The first hurdle facing consideration of independent employment for the midlife professional is internal.  Its that assertive inner voice that says, “Hey—I’m 45, 50, 55, 60 years old. If I were a risk-taking entrepreneur, I would have been doing it years ago. I wouldn’t have worked the way I’ve worked, throughout my work life.”  The assertion concludes, “look- even to think about entrepreneurship at my age is crazy; in fact, I don’t know why I’m even giving it any thought right now!”

And it’s a valid point. Actually, its more than valid. It’s a position that is argued from successful personal accomplishment. It is a position that demands closer attention and elaboration.

In its strongest form, this “NO!” is a psychologically meaningful assertion of successful personal development. It is the  “no” of midlife—–a firm “no” of deep conviction— sculpted and honed through years of managing personal risks and emphatically marking both what the individual will do and what the individual will not. It is the “no” that marks out who I am and what I do from deep inside; and in so doing, defines my personal identity.

What this “NO” both  hides and affirms— is its underlying “YES”. This “YES” is an assertion of personal worth: of cumulative success measured by countless examples of triumph over defeat, across long years both of formal education and workplace learning.

The midlife “NO” is radically different from the “NO” of adolescence: that earlier “NO” anxiously negates, striving to arrive at a future security of identity: NO (that jacket doesn’t define me); NO (I never read that author); NO (that music is awful); NO (my parents know nothing). It is exactly the evolution from this adolescent NO that Mark Twain references in his classic self-reflective observation that his father grew wiser as he, the son, grew older.

So, unlike the insecure and intolerant “NO” of adolescence, the midlife “NO” simply states its limitations in the negative: I don’t do that is another way of stating that I do this. It is founded on the security of arrival at a sense, consciously understood or unspoken, of WHO the person is: “No” declares who I am.  In this sense, the assertion , “I don’t do entrepreneurship” is simply a shorthand for suggesting what it is that I do comfortably. It is a shorthand for suggesting my capabilities, the things I know and have learned over my working lifetime.

“I don’t do entrepreneurship”, approached from this angle translates into “ I haven’t done entrepreneurship” or “I have no idea of my capability in entrepreneurship.” It suggests not knowing rather than a rejection founded in knowledge.

This is the side of the Midlife “No” that remains open to learning, that appreciates that the limits of knowing are not necessarily final. This is the side of the Midlife “Yes” that suggests the possibility of lifelong learning— of expanding one’s skill set through new learning and experience.

However, by its nature in asserting “No” while also meaning “Yes”, the Midlife “No” can also be stressed too hard: and then it bounces back, defiant as an adolescent in its “No”. Under harsh conditions of disappointment and loss— like our current economic turbulence and increasing levels of unemployment, the Midlife NO can rigidify and display its hard demeanor— just as an exasperated parent must sometimes draw the line for demanding children and affirm, “No, I don’t do theme parks”.

Involuntary job loss is such a stressor. It strikes the individual from the outside, from the external world. And whether or not one appreciates that it should not be taken personality, unemployment feels extremely personal.  It is an external threat that resounds as a threat to personal and familial balance. Suddenly, the world of opportunity is experienced as contracting. The future use of savings and investments diminish as we begin to spend down in the present. The prospect of no work seems to loom ominously forward, seemingly to a very distant horizon.

Tragically, the comfort in self and accomplishment expressed by the Midlife “NO” begins to wobble and shake as we react to this environmental shift by aggressively marketing who we’ve been. We rewrite our resumes and network continuously, trying to find the lost fit with who we were, how we knew ourselves only yesterday. Our sense of self plummets, and we begin to feel diminishing worth and self-regard.
The Midlife “NO”  jumps in to aid us. “No” now reminds us of  our old boundaries— attempting to preserve our old sense of who we were, what we were willing and unwilling to do, as we bend ourselves to new, unpleasant imperatives. This preservative use of the Midlife “NO” comes with a price.

By hardening itself toward other uses of our internal strengths, we become more and more desperate in demanding opportunities which may be non-existent. Preserving our self-esteem while we feel under economic and emotional siege, this use of the Midlife “NO” may oddly prohibit recognition of new economic and emotional securities, possible in a changing external world.

How does this obstacle develop ? By our limitation of our ingenuity to well-known paths of adaptation: like finding a likely job interview despite what we know to be diminishing odds. We transform the hard boundaries of our “No” to what feels like a productive, if limited “Yes”. We say we are willing to rewrite our resumes, to ask for a lower salary, to make those phone calls and to market ourselves aggressively; but there is a limit too, a hard stop.

That is: there is a limit to what we won’t do. And that limit is defined by the familiarity of our old decision rule: the midlife NO.

Only this time, by saying NO, we negate the possibility of new learning, because we are anxious and hurting, hunkering down rather than opening up. In saying No now, we say “NO” to a truism we’ve all learned from  living as long as we have: that we are continually thrown upon new cycles of learning that proceed from new types of uncertainty to new types of mastery. And while old skills always help, an open mind is also a critical necessity.

At this point, the certainty of “NO” acts to block possibility; and to enshrine personal identity as something once gained: BUT NOW LOST: a permanent disappointment with recovery questionable.

It need not be this way. The most profound meaning of the Midlife NO is in defining the outline of the Midlife YES. Only by consolidating the productive blocks of what we know, and how they can be of value now, will we be able to go forward— -to future, productive assertions of our self-esteem and successes at mastering life’s challenges.

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