I mentioned in my inaugural blog post that I struggled to extract myself from a reliance on a professional position that no longer served me. I’ve thought a lot about why and have concluded that I was scared of the unknown that awaited me upon my return to faculty. In a way, I was closed off to the possibility of reordering my priorities and doing new things in new ways. In retrospect, this is surprising because I’ve always thought I’m fairly high in openness to new experience.
Over the years in academic administration, I’ve taken various personality assessments like Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, DISC, Big Five, and even a Leadership 360. While not all measure openness directly, my MBTI type suggests curiosity and a love for exploring new theories. StrengthsFinder indicates I’m open to input, the Big Five ranked me 60% in openness, and the Leadership 360 described me as balanced and a strong learner.
In conversations with others at mid-career and midlife crossroads, I’ve found that openness often lingers but pales in comparison to the cognitive comfort and efficiency we gain with age. Beneath the satisfaction and predictability these bring lies a web of life demands—career, family, finances—all tied to rigid daily demands and timelines. Stability takes priority over novelty, security over uncertainty, making our attempts at adaptation—whether chosen or forced—far more draining than they were a decade or two ago. And deep down, we know it.
Have you found yourself prioritizing efficiency over exploration?
For me, it’s apparent when I catch myself wishing I could erase life’s uncertainty by adding a zero to my net worth with a magic wand. But lately, I counter that impulse by asking: What risks have I taken to earn it? Where have I embraced new ways of moving through the world to justify such wealth? The answer is simple—I haven’t risked up until returning to faculty, I’ve prioritized safety, thriving in a predictable cognitive space where paychecks roughly reflect my output (and worth?). Exploration stays confined to hobbies, while at work and home, I’m as much the routine as the one carrying it out. Some part of me still felt like the open young person ready for a new adventure but the inertia of life rendered that internally-held openness a mystery to me.
Can you wake up to the myriad mental shortcuts and guidance from past experiences that give your days predictability?
And what’s wild is that openness to new experience is the least understood of the Big Five traits, with little known about its development over time (Gilhooly & Gilhooly, 2021). By 45, I barely recognized my own openness, relying on measurements to define it. But to my credit, I grew curious, sensing a decline not just in myself but in friends and colleagues. That this shift aligned with the pandemic was likely no coincidence.
In midlife, something fortuitous happened that rebooted my openness. Over time, I drifted from closely held views—liberal ones became conservate, and conservative ones to liberal. And many met in the fuzzy middle. I resisted this viewpoint drift for years, but eventually, I saw my views were more limiting than liberating. Once I accepted the shifting that wanted to happen, the energy once spent holding the self in check became free for new pursuits and perspectives. Navigating from the opposite end of a given polarity was challenging, but it reinvigorated my openness. No longer fixed, my energy now shifts freely—and I get to shift with it. By saying “yes!” to new experiences, I even get to guide the process at times.
Oh, and my openness is up an entire standard deviation since the last time I took the Big Five years ago!
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