A midlife crisis happens when we stop feeling excited about life.
But it's really just a calling – A calling to change or do something different.
It's the start of what Joseph Campbell calls your "Hero's Journey."
When you answer the calling and embark on the adventure to make a change, you start to feel more alive.
You'll hit challenges, discomfort, probably over some some fear, but you'll return with a new set of skills, wisdom, and attributes you can take to you family and your community.
Some common callings men experience during mid-life are to: - get healthier - stop being a jerk - do more of what you love - be more present - or something else entirely. Only you know what's been nagging at you.
Midlife crisis or not, today's episode will lead you to answer a few questions to decide what lights you up so you can start doing more of that.
When we're excited about life, we bring more positive energy to everyone around us.
A midlife crisis happens when we stop feeling excited about life.
But it's really just a calling – A calling to change or do something different.
It's the start of what Joseph Campbell calls your "Hero's Journey."
When you answer the calling and embark on the adventure to make a change, you start to feel more alive.
You'll hit challenges, discomfort, probably over some some fear, but you'll return with a new set of skills, wisdom, and attributes you can take to you family and your community.
Some common callings men experience during mid-life are to: - get healthier - stop being a jerk - do more of what you love - be more present - or something else entirely. Only you know what's been nagging at you.
Midlife crisis or not, today's episode will lead you to answer a few questions to decide what lights you up so you can start doing more of that.
When we're excited about life, we bring more positive energy to everyone around us.
This is the Durable Dad Podcast. I'm your host, tommy Geary. This show is gonna give you the skills and tools you need to be a rock solid man for your work, your community and, most importantly, your family. All right, what's up? Episode number 59. Hope you are doing well today, wherever you're at.
Speaker 1:
I'm feeling good, feeling strong. I think what I got on my radar right now, in addition to some cool work stuff that's happening I got a five-mile leg of a marathon relay. So it's the Glass City Marathon coming up, and I've never done a marathon and I'm still not doing a marathon relay. So it's the Glass City Marathon coming up, and I've never done a marathon and I'm still not doing a marathon, but I'm doing a relay with five other guys and my leg is a little over five miles. So been running a lot lately and feeling really good physically. I think this next week what I'm really going to focus on is honing in on the nutrition and my diet. Only going to focus on is honing in on the nutrition and my diet, which can always be worked on. At least for me, that's kind of where I struggle with numbing out is with food. So that's what I got coming up.
Speaker 1:
I got a Spartan race at the beginning of June, got a weird shoulder injury happening, so maintaining that and injuries suck. I was talking to someone else about injuries and just the patience and taking the time to ice and stretch and rehab it. It's tough. The patience that you have to have is real. You know, these races that I sign up for, these kind of physical challenges, will tie into something that we're talking about today, because what we're talking about is the idea of a midlife crisis and when we get into there's no real particular age, whether it's our late 30s, early 40s or 50s that time when you just notice that you're not as excited about life and maybe you're eating too much or you're drinking too much and you don't really have any personal goals. It's the feeling of drudgery, of the day-to-day and the wait, and sometimes it can feel like a sudden realization, like half of my life is already behind me. Time is short, life is short, and it's also a voice that's usually been picking at you for a while, questioning your day-to-day, questioning your purpose, feeling like something's off, and it's been talking to you for a while. Questioning your day-to-day, questioning your purpose, feeling like something's off, and it's been talking to you for a while.
Speaker 1:
This midlife crisis is something that everyone goes through. That's why people talk about it, but it doesn't have to be a crisis. It doesn't have to be a negative thing. What a midlife crisis could be. What it really is is a calling, a calling to do something different, and I'm not talking about quitting your job. I'm talking about having the courage, the discipline to make some changes in your life Drink less, learn how to manage your temper and your emotions, getting more efficient with your time. I don't really know what it is for you specifically, but whatever it is, you know, internally there's something nagging at you, calling at you to be better, to do something different, and that's what the midlife crisis is. It's a calling, and this calling is what Joseph Campbell calls the hero's journey.
