Margaret is 67 and, by most measures, doing nicely. Since leaving her senior position two years in the past, she has stayed busy: becoming a member of a neighborhood board, taking over consultancy work, signing up for programs and retreats. She is, as she put it, ‘doing all the best issues’. And but, she instructed me, one thing feels off.
She shouldn’t be depressed. However she feels drained, as if the hassle of preserving every little thing going has grow to be tougher than it was once. ‘I hold including issues,’ she mentioned, ‘however nothing fairly sticks the best way it used to.’
As a psychologist and advisor who helps folks discover their goal later in life, I hear tales like Margaret’s quite a bit. Take David, 71, a former GP, who described one thing comparable. He volunteers, travels, stays socially related, and can be seen by others as taking advantage of this stage of life. And but, as he put it merely: ‘Every thing appears to be like fantastic on paper. I simply don’t know what I’m truly doing it for any extra.’
Margaret and David are primarily based on actual shoppers of mine, however I’ve modified their names and private particulars to hide their identities. Their experiences are extra frequent than we are inclined to acknowledge. Many individuals of their 60s and 70s and past stay lively, succesful and outwardly engaged. Their lives nonetheless look full. However, privately, many discover a rising hole between how life seems and the way it truly feels: a delicate flatness or lack of route.
If this resonates with you, you may need discovered that it’s straightforward to interpret your lack of route as a private failing, as if one thing wants fixing. You may additionally have seen that a lot of the favored messaging round later life is way from useful. From ‘second act’ narratives to the concept of an ‘encore profession’, popularised by writers akin to Marc Freedman, and the broader calls from TED talks and different media shops to ‘reinvent’ your self at 60 or past, later life is commonly framed as a time to start once more. For some, that is energising and applicable. However a lot of my shoppers inform me that it simply provides to their sense of failure and makes them really feel beneath strain.
There are good causes to doubt that reinvention is the reply to later-life malaise. The lifespan psychologist Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity concept shows that, as folks grow to be extra conscious of time as finite, their priorities start to alter. Moderately than searching for novelty or broad exploration, many older adults grow to be extra selective about the place they make investments their power, favouring which means, emotional depth and relationships over growth for its personal sake. A decreased urge for food for reinvention, then, shouldn’t be a lack of drive. It displays an adaptive change in motivation.
The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson gives a complementary perspective. In The Life Cycle Accomplished (1982), he proposed that, in later maturity, our developmental job strikes towards integration: weaving accrued expertise right into a extra coherent, internally aligned sense of self. Discarding earlier identities and beginning afresh usually are not a part of this course of. Integration is about deepening and consolidating what’s already there.
Drawing on these insights, slightly than reinventing your self in later life, I suggest an answer that I name reorientation. This strategy acknowledges that your route of development is altering, turning into extra selective and reflective. What follows is a sequence of steps that will help you work with that change slightly than push in opposition to it.
Establish what nonetheless issues to you
Over time, our lives accumulate layers of roles, obligations and routines. Some stay deeply significant. Others persist largely via behavior or a long-standing sense of duty. Step one in the direction of reorientation is studying to inform the distinction.
Do that: take one dedication you at the moment maintain – akin to a committee place, a social position, an everyday obligation – and sit quietly with it for a couple of minutes. Ask your self two questions: Does this nonetheless really feel alive to me? And: If I have been selecting this in the present day, would I nonetheless select it?
Discover what arises. You aren’t making a call but, merely observing. A job that when expressed your values might, over time, have grow to be one thing you preserve out of inertia slightly than real which means. Noticing this, with out judgment, is the place reorientation begins. You possibly can repeat the method along with your varied commitments in life.
My consumer Margaret tried this along with her consultancy work. When she sat with it truthfully, she realised she was persevering with largely as a result of it felt like proof that she was nonetheless helpful, not as a result of the work itself nonetheless engaged her. That recognition, uncomfortable because it was, gave her one thing actual to work with.
I additionally tried this train myself, specializing in my position as secretary for a voluntary organisation. On paper, it nonetheless appeared like one thing I ‘ought to’ worth. Nonetheless, in apply, it had come to really feel like an obligation slightly than one thing that engaged me. After I sat with the 2 questions, the solutions have been clear. It not felt alive. And if I have been selecting it in the present day, I’d not select it. Even the occasions and visits, which could as soon as have held curiosity, not drew me in.
That recognition was uncomfortable. However it was additionally clarifying. It shifted the query for me from ‘Ought to I proceed?’ to one thing extra trustworthy about what I truly need to give my time to now.
Preserve a quick power log
A lot of my shoppers inform me of their frustration at not feeling as energetic as they used to. However I inform them that not all tiredness alerts the identical factor. Some effort will be enlivening even when it’s demanding. Different effort creates a extra diffuse exhaustion that lingers, an indication that power is being directed in ways in which no longer match.
The cultural strain to maintain reinventing could make this tougher to interpret. If issues really feel hard-going, you would possibly assume that it’s best to push tougher or strive one thing new. However persistent depletion in later life might merely imply your power is being directed in ways in which not align with what issues to you.
