Everyone dreads the midlife crisis. It’s the time for sports cars, a new wardrobe, and a mistress who isn’t all that into you, dude. These are all cliches, but there are cliches for a reason. Many men before you have reached a certain age and realized that they’ve gone wrong somewhere. For a select few, it all works out, but for most, it can be a sign that things are going downhill fast.
No one wants to deal with a midlife crisis; not you and certainly not your family, yet it can sometimes feel inevitable. It can feel like you are predestined to ditch your comfortable sneakers for those Italian leather shoes that cost more than your mortgage payments. That is not cool, so what if there was a way to thriver in middle age without a crisis? There could be, you know?
Get Ahead of Your Health
No matter who you speak to who has gone through middle age, they will tell you to get your health sorted before you reach it. You might think you have plenty of time to cut the gut, quit smoking, and focus on your mental health, but this all creeps up on you.
If you don’t act now, you’ll have no choice but to play catch up against Father Time himself, and he does not wait around for anyone. Prioritizing your health will make it much easier to enter middle age feeling good about yourself, which prevents the typical reaction that has struck down so many men before you.
Live Your Youth While You Have the Chance
It may seem like you’ll always have the chance to do this or that, whether it’s something exciting like traveling the world or just spending more time with your buddies and chatting over a brewski or five. Like your health, though, these opportunities are fleeting. Eventually, you’ll have kids; your friends will have kids; you’ll drift further apart.
Because of this, there’s no use in waiting around for something to happen. You’ve got to make it happen. You still have time to live your youth while you have the chance, so stop hanging around. Get out there and do something stupid because it might be your only chance.
Recognize Your Middle-Age Limitations
If you’ve already arrived at middle age, you may have also realized that you can’t do as much as you used to. One day, you felt a twinge in your knee; the next day, you couldn’t keep up with the young’uns on the basketball court.
There will be plenty of limitations you face as you get older, so you need to face them gracefully. This can make it easier to overcome injuries or accidents, especially if you have a good support system around you including family and a motorcycle accident lawyer to advise you it’s perhaps best not to go that fast again. It sucks, but it’s the best way to keep yourself in good health.
Give Back
Middle age often comes with a feeling that you should have done more. The good news is that it’s never too late to give back. If you want to make the most of your free time, volunteering by helping others and the environment can be a fantastic way to soothe your soul and set a superb example for your kids, even if they’re too busy scrolling through their phones to notice it.
By this age, you’ve also figured out your values, and you can find causes that allow you to pass these values on to others. What’s more, you’re hopefully not working weird shifts any longer, meaning you have more consistent and sensible free time, enabling you to get out of the house and do stuff.
Be More Open With Friends and Family
You don’t want to get to old age with any regrets, so being more open with friends and family is a fantastic opportunity for you to share your thoughts and feelings. It gives you the chance to talk about your experiences and let go of any issues that you’d otherwise allow to fester as you get older.
This can create a more welcoming and respectful culture within your friend group and your family. But most importantly, it means you never feel like you didn’t say enough when you had the chance. It might not seem like a huge deal now, but it will matter when you’re older.
Determine Who You Are
Everyone spends their teens, twenties, and even their thirties wondering who they are trying desperately to figure that out. This can lead to a few bad decisions and it might seem as if there were some roads they should have taken.
Hopefully, you’ll figure out who you are by your mid-thirties and you should have figured it out by your forties. By this time, you should have become the person you always envisioned but also the person you need to be. As long as you’re comfortable in yourself, you should not need to worry about losing the plot and diving headlong into a midlife crisis.
Look Forward to Tomorrow
It’s easy to worry about the future. You never know what might happen, and this can make you feel uneasy. This could be why so many men end up in the throes of a midlife crisis as they want to make the most of today, because who cares about tomorrow?
Well, you should care because tomorrow will come regardless. This means it’s always beneficial to look forward to the future no matter the circumstances, and as long as you do this, you’ll have no trouble sticking to who you are and living a life you’re happy with.
Mid-Life Thrive-sis
Pardoning the slightly clunky wordplay, you get the idea. These solutions can help prepare you for reaching middle age. If you’re there already, they give you something to focus on. It might be tempting to throw it all away and buy fast cars, but you know as well as anyone else that you won’t be able to keep up with that lifestyle. A midlife crisis doesn’t look good on anyone, so do yourself a favor and focus on what’s most important.
