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MARCH/APRIL 2009
When the economy is in upheaval, we tend to lose sight of ourselves and how we want to be. Often, we forget how we got to where we are. In this issue, we explore the life stages that all of us go through. It is an opportunity to review your life and to consider what you want to do differently. I urge you to take the time to reflect on the questions as they can serve you I these chaotic times.
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Best wishes
Herb Stevenson
Six Mistakes Of Man
- The illusion that personal gain is made up of crushing others.
- The tendency to worry about things that cannot be changed or corrected.
- Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it.
- Refusing to set aside trivial preferences.
- Neglecting development and refinement of the mind, and not acquiring the habit of reading and study.
- Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.
--Marcus Tullius Cicero
(106 B.C.-43 B.C.)
Life Stages
Erik Erikson1, Daniel Levinson2, and Gail Sheehy3 conducted research and identified developmental stages through which most people pass in their life’s journey. As we pass through these stages some personal values may deepen or fall away while new ones surface. These stages are only approximations, as some will go through particular stages early while others may spend little time in one and much time in another.
As you read the following pages, pay attention to memories, physical reactions, your trends of thought, moments of angst, moments of joy or ecstacy, and other reactions. As these reactions come to your attention, you may feel like these moments were “deciding or defining”. Hold these reactions and express them in the questions that follow each stage of life.
If you have not lived through a stage or have not entered a stage, you can choose to read and skip the questions or be playful and guestimate how it will be for you. Do not strain yourself. Trust that what needs to surface will emerge.
Stage 1. Autonomy and Tentative Choices (Approximately 18-26)
In this stage we are typically developing personal autonomy and leaving the family to establish an independent home, finances etc. We're developing our own sense of personhood as separate from parents and childhood peer groups. We try out new relationships (e.g., romantic interests, professional associates, peer groups and friends). This is typically a period of tentative or provisional commitments. We're comfortable there is plenty of time ahead to change our minds on provisional decisions concerning things like location, occupation, plans to marry or not marry, friends, key life values, etc. Our focus is on defining ourselves as individuals and establishing an initial life structure.
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four soul choices that were made or life-changing events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
Stage 2. Young Adult Transition
(Approximately 27-31)
This is usually a period of significant turmoil - of looking at who we are becoming and asking if we're really journeying in directions we want to go. We question most of our earlier tentative choices. Have we made the right decisions? Are we running out of time for changing our decisions? Are our decisions becoming permanent before we want them to? Do we really want to make this location, career path or romantic relationship permanent? Will we or will we not settle down and have a family? Is time running out? Often with considerable angst similar to the better known mid-life crisis we rethink our provisional decisions and maintain them or change them in the process of making more permanent choices.
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
Stage 3. Making Commitments
(Approximately 32-42)
This is typically a period of relative order and stability where we implement and live the choices made in the young adult transition. We settle down into deeper commitments involving work, family, church, our community ties etc. We focus on accomplishment, becoming our own persons and generating an inner sense of expertise and mastery of our professions. By now we have a better developed and fairly well defined, though not usually final, dream of what we want to achieve in life. We put significant energy into achieving the dream.
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
Stage 4. Mid-Life Transition
(Approximately 42-48)
This is the stage of mid-life questioning that's been discussed so much in the popular press. Here we tend to question everything again. If we have not achieved our dreams we wonder why not. Were they really the right dreams? If we have achieved our dreams we look at what values we might have neglected in their pursuit. Was it worth it? Either way we're probably disillusioned. A period of reassessment and realignment usually takes place, including recognition and re-balancing of key polarities, such as:
Immortality vs. Mortality - While young people know better intellectually, emotionally they seem to feel they are immortal. In mid-life we start to realize it may be half over and we want to make the best of what remains. This typically requires some revision of priorities and values - perhaps less emphasis on values already achieved and more emphasis on those we have neglected.
Constructive vs. Destructive - Up to mid-life, most of us fool ourselves that our behavior has been constructive while we had to deal with others' destructive behavior. In mid-life we get the uncomfortable insight that we have also engaged in our share of destructive as well as constructive behavior. This insight is painful but essential if we want to continue growing intellectually and spiritually.
