A lot has been written and said about the midlife crisis ever since it was coined by Elliott Jaques in 1965. You may be wondering about what is new here. Even though a lot has been said and done on this topic. I am trying to write this in the context of professionals in India and here is why. Indians of the baby boomer generation were characterized by typical government jobs or jobs in family owned enterprises. They had a major sense of contentment and with the society largely patriarchal and having a single bread winner model this existential crisis in their lives and careers was not felt to a great extent. The newer generation - call it the Gen Y and later have worked through a largely different India with a burgeoning private sector job market with women contributing equally to the work force. Contentment as a virtue has been lost and the desire to keep learning and growing has engulfed the generation. This has no doubt created the prosperous India that we live in today but also poses some questions to professionals at work. The other reasons why the Indian professional is different is that layoffs are not rampant and companies allow their employees more room before letting them go. Plus the fact that age is a constraint in getting a job unlike the west where someone can start a new career at 60 makes this a unique case. So what is this midlife career crisis? So you have been sitting there wondering if it is even a real thing. You are probably feeling that you are shielded from it for whatever reason you conceive is best to explain to yourself and that your success thus far will be your immunization against it. The fact of the matter is that midlife career crisis is not a physical condition of the body but rather a mental state. It is the time in your career when your mind asks you a lot more questions than give you answers, a period of time when you want to make peace with your past but find it difficult to do so. You try in vain to forecast your future as much as you can. How do you know you are there? Though there is no definite single answer to this question these broad set of indicators here may help. You no longer see your role in your organization relevant or see it getting into obsolescence soon. People respect your grey hair rather than your technical or management skills. You feel that the skills you learnt so far are hardly being used these days worse are irrelevant in your job today. The new recruits at your company speak a language you cannot comprehend. Your organization sees you as a white elephant raking up cost rather than as an asset. You find it difficult to picture yourself in a new position or place. You feel that the value addition you bring to your job is marginal. You are completely dumbfounded on how to re-skill yourself - fighting the mental battle between I know what has to be known to survive vs I know nothing of anything. You feel your soft skills are not at par with the imaginary version of soft skills which you think you should be having – be it in selling, negotiation or writing. Your juniors (you think plural even if it is a lone person) from college are occupying a higher position in the industry than you. You realize that recluse from your own class is now CEO of a company he/she has started off. You want to drop your current job and take up a new one tomorrow but dont seem to know how to do that. The newspapers talk about a splurge in hiring in your industry but you dont seem to be getting any calls at all. Worse getting regret letters. One or many of these conditions indicate the state of midlife crisis you are in - either starting off or in a full blown state. A warning on what you should not be doing Do not think anything defeatist about yourself and feel that you just have to run through the years remaining with whatever you get or don’t get. You will only be aggravating your mental agony by doing so. Agreed that you cannot move away from years of doing something you have mastered or find a new job overnight but thinking more of it is going to give you a greater pain. So give yourself a pat on your back for the years of good work done and endure some more. Just because you have lived half your life does not mean the other half is short. It will evolve possibly better than the first one. Practical ways to rise to the challenge Go back to your basics - your vision and mission of life - the thing that would come naturally to you as a kid and as you started your career, the stuff for which your bosses have raved about you for years, the thing that fills you with energy, make you happy. Build on top of that foundation. Large corporations have gone back to their roots and brought themselves back from the brink of extinction by just following this one rule. You are in far better shape. Try to draw inspiration from the folks who have turned around themselves in their fifties or even later in life – google it. The list is endless. The resolve and determination that they have had will inspire you to go to your destination. It is never too late. Make realistic goals for the rest of your lives and take the baby steps towards achieving them little by little. Start making time and effort for those passionate activities that you have postponed which could now become your new avocation. Take a restock of your skills inventory. This may sound like mundane advice that you have been hearing more than once from a lot of places. But pieces of the skills that you have if put together in a different way can put you in a totally different spot. After all problem solving skills, communication skills etc. are universal even after centuries of being in use. Build the other soft skills you have on top of these. It will make you feel instantly better and help you take a different path. Better late than never. Take those baby steps in building new skill sets as you go along. You will be surprised at how soon you are able to become master of an entirely new skill which opens up a new door.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Nov 2014 23:39:51 +0000
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