Aging Is a Work-in-Progress - That Process Can Go on for Half a Century, Full of Tough Lessons

"Forget ‘advice to my younger self’ articles. What would older me want to know?" - Financial Times, February 26, 2023

In America, the land of youth, what is perceived as "aging" could kick in during the 40s or 50s. More likely, though, that identity is grafted onto those in their 60s.

The Last Half Century of a Life

That means, given the more we know about healthy lifestyles which increase longevity, we could be in that process for up to half a century. The timeframe could include continuing to earn income from work.

A growing number of my intuitive coaching clients are in their 70s and tell me this: "We see what happens to people who retire. They stick a lawn chair in front of their door and sit and sit and sit until one day they are no longer there." As long as their health holds out those clients are pushing to keep the doors to employment and business ownership open. 

Obviously a shift has taken place. Aging has transformed from a relatively short life event which used to rule out hustling for income to a work-in-progress. Along that journey we are learning plenty. Most of those on my networks, professional and personal, and myself have plenty to say to our 50, 60, 70, or more selves. What we wish we had known ...

Everything Changes

At the top of the list is that everything changes. The world we had navigated so effectively, the skills which brought us financial security, and our own ability to remain healthy physically and mentally are in transition. That's tough space to be in.

After 9/11, the target markets for my communications services collapsed. What I would have told my 50-something self is: This is really happening. The extent of the pull-back on demand is unlikely to reverse any time soon. So, cut expenses radically.

But I didn't do any of that. What I had learned I published in an e-book which has had more than a million downloads. Here you can read it. Incidentally, that and other lessons I was learning evolved into my intuitive coaching career.

No Big Bets on the Future

Next is don’t bet on the future, at least not in a big way. That future, as we configure it, might not happen or it could peter out fast.

Some clients saw the future of money as decentralized finance and lost plenty in crypto. Others, although in their 50s, invested in advanced academic degrees which didn’t yield an ample ROI. Here is my article, published in O’Dwyer’s Public Relations, on the challenges in career change.

What stood out when I read the Insider interview with Paul Weiss chair Brad Karp is that while he put out there the possibility that he might retire in May 2023 he noted that a lot can happen between then and now. Therefore, he approached his options as fluid. He may decide to renew his contract.

Also interesting was that this power player Karp, at the time 63, was candid about how aging was becoming a factor in how he operates his leadership duties. 

That was a kind of breakthrough admission. It can establish a new pattern in discussing what we might be losing and what we might be gaining in the aging process. All my clients gain common-sense skepticism about the wild optimism about life and careers put out there by those quite active on social networks and engaged in other kinds of promotional activities.

Such a Small Sandbox to Play in

Another key learning experience is to not be one-dimensional about life. Those who had made work The All often mutated into broken creatures when their work was taken away.

Classic are those knocked out the box at law firms for partner. Several I coached came to me in emotional breakdowns because they had nothing else to hang their hat on. Not a relationship that meant something to them, not a spiritual belief system, not even other sources of income such as rental property.

The takeaway to prevent being destroyed by the unraveling of a career is to embrace that there is no such entity as employment security. In 2009, multiple sources reported that the largest law firm in the world Kirkland & Ellis terminated 15 to 25 non-equity partners. Yes, partners.

Changing Before You Have to

Overall, maybe the must learning we should transmit to our younger selves is to change before we had to.

Such a fundamental means anticipating that we will age. Then, accepting that we have aged. Nonono, that’s not easy. 

In The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior documents that we think of ourselves as younger than we are. That can make us assess the world as if we are still young and don’t need to accommodate all the realities which go with the intersection of external change and the changes which come with aging.

Those Bearing Happy-Clappy Platitudes

Perhaps it’s overdue that a plaintiff law firm round up a public nuisance lawsuit against those industries and thought leaders positioning and packaging aging as the best of times. Wasn’t that what many foisted on us boomers about college. We were the first generation to be able to attend college as a locked-in rite of passage. It was no longer reserved for the upper middle class. 

Yet for many going off to college catapulted us into a brutal introduction to new kinds of darkness in going about our little lives. Several years ago I made it my business to return one overcast Saturday with my dog to walk around the hills of the college campus I had matriculated at in the late 60s. We had traveled a long way.

Once there, the dog jumped out of the car and took the hills on euphorically. Finally, that transported me to a now. I could shake off that horror. My mantra has become “Look at me, now.” Could that attitude be classified as a "gift' which aging brings?

Just New Kinds of Developmental Tasks

Aging simply is a phase of the human life cycle. Like adolescence, its developmental tasks are unique. It’s neither better nor worse than other demands about survival and clawing out joy and contentment.

Intuitive career coaching about your present and your next. Shut down the noise from that committee in your head and open to possibility.  In addition, Jane Genova is an award-winning writer on Human Resources issues.

Whether you need guidance or that your organization’s story be told, please make an appointment for a complimentary consultation at janegenova374@gmail.com or text 203-468-8579.