Best 36 quotes in «midlife crisis quotes» category

Bad things happen in life, but we must learn to deal with them and move on

All three are hip-deep in midlife, when the eyes go and the waistline spreads and the city on the hill that shone so brightly in youth turns out to be more like a semi-incorporated town in the middle of a garbage strike. An age when a person can feel not so much himself as an inexplicably inferior version of himself.

A motorcycle is a vehicle of change, after all. It puts the wheels beneath a midlife crisis, or a coming-of-age saga, or even just the discovery of something new, something you didn't realize was there. It provides the means to cross over, to transition, or to revitalize; motorcycles are self-discovery's favorite vehicle.

Don’t waste time worrying about work/life balance, or looking for your best self, sham “secrets” or any other snake oil being pushed by sloppy hippies who have never built a business, let alone a bankroll, or you will wake up 20 years from now poor, pissed off and primed for a midlife crisis.

For many women who have been caring for and putting others first, midlife is the time when there’s finally space to start thinking about you. You may feel compelled to make room for you, to live with greater purpose, or to answer the call to do something big in the world. It’s during this time that we can begin to define what legacy we want to leave. If you’ve lost sight of who you are and what you want, it’s time to explore and experiment and define your own new milestones. Up until this point, there have been socially defined milestones like college, first job, maybe marriage, maybe kids, maybe grad school, maybe the first house, and then if there are kids, the kids’ milestones. The lack of milestones can make midlife feel like uncharted territory. It is, and it’s ready to be explored and conquered. If you’re reading this book, it’s time. Time for you. Time for vision. Time for clarity. Time for you to resolve unresolved issues from your childhood, adolescence, and early twenties. Because if you don’t, they are going to keep resurfacing. Trust me on this one.

But what the measured prose of psychiatrists and the carefully calculated statistics of social scientists rarely capture is the experience of inner struggle. These "significant changes" do not occur automatically. In fact, they must often fight against our resistance. In this sense, midlife is a drama more worthy of a playwright than a scholar. We are characters in the play, caught at the opening of the second act, and we do not know what will happen next.

Good reputation is a lifeboat in the flood of life crisis.

I don't know anything anymore. Is that normal? Is it normal to notice the enormity of everything and just go blank?

In my early fifties, I was going through a phase where few things felt right and I was trying to figure out those that did. It was not uncommon. In your twenties, you pursue your dreams. By your late thirties and early forties, you hit a certain stride. Then you hit your fifties, you get your first annoying thoughts of mortality, you begin more serious questioning of not just the meaning of your life but of what’s working, what’s not working, and what you still want, and all of a sudden you don’t know which way is up. You thought you knew but don’t. You just want to get to where life feels okay again.

If you wish to succeed, you must believe in yourself and look at everything positively

Each person has to face this challenge – you must search inside yourself. The props – surroundings, interactions, rituals, customs and superstitions – are just palliatives. You have to achieve your balance on your own; it has to come from the self. Once you get there, you can afford the luxury of lavishing your life with the pleasures of your drifting journey.

It certainly inhibits a man's desire to change companies for a better job. Thus, it is at least a minor pressure against free-spirited enterprise. All the benefits exert pressure, too. There is nothing sinister about them, since admittedly they are for your own material comfort -- and isn't that supposed to be one of the goals of mankind? What happens is that, as the years go by, the temptation to strike out on your own or take another job becomes less and less. Gradually you become accustomed to the Utopian drift. Soon another inhibition may make you even more amenable. If you have been in easy circumstances for a number of years, you feel that you are out of shape. Even in younger men the hard muscle of ambition tends to go slack, and you hesitate to take a chance in the jungle again.

It's not that other people seduce us. It's that we so desperately crave the destruction of our own lives.

Midlife dynamically, for both straight and gay males, is often challenging as we face the reality that many of the dreams we had for our lives might not become a reality and unresolved conflicts come to the surface. For us to successfully transition in to the next phase of our lives we must find reconciliation of these issues. And for the gay male there is a sense that the gay self we have tried to keep in the closet or so many years begins to scream out. "Time is running out. When do I get to live?" You can't ignore that voice in the end, you can try and suppress it, and you can try and deny it, you can try and silence it by filling your life with other noises and diverting attention ......but that voice still exists. "Will my entire life be a lie?

Middle age is not the beginning of decline, but a time to reach for the highest in our selves. Middle age is a pause to re-examine what we have done and what we will do in the future. This is the time to give birth to our power.

In the Dictionary 'lumpy jaw' comes just before 'lunacy,' but in life there are no such clues. Suddenly, for no reason, you might start to dribble from the mouth, to howl peevishly at the moon. You might start quoting your mother, out loud and with conviction. You might lose your friends to the most uninspired of deaths. You might one day wake up and find yourself teaching at a community college; there will have been nothing to warn you. You might say things to your students like, There is only one valid theme in literature: Life will disappoint you.

