Raise your expectations for what you can achieve in the second half of life. It doesn’t have to be less significant than the first half, in fact it can be so much better.
I hate to pigeon hole myself, but as I was born between 1946 and 1964, that makes me a baby boomer. Born in 1962, 52 years old, now in the second half of life, where statistics show that I can expect to live at least another 30 years.
While I’m on the subject of statistics evidence demonstrates that 80% of the UK’s wealth is in the hands of baby boomers. But this isn’t showing the whole picture. There are many more baby boomers dissatisfied with what they’ve achieved in their life, finding that it is nowhere near the dream they once had.
They reach their mid-40’s look back over their life and feel in the pit of their stomach an intense feeling of disappointment. We were brought up in an age where we were encouraged to make something of our life, to be outcome driven.
When we perceive our own personal failure we are overcome with negative emotions regretting the mistakes we made, the opportunities we missed. We will go through a period of endless questioning and evaluation of how our life has played out. This gets many to slowly sink into a state of total malaise, compounded by fear of how the final period of their life will play out.
Is this the way you are feeling?
Well don’t, this is the recipe for ensuring life never improves and you will till your dying day live in regret.
Instead you have to find a way to re-energize yourself and bring about an amazing second half of life.
It would have been really far easier for me to have accepted failure and written myself off at the age of 47. That was the time when all my hard work and the rewards I had earned over the years was suddenly all lost.
You throw yourself into your work, you put the effort in, you make a lot of sacrifices. I certainly did. I missed so much of my kids growing up because I was so often away on business. But it had enabled me to have that luxury home with my indoor pool, home gym, sauna, Jacuzzi bath and everything I could ever dream if. I had great cars, holidayed abroad twice a year and when home on a weekend would more than often be out to really nice restaurants.
I thought I had made it. All the hard work had paid off. But things don’t always work out the way we expect and in 2007 I lost it all. My house was repossessed and I was made bankrupt. For two years I was a mess struggling to come to terms with what had happened and the consequences.
Everything that happened to me certainly caught me off guard. Having then gone through two years of ‘nothingness’ I was woken up by a life changing event. I had a serious problem with my right eye, suffering from a retinal detachment, resulting in vision loss and the necessity of me giving up on my career. Rather than this being the final nail in my coffin it turned out to be the wake-up call I needed.
I refused to settle for any longer being less than I could be, and once again I allowed myself to dream of my possibilities and use goals to enable me to best navigate my journey ahead.
I refused to let my bad situation or aging to allow a decline in my ambition and force me to accept mediocrity.
In fact I used all my experiences and the negative events that I suffered from to shift my state of consciousness taking me through an inward journey where I began to make sense of everything. I realised that my mission for the second half of life was to be who I was born to be, freeing myself from the shackles of the life I’d lived and help others avoid the pitfalls that had damaged me, and deal better with coming through problems.
I helped many bring about transformation through coaching, blogging and speaking, and now I’m ramping up my efforts by writing books and introducing others to two life changing courses, the single page plan, goal setting made easy, and the compass for life – a reinvention journey.
I’ve created both of these and ask you to think what is it you could be doing in this second half of life?
The results of my own journey, and my work has helped hundreds of others navigating their life journey, so I want you to think of the contribution you are still to make. What is it?
Please find the determination and belief to make your second half of life the best years of your life.
photo credit: Sepia Grunge Sign – Water Dam via photopin (license)
