I spoke recently with a friend who is going to his 30th high school reunion this weekend. He isn't looking forward to it. High school was not the high point of his life, and he's not feeling all that good about his accomplishments thirty years later.

My advice to him is

1. Realize that three people in your high school class enjoyed high school - only three. Now that they are 30 years older, it's pretty clear that those days are over.
2. Some of his classmates are bald through no fault of their own (my friend still has his own hair), some have been involuntarily "downsized" from their job, and some are dead. Compared to them, my friend is doing well.
3. People just want you to be able to pronounce their name, be kind, and ask how they are doing. If they ask how you are, you say, "Great!" as you remember the details of  Item #2 above.

I had a high school reunion last year. I was nervous about going, but I put on my party duds and showed up. I saw a lot of people I was glad to see, missed some that I wanted to see, and felt overall very grateful to be alive and able to party with people I had known a long time ago.

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In Part I of this post, I suggested taking an inventory of your roles and identifying the gifts your experience has given you.

In this post, I want to talk to you about forgiveness. You have probably heard and read a lot about forgiveness. There are some wonderful books about why it is important and how to forgive.

But you might not realize how essential forgiveness is to creating a new life for yourself. It is the second key to un-tethering from the past.

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I’ve noticed that in midlife, many of us are carrying around a good bit of luggage – old identities and relationships, “failures” and disappointments, and outdated ways of relating to ourself and our world.  (I put “failure” in quotes because I strive to think of them not as failures but as feedback about what you want and what works.)

It’s hard to make a new start in midlife when you are lugging the past with you. It can be difficult to know when the past is done and you’re ready to step into something new.

So if you are in midlife and wanting create something new, what do you do?

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