A New Jersey couple in their early 50s resign their jobs as school teachers to make and sell pottery up and down the East Coast.

In their early 40s, a San Francisco architect and his wife leave a successful business to open an ice cream shop in Vermont.

Fulfilling her lifelong dream, a 44-year-old divorcee and research analyst at Stanford joins the Peace Corps and moves to the West African nation of Sierra Leone.

"Don't you have a dream you'd like to pursue?" asks free-lance writer Andrea Gross. "Attaining it may be easier than you think." In Shifting Gears: Planning a New Strategy for Midlife, Gross chronicles the lives of dozens of people, married and single, who become what she calls "restylers" in midlife. Gross says that a restyler is someone who leaves the security of a longtime profession to live his or her dreams. The people Gross interviews have restyled for various reasons.

Terrance Grace, Los Angeles attorney turned Honduran school teacher, does so for philosophical reasons. "I don't want to be caught up in this tremendous concern for material things," he says. On the other hand, David and Laura Rausch, who traded their large San Francisco home for a 42 foot sail boat, may have been motivated by midlife adventure. "I always knew we'd take off in our sailboat," says David Rausch. "It was a dream; that's all."

Gross, who says restyling can take the crisis out of midlife, believes all of us can do it. "Some of us may have to juggle our finances a bit, and others may have to find creative ways to meet the needs of our children. But we all have the right to a glorious adventure in midlife--if we plan for it."

Planning is one of the chief reasons for Gross's book. She does not advocate the kind of sudden change that would renege on commitments and leave unfulfilled responsibilities. Gross says all of her restylers have one thing in common: "The change was planned. These people were prepared, both financially and psychologically, for their transformation. They acted out of conviction, not whim."

Gross urges potential restylers to start planning now by asking six basic questions:

• "Are there certain skills we need to acquire?"
• "Is there information we need to gather?"
• "Are there classes we need to take or things we have to learn?"
• "Are there places we want to explore?"
• "Are there business arrangements we need to complete?"
• "Are there financial goals we need to reach?"

Gross's book is good even for those of us whose midlife adjustments may not result in a radical career change. The stories are inspiring and remind us that, with planning and hard work, dreams can come true. Perhaps even more importantly, Gross reminds us that we do not have to remain locked in predictable and conventional patterns of living, tranquilizing habits of life that may be as bland as they are comfortable and safe. Gross's alternative is personal transformation, a good idea even if we don't have to leave home or career to gain it.