Falling Upward

Richard Rohr calls his book Falling Upward because he says it takes a fall, a failure, a crisis of some kind, to move us from the 1st half of life thinking to the 2nd half of life thinking.  He says that the fall usually happens to us.  We don't choose or pursue it.
When we face love, death, suffering, subtlety, sin, mystery, the agenda of our 1st half of life shows itself to be insufficient or even falls apart.  We begin to question things that we thought were certain.  We are not longer threatened by the fact that we are not perfect. 
Some people don't make the move from 1st to 2nd because they don't let anything negative about themselves get through to them.  The very rich don't want to admit failure.  The very religious don't want to face any imperfection in themselves.
It was very clear to me that the psychological problems I finally faced in my late thirties and the therapy that enabled me to deal with them was the fall that helped me to move out of my solid foundation of the 1st half and risk building the house of the 2nd half of life where everything is freer and more joyful.  My falling down became my falling upward.