Nurturing vs. Aggressive - Whether we have focused on aggressive (e.g., fast track corporate careers) or nurturing (e.g., teaching, social work, or homemaking) behavior to date, in mid-life we often want to re-balance. Some aggressive corporate people want to spend more time nurturing with their families or in socially oriented work, and some who have been in more service-oriented nurturing careers want to pursue something more aggressive or financially rewarding.
The experts stress that acknowledging the turmoil, experiencing the pain, and facing and resolving the polarities is essential for continued growth and satisfaction. Refusing to acknowledge or experience mid-life anxieties and questions—or at some unconscious level trying to go back and be twenty again—is usually a sure way to get stuck and disgruntled in a way station.
If you went through a mid life transition as described, what became the most important discovery? How did it change your life?
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
Stage 5. Leaving a Legacy
(Approximately 49-65)
The period after completion of the mid-life transition can be one of the most productive of all stages. We are usually at the peak of our mature abilities here. If the issues of the mid-life transition have been acknowledged and addressed we can make our greatest possible contributions to others and society. Here we can be less driven, less ego-centered, less compelled to compete with and impress others. Instead we can focus on what really matters to us, on developing younger people, on community with others, on leaving some personal legacy that really makes things better for people (whether it's recognized as our personal legacy or not), and on accomplishing values that our maturity and greater spirituality tell us have the most true meaning in the overall scheme of life.
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
Stage 6. Spiritual Denouement
(Approximately 66 and Beyond)
This is the stage of tying things up, of completing the design of what we want to become, of finalizing our growth and assessing/fine-tuning the persons we have made of ourselves. This stage can go on for many years. It can be hopeful or cynical depending on how realistically, humbly, and effectively we have resolved (or now finally resolve) the issues faced in earlier stages. We may move into this stage sooner or later depending on how rapidly we have developed in earlier stages - how much we have moved beyond our narrow selves. Here we come to grips with the ultimate limitations of life, ourselves and mortality. We can look hopefully and unflinchingly at the ultimate meaning of our life and the life of others in the larger context. We do the best we can to pass whatever wisdom we have gained on to others. We accept others for what they are, seeing them as growing like we are and part of humankind's diversity. Our sense of community continually expands as we prepare for survival of the spirit beyond our mortality.
During this time, what did you most personally value? Explain.
What did you personally dislike about this time of your life?
List three or four choices that were made or events that occurred during this time that have impacted your life. Describe the impact.
In reviewing what has come and gone and what is yet to come, what thoughts, feelings, and/or reactions come to you?
Are there themes that run through your most personally valued stages?
Are there themes of dislike that run through your life stages?
In looking back, have your prior choices informed you about your present self or state? Or possibly embarrassed you? Explain.
After some reflections, are there any choices that you would change? Explain.
The Life Stages paragraphs of this instrument were adapted from Career Test for the Soul - www.career-test.biz - based on Your Soul at Work © 2002, Nicholas Weiler
- 1. See: Erikson’s, The Life Cycle Completed, Identity and the Life Cycle, and Vital Involvement in Old Age.
- 2. See: Levinson’s, The Season’s of a Man’s Life and The Seasons of Woman’s Life.
- 3. See: Gail Sheehy’s, New Passages: Mapping your Life Across Time
Upcoming Programs
MoMen Return
July 23-26, 2009
The MoMen Return weekend is a return to where we started. It is an exploration into the four principles of presence. The focus is to delve deeply into the relational next steps of the four chambered heart, the four phantoms of fear and the resulting shadow behavior. Dynamic exercises will be provided to support an inward journey and then the opportunity to share these private stories with each other.
LISTEN to Falling Leaves - music and lyrics written and performed by Jeff Endemann, a participant in MoMen 2006. The song was inspired and written during a MoMen weekend.
WATCH our online slide presentation of the Natural Passages program.
If you are unable to view either of these from your email program, please visit the website at www.natural-passages.com and try again there. You will find them in the left-hand column of all pages.