Life is full of surprises, and we all face our share of highs and lows. However, at some point, it’s very common for people to encounter a mid-life crisis, where they begin to reassess the path their life is taking, perhaps in their late 30s or early 40s. Here are 19 common reasons why someone might go through a mid-life crisis.
Changes in Physical Appearance
The signs of aging can be hard to deal with and often cause negative emotions and feelings about yourself. Forbes confirms that people try to counteract this by actually changing their appearance and enhancing their self-care routine. People can often develop body image issues when comparing themselves to others.
Boredom with Daily Routine
People can struggle with the repetitiveness of their daily lives. They often feel it lacks excitement or adventure. They can often be living for the weekend, where they get to see a friend or go out for a few drinks. They want to feel more excitement in their lives.
Reassessing Life Goals and Achievements
We can all be guilty of looking at someone else’s life and thinking, ‘Why can’t my life be like that?’ This can be detrimental to our mental well-being, blinding us from the good things we have in life and making us only focus on the negatives.
Awareness of Aging
According to Calm, “physical changes, such as menopause or declining health in yourself or loved ones, can spark a flurry of emotions and questions.” The feeling that the best days of your life are behind you creeps in, and you can pay too much attention to these negative feelings.
Career Dissatisfaction
We all spend a lot of time and effort trying to perfect our careers over a large number of years. Sometimes you get to an age and question whether this is really what you want to be doing five days a week for the rest of your life.
Changes in Relationships
The quality of our close relationships has a massive impact on our state of mind. When we fall out with a loved one, it can be heartbreaking in the moment. Some people get to an age where they realize their marriage isn’t how they expected it to be and struggle with this.
Financial Pressures
Finances are always stressful at any age of life. When you reach the mid-life stage, you have many financial commitments, whether it’s your mortgage, car payment, or saving a nest egg for your child. These pressures can make you feel like you’re sacrificing everything and not being able to spend and enjoy your money.
Lack of Travel
People reach an age and wish they traveled more, feeling like time is running out. YourLifeChoices reports “Whether it’s swimming with sharks, trekking the Great Wall of China, or climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, great achievements allow people to enjoy immediate satisfaction.” This lack of satisfaction in people’s lives can bring them down.
Realizing Time Doesn’t Last Forever
When we’re young, we have the world at our feet, and we feel we have all the time to do what we want. Skip a few decades, and that feeling has disappeared, and the realization that you quite possibly have already lived more than 50% of your life can be overwhelming.
Lack of Meaning or Purpose
Meaning or purpose in life is what gets us up in the morning and keeps us motivated to be successful. People can often get to an age in life where they don’t feel they have a true purpose and struggle to find one. This can start the onset of many negative emotions, which can be difficult to deal with.
Health Concerns
Health implications can be a key reason someone suffers from a mid-life crisis. The anxiety of declining health can be overwhelming. You can begin to wonder, ‘Will I be able to do this again?’ These overriding thoughts and emotions can cloud your brain, bringing your mental health down.
Social Media
Social media can be a bad place as much as it can be good. It’s a place where people can look at someone’s life through a screen and be envious. But what we forget at that moment is that social media only shows the good parts and rarely shows a person’s struggles.
Feeling Out of Touch
You can reach a certain age and envy the young. This can include wishing you were still as energetic or that life was still free and fun. You can feel out of touch with the new generations, which leaves you feeling out of place. These disconnections can make it hard to fit in with societal norms.
Concerns About Legacy
People can think too much about leaving a legacy. They worry that they haven’t yet built one or whether people will remember them for the right reasons, such as what they’ve contributed to the world. These thoughts can be overwhelming and negatively impact someone’s outlook.
Questioning Personal Values
People often reflect on their values and the way they see the world. This can be a positive step for growth. However, for some, they can come to the conclusion that their values haven’t been what they wished and they’ve lived life wrong. This sudden realization can provoke negative emotions.
Experiencing Bereavement
The older we get, the more likely we are to experience the loss of a loved one. Unfortunately, this is a way of life, even though the loss can be heartbreaking. The thought of never being able to speak or hug your loved one again can make the grief unbearable.
Feeling Unappreciated or Undervalued
People can feel underappreciated in many aspects of their lives, including their careers. Marriage.com reports that feeling the lack of growth or change in a workplace can cause a mid-life crisis. This feeling of being undervalued can make people question many things, with negative emotions going around their heads.
Pressure to Maintain Youthfulness
Many people can feel the pressure to remain young, but this is hard when your body is against you. People find it harder to stay fit compared to when they were young, and they also don’t have as much free time to prioritize themselves as they did in their younger years.
Regret
Psychology Today reports that studies on middle-aged people show regret can be on a variety of topics, ranging from relationships to finances. Research also suggests that living with intense regret contributes to depression and health problems. Regret can’t change the past, but it can affect your present and future, depending on how you live your life.