Very few people who reach middle age (and beyond) have the same set of priorities they listed when they were in their teens or early twenties. We grow exponentially over the course of a few decades, and what was once deemed terribly important now gets shifted lower on the list, if it even makes the cut at all. If you’ve reached the age of 40, you’ve likely noticed that your life purpose has changed significantly, and this is a good thing! Here are 7 ways it’s likely evolved that may feel familiar to you.
1. You place greater focus on what you can give, rather than what you can receive.
Most of us are quite appetitive in our younger years and dive into life thinking about all the things we can get from it, such as a prestigious career, a house, exotic vacations, fancy clothes, and so on. Having ambition is great, but it can also entail a startling amount of selfishness and lack of empathy for others.
Once you hit 40, however, you may discover you’ve shifted from chasing achievements for yourself to mentoring others with the skills you’ve accrued. Alternatively, you might draw from your well of personal experience to help others through similar difficulties that you navigated over the years.
2. You care less about pleasing others and can live more authentically.
Those who spent their younger years people-pleasing and living to suit others’ wants and expectations suddenly step into their own power when they hit 40. Furthermore, people who have spent years cultivating the facades that they felt were necessary to fit in and succeed are now simply too tired to continue masquerading as something they aren’t. According to Positive Psychology, this inauthentic living means “…we may experience only fleeting moments where we are truly ourselves, saying and thinking exactly how we feel.”
Wearing masks for other people’s benefit is exhausting and wears us down over time. Once we reach our forties, we care far less about pleasing others and being something we aren’t and place more emphasis on living as the truest version of ourselves. We drop the act and become our authentic selves. You may notice that you spend less time comparing yourself to others and invest more time thinking about what you honestly love, rather than trying to convince yourself that you really love team-building meetings and office-to-evening clothing styles.
3. You start to prioritize your health and the health of others.
If you’re anything like me, you probably spent a fair number of your earlier years eating poorly and abusing your body in various ways. In my case, that revolved around ballet training that wreaked havoc on my joints, minimal nutrient intake, alcoholism, and a startling amount of endocrine-disrupting chemicals in beauty and personal care products. Young people rarely think about the long-term ramifications of their actions, and to paraphrase the Dalai Lama, they generally sacrifice their health in order to make money, and then later sacrifice that money in order to recuperate their health.
But in midlife and beyond, you get better at many things, including looking after yourself. You may start a crusade to improve not just your own health but that of those around you as well. Maybe you’ve rid your home of toxic chemicals and have ditched “fast fashion” in favor of natural fibers like wool, linen, and silk. You may have gotten yoga or Pilates certification so you can help other people your own age attain their health goals, or have a social media site revolving around healthy, nutritious meal preparation. Your well-being — and that of those you care about — is now one of the most important things in your world.
4. You can work on self-development.
For many people, their twenties and thirties revolve around school, career, and child rearing. Once they hit their forties, their children are usually old enough to be fairly self-sufficient, leaving them more free time to figure themselves out. This often involves delving into subjects that they didn’t have time for when they were younger or didn’t have the financial means to pursue.
Psychologically, personal development is often as banal as a standard DIY job: the majority of the work entails gathering all the tools you’ll need and making architectural plans before actually getting to the meat of the construction. As such, if you know that there are things you’d like to focus on or achieve in the latter third of your life, you’ll choose to do the work that’s needed to establish that foundation now.
5. You nurture meaningful relationships with people you care about.
Younger people often have several social circles that they weave in and out of, mostly consisting of casual acquaintances, colleagues, and temporary dalliances. When these connections run their course, they’re simply replaced with new ones that suit their current needs or wants.
As you get older, your friend circle often shrinks, but that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. You’ve likely shifted your focus to more meaningful connections with the people in your life. You’re trying to have strong, healthy relationships with your close friends and family members and may get involved with your community. You’ve learned to recognize the importance of cultivating lasting, supportive connections with sincerely good people, and you put significant effort into doing so.
6. You prioritize personal peace and joy.
While heli-skiing or swimming with sharks may have been at the top of your bucket list when you were 21, middle age tends to rearrange our priorities so that thrill-seeking isn’t in the top 10 anymore. It may not even be on the list at all, as you’ve grown beyond the assumed immortality you experienced when you were younger and are now acutely aware of what any given activity is going to do to your back.
As such, your life purpose has likely shifted toward cultivating personal peace and fulfillment in whichever ways you can. Maybe you’ve taken up a craft that’s allowing you to beautify the home in which you spend most of your time. Or perhaps you’re intent on reading the full library of Penguin Classics simply for the joyful satisfaction of having done so. You also become more forceful when it comes to protecting your peace from things (or people) that try to disturb it.
7. You want to make the world a better place in whichever way is most important to you.
Midlife often brings us the opportunity to discover what matters most to us. Once we gain these epiphanies, we often want to dedicate as much time and effort as possible to these areas, while we still can. For many of us, this entails some aspect of care and stewardship of the world in which we live. As such, we tend to get involved in pursuits and causes that will ensure that those we care about will have a healthy planet and supportive society to live in once we’re gone. It becomes important to us that we leave a positive, lasting legacy behind.
Some people change careers after 40 and go into politics or administration in order to shape things in the way they think will be of greatest benefit. Others become staunch environmental activists or start animal sanctuaries to rescue those that have been abused at factory farms. You’ve grown to truly love some wonderful things about this sweet Earth and want to use the time you have left to make a real, lasting difference here.
Final thoughts…
A lot of people who discover that their life purpose has changed after age 40 try to fight against it. Some feel that they’re betraying their younger selves by not crossing things off their life achievement list, while others feel like they’re accepting “old” age and imminent mortality by choosing a purpose that’s less challenging or intense. In reality, we simply aren’t the same people at 40 that we were at 30 or 20, so it’s natural that our life purpose will now be different. That’s no bad thing – the changes we undergo will allow us to bloom rather than stagnate. I know which I’d prefer.
