Old Dog, New Tricks

“Can I Really Change at This Stage in My Life?”

Spoiler: Yes. And in fact, it might be the best time.

The other day I met with a new client - a successful, middle-aged professional struggling in their marriage. They were insightful, open, and motivated. They’d worked with therapists and coaches before and had developed some good coping tools, but still felt stuck. They looked at me and said, “I am who I am, can I really change at this phase in my life?”

That question always gets me excited, because I love helping people see what’s possible for them, especially at this phase of life. The truth is, your 40s and 50s can be an ideal time for personal transformation. In our 20s and 30s, most of us are consumed by the work of becoming adults. We’re figuring out how to build a career, navigate committed relationships, juggle bills, negotiate rental agreements, choose health insurance plans, and hopefully start saving for retirement. It’s a period of massive learning and nonstop building.

By midlife, though, something shifts. Many of the people I work with have built something solid. It may not be perfect, but they’ve checked some of the foundational boxes. They’ve accumulated life experience, professional accomplishments, and maybe a few bumps and bruises from relationships that didn’t go as planned. And now, they’re ready for something deeper. They’re ready to ask harder questions about who they are, what they want, and how they want to live moving forward. This is the work of refinement, of fine-tuning your internal system rather than just surviving external chaos.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is relevant here. It’s incredibly difficult to do deep emotional and relational work when your basic needs aren’t met. If you're in survival mode, your nervous system isn’t exactly available for introspection. Once you have some sense of safety, security, and stability, once you’ve climbed the lower rungs of the hierarchy of needs, you actually have the capacity to engage with the deeper stuff. That’s when exploring the beliefs, patterns, and protective strategies you’ve been carrying, many for decades, can be transformational.

So yes, change is absolutely possible in midlife. In fact, it might be more accessible now than it’s ever been before. You’re not too old. You’re not too set in your ways. You’re likely more resourced, more self-aware, and more ready than you were at any earlier phase. And you don’t need to settle for coping. Transformation—real, deep, sustainable change—is available. And it’s worth the work.