What would your ideal life look like? Would it be any different from the life you live today?
Midlife is a good time to take stock of what got you “here” and to determine if it will get you “there” – to the life you truly want to create.
Well-being
I am sure you have noticed that your body is not reacting the same to what you eat or drink. The same is true for physical activity, your performance, and recovery.
This is normal, as our body, by design, goes through different stages in life and as a result, needs different inputs at each stage.
The optimal nutrition when we are babies differs from teenage years, from early adulthood and so on.
In midlife, the distinctive transition is that you are entering the post-reproductive years of your life.
There are indications that many natural protective mechanisms that kept us healthy during our reproductive years will no longer be there as we grow older.
This is simply called aging and it is natural.
But, what if we want to keep thriving well beyond our reproductive years?
Well, in simple terms, we need to trick nature!
New knowledge from research, including the famous blue zones with a high percentage of centenarians, give us some useful hints.
Other scientific research shows that the optimal nutrition for our body while growing up and up to early adulthood, may have an adverse effect on our health in post-reproductive age.
It seems that in midlife, we have to start hitting the breaks on what has been helping us grow fast and strong to reproduce.
For instance, while a significant amount of protein was beneficial growing up and in early adulthood, it can be harmful during midlife.
Same goes for exercise; there are differences in the optimal type and volume according to our age.
For example, long and strenuous workouts are not that beneficial at midlife.
Daily walks, short, intense workout intervals (HIIT), body weight training and yoga, on the other hand, can be extremely beneficial.
Work
If you want to climb Mount Everest, you don’t just start from the bottom and keep walking until you reach the top.
You climb in stages, stop at base camps and recharge,
Each part of the journey requires a different strategy and proper preparation.
When it comes to our careers, each of us has a different goal to reach. We do not all aspire to become an S&P 500 company CEO.
Also, it is very likely that what you view as your ultimate career goal, will change on the way, most probably more than once.
Maybe you have already reached what you had considered the top, and you are now heading to the next mountain top.
But even if none of the above is true for you and you are still on the way to your childhood dream, you still have to change.
Why? Because the world has changed!
Changes at work, in particular, have been dramatic over the past few decades due to technology. And the rate of change will be increasing exponentially.
Do you believe that you can still be successful by small incremental improvements in your current skills?
You may think that technology will only keep replacing manual jobs. Well, think again.
Do you believe that you can analyze data faster and better than an average computer?
Do you know that computers are already more successful than doctors in the diagnosis of some diseases?
There is no reason to panic.
But, we should make sure we are mindful of the developments in our field, and anticipate possible disruptions.
We do not need to become experts in technology, but we should be able to use it with ease.
Apart from the disruptions in our field, we should also consider the stage of our career path.
In most cases, early in our career, we were more competitive with high achievement motive and often trying to bring results with force.
But, as they progress, people often realize that there are alternative ways of defining success.
For a lot of us, this new vision of success will require human skills like leadership, collaboration, emotional intelligence, etc.
Will those skills be substituted by technology first or last? I guess you agree with me for the later.
So, the question is, how much energy and time have you invested in developing those skills?
In conclusion, no matter how attached you are in your old ways, which might have served you well until now, it is only wise to reevaluate them against current circumstances, on all fronts.
I will be elaborating further on these concepts in future posts, sharing more details on nutrition, exercise, work, and other related areas.
So, are you willing to take the risk to rely only on what got you here to get there?
