The Shift I Didn't See Coming

The arc of life’s motivations

I've been thinking a lot lately about how life breaks down into thirds. Growing. Establishing. Sharing. It's something I've been working through on my own - not a theory I read somewhere, but a framework I built from my own experience. And the piece that keeps pulling me back is this: we are always learning, and we are always contributing. But the motivation behind it all changes as we move through the stages.

I'm in my early 50s. And I felt this shift long before I could articulate it.

For the first third of my life - the Growing years - everything was about ME. Figuring out who I was, what I wanted, what I was capable of. That's not selfish. That's survival. You can't build anything for anyone else if you haven't first built yourself. The world rightly gives young people space to do that work.

Then came the Establishing years - my 30s and 40s. The focus quietly shifted to MINE. My career. My family. My financial foundation. My reputation. I was building - aggressively, intentionally, sometimes at the expense of something else. And I don't regret a single moment of it, because that phase created the platform I'm standing on today. You don't get to the third act without having fought through the second.

But somewhere in my late 40s, something started to change. It was subtle at first, easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. The goals that used to light me up started feeling hollow. Not wrong, just…incomplete. I'd achieved things I'd spent years chasing, and instead of the satisfaction I expected, I felt a quiet pull toward something bigger than myself.

Now, in my early 50s, I'm firmly in the third third. The Sharing stage. And the motivation isn't ME or MINE anymore. It's OUR.

Generativity

That word — OUR — is doing a lot of heavy lifting in my life right now. It shows up in how I think about the company I'm building. It shows up in the problem I chose to solve. It shows up in why I get out of bed every morning with more energy than I had a decade ago, even though the work is harder than anything I've ever done.

I'm building a mobile app for adult children who are caring for, or worrying about, aging loved ones. And I didn't stumble into this space by accident. I walked into it because I lived it. Because I watched people I love navigate one of the most emotionally complex seasons of their lives with almost no support, no clarity, and no roadmap. And I thought: this is the problem I'm meant to solve.

That's the third third talking.

Here's what I've come to understand: the shift from ME to MINE to OUR isn't a decline. It's not about slowing down or stepping back. It's about elevation. It's about taking everything you built in the first two thirds - the self-awareness, the skills, the networks, the scar tissue - and redirecting it toward something that outlasts you.

Psychologists call this generativity. I just call it finally figuring out what matters.

Are you paying attention to your signal?

If you're in your late 40s or early 50s and you're feeling restless, like the old playbook isn't cutting it anymore, pay attention to that feeling. It's not a midlife crisis. It's a signal. The motivation is changing. And if you let it, it will change everything.

The question isn't whether you'll make this shift. It's whether you'll recognize it when it happens.

I almost missed it. I'm glad I didn't.

Rukmini
Co-Founder, CuroNow
Supporting Caregivers. Strengthening Connections.