It’s like driving 50 miles out of your way. Frustrating, isn’t it? But do you just give up and say, “Oh, well, I’ll just keep driving down the wrong road”? Of course not! You’d turn around, wouldn’t you? So why stay on the same course of life or career?
Maybe school, family or unforeseen circumstances mapped out your life and set you down that road. But now you’re looking for a new direction and new meaning. You’re not alone. You’re one of the 84 million born in the United States between 1946 and 1964 who have now reached middle age and are on a quest to find a new way of life. By our very existence, we changed the economy, music, medicine, fashion, technology—you name it, we did it! So don’t stop now! The only limits are the ones we place on ourselves.
Some plunge headlong into midlife crises, but there is nothing critical about midlife! Instead, believe in the transformative powers of middle age. This is the time to turn it all around, to please yourself, to make your own choices and to create what you want. All you need is a “you-turn.”A U-turn is when a vehicle goes 180 degrees into the opposite direction of its previous path. Likewise, a you-turn, as I like to call it, is a complete reversal in opinion, action or policy. When you embrace a you-turn into your life, you set in motion a self-fulfilling prophecy of empowerment and possibilities.
My life journey took me on many detours until I made my own you-turn. I’m not an exceptional person—my SAT scores were pretty low, and I was always the last kid picked for any team sport. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, I trained to be an opera singer. My passion for performing led me to New York City, where I changed direction and began a career as a stand-up comic. I worked gigs all over the country and internationally. I moved to Los Angeles in 1994, when I heard Hollywood needed more blondes. While I was doing fairly well as staff emcee at the Melrose Improv, comics only work about 30 minutes a day, so I had a lot of time on my hands. I began volunteering in the community, a move that would induce my biggest life change to date. While working for Children of the Night, a shelter for sexually abused children, I experienced an epiphany—I wanted to spend my life educating, counseling and advocating for kids like this. Not only did this experience wake up the healer in me, but it allowed me to begin healing the wounds from my own childhood sexual abuse at the hands of a clergyman. I decided to pursue a doctorate in psychology, specializing in the prevention and healing of child sexual abuse. Even with a you-turn of this magnitude, I continue to push the envelope. For example, I now am training to treat molesters, which keeps me standing in the empowering position of compassion rather than victimization. Further, treating perpetrators is the best way to help victims.
Today, in addition to my thriving private therapy practice in Los Angeles, I’m a busy public speaker for Children of the Night, as well as for other advocate groups like Planned Parenthood and the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). I’m a member of the California Psychological Association, the Southern California Society of Clinical Hypnosis and the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress, and I sit on the Education Committee of the California Coalition on Sexual Offending. Ironically, I’ve appeared on more radio and TV shows as a therapist than I ever did as a comedian!
I once thought my entire first and second careers were a misstep, or that I was just idling, wasting time. But my 10 years in opera and nine in comedy were not mistakes; a significant portion of my patients are creative artists—how could I truly understand them had I not been a part of that world? I believe that life is a dynamic process and everything happens for a reason. I knew somewhere deep inside, there was a purpose. If I hadn’t been a bored comedian, I may never have sought out volunteer work and had the healer in me awakened. If it weren’t for that “mistake,” I’d never be where I am now.
Mistakes get a bad rap, but they are merely stepping-stones to success. I defy you to find a successful person who never made a mistake or acted without fear. We are geared to think that mistakes are the worst possible outcome, as if someone’s keeping score or we collect them next to our name like demerits as evidence of failure. Like the longer your list of mistakes, the bigger a loser you are. But mistakes are valuable learning tools, pushing the envelope toward your success. Winners lose all the time. So embrace your mistakes and learn from them!
One of the first things I have my “mistakaphobic” clients do is to deliberately make a blunder. Go ahead and try it. This exercise gives you permission to fail and frees you to take risks. If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t living. (That said, your practice mistakes should never be ones that would intentionally harm another person or yourself.) Pick an activity you KNOW you’ll fail and do it. What’s the worst that can happen? Will you fall off the earth? Of course not! You might be surprised at what you discover ... that you underestimated yourself, or that you have an untapped talent or two. For example, if you think you are a sucky singer, go to a karaoke night. You’ll dissolve the block of fear and learn to truly value your strong suits and skills.
