Have you Bought into the Golden Years Fantasy?
There is another option – designing an encore performance that could be your life legacy.
I love fantasy — reading fantasy novels, and yes, even writing them, but I don’t enjoy living in a fantasy world. But we Baby Boomers have been led to believe a fantasy about our later years, what is typically referred to as our “retirement years” or the “Golden Years.” The fantasy is that by the time we reach sixty-five we’ll quit work so we can move to a Sun City type retirement community where we’ll fill our days with golf, tennis, and shuffleboard until we pass quietly from this world a few years later.
You may have believed this is the way everyone is supposed to live out their final years. After all, hasn’t this form of retirement been around for hundreds of years? That’s what I thought, until I learned that this typical retirement scenario has really only been around about fifty year — the fifty years that make up the majority of us Boomer’s lifetime.
I mention Sun City intentionally, because, according to Marc Freedman, author of Encore: Finding Work that Matters in the Second Half of Life (an excellent book by the way) and the founder of Civic Ventures, it was the developer of the Sun Cities, Delbert E. Webb, who invented this concept of the Golden Years starting on January 1, 1960 when the first Sun City opened.
You see Del Webb
was not only a great real estate developer, he was a master marketer and entrepreneur. But at the time he created the “Golden Year” fantasy, no one including Webb thought we boomers would end up living more than a few years after retirement. But, as author Marc Freedman points, over the last few decades we’ve stretched those “retirement years from a brief hiatus that was supposed to cover the few remaining years between disability and death and turned it into a period lasting fifteen, twenty, twenty-five years.” That’s as much as a third of a person’s life.
So, just how much golf or shuffleboard can one person play? (Now, don’t get me wrong. I’ve nothing against shuffleboard or golf. While I don’t play either, I have become active with the local Senior Softball League, but even there, how much softball can one person play? Sure, it’s fun. It’s just not all that my life is about these days.)
Many of us are learning Del Webb’s “Golden Age fantasy” isn’t sustainable for us as individuals or collectively for our society. And there’s one fundamentally vital piece that’s missing — a clear sense of purpose and meaning.
What’s a Boomer to Do?
As you approach these “retirement years” and realize that you’re now talking about decades instead of just a few years, you naturally want to make the most of the time you have left so you probably have considered and maybe even tried some of these solutions:
Keep working at what you’ve always done: You may decide not to retire at all, but to just keep on working in the same career you’ve been at, but that often doesn’t feel any better than overdosing on shuffleboard. Both can be mind-numbingly boring for different reasons.
You may find your old work is boring because of the very fact that you’ve done is for so long. Oh, you’re probably good at it which makes it a comfortable decision to just keep on keeping on, but is it really what you want to do for the rest of your life? Often time, the answer to that question is no, not only because it’s the same ol’ same ol’, but because the reasons we chose the career in our twenties or thirties may not be relevant reasons to keep it in our sixties and seventies.
In this next stage of life most of us want to do something that’s more meaningful and that gives us a greater sense of purpose. So, in an effort to gain a deeper sense of purpose and meaning we might try:
Volunteering: And volunteering can be a good thing, and it can give us a shot of purpose for a while, but often times it doesn’t take long before we realize that volunteering only goes so far. Of sure, it can fill up some hours, and keep us from going stir crazy, but for many boomers it’s just not enough to really inspire us out of bed in the morning, so we decide to:
Travel: After all, haven’t you and your spouse been talking about seeing more of the world forever. What better time to travel than in your retirement years. And once again, traveling can be a good thing. Seeing new places, tasting new and different ethnic foods, and experiencing different cultures — all good….except, can you really fill ten, fifteen, twenty or more years traveling? Not to mention how expensive all those trips can be. So, if you’re not careful you:
Become a couch potato — with hundreds of TV stations, not to mention the internet, and all those books you promised you’d read 
someday, it’s easy to find yourself whiling away your “Golden Years” laying around the house. Now, don’t get me wrong, rest and relaxation can be a good thing….something us Boomers need to add more to our lives before our retirement years, but it can also become too much of a good thing if we’re not careful.
