My Selfish Year....How I'm dealing with my Mid-Life Transition...A.K.A. Crisis

A few weeks ago I saved a link on Facebook titled... 10 Signs your are going through a mid-life crisis.  As I wanted to see what the signs for this were.  I found that I actually have a few that I am doing.  But I would like to say that instead of calling this change in my life a "crisis"  I have decided to call it a "transition".  I think that is a more positive outlook.  I'm not sure when I realized I was going through this transition, but at some point it occurred to me that my life was in a giant change.
I thought I would share the signs and tell a little of my journey.

The 10 signs you are going through a mid-life crisis.... According to some facebook site....  And isn't everything we read on facebook fact....LOL...

1.  Starting to panic about health problems.... This one is not me.  I'm not worried yet about health issues.  But I am focusing on being healthier.  I've realized that I can't eat all the sugar and fat and things that I have over the years and still remain healthy.  So one of my changes in life is that I'm focusing on being healthier.

To take my health to better places I find I buy a lot of magazines...I'm looking for all the tips I can get to be healthy in my eating, as well as getting fit.  I also love learning about practicing mindfulness, and someday hope to be able to fit learning to meditate into my schedule.

2. Comparing ourselves to friends and other peers... This one I am not doing.  I just have never been one to compare myself to others.  It takes too much time.  I may worry about what my neighbors think about my lawn disaster...Which I hope to share someday...But I could care less what the rest of the world is doing.

3.  Obsession with losing weight/ getting into shape...Oh this is me... I think this comes from the fact that I had a bad experience over a year ago where I didn't sleep or eat for awhile and I lost all this weight and I loved it.   And while my family continues to remind me that this was not a healthy way to lose weight, and I have not had that level of stress in my life to recreate this experience..I loved how thin I got.   My new job, and the fact that there is very little stress in my life caused one thing...Weight gain.  In fact I weigh more now than I ever have in my entire life.  I'm obsessed with finding a healthy way to lose this extra weight...  Thus I have a treadmill now and am trying hard to lose weight in a healthy way and to eat healthy.  Which is hard!

4.A heightened sense of self-worth.... I think this is my selfish year desire....I am looking at myself and thinking is this where I want to be?  Have I accomplished anything in my life?  My other grand question is "What do I want to be when my kids grow up and leave me?" .... I think that is what this means.  And in a future post I will share my thoughts on what I want to be when my kids grow up and leave me... I'm rethinking myself in an emotional and spiritual sense....

5. Wanting to quit a job...even if it is a good job... This was me two years ago...Even before I left my old job, I had been telling people that I was looking for a new job.  That I wasn't going to stay in the job I had.  I wasn't happy with it and I was ready to figure something new out...When you start telling the Universe that you are ready to move on, be ready to move on... What a wild ride leaving my job was, and yet I look back and see what a blessing it all was too.  And for now I'm in a good job for me.

6. Bouts with depression... I think sometimes the female body in it's transition into life change gives you bouts with depression...I sometimes have been sitting and begin to cry and have absolutely no idea why I'm sad.  At my old job the stress level was so high that I got to experience panic attacks.  Over a year and a half free of those.  At least for me I knew the cause.   I think I did go down the dark rabbit hole of mental issues, that time where I stopped eating and sleeping.  I beat it though, I am tougher than anything thrown at me, and of course I had Heavenly Father helping me.  I somehow realized the feeling of the hole trying to pull me in and found ways to make my mind change direction.  I also had my book of pain that I wrote in, but what I found as I looked back at it a few weeks ago was that I always ended all the pain I felt with things I was grateful for.  My book of Pain morphed into a book of gratitude, and the thoughts that had at one point pierced my heart no longer had any hold on me.  I was able to move away and think no more of it, because I felt more gratitude in my life than I felt pain.  It was a very wonderful experience for me.  I grew so much in this transitional state that I would never change any of what happened.  And it has helped me to help others, or at least be a safe person for those who suffer to come to. As I can understand it, and can give compassion when others just can't understand it.

7. Thinking more about Death/ purpose of life...  I think I see more of Death.  I see that Death is coming, maybe not to me yet, but that there are people in my life who are closer to Death happening than are farther away.  There is no way for me to stop those who are older than me from aging.  And there is now way for me to stop aging.  I am seeing myself in this middleness.... Those older than me are preparing to at some point leave and those younger than me...My children are also preparing to leave me, not to die, but to have their own life without me...in that there is a death of some of my identity...I'm no longer the mom that is needed constantly, but the mom who watches from the sidelines.  This I think is what causes the Mid life transition.... or crisis...This being in the middle of the movement of others and trying to figure out just how it affects you, and figuring out who you are when all the dust settles....

8.  Buying lavish items on impulse...I'm not doing this, but I am going to begin to plan my big trip.  I want to go to Scotland.  So soon I will be planning this trip.  I'll share that in my blog posts.  I am going on small trips.  I'm trying to see the world that is around me.  I'm tired of working and not doing anything.  So I have been asking for the same days off as my husband has with his new job and we go on mini adventures.  There are two reasons for this, one we both need to have stress free time.  And we need to keep connected.  I don't want to be that couple that falls apart when the children leave.  I don't want to wake up one morning and look over and think who are you?  when I look at my husband.  My daughter would love to help us on this as she feels we are in the house way too much.  She thinks we need to leave more often so she can blast her music.  Marriage is something you constantly have to work on.  And so I'm in this new stage of working on it.

9.  Someone says "your having a Mid-Life Crisis... no one has said this to me.  And perhaps I really am not.  I am in a transition in my life though.  And I'm going to go through it laughing, and enjoying it and being grateful for all the change.  I like a good adventure.

10.  You change your name on Facebook multiple times...LOL... I have actually changed my name on Facebook multiple times this year.  And for some reason that made people worry and ask what is wrong.  Facebook just isn't a really serious place in my opinion.   And I was just having fun playing with ways my name is spelled.  But it could be a sign of Mid life crisis...

Are you going though a change in your life?  How are you dealing with it?
G.G.