3 Important Ideas When You are at a Crossroads
Posted on November 27, 2024 by Chris Farmer, One of Thousands of Life Coaches on Noomii.
A watershed moment in anyone’s life happens when you finish a set of goals and objectives and suddenly you look ahead and ask yourself: What's next?
The What’s Next Nebula is a problem that is familiar enough to be a cliché, and yet it is real and can be a real threat to your well-being. It can happen at any age, although most of us experience it in our thirties and forties.
Some people might call it a nice problem to have: you have ticked all the boxes and now, with more than half your life ahead of you, you have run out of mountains to climb. When I say this, I am not talking about the tech, Wall Street, or creative multi-gazillionaires who invested in Microsoft at 16 and then wondered what else there is for them. Although I will swing back Mr. Gates later, I am talking more about you and me.
When I turned 40, I looked around and could only see the past. The What’s Next Nebula had surrounded me. People who know me will attest that I was not very pleasant to be around at the time. Less than usual, let’s say.
I had the schooling, I was married, I helped create four beautiful sons who are now spread out around Europe, I wrote a few books, I had columns in newspapers, and blogs online, and my career progressed smoothly and sufficiently even if I didn’t invent Microsoft. At 40, I felt like I had run out of boxes to tick.
The point of this is not to compare your life to someone else’s. The What’s Next Nebula creeps in when you look at everything you have done and compare it with everything you have actually wanted to do. If you set yourself reasonable goals along the way, it is likely that you will hit most of them at mid-life. It is perfectly natural for you to do so.
“What’s next” should be seen as the wrong question. If you have arrived at the point where you have done most of what you wanted to or felt you needed to, then the next moves will be quite different.
The key things to remember here are
1. You are NOT in competition with anyone here.
2. You do NOT have to be in a hurry.
3. What you want to do may NOT be monumental
One person may want to change jobs and continue to make money. Another person may find more satisfaction merely in having more time to read, to visit the grandchildren, to travel, or to take up fishing. The level of satisfaction you will derive is measured only against what you want.
Understand what that desire could be is the key, and you should allow yourself enough time to figure it out. Consult with friends, former colleagues, a life coach – explore options even if they seem far-fetched. William Shatner started pretending to be a spaceman in 1966. But in 2021, at 90 years old, he actually rocketed into space.
Whatever it ends up being, you will leave the What’s Next Nebula with a new plan.
