How I lost myself in my 30’s and found myself in my 40's
By: Chris Price
Tags: Self Development, Lifestyle, Mental Health Awareness, Mens Health, Mental Health

Photo by Paul Postema on Unsplash

This story starts in what feels like a different lifetime. I was married and celebrating my 30th birthday with my family on a trip to New Zealand. On the surface I was happy however, it was also on this trip and the experiences on it, that I knew deep down, the marriage I was in had no future. It took six weeks once we returned home to Canada to make the decision to leave. Leaving itself was relatively easy, I spent a night in a local hotel, a few days at a friends place before finding a furnished rental for a month. We had already invested the time into therapy and I think we both knew that this was the right path to take.

(In hindsight and from the view of my 43-year-old lens, the driving factor here simply was that this was not the right person for me. I had a vision of my life at this stage and this person did not fit into it. I wanted the cars, the house, and the family, but needed to find the right person).

Post-divorce, I focussed my time on myself and my health, I was single again, fit and healthy with a newfound passion for life. I had a successful career for a global travel company where I spent years traveling the world, partying, drinking, taking drugs, and getting into as many meaningless relationships as I could. My focus was on my freedom, adventure, traveling, and having as much fun as possible. I was living a fast life without a care in the world. I was basically living my life like I was in my 20’s again and it was pretty awesome.

(In retrospect, responsibilities were the furthest thing from my mind. At that phase in my life, my vision was to live fast and build strong friendships and memories. I spent every dollar I earned and was truly carefree).

It was only a few years later when I met my now wife and fell in love again, and because I knew what I didn’t want from my past marriage I was able to easily identify what I did want and it didn’t take long for us to start living and planning our future together. We moved into an apartment in the city, traveled often, and had the perfect wedding in Tuscany, Italy surrounded by our closest friends and family. Soon after we bought our home together and started to plan a family of our own.

(Looking back I can see we had a shared vision of our life, our kids, and our home in North Vancouver. I had a newfound purpose and direction in life, I was as happy as I had ever been. The previous “version” of my life's vision was restored, this time with the right person).

Then there was the lump. Stage II breast cancer and the beginning of a series of events that would reshape my future. I lost my mum to lung cancer while we were a few weeks into radiation treatments. She passed quickly in Australia while I chose to stay in Canada and support my wife through her treatment. Not much over a month later, we lost my father in law, also to cancer. He had moved to Halifax and again geography and radiation treatments were not kind to us. Despite the tragedy of these events, we faced life head-on and the support we received from friends and family around the world was astonishing. We hosted fundraisers, donated a large sum of money to breast cancer charities, and ran the London Marathon, a life dream for us both.

(The reality? I was just trying to move forward and steer the pain to a better purpose. My plan for starting a family was put on hold. My priority was (and still is) my wife's health and the medication she needs to stop the recurrence of cancer. There was an unknown path ahead of us).

A year had passed before I found out that my Dad had throat cancer and it was an easy decision for us to relocate from Canada to Australia to spend time with him. We had planned to take an extended period off work, to travel and create memories in the face of the previous few years, then live in Australia, where we could continue to explore new parts of the world. We were only a week away from packing up our life in Canada when I got the news of his passing.

(The reflection here is that my vision was murky at best. I felt my future of family life in North Vancouver slipping way. I struggled to adapt and had pieced together a half plan. I couldn't see what was next and I was struggling with the now. With so much uncertainty and sadness in my life I was lost).

I felt like I was running away, much in the same way I used to when I was a kid and didn't get my own way. Only I had nowhere to go and no one to run home to. We spent the next six months traveling around Europe, exploring, learning, and laughing. I was simply enjoying the one person closest to me that I had not lost, even though the threat of that was real, just a few years earlier. Our shared experiences, our travels, and living in each other’s pockets only made our bond stronger. I knew that as long as we had each other there was the hope of a fulfilled future.

Deep into our travels, I got the news that my older cousin, a successful doctor, athlete, and respected community member had developed Huntington’s disease and committed suicide widowing his wife and two young daughters. I can’t imagine the pain he must have been dealing with, and my feelings of loss, sorrow, and confusion only deepened.

When we arrived in Australia, I did what I knew best and sought out the safe, successful, but unsatisfactory career that I had built in the year’s past. So much of myself had changed, yet I ended up doing what I have always done. Bitter with my choices and situation, my entire outlook started to change. This was compounded by more medical issues with my wife, culminating in a hysterectomy to reduce the risk of cervical cancer which left me totally lost and directionless. Confused about the past, disappointed in the present, and terrified of an unknown future. Mortality was ever-present in my thoughts. I was consumed by fears. I didn’t know what I wanted from life, or what was even possible, and I lacked the confidence to speak up.

(While I held onto hope, I lacked a purpose, a vision for my life, and an overall game plan. I was letting fear control me which resulted in high levels of self-doubt and anxiety).

My epiphany came when I started investing in myself and my openness to reach out when an opportunity presented itself. I sought help, and I threw myself into self-development and growth obsessively, as I have always done when I see a hint of a result. At 43 years old, for the first time, I was receptive to new ideas and open to change. I was challenged to map out what I wanted, at this stage of my life, and in my current reality, not based on past beliefs.

I defined my reason for being on this earth, my purpose in life, and the direction I want to take in my current reality. I learned how to take control and steer my life toward this. Using new tools and knowledge, I have been able to draw on my past to redefine my present and construct a new future that I have full control over. I now have clarity and pure confidence in my vision, purpose, and in my life. I have done this with a mindset of what has happened for me, rather than what has happened to me, this is not a victim's story.

I had some help; from my wife, my sister, my coach, and friends who know me well. But mostly it’s just me, showing up and doing the work daily. By taking small simple steps, staying true to my purpose and my vision, I am finding the systems that work for me. I let go of past beliefs and adapted to create a vision for my future that fits my new reality and accurately reflects where I am now in my 40’s and what I want to be writing about in my 50’s and beyond.

It sounds so simple to write, but I lost my way when I had no direction, and when I felt my life was out of control. I found myself when I took the time for myself to develop a clear vision for my life, and a clear purpose with a structured and systematic approach to living every day to support this.