Life After 45
A different kind of “freedom”
If you grew up in Canada, you probably remember the “Freedom 55” fantasy: early retirement, golf shirts, wide beaches, smiling couples who looked suspiciously untroubled by inflation, teenagers, or aging parents.
By the time you’re 45–65, you know better.
You are not coasting toward a hammock. You’re in the thick of things: aging parents, almost-adult children, career ceilings, restructuring, geopolitics, questionable government policy, rising costs, and a body that no longer tolerates abuse the way it did when you were 30.
You also know something else: you don’t have “the rest of your life” to figure this out. You have maybe 20–30 working years, and you’d quite like the second half to be wiser, saner, and more suitable than the first.
This is the work of Life After 45.
Not crisis. Not “reinvention.”
A sober, hopeful redesign of how you spend your remaining time and attention.
When the old script stops working
By mid-career, the script you followed so faithfully can start to feel thin.
You did the respectable things. The hard degree. The heavy qualification. The long hours. You moved to the right city, joined the serious firm, took responsibility seriously. You followed rules, codes of conduct, and ethical standards. You became one of the people everyone relies on when capital decisions meet real human consequences.
And yet:
Your role looks strong, and your days feel small.
You are paid well to do work you could almost do in your sleep.
You feel guilty even thinking that something might be “off” when others would kill for your CV.
You oscillate between gratitude and a quiet dread that you’re wasting the second half on autopilot.
On bad days, the options seem crude: stay and endure, quit and blow everything up, or distract yourself with a new credential, a new toy, or a new city.
Underneath, the questions are sharper:
Is this what I meant to build?
If not, what would be a better use of the next 10–20 years?
What am I afraid will happen if I take that seriously?
This service exists for those difficult questions.
Suitability over slogans
The self-help world talks about “reinvention,” “next-level success,” “finding your passion.” Corporate life talks about “career pathing” and “human capital.”
You and I both know none of that language helps much when:
You are carrying large financial, professional, and family responsibilities.
You cannot simply walk away without collateral damage.
You are trying to balance ethics, reputation, health, and money in the same equation.
The word I trust is simpler: suitability.
Not “Can you do this job?” You already can.
The better questions:
Is this role suitable for the person you have become?
Is this firm suitable for your values and temperament?
Is this city suitable for the life you want outside work?
Are your current commitments suitable for a body that is no longer 28?
Suitability is what most professionals postpone until something breaks. By 45+, you have less room for breakage. The margin for error is thinner. Which makes this the right time to examine it properly.
Why this work is different after 45
In your twenties, experimentation is cheap. You can change cities, firms, sometimes even industries with relatively little fallout.
After 45, your decisions are more like private equity: long-dated, harder to unwind, with more people tied to the outcome.
You may be:
Considering a major role change: C-suite, partnership, board track, or stepping away altogether
Debating whether to pursue another demanding qualification or finally admit you’re credentialled enough
Wondering if you can afford to downshift, move cities, or start something of your own
Looking at your health, marriage, faith, or friendships and realizing they will not survive “more of the same” indefinitely
The stakes are higher. So the process has to be better.
Not endless overthinking. Not reckless leaps.
Careful thinking, then real moves.
What we actually do together
This is not a one-off “clarity session.” Life After 45 is a longer arc of conversation and action, usually over several months or more.
We:
Take a clear look at today
Where you really are, not where your CV says you are. Your role, your firm, your city, your health, your family, your energy. What is working. What isn’t. What you have been tolerating because you are responsible and other people depend on you.
Audit the path that brought you here
Which choices were truly yours, and which were drift, expectation, or fear. Where your degrees, designations and early career decisions opened doors, and where they quietly narrowed your imagination.
Name the futures you’re actually considering
Staying and changing the terms. Moving firms or cities. Taking a sabbatical. Stepping toward ownership, partnership, or a different sector. We treat these as real scenarios, not fantasies, and we map their costs and upside the way you’d analyse any serious investment: time horizon, liquidity, risk, suitability for who you are.
Design small experiments
Not “burn the boats.” Small, concrete moves that give you information: new conversations, modest scope changes, side projects, visibility shifts, sabbatical planning, relocation tests, health-first changes. Enough to feel the direction in your bones, not only in your head.
Decide, slowly and then suddenly
The best decisions often come after a period of disciplined wandering: exploring options, watching what energizes or drains you, listening to what your quieter voice keeps returning to. When a decision becomes clear, we help you structure it in a way that is honest, ethical, and sustainable.
Throughout, I bring what your world usually undervalues: wisdom. Not in the self-appointed guru sense, but in practical, broad sense: using intelligence, experience and ethics to balance your own interests with those of others, over the long term.
How my own second half changed
I am not giving this advice from the shore.
After years in institutional work and global CFA teaching, my own life became a case study in “externally successful, internally unsustainable.” Health, sleep, and sanity were quietly eroding. The work was impressive. The life wasn’t.
So I stepped off the circuit and onto a classic sailboat on Canada’s west coast.
I rebuilt from the ground up: sleep, physical health, mental health. I read widely in philosophy, psychology, and theology. I gave up alcohol and later walked away from hobbies where one mistake can end your life. I learned, slowly and uncomfortably, to ask for help and accept it, instead of proving my independence at all costs.
That period was not a postcard sabbatical. It was a refit.
The point was not to escape work forever. The point was to return to work differently: aligned, alert, and clear about what my second half was for: helping intensely educated, over-responsible people see themselves clearly enough to make braver, kinder decisions about work and life.
Life After 45 grows out of that experience.
Who this is for (and who it isn’t)
Life After 45 is for you if:
You are roughly 40s–60s, with serious degrees / designations and real responsibility
You sense that “more of the same” will not be acceptable for the next 10–20 years
You are willing to think honestly, feel uncomfortable truths, and then act, however small the first step
It is not for you if:
You want a three-step formula, a vision board, or a promise that you can “have it all” without trade-offs
You want someone to bless a decision you have already made, regardless of its consequences
You are looking for a way to retire emotionally while still collecting the paycheque
Why it matters
“Freedom 55” was always a cartoon. Real freedom looks different at 45, 55, or 65.
It looks like:
Waking up more often with a quiet “yes” than a quiet dread
Knowing your work is broadly suitable for your values, temperament, and stage of life
Carrying responsibility without abandoning your health or the people you love
Feeling that the years ahead are being spent, not merely endured
My role is not to hand you a new script. It is to sit beside you while you rewrite your own, using all the intelligence you already have, plus a kind of wisdom our profession rarely teaches: how to build a second half that you will not regret.
If you’d like to explore whether Life After 45 is the right frame for where you are, we can talk about that, too.