Personality to Authenticity: An Adventure Through The Two Halves of Life

Carl Jung observed, “The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.” This quote would not have caught my attention when I was younger, but now, it make so much sense to me because I am experiencing it. I heard someone else paraphrase this quote as in the first half of life, you conquer the world; in the second half, you conquer yourself.

Here’s a look at my experience in each phase.

The First Half – Focusing on Ego, Personas, and the Intellect

Like everyone else, I spent my youth and young adulthood “conquering”, or making a name for myself in, the external world. Of course, learning the “ins” and “outs” of how to behave in society is a large part of childhood. As kids, we learn how to navigate the world and give up pieces of ourselves to fit in and to remain within the good graces of our parents and communities. As Gabor Mate says, from infancy, we learn to choose attachment to caregivers over being authentically ourselves because it boils down to a choice between survival provided by caretakers on the one hand and being completely in tune with their bodies and intuition and instincts on the other.

“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego,

the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”

Carl Jung

Consequently, we learn to repress our intuition and gut instincts and, instead, learn to adapt to what we think our parents expect of us to remain attached to them for protection. Of course, these adaptations change how we show up in the world.

My childhood and early adulthood followed this pattern. Whether I was conscious of it or not, I adapted to meet my parents’ expectations (despite my rebellious nature). To do so, I adopted a variety of personas, including “good student”, “perfectionist”, “good friend”, “protector”, and “caretaker”. By assuming these roles and the behaviors and attitudes that went with them, I earned me positive reinforcement from family, friends, and teachers.

In other words, I put my wants and instincts aside (mostly into my subconscious) and deluded myself into believing that behaving in these ways was who I was, not conscious of the thought that acting in these personas would make me worthy and loveable enough to be taken care of.

Even as a young adult, I can see now that I was trying to make my parents happy or fit in with society’s expectations of what success is by the career choices I made. I taught elementary school because teaching was a respectable career for women and because I was a good learner. After 9 years of teaching, I then went to law school because I had an interest in the law, but I also thought that it would make me more “successful”.

However, during law school, I decided I didn’t really love the legal world. So, after law school, I entered the business world in the field of human resources because it was a way to use my law degree (e.g., employment law) that would still make me “successful”.

During my career in human resources, I saw the difficulties managers and executives struggled with dealing with employees, so I eventually started coaching managers and executives to become better leaders. Again, I thought this was what I wanted, and working with movers and shakers in the business world was a way to appear acceptable, worthy, competent, powerful, and deserving – aka “successful”.

And I must say, I wasn’t miserable doing all of this. My ego was fully engaged and having a good ol’ time.

The Second Half – Redirection, Reflection and Letting Go

Then, a couple of years ago, I dealt with a couple of serious health issues, then the pandemic came along. Over the course of approximately three years, I not only focused on recovering my health, but I spent time reflecting on what I really wanted out of life. The trajectory I had been on wasn’t bad – in fact, I enjoyed it. But if I was honest with myself, I wasn’t having the impact and level of success I knew I was capable of. Circumstances seemed to be nudging me to go in a different direction.

I realized I had spent most of my life in left-brain, logical mode (which isn’t bad) and was really good at it. I began to think it might be beneficial to tap into my intuition more. You know, round out my abilities as a person. After all, how many times had I had an “notion” to do something, only to allow my logic to downplay or negate the impulse, then kick myself afterwards when my initial instinct would have paid off.

I also wanted to work more with women and somehow bring more balance into our male-dominated world. With all my careers devoted to helping others with their self-development, I now wanted to explore my own development and share my experiences with others. And, I had always been interested in astrology, mythology, philosophy, and even quantum field theory, so I wanted to incorporate these interests into whatever I ended up doing.

In short, I had spent most of my life guided by what I thought others thought of me. It was my attachment to those expectations and the protection of fitting in that had at least partially propelled me to where I was. I wondered what would happen if I pursued more of what I thought would be “fun” without worrying about being a “success” as measured by society.

I guess you call this my mid-life crisis . . . .

I would come to see this redirection as part of my quest to become more authentic. Instead of focusing on conquering the world, I was now conquering myself by letting go of my ego.

“Think you're escaping and run into yourself.

Longest way round is the shortest way home.”

James Joyce, Ulysses

Part of what I’m currently going through is reconciling my relationship with my ego, logic, and the material world of the senses with finding more of my authentic self that I masked with those personas I mentioned by using experience, intuition, and discernment. While I appreciate what I have achieved in the first half of life, I feel a pull toward reconnecting with aspects of myself I buried in childhood. For me, the main ways of doing this are to let go of aspects of my ego that aren’t working for me anymore and to delve into my shadow where disowned aspects of myself reside.

It seems everyone goes through a similar pattern during their life. If you’re in mid-life, you may be facing the same type of reflection and redirection I did. The events, people, challenges, and triumphs are different for each of us, uniquely constructed to shape our growth and evolution. I feel more sure that it’s not about amassing a lot of “stuff” during life that makes you successful; rather, real success is finding your way back to your authentic self.

Enjoy the adventure.