Speaker 1:
It's the start of your hero's journey, and we all go through multiple hero's journeys throughout our life, and the premise is that we are the main character we're. The hero is interwoven into the movies that we watch, the books that we read and into our personal experiences. So the way that this is laid out is the hero has a calling to leave his normal life and to go on an adventure, and on this adventure, he's presented with challenges and he needs to learn new skills, overcome obstacles and along the way, he starts shedding his old ways and in the end, he earns something. He earns wisdom, some type of behavior. He earns wisdom, some type of behavior, something that he brings back to his family and to his community. That's the hero's journey and the journey. It takes courage, it takes resilience, it takes discipline. However, in today's environment, we don't need courage, we don't need bravery to get by, to survive. We can really just float along in this comfort of our screens, of our sedentary life, of easy access to food, to booze, to weed, whatever it is. We could just float by and be okay, but this midlife calling is calling us to not just float. By.
Speaker 1:
Joseph Campbell says I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. When we're on our screens all day, when we're on our phones, when we're just watching shit all the time, it's the opposite of feeling alive. We sink into our day-to-day routines and it's not vitalizing. One guy that I was talking to he said it feels like I've put a part of me on a shelf for the last 10 years and I've just been doing everything I'm supposed to be doing and he wanted to take that part of him off the shelf. Just didn't really know what it was. But that's a calling. That's the start of his calling, right? Usually it's our growth has stalled and we don't feel as excited anymore. We want to feel alive.
Speaker 1:
So a midlife crisis is a calling. It's a call to go on a hero's journey, an adventure. And the hero's journey has been so impactful in my life this perspective, that a goal, a change, that we're the hero of our story that when we started this business, when Brenda and I were branding and naming it, the original name was we Embark. And it was we Embark because I believe that whenever a guy comes and start coaching with me, he's going on his own hero's journey. And since it's changed to Tommy G, coaching for marketing purposes. But when I kick off with a guy, I am pumped because I know that when we coach, he's going to do new things. He's going to do new things, he's going to challenge himself and in the end, he's going to gain wisdom, confidence, new skills that he brings back to his family. He's going to go on a hero's journey and return to his regular life with more to give, and it just pumps me up.
Speaker 1:
So I'm going to go through some of the callings that we get as men at our midlife. So one is to get healthier, to start moving our body again, to start losing some weight. Campbell talks about our sedentary life and how there's a lot of intellectual excitement, stimulation, but the body is not in it very much. So if you notice yourself thinking, start working out more, start eating healthier, that's your calling. And we can get stuck living vicariously through sports on TV, and Campbell even talks about like the person who watches athletic games instead of participating in athletics Start moving your own body, start taking care of yourself. Follow that calling and when you do, you'll start to feel more alive, especially if you start doing it in the outdoors. Right now it's springtime in the US, a lot of opportunity to get outside. Whatever. You need to get motivated to start getting healthier.
Speaker 1:
That's one of the callings. Another one is to stop acting like a jerk. It's that calling that you notice yourself behaving externally in a way that's not really aligned with who you are. That's a calling to work on some of the bullshit you have going on, why you're triggered easily, why you're frustrated. Start to manage your emotions, and some of these callings can feel selfish. But a hero's journey is done on your own. It is an individual thing, and Campbell says that we're not on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes. There's three sentences in there and I think there's a lot. But we're not doing this journey to save the world. We're doing it to save ourselves. But when we work on ourselves, we end up saving the world, and the world could be your community, the world could be your family. When you save yourself and you feel more alive, that aliveness bleeds over to other people. So the calling could be get healthier, move your body. It could be stop acting like a jerk, build your relationships up a little bit.
