Midlife Happiness and Resilience

Gratitude When Things Don’t Go As Planned

November 30, 2025 • By Dr. Arlonda Stevens

We’ve all been there. You mapped your life out with loving intention — the career milestones, the storybook family, the graceful aging, the joyful retirement adventures, one five-year plan after another. And then, just as you settle into your expectations, life laughs at your carefully crafted plans and goes in a completely different direction. How can you discover midlife happiness and resilience with a life that has run so completely off track?

Maybe you’re sitting in a job that was never part of the dream. Perhaps a marriage ended or never even began. Your body surprises you with changes you never anticipated, and that warm family gathering you once pictured now feels more like a distant fantasy. When reality strays from the script, practicing gratitude can feel furthest from you, a nearly impossible practice.

But here’s what I’ve learned in this messy, beautiful, unpredictable middle of life: gratitude isn’t about pretending everything is fine. True gratitude is far from blind cheerfulness. It’s not about slapping a smile on disappointment or the shallow comfort of toxic positivity that only dismisses real pain. Real gratitude is grittier than that. It’s tough and true, a steady hand that guides you to a solid footing when the world feels unsteady. And, when gratitude feels furthest from your mind, that is when you need its practice most.

Why Gratitude Can Feel Out of Reach

Let’s get honest—when everything unravels, the suggestion to “just be grateful” can sting. Gratitude becomes insulting. Someone tells you to “just be grateful for what you have” when you’re grieving what you’ve lost, and you want to scream. That’s valid.

Gratitude doesn’t erase grief, disappointment, or legitimate frustration. You can hold both at the same time. Life is not about disappointment or gratitude; it is often a tango of both. Gratitude is not a magical eraser for suffering or loss. You are allowed to hold both in tandem: the hurt over what is lost and the thankfulness for what remains.

The problem with unmet expectations in midlife isn’t just that we didn’t get what we wanted; it is that we built an identity around those expectations. We told ourselves stories about who we’d be, what we’d do, how we’d feel. When those stories crumble, we’re left wondering who we even are anymore.

At midlife, this hits differently. We’ve invested our lives in every big decision we made; every sacrifice and all of our hard work led us to the present. Even when we’ve done everything “right,” we can find ourselves in the heavy grip of grief and disappointment. When it doesn’t pay off the way we envisioned, the disappointment cuts deeper because we’re acutely aware of time passing. There’s less runway to start over, less energy to rebuild, and it feels as if you’ve missed the bus. Too late, game over. How can one feel grateful for this?

A gold hourglass with purple sand represents the myth of being out of time in midlife. — When you reject the myth that your time has run out, you make space for midlife happiness and resilience to consume the many years you have left.

Common Reasons Gratitude in Midlife Feels Difficult:

You’ve invested decades moving in a certain direction.
Sacrifices were made, rules were followed, and still things didn’t go as planned.
Losses came suddenly and hard, despite all your best efforts and intentions.
Dreams were chased to dead ends, or life got in the way of pursuing them altogether.
When outcomes fall short in midlife, the disappointment is sharper — time feels more precious, second chances feel rarer.

Society whispers that our best years are behind us. While it may be true that we have more years behind us than ahead, that doesn’t mean we surrender the years to come to doom and gloom. Here is a powerful reminder of the truth: there is beauty, possibility, and joy yet to be discovered.

When you let gratitude in, you begin to experience midlife happiness and resilience, both at a deeper level than you’ve ever known. You have just enough time for the life that is meant for you.

My Story: When Plans Shift

I know what it means when life doesn’t go as planned. So much of my journey unfolded beautifully, but the one thing I hoped would last — did not. After 27 years of marriage, I found myself newly single at 56. I never pictured that future. My vision was a blissful retirement hand-in-hand — traveling, playing with grandchildren, growing old together. Instead, I was gifted a blank slate I never asked for.

Was I heartbroken? Absolutely. But I slowly realized this wasn’t the end of my story. It was the tender beginning of my renewal and renaissance. Midlife happiness and resilience had been patiently awaiting my arrival.

The Unexpected Gift of Changed Plans

Here’s what no one tells you about plans falling apart: sometimes the crumbling of your plans breaks open space for things you never knew you needed.

That sudden job loss may lead you toward work that fills your soul, not just your bank account.
An ended relationship can grant you the grace to rediscover, and even reinvent, who you really are when you stop trying to fit someone else’s idea of you.
When your body demands changes, it invites you to redefine beauty and strength on your own, authentic terms.

A woman walks her dog on a green leash for a stroll. — In order to embrace midlife happiness and resilience, we must shed ideas of who we were and accept who we are today. Maybe your rigorous running schedule or gym routine doesn’t look the same in midlife, but a long walk with your dog is a wonderful way to honor your body and stay healthy in the present.

This isn’t about silver linings, everything happening for a reason, or sugarcoating hard times. Some things just hurt; there often are no tidy lessons in loss. But when we practice gratitude in the midst of disappointment, we’re not dismissing the pain — we can acknowledge it, while refusing to let it be the only story we tell.

Practicing Gratitude Without the Pressure to Perform

Gratitude, especially in midlife, doesn’t need to be performative. It shouldn’t be another box to check or another expectation to fulfill. You don’t need the pressure of a gratitude journal with perfect handwriting or a daily practice that adds to your already overwhelming to-do list.

Sometimes gratitude is just pausing long enough to notice one thing that didn’t go wrong today. One thing that maybe made you smile, brought you relief, or sprinkled a glimmer of joy amidst your grief. When we start to add these tiny moments up, and they surely add up, we begin building midlife happiness and resilience. Gratitude is a practice, after all; the more you do it, the easier it will become.

Consider these simple, yet genuine ways to weave gratitude naturally into your days:

Revel in a hot cup of coffee or tea as the morning sun streams in.
Cherish a friend who truly gets where you’re coming from.
Acknowledge the miracle that you’re still here, still trying, and still growing as you figure things out.
Celebrate your own resilience —surviving storms you never thought you could weather.
Appreciate those strange, beautiful detours — the unexpected paths that opened up precisely because the expected ones closed.

A woman carefully makes a cup of matcha tea as an example of a gratitude routine to create midlife happiness and resilience. — Creating meaningful daily rituals to start practicing gratitude in small ways. Craftfully making a delicious matcha tea, coffee, or other beverage allows you to slow down, give yourself a treat, and take a moment to be thankful.

The goal isn’t to feel grateful all the time. It’s to create small moments of acknowledgment that even when life isn’t what you planned, there are still pieces worth holding onto.

Moving Forward with What Is

Hard truth: very few of us end up where we thought we’d be. Yet it’s in the space between dreams and disappointment that real life happens — messy, imperfect, and overflowing with possibility.

Gratitude, at its core, isn’t about abandoning your dreams or accepting less than you deserve. Instead, it’s the courage to acknowledge disappointment and loss and still meet the present with open arms. You can grive what didn’t happen while still showing up for what is.

You’re allowed to mourn the life you imagined and be upset that life didn’t follow your script. And you’re allowed to find moments of gratitude anyway. Both can be true. That’s the complexity of being a woman at midlife who’s lived enough to know that nothing ever goes exactly as planned — a woman who’s still brave enough to keep building, moment by handmade moment.

There is still so much life, renewal, and growth ahead. When you start accepting both loss and gratitude, you’ll stop feeling like you’re treading water. Finally, you’ll be floating with your newfound midlife happiness and resilience.

Embrace your renaissance, and experience greater in your later.