But while each of these may help to some extent, they simply don’t get to the heart of the matter — the real opportunity and possibility that this next phase of life has to offer, and that is the opportunity to experience the most satisfying, fulfilling and meaningful years yet. This is the time when you truly can live your life on purpose. But how? Where do you start?
It’s time to Design Your Encore Performance
What you really need to do is to make the most of this incredibly rich and potentially fulfilling phase of your life by creating and then fulfilling your “Encore Performance.” One of the definitions of an encore is:
Encore: “a second achievement especially that surpasses the first.”
The right encore performance will come from the heart, from the very essence of who you are, and will include what you value most about life. It will fill you with a sense of purpose and meaning, not just upon it’s completion but every step along the way.
It could even become your legacy — what you’ll be remembered for, not only by your children and grandkids but by the world.
Key to creating a powerful and memorable encore performance is that it be a full blown expression of your life purpose because it’s this purpose that will inspire you out of bed each morning. It’s your purpose that will allow you to tap into the wellspring of passion and enthusiasm that becomes the fuel that propels you forward in your encore performance.
And that’s why the most important first step you need to take is to clearly know your true, Divinely Inspired Life Purpose.
I Can Help You Design Your Encore Performance
I designed my first Encore Performance when I was 47, after selling my veterinary practice and co-founding Life On Purpose Institute in 1996 as a way to express my own life purpose. (In fact, I’m now in the process of designing my second encore performance as an author of visionary fiction and nonfiction.)
As a fellow Baby Boomer in his early sixties, I know and appreciate what it feels like to want to make the most of this next phase of life. I also realize how important it is for someone to know themselves well — know that aspect of ourselves that can sabotage us, particularly when it stays hidden in the background shaping our decisions, choices and actions, often without our being aware of it. It’s also paramount to know who we truly are — the very essence of ourselves that is present in our finest moments, and how to bring that to the forefront so that becomes what shapes our decisions, choices and actions.
For over two decades I’ve worked with hundreds of clients both individually and in groups helping them to identify both the ‘saboteur’ aspect and the true, “Divinely Inspired” self — to give room and acceptance to the former while embracing and encouraging the latter to be the true decision maker, and the primary force that shapes their life.
Prior to founding Life On Purpose Institute, Inc. I originated a process that has evolved into what today is known as the Life On Purpose Process.
Life On Purpose Process: a proven, systematic, spiritually based and practical process that helps people to clarify their true purpose in life and to then design a life that is a true and accurate reflection of that purpose.
For many of my clients going through the Process has included designing an “Encore Performance.”
Your Next Step to Designing Your Encore Performance – A Simple Conversation
Over the past 25-plus years of coaching I’ve learned that one thing that makes a life coaching relationship so powerful in a person’s life is making sure there’s a good match between the coach and the client. With a good match, magic and miracles are possible — without it…well, not so much.
That’s why I offer an initial, no-obligation coaching consultation. There are two purposes and intentions for such a consultation:
- To add value to your life for the pure joy of it, and
- To determine if we’re a good match — is Life On Purpose Coaching what will serve you, and am I the best coach to help you design your encore career.
I’ve also found that if you and I prepare ourselves a little for the initial conversation, our chances of fulfilling these two intentions are dramatically increased, so I invite you to take the next step to scheduling such a session.
Brad’s Coaching Days
I really do want to help you design your Encore Performance that will inspire you to live as purposeful and meaningful life as possible, so I’ve set aside some times in June to explore this possibility with a few select people that feel ready to design this next phase of their life and are looking for some guidance.
If that describes you, I invite you to click over here, then scroll to the bottom to select the day and time that works best for you. If none of the available times work for you, you can email me here, and we’ll arrange another time for our initial coaching consultation.
After you schedule the time, you’ll receive a confirmation email from me along with a link to a coaching questionnaire that will prepare both of us so you can get the most value from the consultation.
NOTE: You will receive an email message from our appointment system that may lead you to believe that the appointment needs to be in person. Don’t believe it! Unless you live in the western part of North Carolina,these appointments are either by phone, skype, or Google Hangout.