Speaker 1:
Another calling that guys get is to start spending more time on things that you enjoy, things that you love, and I think this is one of the biggest callings that you can have. And sometimes, when I'm coaching guys, I'll ask when was the last time you felt alive or when was the last time you felt really excited and sometimes it's recently something that happened, but other times it hasn't happened in a while. I haven't felt really excited or alive for a long time. But ask yourself that question when was the last time you felt alive? And whatever the answer is, if you're having this midlife calling, go, do more of what excites you, and some guys will decide to focus on the parts of their job that they really love, that really inspire them, and learn how to delegate the other stuff that doesn't excite them anymore. Learning how to delegate, learning how to manage your time so you can focus on the part of work that you like that's a hero's journey. You're going to have to change your old ways and become a new person. It's not. You're going to have to change your old ways and become a new person If your job isn't giving you the opportunity to do something you love.
Speaker 1:
It could be picking up a hobby and that sounds cheesy or something you've heard of before, but I know that men, men that have families especially need some other type of identity rather than just dad, husband, professional, one of my good buddies. Over the last year he's mentioned twice that he's had this itch to write a book and he's done some writing already and it's like, ah, when every mentions it I get pumped because that's his calling. Going and trying to write a book that's your hero's journey. It could be woodworking, any hobby that lights you up, not something that feels like it's a need spend time on that. It's a calling to do something that you love.
Speaker 1:
If you're not sure what the hell no-transcript you can take a sabbatical like. Figure out a way to take a sabbatical. Take some time to learn about yourself. Figure out what it is you really want. Sabbaticals are really healthy during your midlife, when you've been in one career for a long time, to stop pause. Take some time to figure out what you want to do. It might end up that you shift careers right, if nothing about your career excites you. It could be a calling to make a shift, to buy a business, to start your own business by doing what you love, asking yourself what you love, and then going after and doing it.
Speaker 1:
You're following your calling. You're going to be going on a hero's journey and when you do, you're going to feel more alive. There's going to be hard times, there's going to be fear, there's going to be excitement, there's going to be celebration and, instead of just towing the line of the day-to-day, you're going to expand the spectrum of emotions, and that's what feeling alive is. And when you feel more alive, you get to bring that aliveness to everyone else in your life. All right, one more calling that we have in our midlife is to be more present. So when guys set up strategy sessions with me, they fill in this intake form and on that intake form a lot of guys will say they struggle with being present. And this is usually a calling to stop numbing out, to get off of your phone, be bored, maybe. Be present with who's in front of you, what's happening right now.
Speaker 1:
It's not easy and a hero's journey isn't supposed to be easy. We have unhealthy ingrained habits that we want to change. That's a hero's journey. And if you listen to episode 36, I talk about conquering your vice. Your vices are what's keeping you from being present, and you have to be willing to feel uncomfortable as you go on that journey and you start having obstacles and overcoming them and having small wins, you're going to feel more alive and on the other side of that journey of changing the unhealthy habit, you're going to feel better. You're going to feel more confident. Right, and that's the hero's journey. You get to bring that reward back to your ordinary life, back to the people in your life.
Speaker 1:
So these are all callings for hero's journeys Get healthier, stop acting like a jerk. Spend more time on things you love. Be more present. Maybe you have something else that's calling you, right? I don't know. That's a big part of the hero's journey. Only you know what your calling is. Only you know how to succeed. But if you're in this space where you're feeling a lack of excitement about your life, you're feeling like you have more potential inside you. You have more to give.
Speaker 1:
Calling it a midlife crisis is a pretty negative way. It's a negative perspective and it's not. It's just a calling to change for the better. So listen to the calling. There's a little nudge that's saying, hey, do something new, do something different. Stop a second, listen to what it has to say.
Speaker 1:
And when you answer these callings, when you navigate these challenges and you create new skills, new habits, you bring back a more confident, a healthier you to your kids, to your family. You show your kids what it means to do something hard, to make yourself better, to grow, and that's pretty heroic, right? I'm going to repeat that quote from Joseph Campbell we're not on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves, but in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes. All right, that's what I got for you guys today. Please subscribe, follow, before we move on to the next episode or the next podcast you listen to. Just it takes a couple seconds to click and subscribe or follow whatever podcast platform you're on. Appreciate it Gets more guys to listen and talk to you next time.