At age 50 the bigness of things don ‘t seem to matter as much. The size of the house, the size of the car, the size of the office, etc. Making a difference becomes a greater concern. Have I done enough? Have I impacted others the way I wanted?
Fifty (plus or minus five years) is the age we begin looking backward at our lives. There’s more of life behind us than is now in front of us.
Have I accomplished all that I set out to accomplish by now? Or, did I think I would be further along than I am?
The dash…that little thing that sits between when we are born and when we’ll pass away. The dash represents all the things we did in our lives. And now that we have entered the second half of our lives, we are either living our purpose, refocusing our purpose or establishing it for the first time.
Life is fleeting. My own three children are approaching college. My two boys are taller than me. Where did the time go?
Life is busy. We had football games and practice, soccer, basketball and more. Life was happening to me at a rapid rate. My purpose was (and is) raising those kids the best way I know how. I fail a lot. Being the best husband I can. I fail a lot.
Building a career to support them all. I have failed at times there, too.
The idea of purpose has always sat in my recesses of my mind, but I never really defined it until about a decade ago. As I recovered from a failed business venture (thanks to the financial crisis of 2008) I vowed I’d never let that happen again. Plus, I wanted to make sure it didn’t happen to anyone else, if I could help it. I wrote down my purpose of helping 1,000,000 become financially independent.
I wasn’t sure how I would fulfill this purpose, but the first step was doing it myself. And I had now taken that first step. The key is to decide. Decide that you want your second half to be greater than your first half.
The next step is figuring out what action to take. What does your purpose look like in action? Being of service to others or adding value to others is not only part of my job but I’ve expanded it to individual and group coaching. You’ve lived a while, amassed experience and wisdom, now may be a good time to share that wisdom. Help people along their journey. It could be paid or volunteer.
It starts with your values. What do you value in life, with yourself, your work, your family, your friends? What do you love? What is something you do so effortlessly that is seems everyone probably know it (but they don’t)? You know already. You just haven’t sat down to define it yet.
This is a step we do in my coaching program. It’s as easy as jotting these things on a piece of paper. Get it all in front of you.
Ikigai. In Japan, they have the concept of ikigai (pronounced ick-ee-guy)— a reason to jump out of bed each morning.
