Next May I turn 35. That milestone places me at the threshold of early middle age. Strangely, I feel relief.

I’m grateful I already weathered a major identity shift in my early 30s, when the stakes felt lower. Before a mortgage, marriage or children. Before the weight of caring for ageing parents. I’m grateful I listened to the unease early and chose differently. It means the years ahead feel wide open to create a life that’s truly mine.

The unease started at 28. On paper, I had everything I thought I was supposed to want: the job, the relationship, the money, the clear trajectory. On the inside, small cracks appeared: numbness, disillusionment, a quiet “Is this really all there is?”

Over the next few years, I tried to “solve” it. I changed jobs. I left a relationship. I moved overseas. I signed up for yoga retreats. None of those things solved the problem. What they did do was create opportunities for self-exploration and for reconnection with parts of myself I’d lost along the way.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but I was hearing an early echo of what many don’t encounter until midlife: the summons to ask not just what the world expects, but what the soul is asking now.

Middle age arrives as a perfect storm

There isn’t a universal definition of middle age, but its characteristics are unmistakable.

Psychologists describe it as the phase when the future no longer feels limitless and existential questions surface with new urgency. Economists mark it as peak working years (roughly 35–54), when financial responsibilities mount. Sociologists define it by roles: juggling career, parenting and caregiving for ageing parents whilst managing a web of social expectations.

What makes midlife so charged is that it’s not just one transition. It’s many, all arriving at once.

The people around me are asking big questions: whether to have children, what it means to raise them, whether to keep climbing the career ladder or walk away from it altogether to create something of their own. Many are carrying multiple roles simultaneously: advancing in careers, raising children, caring for parents. The weight of expectation is everywhere—from partners, families, workplaces and culture at large.

Choices feel heavier now. Their consequences more permanent. Some quietly wonder if it’s too late to change course.

This is why midlife carries such intensity: external responsibilities peak precisely just as the inner voice grows louder. The summons of the soul collides with the pressures of the world. What looks like restlessness or discontent from the outside is often something deeper stirring from within—a growing tension between the life we’ve built and the life we know is ours to claim.

A summons, not a crisis

The term midlife crisis has been co-opted by popular culture as a way to dismiss someone’s distress—clichés about sports cars and affairs that reduce genuine psychological upheaval to punchlines.

The reality is far more complex.

James Hollis, a Jungian psychologist, describes midlife in his book Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life as a psychological passage when the old scaffolding of identity can no longer hold. What looks like a breakdown is often the psyche breaking through.

By this stage of life, two things have happened: we’ve been separated from our parents long enough to make our own choices, test them and feel both success and collapse. We’ve also developed enough ego strength to reflect, critique and risk new values and directions.

Hollis says that midlife distress often shows up first in intimate relationships, then in careers, and finally as personal symptoms—depression, insomnia, addictions or a restless longing that refuses to quiet down. When we ignore it, it erupts through troubling dreams, intrusive thoughts or self-sabotaging behaviour.

These questions don’t wait for a specific birthday. They surface whenever the life we’ve built on adaptation starts to feel too tight. They confront us with the gap between what we’ve achieved and what we feel in our most honest moments.

Whether at 28 or 48, the summons is the same: to ask not just what the world expects of us, but what the soul is asking now.

This past weekend, I listened to a podcast hosted by The Imperfects. The episode featured psychologist Dr Emily Musgrove discussing Hollis’ work on midlife. For the first 30 minutes, one of the hosts, Josh, was mostly silent whilst the conversation explored the tasks of midlife, the U-curve of happiness, the shift from achieving to meaning-making.

When Josh finally spoke, his voice cracked. He’d just been diagnosed with depression the week before. Despite having what he called “the best job, the best wife, the best kids” — all the external markers of a life well-lived — he felt numb. He described a fear of taking up too much space, of needing to “get out of the way” as his children grew.

The dissonance was striking: everything looked right on paper, yet inside, something fundamental had collapsed.

What Josh was confronting was the very essence of midlife. The moment when external achievement no longer protects us from internal reckoning. This is what Hollis means when he describes midlife as the psyche breaking through. The pain isn’t pathology. It’s information.

The difference between quarter-life and midlife is mostly timing and intensity. At quarter-life, the questions revolve around early career scripts—Am I on the right path? At midlife, they take on deeper existential weight: mortality, legacy and the ache of the unlived life.

The unlived life

The unlived life names the gap between the life we live to please others and the life we know is ours to claim.

It shows up in many forms: the creative impulse you’ve always felt but never pursued. The career path you sacrificed for security, even though it never fit. The conversation you’ve avoided. The relationship you never repaired. The risks you postponed until “later.”

It lingers in envy—that subtle pang when we see someone living a life we’ve denied ourselves. We’ll explore how to decode that envy shortly…

The tragedy of the unlived life is not that we never had the chance. It’s that we turned away from it, again and again, out of fear, duty or habit. We choose adaptation over authenticity. We choose applause over aliveness.

Once you’ve glimpsed the unlived life, you can’t unsee it. You can’t unknow the truth that it’s never too late to begin living it. Which makes the real question not “Is it too late?” but “What is this unease trying to tell me?”

