If you're at mid-life and starting to ask deep, existential-level type questions about your job, occupation, and current employment outlook, I invite you to consider the fact that the average lifespan for a healthy adult will allow most of us to have something like 3 or 4 full careers over the course of a lifetime. So a mid-life career assessment is a natural and totally normal process. It's always a good time to inventory your current situation and figure out your overall life plan for the next decade or so.

Many of us are in constant "reactive" mode rather than in proactive or visionary mode. For example, at your current job, did you just "fall in" to it? or did you actively create it?

In your current house or apartment, was it just available, or did you identify what you wanted and then find it?

In your current relationship, is it just there, or is it something that you co-actively create and maintain over time?

When we sit down, assess, take a deep, deep breath, and really think about what it is we want to create with our lives, we start to understand our priorities and what it is that we want to make manifest with the gift of our lives.

When you look at pictures of space, you get the feeling that your whole world expands.

Our actions here on our tiny planet, Spaceship Earth, while we float in a vast galaxy in a huge universe, are just one of the many experiences we offer/we are offered: we are constantly learning, sharing, growing, living and dying, and as sentient creatures, we have multiple opportunities to be aware and to be mindful of our situation.

Do you remember your life-shattering decisions from one year, five years, ten years, twenty years ago? Only a few very special decisions will stand out. The rest is just chaff separated from the wheat.

The root word of education is educare, which means "to rear." When we rear our inner child, we educate ourselves: we raise up our young, immature, selfish self and we use knowledge and experience to become stronger, more aware, and more able to share.

We are such sociable creatures, and part of us craves and even needs companionship with others. The word "companion" is from the Latin root com- + panis (panis means bread, or food): we feel compelled to share bread with each other. When we feel truly connected with others, we feel more zest for ourselves and for life. Here are four steps I recommend for increasing your connection with others.

1) Join a group of some sort.