Here are some of the stresses and joys of each life stage.
| Breaking Loose | Leaving home, focusing on/conforming to peers, testing our wings, loneliness, attachment to causes, changing lifestyle, throwing out family morals. |
| Building the nest | Searching for identity, intimate friendships, marriage, intoxication with ones own power, great dreams, making commitments, taking on responsibilities, launching a career, working towards goals, doing shoulds, finding a mentor, thinking about having children. |
| Looking around | Raising questions, recognizing painful limitations, gathering possessions, moving up a career ladder, questioning marriage, settling down, having children, desiring freedom, what do I want to do with my life? |
| Mid-Life rebirth | Awareness of mortality, diminishing physical energy, emotional turmoil, parenting teenagers, finding new friends and developing deeper relationships with current ones, asking deep questions, changing careers, second adolescence, divorce, remarriage, conflicting pressures, learning to play again. |
| Investing in life | Life reordered, settling down again, embracing new values, focusing on relationships rather than on possessions or power, nurturing a few good friendships, grandparenting, having more freedom, enjoying life, adjusting to an empty nest, facing lost dreams. |
| Deepening wisdom | Softening and mellowing, steady commitments, deepening richness, simplifying life, adjusting to limitations, loss of energy, retirement, quiet joys, self-knowledge, and facing death. |
| Twilight years | Loneliness, freedom from shoulds, dependence, mind sharp/body failing and/or body fine/mind failing, death of mate and friends, preparing for death, achieving a sense of peace and perspective. |
- Where are you now?
- How are you experiencing changes physically?
- Are you holding on to some things that may be best left behind?
- Are you stretching yourself too far forward?
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