Jung offers insight into what’s really happening.

The unrest isn’t malfunction

Jung described midlife as a fundamental shift from one orientation to another. In the first half of life, we build identity and pursue external goals. In the second half, external achievements lose their lustre, while meaning and authenticity come into focus. The transition brings confrontation with parts of ourselves we’ve long ignored, visceral awareness of mortality and re-evaluation of values.

For women, midlife often coincides with questions about motherhood—whether to have children, navigating the identity shift of becoming a mother, or reconciling professional ambition with caregiving responsibilities. Yet, out of the weight of these changes, something shifts: a growing assertiveness, a reclaiming of personal authority that may have been set aside. The “good girl” who kept everyone comfortable begins to fade. Research shows women’s confidence often peaks around age 60, suggesting that midlife isn’t decline but an opening into something fuller.

I hold this tension myself. Women are gifted the ability to create and hold life, which is undoubtedly a deeply rich and meaningful human experience. Yet I also want the freedom to live for myself, to pursue my goals without setting them aside. It sounds selfish. Perhaps it is. But it’s honest. Balancing these desires isn’t simple, and this question occupies more space in my mind as I move further into this life stage.

For men, midlife often involves a softening. The focus on competition and achievement that defined earlier years gives way to something more collaborative and nurturing. Many men shift from what researchers call vertical ambition to horizontal expansion—from climbing hierarchies to mentoring, teaching and creating legacy. Strength doesn’t disappear, but it makes room for vulnerability.

This questioning is visible everywhere, among both men and women reshaping what work means to them. What looks like people leaving their careers is often something more nuanced: a search for work that aligns with deeper values.

Hollis writes about the distinction between a job and a vocation. A job is what we do to meet external expectations. It gives us structure, stability and identity. A vocation, by contrast, is what we do in response to an inner summons. It may or may not pay well, but it moves the soul.

Some people need their job to be their vocation. Others need the separation. It requires discernment about what your life actually needs. So the question becomes: “What arrangement lets you honour both your material needs and what genuinely matters to you?”

When the scaffolding of career identity starts to feel shaky, most of us interpret the discomfort as burnout or personal failure. We think something is wrong with us. We wonder if we’re being ungrateful, unrealistic or self-indulgent.

The script that says a job must be everything—identity, purpose, security, meaning—is breaking down. A new one is forming, where distinguishing between job and vocation matters. Where work can provide stability without consuming your entire sense of self.

A job may keep the lights on, but vocation is what keeps the fire lit.

Decoding your envy

Envy is one of the most honest teachers we have. We don’t envy everyone—only those who hold something we feel we deserve. Hidden in that discomfort is information about our unlived potential.

The mistake we make is envying people in their entirety, when actually it’s only a small part of what they have or do that resonates with us. The School of Life offers a useful exercise in The Career Workbook to help decode what your envy is really pointing toward.

Take out a notebook and create four columns:

1. People I envy

   List four names. Two might be people in public life or media. Two might be people you know directly—well or casually. Don’t overthink it. You might envy your sister, someone you met briefly at an event or your former colleague.

2. What they’re known for

   Write down their most obvious achievements or what they’re recognised for.

3. The positive bits I don’t actually want

   Even when we envy someone, we don’t want everything about their life. Focus not on the downsides (the long hours, the travel, the scrutiny) but on the positive aspects that don’t appeal to you.

   Maybe you envy a wealthy entrepreneur, but when you look closely, you realise you don’t actually want the wealth—you want the autonomy. Maybe you envy a creative person, but it’s not their art you want—it’s their ability to structure their own time.

4. The positive bits I do want

   This is where the insight lives. Extract from these specific lives a few things that genuinely interest you. What moves are these people making that lie at the root of your discomfort and painful longing? These are the breadcrumbs pointing toward your unlived life.

Your envy isn’t random. It’s showing you something important. The question is: are you willing to listen?

Swimming in deeper waters

Middle age isn’t defined by a number. What I’m experiencing today—the quiet questioning, the reorientation—feels best described by its characteristics rather than the milestone itself. It’s a period when the waters of life begin to move with a stronger current. We’re no longer wading in the shallows. We’re learning to swim in deeper water.

It’s also about discernment—separating what’s truly mine from what’s conditioning. I feel this most acutely when I think about whether to have children. The question occupies space in my mind, but it doesn’t feel like confusion. It feels more like an invitation to clarity.

The term midlife crisis needs a rebrand. It’s not something to be mocked or pathologised. It’s a call to wake up to what’s real, to notice what no longer fits and to listen for what wants to be born through us next. Beneath the clichés of sports cars and affairs lies something deeply human: the longing to live a life that is truly our own.

The summons is here. The question is whether you’re ready to listen.

About Work Worth Doing

Work Worth Doing is a space for people who’ve outgrown a professional career they’ve spent years building, and aren’t sure about what comes next. You’ll find essays on identity, purpose and finding fulfilment outside of work too.

I work 1:1 with people transitioning from a professional career into meaningful work. To learn more about how coaching can support you, book a consultation or learn more below.