Chris Perkins

I spent my 45th birthday eating pizza alone in a hotel room, prepping for a work pitch and wondering: "Is this it?"

On paper I had it all - the senior career, the salary, the family, the house. Inside, I felt completely flat, and couldn't explain why. Which somehow made it worse.

It took me years, and hitting my own low point at 49, to understand that what I was feeling wasn't a personal failing or a clichéd "midlife crisis". It was a real, well-researched stage of life - and one you can navigate deliberately, rather than just endure.

The people I work with

Senior professionals, usually mid-40s to early-60s. Successful on the outside, secretly restless underneath. You're not in crisis - and that's exactly the dilemma. Nothing is dramatically wrong, which is precisely why it's so hard to explain or justify. You feel guilty for wanting more from a life that looks this good. You catch yourself imagining walking away from something - but you'd never actually blow it all up....would you? You just want it to feel like your life is yours again.

How I work

I don't believe in "find your one true purpose," and I won't hand you a formula for your life. My background is in design thinking, and that's the heart of how I coach: we take stock properly, run small low-risk experiments, and redesign the next chapter a few degrees at a time - without detonating the parts that are working.

I work with you on all five of the big midlife challenges together: happiness, relationships, meaning, health and career - rather than treating one in isolation. Because in real life, they don't sit neatly in separate boxes. You pull one thread and the others start to unravel.

You can get a clear read on where you are with the five challenges with my free Midlife Fulfilment Snapshot - it's 15 questions and takes about 2 minutes; you can visit it via my website above. 

If what you're feeling is more than the low-grade flatness of midlife, and could be depression, I'll say so - I'm a trained Mental Health First Aider - and I'll point you towards the right support. But for most people I work with, the issue isn't illness. It's that the life they built for the first half no longer fits the person they're becoming in the second half.

I'm 56 now, and genuinely doing the most meaningful work of my life. If any of this sounds like you, that's exactly who I'm here for.

Sessions are online, so we can work together wherever you are. The first step is a free, no-obligation conversation - no preparation needed.

You can read more of my story and how I work via my website. 

• The "is this it?" feeling
• Midlife transition or a midlife slump
• Feeling successful but unfulfilled
• Burnout and overwhelm in senior professionals
• Golden handcuffs (a high-paying job you've outgrown)
• Career change and reinvention after 50
• Loss of meaning, direction, and purpose
• The happiness curve
• Empty nest and identity change
• The sandwich generation (caring for parents and children at the same time)
• Work-life balance
• Relationships feeling off-kilter
• Health and wellbeing in midlife
• Planning the next chapter / the glide path to retirement

My 1:1 coaching programmes include unlimited sessions of up to 75 minutes, not a set number. You also have weekday text and email support, optional AI coaching, and my Results or Extend guarantee.