The Midlife Wake-Up Call: Crisis or Opportunity?

Austin STRONG: RBC
May 22
6 min read

Build a life you don’t need a vacation from.” — Unknown

A new client reached out last week, wanting to address what he called “a sense of ennui.”

“I don’t think I’m clinically depressed,” he noted. “I have everything I’m supposed to want. The career, the family, the house. But I wake up each morning feeling… flat. Like I’m just going through the motions.”

At 46, he’s achieved all the milestones our culture celebrates. He followed the success blueprint to the letter. And yet, he feels a profound emptiness he can’t quite name.

“It’s like I’ve been running toward something my whole life,” he told me during our first session. “And now I’m like the dog that has finally caught the car — now what?”

If this resonates with you, you’re not alone. In my last post about achievement versus fulfillment, I explored how external success doesn’t automatically create internal satisfaction. Today, we’re diving deeper into a critical shift that often emerges in midlife: the evolution from passion to purpose.

Lost Your Passion? Find Your Purpose

There’s a reason “midlife crisis” entered our cultural lexicon.

By midlife, many of us have spent decades pursuing passion through achievement channels that society validated. We followed the blueprint: education, career advancement, relationship milestones, financial goals. We channeled our innate human need for meaning into metrics that could be measured, compared, and publicly praised.

And then something shifts.

The promotions don’t deliver the same rush. The vacations feel more like necessary escape than genuine joy. The achievements that once felt so defining somehow don’t define us anymore.

This isn’t failure. It’s evolution.

I’ve come to see it less as a crisis and more as a wake-up call — a perfectly timed invitation to reassess and realign.

Another client recently brought up that new show “Friends and Neighbors” during our session. He saw himself reflected in the main character — a man with a successful career, beautiful home, all the external markers of having “made it” — who then loses everything when his wife cheats on him and he gets fired in two unrelated but equally earth-shattering blows.

“That could be me,” my client admitted. “I’ve built this whole life on achievements that could disappear overnight. And watching him fall apart made me realize how fragile my foundation is. I’ve been running a marathon toward some finish line that keeps moving, and suddenly I’m asking myself: why am I even running this race?”

Hustle Culture: Junk Food for the Soul

Let’s be honest about what hustle culture really is: it’s spiritual junk food.

It promises quick hits of satisfaction. It’s engineered to keep you coming back for more. It creates the illusion of nourishment while actually leaving you depleted.

And like any junk food habit, it eventually catches up with you.

Because hustle culture can’t satisfy our deeper hunger for meaning. It was never designed to. It was designed to keep us productive, consuming, and competing — not fulfilled, connected, and at peace.

There’s a line in that show that perfectly captures this phenomenon: achievement-oriented people find themselves constantly “nicheing down” — becoming obsessively interested in increasingly specialized pursuits like rare watches, single-malt scotch, or the perfect golf swing.

It’s a desperate attempt to keep feeling that something is worth pursuing, to avoid the “Groundhog Day” sensation that comes when the achievement path stops delivering satisfaction. We create new, more specific mountains to climb when the old ones no longer give us the view we hoped for.

Building a Life You Don’t Need to Escape From

The ultimate goal isn’t a life that impresses others. It’s a life that feels like home to you — a life you don’t need a vacation from because it nourishes rather than depletes you.

This doesn’t mean every day will be easy or that purpose-driven work never involves challenge. But it does mean that the challenges feel worth it because they’re connected to something that matters deeply to you.

When passion fades — and it will, because all emotions are cyclical — purpose sustains. When motivation dips, purpose carries. When external validation disappears, purpose anchors.

Because purpose isn’t about how you feel. It’s about who you are and what you’re here to contribute.

And that, is a foundation that no midlife questioning can shake.

From Passion to Purpose

When we’re young, passion drives us forward and it's great! There’s nothing wrong with following your enthusiasms and seeing where they lead.

But as we mature, purpose becomes the more sustainable fuel. Purpose weathers the inevitable seasons of life when passion wanes. Purpose carries us through the mundane Tuesday afternoons when motivation isn’t showing up.

Here’s where the shift from passion to purpose becomes crucial.

Passion is often externally oriented. It’s about what excites us, what we enjoy doing, what gives us that rush of enthusiasm.

Purpose runs deeper. Purpose is about contribution, connection, and congruence. It’s about how your unique gifts serve something larger than yourself. It’s about alignment between your daily actions and your core values.

Less Crisis, More Reset

What if we reframed midlife not as a crisis but as a reset? A perfectly timed opportunity to:

Question the narratives you’ve been living by
Release the definitions of success that no longer serve you
Reclaim authorship of your own life story
Redirect your energy toward what genuinely matters to you

The reset doesn’t have to match outdated stereotypes — no sports cars or dramatic affairs required. In fact, the most powerful resets often happen quietly. They might look like:

Renegotiating your relationship with work rather than abandoning your career
Creating boundaries that protect what matters most to you
Bringing more authenticity to existing relationships instead of ending them
Finding pockets of meaning within your current life structure

The modern midlife transition is less about external upheaval and more about internal realignment. It’s not about blowing up your life but about recalibrating it to better reflect who you’ve become.

The point isn’t the visibility of the change. It’s the reclamation of choice.

Finding Your Purpose: Practical Steps

If you’re feeling that midlife call toward purpose, here are some entry points:

Mine your discontent. What specifically feels empty about your current path? Your dissatisfaction contains valuable data about what needs to change.
Identify your core values. Not the values you’re supposed to have, but the ones that genuinely guide you. What principles would you defend even if they cost you something?
Ask better questions. Instead of “How can I be more successful?” try “How can I be more fulfilled?” or “What work would feel meaningful even without external recognition?”
Look for flow states. When do you lose track of time? When does work not feel like work? These are clues to your purpose.
Start small. Purpose doesn’t require dramatic life upheaval. Begin with one hour a week dedicated to something that aligns with your deeper values.

The Purpose Meditation

Here’s a simple practice to help clarify your purpose. Set aside 15 minutes in a quiet space with a journal:

Close your eyes and take three deep breaths.
Recall three moments in your life when you felt most alive, most yourself, most connected to something meaningful.
For each moment, write down:
1. What were you doing?
2. Who were you with (if anyone)?
3. What values were you expressing?
4. What needs were you meeting (both your own and others’)?

Look for patterns across these experiences. What threads connect them?

Complete this sentence: “I am here to…”

Don’t expect a perfectly formed purpose statement to emerge immediately. This is an iterative process. But even an imperfect articulation of purpose can serve as a north star when the path ahead seems unclear.

What Comes Next: The Purpose-Driven Life

As you move from achievement-oriented striving to purpose-centered living, something remarkable happens. The pressure to constantly perform eases. The compulsive comparison to others diminishes. The nagging sense that you should be doing more, having more, being more — it begins to fade.

In its place comes a quiet confidence. A deeper sense of ease. A recognition that your worth was never tied to your output in the first place.

You begin to measure success differently — not by external metrics, but by internal alignment. Not by what you accomplish, but by who you become in the process.

And perhaps most importantly, you discover that purpose isn’t a destination you reach. It’s a way of being you practice. Every day. In small ways and large ones. Through seasons of clarity and seasons of confusion.

The purpose-driven life isn’t perfect or easy. But it can be yours. Authentically, intentionally, meaningfully yours.

This post is the second in our May series on Achievement vs. Fulfillment. Where are you on the journey from passion to purpose? I’d love to hear your reflections in the comments or in our next session together.

With love,

Kristal DeSantis, M.A., LMFT, CCTP, CSTIP

Psychotherapist & Author | STRONG: A Relationship Field Guide for the Modern Man

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