Feeling Lost After 50? You May Not Need to Find Your Purpose
There is a strange thing that can happen sometime after 50.
You look around at your life and, from the outside, everything may seem perfectly fine.
You have a home. People you love. Work you’ve done. Relationships you’ve built. A lifetime of experiences behind you.
And yet there’s a little voice asking:
Is this it?
Or maybe the question is even simpler:
Who am I now?
If you’re feeling lost after 50, you might assume something has gone wrong.
I wonder if something else is happening.
Maybe the life you created still fits the person you were when you created it.
But you have changed.
And perhaps feeling lost isn’t always a sign that you’ve taken a wrong turn.
Sometimes it’s what happens when the old map no longer shows you where you want to go.
Why do I feel lost after 50?
For much of our adult lives, we know what we’re supposed to do next.
There are children to raise, careers to build, businesses to run, parents to care for, relationships to tend, bills to pay and a thousand ordinary things that require our attention.
We become very good at being needed.
And those roles become part of our identities.
Mother.
Partner.
Daughter.
Caregiver.
Business owner.
Employee.
Problem solver.
The reliable one.
Then life changes.
Children grow up.
Caregiving ends or changes.
A career that once mattered deeply may not feel the same anymore.
A relationship changes.
Retirement arrives.
Or perhaps nothing dramatic happens at all.
You simply realize that the things that once gave your life structure don't have quite the same hold on you anymore.
Suddenly there is space.
We spend years wishing we had more of it.
Then we get some and think:
What am I supposed to do with myself now?
You can have a good life and still want something different
This is something I think we need to talk about more.
You don't have to hate your life to want it to change.
You don't need a dramatic reason.
You can love your family.
You can appreciate what you have.
You can be grateful for the life you've built.
And still feel restless.
Those things can exist together.
Sometimes we're so uncomfortable with that restlessness that we immediately try to solve it.
We search for answers.
What should I do after 50?
How do I find myself again?
How do I reinvent myself?
How do I find my purpose after 50?
And suddenly this new stage of life comes with another enormous assignment:
FIGURE OUT THE REST OF YOUR LIFE.
I'm not sure that's what we need.
What if you don't need to find your purpose?
Purpose is a very big word.
It sounds important.
Permanent.
Possibly laminated.
We feel as though we're supposed to discover the one meaningful thing we're meant to do with the rest of our lives.
But what if you don't know?
What if you're 52 or 58 or 67 and you honestly have no idea what you want your next chapter to look like?
I think that's allowed.
Maybe you don't need another five-year plan.
Maybe you don't need to reinvent yourself by Tuesday.
Maybe you don't even need to know where you're going yet.
Maybe you just need to become curious again.
Try curiosity before purpose
Instead of asking:
What am I supposed to do with the rest of my life?
Try asking:
What am I curious about today?
That's a much smaller question.
And I think small questions can sometimes lead us to much more interesting places.
Maybe you keep thinking about taking a pottery class.
Maybe you've become fascinated by gardens.
Maybe you're suddenly drawn to orange after wearing neutrals for twenty years.
Maybe you want to learn Italian.
Maybe you want to travel somewhere by yourself.
Maybe you want to rearrange your living room.
Maybe you want to paint.
Maybe you want to dance.
Maybe you want to make a quilt even though you don't know how to sew.
Maybe you keep looking at women with wildly colorful glasses and thinking:
I want those.
Good.
Pay attention.
You don't have to know what any of it means.
These things aren't necessarily your new purpose.
They're clues.
Creativity can help you hear yourself again
I've spent most of my life making things.
I've designed clothing, worked with textiles, painted, dyed fabric, stitched, drawn and experimented with color.
And I've come to believe creativity is much bigger than making art.
Creativity is our ability to affect the world around us instead of simply responding to it.
You choose what to wear.
You put flowers on the table.
You cook something you've never cooked before.
You plant a garden.
You move the furniture.
You combine two colors because seeing them together makes you happy.
You make something badly simply because you wanted to know what it would feel like to make it.
That's creativity too.
And it can become especially powerful during periods when we don't quite know who we are anymore.
Because sometimes we don't create because there's something important we need to make.
Sometimes we create because making helps us hear ourselves again.
Do something that doesn't need to become anything
This may be one of the hardest parts.
After decades of being productive, we can become suspicious of anything that doesn't have a purpose.
We take a painting class and wonder whether we're any good.
We make something and wonder whether we could sell it.
We start writing and wonder whether we should start a blog.
We develop an interest and immediately want to turn it into a goal.
What if we didn't?
What if you painted because you wanted to see what blue looked like next to orange?
What if you learned to knit and made one spectacularly crooked scarf?
What if you planted tomatoes and nobody cared how many tomatoes you produced?
What if you took photographs nobody ever saw?
What if the thing you loved doing didn't have to become a business, a side hustle, a new identity or your life's purpose?
What if enjoying it was enough?
That kind of exploration gives us information about ourselves.
I like this.
I don't like that anymore.
This makes me feel alive.
I want more of this.
I thought I wanted that, but apparently I don't.
Those tiny discoveries begin to create a trail.
Pay attention to what you're drawn toward
I think we underestimate attraction.
Not romantic attraction.
The little pull you feel toward something.
A color.
A texture.
A place.
A subject.
A person whose way of living intrigues you.
A book you keep picking up.
Something you haven't done in thirty years.
Something you've never done at all.
We're very quick to dismiss these things because they don't seem important enough.
But I've started thinking of them differently.
What if they're breadcrumbs?
You don't have to know where they lead.
Just notice them.
This is part of why color has become so meaningful in my own work.
The colors we're drawn toward can give us another way to notice ourselves.
Not because a particular color magically tells us who we are.
But because choosing deliberately makes us ask:
What am I drawn to?
How do I want to feel?
What feels like me now?
Those are very different questions from:
What am I supposed to be?
You don't have to find the woman you used to be
When women tell me they want to “find themselves again,” I understand what they mean.
But I've begun wondering whether we're looking in the wrong direction.
Maybe you aren't supposed to find the woman you were at 35.
She's still part of you.
But you've lived since then.
You've loved people.
Lost people.
Changed your mind.
Learned things.
Been disappointed.
Been surprised.
Built things.
Ended things.
Started over.
Why would the woman you are becoming look exactly like the woman you used to be?
Maybe the goal isn't to get back to yourself.
Maybe it's to meet yourself here.
You are allowed to create yourself
I don't believe we discover ourselves once and then spend the rest of our lives being that person.
I think we're constantly becoming.
And after 50, we may finally have an opportunity to participate in that process more deliberately.
Not:
Who am I supposed to be now?
But:
Who might I become?
You don't need the complete answer.
Start ridiculously small.
Wear the color.
Take the class.
Make the thing.
Read the book.
Plant something.
Go somewhere.
Change your mind.
Follow one small clue and see where it leads.
You may eventually discover a new purpose.
Or you may discover something even better:
You don't have to find yourself after 50.
You can create yourself.
And you can begin today.
Curious about where to begin?
Sometimes reconnecting with yourself starts with something as simple as noticing the colors you're drawn to.
Take the free Soul Color Quiz and discover the colors, feelings and creative energy you may be craving in this season of your life.