A extra helpful query than Am I drained? is: What sort of effort is that this?
One option to discover that is to maintain a quick power log for every week. After every vital exercise or dedication, be aware in a sentence or two how you’re feeling, not simply bodily, however inwardly. Do you’re feeling extra settled, or drained and vaguely resentful? Over time, you’ll discover that patterns are inclined to emerge.
Margaret seen she might spend a whole afternoon writing, or in a significant one-to-one dialog, and really feel replenished. In distinction, an hour in a committee assembly left her feeling flat for the remainder of the day. The log made seen what she had beforehand been dismissing as basic tiredness.
After I accomplished an power log myself, I seen one thing comparable in my very own week. Writing and time in nature tended to depart me extra settled and energised. Some conversations had the other impact. Not all, however sure interactions left me feeling depleted in a manner that lingered.
Being attentive to this modified how I responded. Moderately than assuming I merely wanted to be extra accessible or extra affected person (the same old ‘push tougher’ mentality), I started to position clearer boundaries round my time. In some conditions, that meant intentionally preserving conversations transient. In others, it meant recognising that I didn’t want to interact in any respect.
I didn’t withdraw from folks utterly, however I started taking note of when my power was being spent in ways in which not felt sustainable – after which I made changes accordingly. Use your power log to make the identical intentional tweaks to your personal life so that you spend extra time doing issues that depart you feeling energised.
Channel what has all the time mattered most to you
Earlier in life, development usually includes buying new abilities, identities and experiences. In later life, growth extra steadily includes integrating and expressing what’s already there.
This step includes a change in the way you view your personal depth. Moderately than accepting the reinvention narrative and asking your self: What new path ought to I take?, I recommend that it may be extra useful to ask: How would possibly what I already know, worth and do nicely be expressed in ways in which higher match who I am now?
To make this extra concrete, strive mapping your expertise. Take a sheet of paper or open your Notes app, and jot down three issues: the data or abilities you’ve got constructed over many years; the values which have remained constant throughout your life; and the sorts of contribution which have felt most significant. Then take a look at the place these overlap. Maybe at this stage in your life you’ve got an opportunity to present this explicit intersection of abilities, values and which means higher precedence.
For Margaret, this train surfaced one thing she had been undervaluing. Her deepest satisfaction had constantly come from serving to people assume extra clearly about their very own lives, not from managing, main or consulting at scale.
If you gain a similar kind of insight from the task, ask yourself one further question: How can I find a way to express this more in my life? Often the answer points not towards doing something entirely new, but to something already present in your life that has been crowded out by obligations that once made sense but no longer do.
For instance, Margaret realised she had been trying to maintain the form of her earlier career when the essence of what’s always mattered most to her is something more relational. She began to consider how this might take a different form. Instead of continuing with consultancy work that required her to maintain a professional identity that no longer fully fit, she explored offering more focused one-to-one conversations and creating space for writing, where she could express that relational depth more naturally.
I came to a similar realisation when I completed this reflective exercise during a three-month sabbatical. Stepping back from my usual consultancy work made it easier for me to see what I had always found most meaningful through my career – the opportunity for deep reflection.
I realised that writing and time spent managing my woodland were closer expressions of that same underlying value. They offered a different way of engaging, one that felt more aligned with how I wanted to spend my time now.
By rebalancing my priorities, I wasn’t reinventing myself, but giving more room to a purpose that had always been present but never fully expressed.
Reframe how you think about your contributions
Contemporary culture often equates contribution with visibility – celebrating concrete achievements, making a splash and building a brand. Similarly, if your identity has long been tied to visible achievement, this can make the natural evolution of later life feel like diminishment.
But while the kind of contributions people make in later life often change form and might seem less visible, they are certainly no less valuable. Mentoring, sharing perspective, offering sustained presence to others: these can carry real meaning, even when they are less externally visible than earlier achievements.
If you’ve been feeling anxious about what you can contribute later in life, one way to approach this is through a simple reframing exercise. Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. On the left, write what you feel you still need to build or prove. On the right, write about all your stories, skills, experiences and perspectives that you could share. Give yourself 10 minutes, and resist the urge to edit as you go. Then read back the right-hand column slowly. For many people, the second column turns out to be richer than expected.
Now, try shifting the question you ask yourself, from What will I leave behind? to What knowledge and experience do I already carry that is worth passing on? That reframing can once again make your later life purpose feel less like a project requiring reinvention and more like a natural expression of who you have already become.
Margaret found that when she stepped back from maintaining the scale of her earlier career and began offering one-to-one conversations to a small number of people navigating their own later-life transitions, the flatness lifted. The work was less visible, but it felt, as she put it, ‘like mine again’.
I have reframed things similarly in my own life. Spending more time in my woodland, alongside a greater focus on writing, has brought me a deeper sense of purpose and satisfaction. Yes, the work itself is less visible, but it feels more fully aligned with how I want to live.
There is also a secondary beneficial effect. I like to think that having that space to think and write has also made me a calmer, more settled presence with others. The contribution is not always in what I do, but in how I am. If you are able to make similar adjustments in your own life, I hope you too will notice these kinds of secondary benefits.
