What are successful business leaders most interested in as they approach middle age? The brief answer to this question is personal change.

At least that’s what I discovered from a group of such leaders recently when they called upon me to consult with them. In advance of our meeting, I had prepared materials about growing older, along with information about the age revolution that is likely to transform American society in the next three decades.

But they focused much more intently on their own careers than I had expected. Several of these company presidents were feeling themselves at a turning point and envisioned the time when they would sell their businesses and set off in a different direction.

To my surprise, these leaders were fascinated by what they read in my own vita. Evidence of the sharp transitions in my career stirred in them questions about how those changes happened. How, they wondered, could I have moved from a long career as a member of a religious order and an ordained priest all the way to living as a layman – as a husband, father, and a person employed in the secular world?

What was the secret to being able to make this leap in middle life? Surely I must have some tips for other people anxious to embrace major life change. One man asked: “What would you, at age 72, say to yourself at age 36 about your own future?”

My answers at our meeting were more halting than this column would suggest. To a large extent the focus on my own life caught me off guard. But since our meeting of a few weeks ago, I have continued to reflect on the questions raised then. Here, then, is an indication of what I would say in response to this inquiry.

One caution, however, deserves mention. The answers that I give here are more rational than the real life process itself was. Looking back, one can analyze the events of life coolly and clearly in a way that is difficult to see them as they are happening. In daily life emotion plays a much larger role than we tend to remember later. As one approaches middle age, elemental forces often drive us forward without our being fully aware of the direction in which they are leading us. At least, that’s the way it was with me.

The first thing I would advise middlers interested in personal change is to write a memoir. A written review of their lives up to the present time usually proves a powerful tool for plotting change. Support for this view came to my attention recently from the Odyssey program at Harvard Business School, an educational approach to mid-career change for which HBS charges $10, 500. Those who enroll are required to write such a memoir.

I found the writing experience enlightening indeed. Writing about my life enabled me to see patterns previously hidden. Review of events both outside and within opened themes and motifs not evident before. As a tool for enhancing self-knowledge, the autobiographical enterprise is uniquely valuable.

Another major influence for me was paying more attention to my dreams. I began the habit of placing a pencil and paper next to my bed so as to write the dreams down before they could escape like fish not securely hooked. Again, I found in these nocturnal adventures symbols and patterns that revealed more of myself.

Closely connected with this opening to imaginative life was a gradual increase in emotional expressiveness. Both my home upbringing and my religious order training had combined to make me rather rigid as a young man. But I later learned to trust friendships with both men and women as the source of a richer affective life. These emotional ties with other people  enabled me to accept change and even seek it out as desirable.

I also allowed external events to have an impact upon my thinking and feeling. Within the church, the Second Vatican Council (1962-65) radically changed the way I looked at the spiritual world. So did the turbulence within American society during the latter 1960s and the first half of the 1970s. Mainline institutions entered into crisis in those years and came to seem much less secure.

This kind of social change had the effect of shaking some of my rigid outlooks. So did living in Europe for two years among colleagues and others from different nations. They did not see things the way I did and that variety of thinking helped loosen my approach to the world.

Obviously, these few paragraphs cannot do more than suggest more detailed answers to a far-reaching question. However, they may point the way toward an agenda for men and women to whom personal change has become a priority. Much more needs to be said but these fragments from one person’s experience  may prove helpful as a start.

Richard Griffin