Midlife Mastery Journal

The REAL 'Secret to Success'

I Googled 'secret to success' and I came up with over 617,000 listings! Some secret! In fact, I know I've written more than one article on the subject myself. Yet I'm still learning and still pressing the Universe for answers to the deepest questions, especially those that plague most of us at the midlife transition. Midlife, you know, is that time of life when we transition from doing what we were supposed to do, to doing what we were destined to do . If you are having trouble figuring out what I mean by that, then the midlife transition may not have hit you quite yet. But, be patient! It will!

Now, back to the REAL Secret to Success. After the life-altering experience that I underwent a couple of weeks ago, I wanted to write about something significant that I had learned . . . something that might be of benefit to others. I thought about the biggest obstacle that people (men especially) have to face at midlife. I know that 'stopper' very well: self-sufficiency. I also remember the one piece of important advice that almost every entrepreneur I interviewed on my former radio program (The Frazzled Entrepreneur) gave as his or her parting comment: "Get yourself a coach, mentor or adviser!" Seeking the counsel of others is of critical importance to anyone who is in pursuit of success. Yet, in itself, this is not the REAL Secret to Success. What is?

Derailing Your Train of Thought

Have you ever noticed how certain patterns in your life keep re-emerging. Doesn't it sometimes feel as though you've gotten yourself locked into some kind of bizarre dance that sends you round and round the same issues and behaviors time after time? Only part of our actions are really deliberate; the rest are all learned behaviors. We learned them because we had to. At one time, they served us well. Although we can no longer even remember when we climbed on board these thought patterns, our behavior very often gives stark testimony to our rigid, one-track mind.

There are many sayings and slogans in the many and varied recovery programs out there. There's one that fits here particularly well (it's from AA): "The same man will drink again." It's true because, unless we're able to confront the unconscious thought patterns that underlie our decision-making processes, when faced with similar situations, we'll just naturally come up with the same conclusions whether or not they make any sense. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity: 'Doing the same things over and over again, each time expecting different results?' The insanity behind self-defeating behavior doesn't lie in the will — we seem to have plenty of ability to do whatever we really want to do — the problem lies, rather, in our patterns of though themselves. Another saying from the world of recovery states: 'You don't have a drinking problem so much as a thinking problem.

The Courage to Change

I never expected that taking courageous action could result in enjoying such positive feelings. I want to start out this little article giving enormous credit to my eight fellow group members and four staff members — and myself — for having the courage to spend a week together "Real World" style (miked and filmed almost every waking moment) for the sake of letting the world know that there's hope out there for anyone suffering from chronic emotional pain. Our stories will be told for all to see in January on a special edition of one of the NBC Television Network's major program series*.

This experience has tremendous significance above and beyond the NBC T-shirt I get to wear to tell all my friends that I've been filmed for national TV. It focuses directly on what I believe is the principal cause of crisis in the lives of adult men and women: the overwhelming (and paralyzing) fear of dealing with their personal issues. It's not too strong a characterization to call this process 'facing your demons.' It's always much easier to deal with the externals of a life going off-track than it is to come face-to-face with the changes that each of us needs to make in our beliefs, our attitudes, and our behaviors. Those two denizens of self-defeat, denial and blame, are constantly at hand to see to it that we never actually face and bring closure to the old patterns we use to provide ourselves with a sense of safety, even when those patterns have progressed way beyond futile: all the way to harmful.

Should I Stay or Should I Go?

It's really fitting that the song, "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" is by a group called The Clash. That tends to be THE major midlife question for many people, doesn't it? I don't honestly believe that anyone at any time who has been in a relationship of any depth at all and who hasn't asked him- or herself that question. There are many reasons that this happens to everyone. It's part of our human nature, and it's part of the nature of human relationships.

Everyone brings to a relationship an odd mixture of personality traits, learned behaviors, and a set of expectations, some realistic, others not so much. Everyone also brings to a relationship a certain capacity for trust, for communication, for openness to change and growth. Finally, each person brings his or her own willingness to commit. As always, my guest on this past week's internet radio program, "The Unstoppable Coach" Frankie Picasso, gave us some wonderful insights. One of these was the difference between 'trying' and 'committing.' It was a distinction I had never thought of before, and one that bears more consideration. I'll get back to that in a minute.

Your Life - Slip-Sliding Away?

I was talking to coach Bradley Foster last Thursday before and during my weekly internet radio program, and one of the issues that I brought up with him concerned my quandary regarding what to do about men approaching or in midlife who more or less pride themselves on the depth of their denial. The symptoms of this denial are two-pronged: on the one hand, it's the feeling that I can take care of myself and I don't need anybody else's help doing it; and, on the other hand, it's the attitude that the difficulties and obstacles I'm facing are somebody (or something) else's fault. Hiding behind this two-edged sword of denial (being unable to admit that I'm in trouble and that I'm the only one that can fix the situation) pretty much guarantees that a guy's midlife transition will become a crisis. Midlife crisis lies between the Scylla of inaction and the Charybdis of focusing your energies in the wrong direction. Bradley's response to my question was brilliant: focus on those guys who know they're in trouble and who want to do something about it.

There's a deadly little secret that traps way too many well-intentioned men (and women) as adulthood progresses. People forget that they don't know what they don't know. That's what so fascinates me about culture: it's imperceptible to each of us, except when we see it in someone else. That's why sociologist Geert Hofstede calls culture the 'software of the mind': it's embedded in each of our mental 'operating systems' and determines how the data of our perception gets analyzed as we perceive it. It forms the meaning that we give to everything that we 'understand' and that we think exists 'out there'. Take, for example, a three-legged piece of furniture about two feet high. What is it? Depending on how we perceive it, we can just as easily take it for a table as for a stool. It all depends. It so affected Hofstede that he wrote a book about the four scales that can measure cultural attitudes only to realize years later that there was a fifth scale experienced primarily by Asian peoples — a scale of perceptual experience that, as a Westerner, he could not experience.