Your Life Reimagined

Your Life Reimagined

July 22nd, 2011 // 4:48 am @ Jim // 2 Comments

My mom died a few hours ago.

She was 91 and lived a relatively happy life. But she had a heart attack 2 days ago and slipped quickly away. The day she died was exactly 23 years after my dad was diagnosed with terminal bladder cancer. He died 10 months later.

Mom was lost for how to spend her last 22 years. I am convinced she could have lived even longer and more happily had she been pursuing a purpose, doing something to contribute to others. But she could not imagine that. Dad had retired and there was nothing else to do but wait to join him, to wait to die. And she was mad at him for all those years because he left her to play alone.

Her passing has opened a new door for me. I feel a bit like a hot air balloon that had been tethered to the ground. I still have plenty of ballast to keep me from sailing wildly away but I am now ready to pursue what has been my passion for years now – what do people do when they “retire”.

I plan to re-conceptualize our culture’s view of  ”Retirement”, life’s 5th stage. Without getting too caught up in discussing the exact ages of the stages, our current view is something like this:

Stages of a Life

Stage 1  Birth to age 5 – - Play

Stage 2  Age  5 to 18 – - School

Stage 3* Age 18 to 22 (or – 30) – - College (grad or med school, etc.)

Stage 4  Age 22 (-30) to 65 – - Life

Stage 5  Age 65 to death – - Retirement (where retirement means purposeless Play)

[*Stage 3 is an optional stage and may last a year or as many as 12]

I’d like to see Stage 5 called — Fulfillment (where fulfillment means you find your purpose for your remaining years and pursue that purpose passionately).

The focus of my coaching is this subject. I give presentations to baby boomers who are reaching “retirement age” but are afraid to retire because they are healthy but not ready for the purposeless play that leads to an unfulfilling 30 – 40 years.

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