If you want to make a change, mistakes and all, you’ve come to the right place. This isn’t a how-to book—it’s a can-do collection of proof that ordinary people can do great things. It contains thought-provoking, energizing and refreshing stories from men and women who wanted to change their lives and did. Some knew what they wanted, others didn’t. No one made his or her you-turn exactly the same way. But they were just like you—they felt trapped, stuck and bored, and that’s a great place to start. At least you know how you feel. Many people are so steeped in their denial that they are completely desensitized to pain. But pain is GOOD! It is a signpost and signal that you’re going in the wrong direction. Here’s your opportunity to correct it and get going in another direction. Winners use pain as an alarm clock that something’s not working and make adjustments. Losers use pain as proof that they are failures.
Let’s get started making your own you-turn toward a new life. Don’t feel overwhelmed, we’ll go in baby steps.
Begin by asking yourself the following questions to get in gear, and let them sink in before answering. I would suggest answering one at a time, preferably before bed. Make each one an essay—write down every thought, feeling and impulse (positive and negative) you have for that answer. Then put it away until you’ve completed them all.
1. What would you do if you knew you could not fail?
2. If money were no object, what would you be doing?
3. If time were no obstacle, what would you be doing?
4. If you were given six months to live, how would you spend them? What would you want to say, and to whom, on your deathbed?
5. If you could be present at your own funeral, what would you want to hear the eulogizers saying about you?
6. When you are 100 years old and sitting on your porch talking to your great-great-grandchildren, what do you want to share with them about your life? What would you like to look back on and see that you did— what you stood for, what you had to say?
7. If you had time to volunteer in the community, what would that look like? Would you read to the blind, save the whales, clean up the environment, serve in a soup kitchen, visit terminal kids in a hospital? What causes could you take a stand for? How could you help to make the world a better place? A great way to begin this exercise is to ask yourself what angers/bothers/upsets you most about the world? How can you help change that? I find that the answer is always in giving.
8. What are your strengths and limitations? Write down all the things that are working in your life, followed by those you’d like to change.
9. Which is scarier: change, or staying bored and miserable where you are?
10. What is the worst possible outcome you can imagine? Could you survive if that ensued?
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That took a lot of work, I know. Are you any closer to what it is you’d like to do? Any changes you’d like to make? Don’t have a clue? No problem. There are ways to jumpstart your life changes.
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Want some more?
1. Think back when you were a kid. Who/what did you want to be when you grew up?
2. What are your five favorite movies ever? Five favorite books? You identify with the message or the characters in some way. Explore that common denominator. It is an integral part of YOU.
3. What are your most important values?
4. What are the happiest, most fulfilling, or most outstanding peak moments in your life thus far?
5. What are you most proud of?
6. What are you good at? Make a list of all those things you like to do, and those that you are really good at (they may or may not intersect).
7. Take a survey of five diverse people (professional, friend, neighbor, family member, etc.) and ask them what they see as your three greatest strengths, as well as three areas that could use improvement.
8. What three adjectives would those closest to you use to describe you?
9. What do people come to you for? What sort of help or advice?
10. If you could wave that proverbial magic wand, what would you suddenly have/be/do?
About DR. NANCY IRWINPsychotherapist/Clinical Hypnotist/Author/Speaker/Baby BoomerOriginally from Atlanta, where she trained as an opera singer, Dr. Nancy Irwin moved to New York City in 1985 to pursue a career as a stand-up comedian. She worked all over the country and abroad, and moved to L.A. in 1994 when she heard that Hollywood needed more blondes…
Dr. Irwin experienced an epiphany when she began volunteer work for Children of the Night, a shelter for sexually abused children in Los Angeles. This waked up the healer in her, and prompted her to pursue a doctorate in psychology at age 42 and to specialize in the prevention and healing of child sexual abuse. She now treats victims as well as abusers, for it is her belief that “The best way to help victims is to help the perpetrators.”
A pre-licensed psychologist and clinical therapeutic hypnotist, Dr. Irwin is in private practice in Los Angeles (
http://www.drnancyirwin.com/), co-leads group therapy sessions for sex offenders, and is also a busy public speaker, and at work on her second book. You-Turn: Changing Direction in Midlife (Touch the Sun Publishing, 2008,
http://www.makeayou-turn.com/), a collection of “over 40 stories of people over 40” is her first book. She can be contacted at 310-235-2882 310-235-2882 or
nancyirwin@earthlink.net.
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Nancy is a member of our Boomer Authority™ community of experts.
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