Midlife transitions tend to arrive in clusters. A career change rarely happens on its own. It often lands at the same time as shifts at home, changes in health or energy, and a growing sense that time matters more than it used to.

The phrase 'midlife crisis' does a lot of people a disservice. It makes it sound like a slightly embarrassing blip… a sports car purchase, a dramatic haircut, a brief detour before life resumes as normal. But for many people, the questioning and unsettledness that comes in midlife is far more significant than that. It's not a crisis. It's a reckoning.