Catering to Your Midlife Crisis Is a Growing Business
Budding industry helps adults who seek fulfilling second acts
3 min
Americans want their midlife crisis to be more productive. This presents, for a growing number of companies, coaches and consultants, a multimillion-dollar opportunity.
Some programs are online and charge a couple hundred dollars. Others take place in exotic spots and feature luxury accommodations, yoga and surfing classes for thousands of dollars. Discounts are sometimes available.
Fuelling the businesses are longer lifespans, leading more people to search for meaningful pursuits in their 40s, 50s and 60s. Some psychologists call this period a second adulthood when identity-shaping roles, from executive to full-time parent to caregiver, can fall away, causing some to re-evaluate.
“Transition is a skill we need to master in an era of increased longevity and change,” said Chip Conley, co-founder of Modern Elder Academy, or MEA, which offers online and in-person workshops.
Some studies show life satisfaction reaches a low point around the mid-40s, perhaps because of stress linked to the demands of work and family. That juggle, coupled with little time for self-reflection, leaves many people unsure how to approach their next chapter.
Instructors in midlife programs explore topics including psychological development in midlife and ageism, which can cause people to believe they are “irrelevant, over the hill, and that their best years are behind them,” said Conley.
He created MEA after working at Airbnb, where the home-sharing company’s young founders dubbed him a modern elder at age 52. The workshops aim to help participants learn to better navigate stressful transitions, including layoffs, divorce and the death of loved ones.
Space for self-reflection
Like the months long academic programs several universities have launched for adults nearing the end of careers, most midlife courses bring together groups of eight to 50 people.
“These programs give people the space and structure to consider not just what, but who they want to be at this stage,” said Barbara Waxman, a gerontologist who teaches at MEA.
Nadia Al Yafai, 46, said she discovered the Midlife ReThink, a $385 online program, after being laid off recently from a senior position at a U.K. insurer.
The Midlife ReThink proved transformational, she said, adding that meeting others who felt similarly unanchored comforted her.
Started in 2020 by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a coach and consultant who specialises in gender and generational balance in the workforce, the program consists of three 90-minute online sessions for about 25 participants.
“A lot of people suffer through transitions on their own, as if this is some terrible thing they are going through,” said Wittenberg-Cox. “Community is the key to helping people realize it’s normal and fairly predictable at this age and stage to get restless” and crave change, she said.
Al Yafai said an exercise that asked her to define what she wants from the next seven years led her to start a consulting business.
“I went from feeling a bit lost at not being part of my old world anymore to realising there’s this new world of people doing really interesting things,” she said.
‘We still have value’
Reboot Partners, which provides workshops and coaching on career and other transitions, has organised two weekend-long retreats this year, in Santa Fe, N.M., and Sag Harbor, N.Y., for $1,895. Participants visualize their perfect life and discuss fears and motivations around change, said co-founder Jaye Smith.
On an oceanfront campus in Mexico’s Baja California Sur, MEA teaches courses on re-creating careers, embracing midlife and optimising longevity. It also offers weeks long online programs on transitions, purpose and reframing retirement for $395 to $1,250. It plans to open a campus in Santa Fe, N.M., next year.
Lisa Fitzpatrick said MEA, which she first attended in 2019, helped her face down barriers to success.
Dr. Fitzpatrick, 55, was launching Grapevine Health, which publishes online health information for low-income communities. She relished the opportunity to interact with Conley, a veteran entrepreneur.
The Washington, D.C., resident said an exercise to identify self-limiting beliefs helped her conquer a fear of being too old to start a business. She returned to Baja five times to attend workshops on entrepreneurship and healthcare.
For that first visit, she received a scholarship for a seven-day stay that now costs $4,000 to $5,500.
One exercise Fitzpatrick particularly enjoys involves stacking rocks on the beach. “It sounds kind of woo-woo,” she said. But the task of balancing a big rock on a small one helped her overcome mental barriers to what she could achieve. “MEA helps people in midlife realise we still have value,” she said.
Finding a purpose
Some programs explore next acts or spirituality.
Dallas-based Halftime Institute’s offerings include a two-day, $2,500 couples retreat and a $25,000 yearlong program. The latter features in-person and online sessions, as well as one-on-one coaching on relationships, health, faith and finding one’s calling.
“Not everyone who goes through it is Christian but that’s the perspective we come from,” said Co-Chief Executive Jim Stollberg. “We talk about a calling, rather than a purpose.”
For $2,500, Union Theological Seminary in New York offers a four-month Encore Transition program, with virtual sessions on topics such as spirituality in midlife and finding work with social purpose.