MIDLIFE is that pivotal moment when you can FINALLY say that you basically have all your shit together and then your body starts falling apart!

Neurotic suffering indicates inner conflict. Each side of the conflict is likely to be a composite of many partial forces, each one of which has been structured into behavior, attitude, perception, value. Each component asserts itself, claims priority, insists that something else yield, accommodates. The conflict therefore is fixed, stubborn, enduring. It may be impugned and dismissed without effect, imprecations and remorse are of no avail, strenuous acts of will may be futile; it causes - yet survives and continues to cause - the most intense suffering, humiliation, rending of flesh. Such a conflict is not to be uprooted or excised. It is not an ailment, it is the patient himself. The suffering will not disappear without a change in the conflict, and a change in the conflict amounts to a change in what one is and how one lives, feels, reacts.

People may indeed be treated as objects and may be profoundly affected thereby. Kick a dog often enough and he will become cowardly or vicious. People who are kicked undergo similar changes; their view of the world and of themselves is transformed. . . People may indeed be brainwashed, for benign or exploitative reasons. . . If one's destiny is shaped by manipulation one has become more of an object, less of a subject, has lost freedom. . . If, however, one's destiny is shaped from within then one has become more of a creator, has gained freedom. This is self-transcendence, a process of change that originates in one's heart and expands outward. . . begins with a vision of freedom, with an "I want to become...", with a sense of the potentiality to become what one is not. One gropes toward this vision in the dark, with no guide, no map, and no guarantee. Here one acts as subject, author, creator.

she was wishing that whatever stage of her life she ws in now could be got through quickly, for it was seeming to her interminable. If life had to be looked at in terms of high moments or peaks, then nothing had "happened" to her for a long time; and she could look forward to nothing but a dwindling away from full household activities and getting old.

Simply thinking creatively is not the same as being innovative, and only those who risk breaking out of their comfort zone by putting thought into action will discover the profusion of opportunity that exists.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to work, your future lies ahead of you

The significant relationships of early adulthood are thus construed as the means to an end of individual achievement, and these "transitional figures" must be cast off or reconstructed following the realization of success. If in the process, however, they become, like Dido, an impediment to the fulfillment of the Dream, then the relationship must be renounced, "to allow the developmental process" to continue. This process is defined by Levinson explicitly as one of individuation: "throughout the life cycle, but especially in the key transition periods . . . the developmental process of individuation is going on." The process refers "to the changes in a person's relationships to himself and to the external world," the relationships that constitute his "Life Structure" (p. 195). If in the course of "Becoming One's Own Man," this structure is discovered to be flawed and threatens the great expectations of the Dream, then in order to avert "serious Failure or Decline," the man must "break out" to salvage his Dream. This act of breaking out is consummated by a "marker event" of separation, such as "leaving his wife, quitting his job, or moving to another region" (p. 206). Thus the road to mid-life salvation runs through either achievement or separation.

One of the most important problems in machine learning—and life—is the exploration-exploitation dilemma. If you’ve found something that works, should you just keep doing it? Or is it better to try new things, knowing it could be a waste of time but also might lead to a better solution? Would you rather be a cowboy or a farmer? Start a company or run an existing one? Go steady or play the field? A midlife crisis is the yearning to explore after many years spent exploiting.

Suicide solves midlife crises.

The Dark Night of the Soul is not merely “having a bad day” or even week. The Dark Night is a long, pervasive, and very dark experience. If you’re experiencing the Dark Night of the Soul, you will constantly carry around within you a sense of being lost. Your heart will constantly, in some shape or form, be in mourning, and this is because you long deep down to feel the presence of your Soul again.

Thinking of only the worse of yourself will eventually destroy you

To come across as younger than they are: Women buy creams that promise to slow aging; men buy fast cars.

Will you be home for dinner? I'm making midlife crisis" "Oh, I guess I'll have a slice, if you're making it already.

You are trapped by nothing more than a poor attitude

You can live doing what you love or die having done nothing at all.

This is closest we'll ever be. This is our escape. Our secret closet, our letter of invitation to Hogwarts, our death-star run. After this we're back to the real world, and from there the hill slopes down and only stops at six feet under.

While the Dark Night of the Soul is a process of death, the Spiritual Awakening Process is the rebirth.

You know that you have officially HIT at total midlife crisis when you get acne on your wrinkles.

You know you’ve officially hit a midlife crisis when you finally start feeling like you have your life together and your body starts falling apart!

The midlife crisis you're having at 30 is indulgent, but the midlife crisis you have at 45 is to an extent thrust upon you.