Why Am I Questioning Everything in My 40s?

You might have hit your 40s and be thinking,why the hell am I suddenly questioning absolutely everything in my life?

It could be your relationship, your friends, your work — maybe even the people you work with. It might be where you live, what you want, who you're showing up as, even what you're wearing.

Just the whole shebang, really.

And it can be really confusing because, particularly for women, you're also potentially going through perimenopause at the same time. Your hormones are changing, your body might be changing, your mood might be all over the place and there can be all sorts of symptoms going on.

So it's very easy to put everything down to that.

And sometimes, of course, it is related to menopause.

But what if there's something else going on alongside it?

You might be rocking along and life looks good. The kids are good. The job's good. You've done well at work. Your health might be fine. Everything looks pretty normal from the outside.

But actually, what's happening on the inside feels far from normal.

This happened to me

I think things had probably been shifting throughout my late 30s, but by the time I was 44 — which happened to coincide with Covid — I was definitely slap bang in the middle of it.

I remember waking up one day feeling like I'd jumped timelines.

It was almost as though somebody had pulled the curtains open and suddenly I could see.

For me, this was very much an awakening. Looking back now, I would call it a spiritual awakening.

And I don't mean I suddenly turned religious or anything like that.

It was more like I could suddenly see things for what they were. Almost like taking off the rose-tinted glasses.

My life had been pushing along in one trajectory and suddenly I was thinking:

How did I get here?

Obviously I'd chosen these things. I'd chosen what I did, where I lived, who I was with and all of that stuff.

But had I really chosen all of it?

Or had I just gone along with the flow? Done what society expected? What you're supposed to do?

And I got to this point where I thought:

Hang on. What do I actually want?

Am I okay?

Am I happy?

Is this actually what I want?

And I want to say here that nothing in my life was bad.

Lovely friends. Lovely partner. Lovely home. Lovely children. Great work. Great clients.

I wasn't looking at a terrible life I needed to escape. I was just seeing my life differently.

Covid and lockdown gave me more time and space to think about all of this than I'd probably had for years.

But obviously, it doesn't take a pandemic for this to happen.

Why can this happen in your 40s?

I think you can spend so much of the beginning of your adult life being pushed along with the tide.

You're striking out, building your career, building friendships, buying a home or moving out and renting, getting into relationships.

And then suddenly you've got a relationship as well as a full-time job, you've got responsibilities, you've got a mortgage or rent and bills to pay.

Maybe there's family members you care for. Maybe you've got children. Maybe you're juggling all of it.

And you just get on with it.

Then there can be this point in your 40s where the question starts changing.

Instead of:

What am I supposed to be doing so I don't make things harder for the future version of myself? What's the right thing to do? What does society expect me to do? What does my family want me to do?

It becomes:

Hang on. What do I actually want?

And there can be all sorts of things that push you into that questioning.

Maybe you don't really like your job anymore. You've grown out of certain things. Your hormones are roller-coastering. Your body's changing shape. Your parents are getting older. You can't be bothered with the cleaning.

Maybe your relationship's have been left on the shelf for a while because you've been busy doing X, Y and Z because you've had to.

Maybe your kids are growing up or moving out.

Things have evolved, and perhaps you haven't had the time or space to stop and think about whether the life you've built still fits the person you are now.

Why does it feel so unsettling?

Because what you used to do doesn't necessarily work anymore.

Maybe previously you've been able to think, it's all good, I'm fine, I'm overthinking it, and just get on with things.

Or perhaps things haven't been good. Maybe you've thought, I hate this job, but I've got to do it, or I'm not happy with this, but what else am I going to do?

Then you can get to this point where something in you just says:

No. I can't do this anymore.

And this can be a bit of a struggly point, because I know from working with people, and from what happened to me, that you can suddenly want to pick off all the big things.

You start looking externally.

Where you're living. Your job. Your relationship. Your friends. Your family.

You might want to shake it all up. Throw it all out the window. Do something —anything— to make things feel different.

And I'm not going to deny that there may absolutely be external things you eventually need to change.

But I think we can start looking in the wrong place.

Before you blow everything up, look inside

At this stage, I think we need to come inside.

And that can be quite scary.

Some people don't really like sitting with themselves. Perhaps you've never really sat quietly with yourself before. Maybe you've been so busy for years that you've never really had to.

No judgement on that whatsoever because it's really, really common.

But if you don't want to rip everything up and start again without really understanding why, I think it takes looking at what's happening inside you first.

And if what you're experiencing does have an awakening or spiritual element to it, this can also be the point where you get led down all sorts of rabbit holes.

You might start finding spiritual teachers. Listening to podcasts. Watching YouTube. Reading books. Looking for somebody who can explain what the hell is happening.

I did that too.

There's nothing wrong with exploring. But I think you've also got to find your own way through all of this rather than automatically believing that somebody else has the answer for you.

Take the bits and pieces that help.

But keep coming back to your own grounded wisdom too.

Is it a midlife crisis?

I don't think the usual caricature of a midlife crisis is particularly helpful.

What we're really talking about is much more of an identity transition.

You know who you've always been.

That person doesn't quite fit anymore.

But you don't really know who you're becoming yet.

So you're in this gap between the two.

And that can be horrible.

It's deeply uncomfortable because you want to know what you're doing, where you're going, who you're going to be and what the next part of your life is going to look like.

And sometimes you just don't know yet.

For me, there was a spiritual awakening wrapped up in all of this.

You might not like the word spiritual. You might not relate to spiritual awakening at all.

That's okay. The label isn't really the important bit.

For me, spirituality is about going inside, going deeper and really getting to know who you are, so you can move through the second part of your life in a way that feels authentic and true to you.

So what actually helps?

Firstly, don't panic (Don't panic! Mr Mainwaring).

And don't assume because you're questioning everything, you have to immediately change everything.

It's very easy to decide, Right, this is definitely the problem. It's my job. It's this person. It's where I live.

Be a little bit careful there, because we can project what's happening inside us onto things outside of us.

Instead, get curious.

What's not working for me anymore?

Who am I around? Are they helping me or hindering me? Are they genuinely there for my best interests or theirs?

Have I outgrown certain things, situations or people?

What doesn't fit anymore?

And then look at the flip side too.

What am I drawn towards?

What's interesting me?

What new things do I want to explore or try?

Is there anything I used to love that I want to go back to?

And really importantly, before you sign yourself up to sail around the world with a bunch of people you've never met or decide to cycle up a mountain when you've never ridden a bike before, sit with it for a while.

Allow yourself a period of time — weeks or months even — where you don't know exactly where you're going or what you're doing.

You don't have to answer the enormous existential question:

What am I going to do with the rest of my life?

Not yet.

Maybe there's a different question

So I just want to finish with this thought.

Maybe the question isn't:

What's gone wrong with me?

Maybe it's:

What's changing within me — or what has already changed within me that I haven't quite caught up with yet?

You may not know where any of this is taking you.

You don't have to.

Give yourself some space to notice what's changing, what no longer fits, what you're becoming curious about and what you're being drawn towards.

And allow yourself some time in that place of not knowing.

This whole experience of feeling lost, questioning your life and not quite recognising yourself anymore is the territory I call a LifeStorm.

I created the LifeStorm Map because I wish I'd had something like it when I was going through all of this myself — something that helped me understand where I was, what might be happening and what could actually help at that point.

And if you're in your 40s or 50s and thinking, bloody hell, this sounds like me, I've also created a free helpful guide called Why Midlife Suddenly Feels So Unsettling.