On the Second Half of Your Life

 James Hollis, a Jungian psychologist, says that the second half of life is very different than the first half of life.  In the first half, our job is to find out what the world is asking from us.  The second half is to find out what the soul is asking of us.    We need to figure out: What is looking for expression through me?

This isn't a simple task because we are conditioned by our experiences.  We repeat or resist patterns from our past.  There is a multitude of voices clamoring for our attention.  Often, when we are in crisis, we only know to do the same things that have gotten us into the crisis.  It's like we've dug ourselves into a hole and the only tool we have is a shovel.

 But it becomes necessary after a big loss or even when there is a growing sense of the exhaustion of the game plan of your life.  You come to the realization that you need to take your life seriously and go in a new direction.

The task of the transition is to discover which of these "inherited voices" come from our family, which voices come from pop culture.  We need to develop a relationship with our own soul voice.  The relationship shouldn't be hostile or estranged, but conversational.  We need to discover our authentic voice and become accountable to our deeper selves.  

In this interview, Hollis says:

If you paid attention, you'd be surprised.

This has become a theme to me recently, related to Amy Krouse Rosenthal's "Pay Attention to What You Pay Attention To" and Mary Oliver's "The Journey." 

Interview in podcast AOM #598