How to Manage a Mid-Life Crisis

Or, what I learnt from the author of The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck

This week I was lucky enough to interview the incredible Sarah McKnight, author of The Life Changing Magic of Not Giving a F*ck and many other brilliant books, about her new book, Grow the F*ck Up. My chat with her inspired this week’s post and you can see the full interview on my Instagram. The book is out this week and it is both packed with useful advice for all of us AND an excellent gift for the slightly grumpy teenager in your life.

Sarah McKnight’s ascent to best-selling author and world-wide anti-guru started with a descent. She was working as an editor at one of the biggest publishing houses in the world. She’d published countless bestsellers, worked with some of our personal favourite authors and had one of those big-dog jobs that in the ‘00s women were so often encouraged to strive for and yet so rarely given. She was absolutely a grown-up. And then one day, she decided she’d had enough. You can read her blog about the day she quit her job and started a new life here. If it doesn’t have you cheering for joy and writing a “f-you, I’m out of here” email to your boss by the end then you’re a better woman than I.

In the blog, however, Sarah says she asked herself the question, “what do I want to be when I’m grown-up?” and the answer came back, “happy”. We ask ourselves that question so much when we’re young. We imagine all sorts of scenarios, we give ourselves big, important jobs, we plan out lives juggling flying to space with having a family of five kids (in all honesty, I juggled my astronaut career with a farm filled with ten horses and three dogs but each to their own). And the most important thing is, this dream doesn’t stay the same. Very few of us are as grown-ups exactly as we thought we would be as children. And if you are, do tell me about that in the comments because I want to know how you were so certain back then. In fact, I want to know how you are so certain now because I rarely am!

When I was about seven or eight, I told one of my parent’s friends what I wanted to do as a career. I was going to go to Cambridge University and study veterinary science, then I was going to become a vet, specialise in horses and have a side-hustle as a show-jumper. She told me that all sounded admirable but also, “don’t be afraid to change your mind.” And suddenly the world opened up for me. All the possibilities were on the table and I could do any of them. I blame her entirely for the fact that I don’t have an Olympic gold medal in equestrian sport.

I change my mind about what I want from my life nearly every day. Sometimes I’m delighted by my ability to follow any flight of whimsy, to allow my brain to snuffle its way down whatever rabbit hole it’s found that day and dig out some morsel of knowledge that would have been denied to me if I’d had tunnel-vision. Other days I wish I could focus. It feels to me that the adult thing to do is to stick to the plan, to accept that you’ve made your choice and now you just have to keep going no matter what. And yet, I worry that that inflexibility is what so often leads to a mid-life crisis. To the terror that perhaps we have got it wrong and missed out on something along the way. As I wrote in last week’s newsletter, individuation (or a mid-life crisis) is a critical part of life. Where is the space for this if we can never change our minds?

What I learnt from talking to Sarah, however, is that actually you need to do a bit of both. In her book, Grow The F*ck Up, Sarah points out that being an adult actually requires three things: self-awareness, responsibility and accountability.

Self-awareness is where we individuate - where we ask ourselves, is this still working for me? What else do I need right now? What would make me feel more fulfilled? What is my life lacking in? It’s the place where we realise we’re waking up grumpy every day, taking it out on everyone around us and that if we keep doing that we’ll not only never feel better but we’ll also die alone and no-one will come to our funeral. So this is the point where we have to ask ourselves, “is it time to change my mind?”

You’ll note that I didn’t ask, “is it the right time?”. It is never the right time. Part of being a grown up is knowing that there will always be bills to be paid, children to nurture, relationships to protect, work to be done, etc etc. Stop waiting for the right time and just ask yourself, “is it time?”. You will know if it is. Perhaps you’ll hear a little voice inside you whisper “now, go now” or maybe you’ll feel what I always do - a chord of silk slowly snaking its way around my heart and pulling tighter and tighter, until I can no longer ignore it. Until to ignore it would mean slicing my heart in two. You’ll know it is time not because it feels right but because it doesn’t. If it feels right, you’ve waited too long.

And if it is time, then you make a change. And almost instantly it will feel like the wrong thing to do. You will have to ask for help and a few people (probably your mother) will say, “I knew this was going to happen.” This is where taking responsibility comes in. You did something bold and now you’re in the bumpy transition phase and it is going to hurt. As Sarah Knight would say, stop being a big f*cking baby and get on with it. Accept that breaking things is sometimes the consequence of change but that doesn’t mean you’ve done the wrong thing. Accept that in the process of growing-up and growing-on, you’re going to get things wrong. Learn from it and keep going.

And finally, be accountable. If you’ve made a big change in your life because you know it’s the right thing for you then for god’s sake, don’t get distracted again. I say this to myself as much as to anyone. Don’t let another bright and shiny thing distract you from the period of individuation you stepped into. Don’t let the soft warmth of what you already know, lure you backwards. Ask yourself what it is you really want and then hold yourself accountable for making it happen. Set some goals like a goddamn adult and hold your focus until you get there. That is being a grown-up and sometimes we all need a reminder of just how to do it, no matter how old we are.

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