“I'm having a midlife Crisis”: signs, causes & how career coaching can help

You didn't stumble upon this article by accident

Maybe you're lying in bed at night, absently scrolling through your phone even though you meant to go to sleep. Or maybe it's in the morning over coffee, before the day begins or on the way to work, staring out the window, wondering whether other people feel it too. That feeling that's been settling in for a while now and simply refuses to leave, no matter how busy you keep yourself.

You have a job that looks impressive on paper. Maybe even one that others envy: a good salary, experience, responsibility. You've ticked all the boxes: education ✓, career ✓, pay rise ✓. And yet there's this stubborn, hard-to-name feeling sitting inside you: This isn't me.

It's the question that suddenly appears and won't go away: Is there more to come? Or is this just… it?
And then you find yourself googling "midlife crisis symptoms" in the middle of the night. You read. And think: Damn. That's me.

What is a midlife crisis and why is it happening to you?

A midlife crisis isn't a lifestyle problem for people with too much time on their hands. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung described the phenomenon as far back as the 1930s. He called it the "middle of life". The point where the first half of life somehow runs its course and you sense that there must be something else. Something not yet lived.

Statistically, it affects most people between their mid-thirties and mid-fifties, women often a little earlier than men. But honestly, those numbers are secondary when you're right in the middle of it. What matters is the feeling: that boredom even though everything is technically fine. A restlessness without a clear trigger. That quiet, quiet rumbling you've been pushing away. Until one day, it simply couldn't be pushed away anymore.

What a midlife crisis really feels like

You might think of a midlife crisis as red sports cars and affairs. That's might happen but for most people, it looks completely different, and that's exactly why it takes so long to recognise it.

1. You have everything and still feel empty

You're sitting in a meeting, staring out the window, driving home and somewhere in between, you wonder why none of this actually touches you. Why you feel so uninvolved. Not the success, not the new job, not the house. You thought you'd feel happy once you had it. And now you do, and you think: So what.

2. Sunday evenings feel different than they used to

You notice yourself getting irritable. In a bad mood. Exhausted. The thought of going to work tomorrow frustrates you. Same old routine, day after day. The idea that this is just going to carry on the same way for the next few years fills you with dread.

3. For the first time, you're really asking: were those actually my decisions?

At some point you look at your life which might even look successful from the outside and think: How did I end up here? Am I actually living my own life? Or am I living the life others expected of me?

You may have heard of the book The Top Five Regrets of the Dying by Australian palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware. She spent years accompanying people at the end of their lives and noticed that most people didn't regret what they had done but that they hadn't followed their dreams, hadn't been true to themselves, and had listened too much to other people's expectations.

4. Achievements feel meaningless

You reach a goal you've worked toward for years and don't feel the satisfaction you'd hoped for. It feels somehow empty as if you've been ticking boxes that were never really yours to begin with.

5. You look at your possessions and feel overwhelmed

Clothes you never wear. Books you always meant to read. Exercise equipment gathering dust in the corner. A packed basement full of things for projects you never started. And suddenly you're overcome by the feeling that all of it is weighing you down, closing in on you. You just want to get rid of it.

6. You feel stuck

The decisions of recent years have brought you exactly here. Maybe it's a house (or a flat) that ties you to a mortgage, a job, a set of obligations. And you realise you never really asked yourself whether you still want any of it. That realisation is uncomfortable because it means you'd have to start looking honestly. Which is exhausting.

7. The questions simply won't go away

Was that it? Is this what my life is going to look like for the next few years? Is there still more to come?
Do I want to keep going like this? How do I actually want to live? Not what would be sensible, not what looks good on LinkedIn but what you genuinely want, for the next years, for yourself. The questions surface while you're cooking, driving, lying awake at night. And they can no longer be pushed aside.

Why now? How a midlife crisis really develops

In your early twenties, you don't yet know who you are. So you take your cues from what you've been shown , what your parents advised, what your friends did. You set off in a direction, build on it, and at some point that direction has become an entire life. With a mortgage, a packed diary, obligations, and a daily routine that runs itself even without you actively steering it.

And then, somewhere between forty and the mid-fifties, life pauses for a moment. You look at what you've built and ask yourself, really for the first time, whether this is what you would have chosen. Whether this was your direction or simply the one that presented itself back then.

Maybe it was the house you bought or renovated. You worked toward it for years, gave up holidays, sacrificed weekends, made compromises you didn't really want to make. And then you're standing in front of it, the mortgage is running, and you think: Was the last few years worth it?

Or maybe it was your career. You gave more than you actually wanted to, climbed the ladder, and eventually landed the position you'd long been aiming for only to find it gives you nothing. And you wonder whether this is just going to keep going until retirement. And the thought makes you feel sick.

Because the mind works the way it does, it eventually starts thinking further ahead. You realise that change suddenly looks like an enormous amount of effort. And at the same time, you notice: you can't wait forever. If you want to take your life in a different direction, you have to start looking soon. Actually, now. And that fills you with panic. Because the truth is, you're tired. And lost. And yet there's this inner restlessness, this feeling that something feels wrong. Something has gone off course.