Consultant Carolyn Buck Luce leads a group of women through a weeks long online program called the Decade Game that costs $2,250. It challenges participants to set goals to guide their next decade in areas including education and purpose.
“It’s about being able to declare the purpose you were called to,” said Luce.
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The lunar flyby would be the deepest humans have traveled in space in decades.
4 min
It’s go time for the highest-stakes mission at NASA in more than 50 years.
On April 1, the agency is set to launch four astronauts around the moon, the deepest human spaceflight since the final Apollo lunar landing in 1972.
The launch window for Artemis II , as the mission is called, opens at 6:24 p.m. ET.
National Aeronautics and Space Administration teams have been preparing the vehicles to depart from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the planned roughly 10-day trip. Crew members have trained for years for this moment.
Reid Wiseman, the NASA astronaut serving as mission commander, said he doesn’t fear taking the voyage. A widower, he does worry at times about what he is putting his daughters through.
“I could have a very comfortable life for them,” Wiseman said in an interview last September.
“But I’m also a human, and I see the spirit in their eyes that is burning in my soul too. And so we’ve just got to never stop going.”
Wiseman’s crewmates on Artemis II are NASA’s Victor Glover and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen.
What are the goals for Artemis II?
The biggest one: Safely fly the crew on vehicles that have never carried astronauts before.
The towering Space Launch System rocket has the job of lofting a vehicle called Orion into space and on its way to the moon.
Orion is designed to carry the crew around the moon and back. Myriad systems on the ship—life support, communications, navigation—will be tested with the astronauts on board.
SLS and Orion don’t have much flight experience. The vehicles last flew in 2022, when the agency completed its uncrewed Artemis I mission .
How is the mission expected to unfold?
Artemis II will begin when SLS takes off from a launchpad in Florida with Orion stacked on top of it.
The so-called upper stage of SLS will later separate from the main part of the rocket with Orion attached, and use its engine to set up the latter vehicle for a push to the moon.
After Orion separates from the upper stage, it will conduct what is called a translunar injection—the engine firing that commits Orion to soaring out to the moon. It will fly to the moon over the course of a few days and travel around its far side.
Orion will face a tough return home after speeding through space. As it hits Earth’s atmosphere, Orion will be flying at 25,000 miles an hour and face temperatures of 5,000 degrees as it slows down. The capsule is designed to land under parachutes in the Pacific Ocean, not far from San Diego.
Is it possible Artemis II will be delayed?
Yes.
For safety reasons, the agency won’t launch if certain tough weather conditions roll through the Cape Canaveral, Fla., area. Delays caused by technical problems are possible, too. NASA has other dates identified for the mission if it doesn’t begin April 1.
Who are the astronauts flying on Artemis II?
The crew will be led by Wiseman, a retired Navy pilot who completed military deployments before joining NASA’s astronaut corps. He traveled to the International Space Station in 2014.
Two other astronauts will represent NASA during the mission: Glover, an experienced Navy pilot, and Koch, who began her career as an electrical engineer for the agency and once spent a year at a research station in the South Pole. Both have traveled to the space station before.
Hansen is a military pilot who joined Canada’s astronaut corps in 2009. He will be making his first trip to space.
Koch’s participation in Artemis II will mark the first time a woman has flown beyond orbits near Earth. Glover and Hansen will be the first African-American and non-American astronauts, respectively, to do the same.
What will the astronauts do during the flight?
The astronauts will evaluate how Orion flies, practice emergency procedures and capture images of the far side of the moon for scientific and exploration purposes (they may become the first humans to see parts of the far side of the lunar surface). Health-tracking projects of the astronauts are designed to inform future missions.
Those efforts will play out in Orion’s crew module, which has about two minivans worth of living area.
On board, the astronauts will spend about 30 minutes a day exercising, using a device that allows them to do dead lifts, rowing and more. Sleep will come in eight-hour stretches in hammocks.
There is a custom-made warmer for meals, with beef brisket and veggie quiche on the menu.
Each astronaut is permitted two flavored beverages a day, including coffee. The crew will hold one hourlong shared meal each day.
The Universal Waste Management System—that’s the toilet—uses air flow to pull fluid and solid waste away into containers.
What happens after Artemis II?
Assuming it goes well, NASA will march on to Artemis III, scheduled for next year. During that operation, NASA plans to launch Orion with crew members on board and have the ship practice docking with lunar-lander vehicles that Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin have been developing. The rendezvous operations will occur relatively close to Earth.
NASA hopes that its contractors and the agency itself are ready to attempt one or more lunar landing missions in 2028. Many current and former spaceflight officials are skeptical that timeline is feasible.
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