfilling lifestyle options. The following are some examples:

  • Senior entrepreneurship: Approximately one in four business start-ups are now undertaken by someone over 50. Businesses are being launched to supplement income, because of a hobby interest or an identified gap in the market.

  • Childhood desire: Entering the workforce in the 60s and 70s, Baby Boomers experienced limited work choices due to gender, as well as economic, social and family circumstances and pressures. Fulfilling a childhood desire, one might prepare through online studies to leave a corporate role to become a school teacher.

  • Work–life balance: Going part time, working from home and project or seasonal work are examples of flexible practices that can be negotiated with an employer — freeing up time and energy for volunteering, sport or additional family and friendship involvements.

    Midlife is a time of possibility and new beginnings as clients clarify career and life choices for the second half of life.

Merilyn Hill is the Director of Midlife Design and specialises in career, redundancy and midlife transitions.