When possessions become a burden

And then there's that moment when you go down to your basement, look into your overflowing wardrobe, and feel the walls closing in. Because there's just so much stuff everywhere. All the things you've accumulated and collected over the years. You look around your flat (or house) and realise: it stresses you out. And when you try to sort through it, you feel overwhelmed.

You wonder: How did all of this get into my home? What am I supposed to do with it? Because all of it needs tending to. Things need to be maintained, repaired when they break, stored somewhere. Every single object demands attention and energy.

And then you want to free yourself from things. To sort, to clear out.

Researchers at the University of California have shown that clutter raises cortisol levels - the stress hormone we actually need for genuine emergencies. An overcrowded room keeps the nervous system in a state of constant low-level tension, without you even consciously noticing it. People who start decluttering often find, after just a short time, that their minds become quieter. Because space has been created in which they can think more clearly. Outer clarity creates inner clarity especially when you're facing change and don't yet know where you're headed.

Several years ago, I read an interesting article in the German Brand Eins magazine. An architect and designer catalogued and photographed all of her possessions. Every single item. The result: she barely or never used almost half of them. And this despite the fact that, with around 2,500 objects, she was well below the European average which, according to Brand Eins, stands at approximately 10,000 items per person. Her conclusion: things had simply accumulated around her.

And that's how it is for most of us. We collect things over the years, and our homes grow fuller. Our computers, our phones, our cloud storage fill up with material and digital clutter. All of it needs to be managed. And it fills not only our homes, but our heads.

This is precisely why Marie Kondo's KonMari method has reached millions of people. Because her central question is uncomfortably spot on: Does this spark joy? Not "might I need this someday" but does it make me happy, right now, in this moment? Anyone who applies that question consistently to their possessions quickly realises it doesn't have to stop there. It can be applied to a job, to habits, to obligations.

The Swedish concept of döstädning (literally: death cleaning) takes this a step further. The idea sounds morbid at first: tidy up your life while you still can not for yourself, but so your loved ones don't have to do it after you're gone. And start no later than age 65. But the real question underneath is a different one: What is worth keeping? What has genuine meaning, and what has simply accumulated because no one ever said no? Applied to one's own life: which chapters are allowed to end now? Which roles and habits are you still carrying that you could let go?

You might have heard about Greg McKeown's book Essentialism. ( If not I highly recommend to read it). At its core, it's about focusing on the things that truly matter and doing them really well. In other words: consistently saying no to everything that doesn't genuinely belong to you, so that you can have a clear yes for what does. Less, but better. What all three concepts have in common is the question: What of this is really me and what am I allowed to let go?

What helps now and what definitely doesn't

What doesn't help: carrying on as before and hoping it passes. Working harder, achieving more, ticking more boxes.

What actually helps is more uncomfortable and at the same time the most effective thing: pausing. Listening to yourself. Reflecting inward. Looking honestly. What do I actually want, beyond what would be sensible or what others expect of me? What still fits the person I am today not the person I was ten or fifteen years ago, when I made those decisions?

These aren't questions that can be answered on a Sunday afternoon. And they need more than a self-optimisation podcast or a book about morning routines.

Career change after 40 - when a midlife crisis becomes a crossroads

A midlife crisis is an opportunity to look more closely. At decisions you've made. At the status quo. At the life you're currently living. And sometimes, that closer look leads to a realisation: I want something different professionally. I just don't know what yet.

That's exactly where I come in with my career coaching for professional reorientation. I work with people who feel stuck professionally, who sense that things can't continue like this but who have no idea where else to go. They arrive with many question marks, feeling directionless and overwhelmed. After the coaching, they have a deeper understanding of who they are, what drives them, and a concrete sense of how they want to shape their professional life (and their life as a whole, because work and personal life are interwoven).

My client Jan stood at exactly this point. After losing his dream job, which he had dedicated nearly twenty years of his life to, he describes his situation like this:

“I was feeling very conflicted. I really needed to take a step back and think things through, yet at the same time I was motivated to actively pursue a change. It was a strange combination of fear of the future and excitement about all the new things that might now come into my life. In short, before the coaching began, everything was a bit of a mess, with a big question mark hanging over how things might proceed from there.”

In the meantime, this client has become self-employed. When he recently looked back through his old coaching materials, he noticed that he had actually put the plans they had sketched out back then into practice. What has changed most for him:

"Now I feel much clearer-headed and more focused, and I don’t just feel that I’ve actually turned the crisis into an opportunity, but that I’ve undergone a genuine transformation. Seeking and identifying the motivations behind my own drive from within, rather than primarily trying to meet external expectations. That’s what has changed the most.”

If you want to read more about the process that Jan and other clients have gone through, you can find information about the coaching process here, and what changed for them is something I've described in this article.

Perhaps you're currently at a similar point: full of question marks about your professional future, wanting to reorient your career but not yet knowing what that might look like. Feel free to book an initial consultation.