—Dorothy Fuldheim

I’ve had many clients tell me they are just not creative people, thinking the term describes only artistic people, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. We all have creativity inside us, just as we all have a visionary voice. Seeing alternative futures, other possibilities for our lives, our work, and our world, requires creativity. Creating paths to these possibilities requires innovation every step of the way. Problem-solving is in and of itself a profoundly creative act.

And that is one of the reasons becoming a visionary is much easier after age 40. We have more experiences to draw from when solving problems, and a wider network of people to collaborate with and seek advice from. We are often more able to focus our creative efforts on what really matters, having reached a point in our lives when we no longer want to expend limited energy and time with anything, or anyone, that isn’t truly meaningful to us. The creative energy we once required for other important parts of our lives, such as having and raising children, can often be channeled into new pursuits.

The evidence backs this up. As I discuss in an earlier post, the most successful companies are started by entrepreneurs over 55 years old. And our present and past are full of examples of accomplishments, always fueled by innovative thinking, of people in their 40s and beyond.

• Dorothy Fuldheim because the first woman in the United States with her own news show in her 40s, and invented a new format for television news: weaving commentary and interviews into her news summary.
• Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod at 44, discovered electricity at 46, codrafted the Declaration of Independence at 70, and later invented bifocals.
• Arianna Huffington was 55 when she launched the Huffington Post.
• Willa Cather published her first novel at 40, won the Pulitzer Prize at 50, and after a period of personal despair in her early 50s, bounced back to write what scholars and critics agree were her greatest works.
• Henry Ford introduced the Model T at 45.
• Frank Lloyd Wright built Fallingwater, a masterpiece of architecture, at 68.
• Jane Addams, suffragette, founder of Hull House in Chicago, and founding member of the ACLU and charter member of the NAACP, published her first book when she was 50, foresaw World War I and at 55 started the Women’s Peace Party and the International Congress of Women in an attempt to avert it. In 1931, at the age of 71, she received the Nobel Peace Prize.
• Silicon Valley pioneer and serial entrepreneur Sandy Kurtzig started the software company Kenandy in her 60s, and as already received $10.5 million in early funding

And this is only a small fraction of the examples I could list. Shouldn’t your name be on it?

In what ways do you use creativity in your life and your work?  What is innovative about your vision for the future?

Image credit: Photograph by high resolution.

Why, in this day and age, do we even have a “retirement age”? Maybe in the past, a particular age could be associated with a time when people were physically and mentally ill-equipped to continue working, so this age provided them with some guarantee of health care and continued income (although I would argue that this arbitrary age was never accurate and perhaps contributed only to a dangerous myth that kept people from fulfilling their true potential in their third and fourth stages of life).

But today, we know that people are living longer, healthier, more active lives across the board. You’ve heard that 60 is the new 40 (and 70 the new 50, 80 the new 60, etc.). This isn’t just a marketing slogan. We all look around at our friends, our families, ourselves, and we know this is true. So what kind of sense does it make to be quibbling about a few years here and there in a person’s 60s? What kind of sense does it make to be thinking about a retirement age for someone who is functionally in their 40s?

And when you really start thinking about what “retirement age” means, what kind of sense does it make period?

The only valuable purpose I can see for having this demarcation at all is to be sure everyone in our society is taken care of when they are not as equipped to care for themselves. But isn’t this an ideal for people of any age? If health or disability interfere with a person’s ability to provide for themselves, does it really matter whether the person is 65 or 25?

So that leaves social security, which we’ve all been paying into. Yes, it does make sense for this to be available as we age because it is true that at some point, we will be less able to work as much as before (even if we keep working). It is true that the longer we live, the more likely part of our income will go increasingly toward health-related expenses. But what on earth does this have to do with retirement?

I’m not talking about denying age. Just the opposite. I’m talking about looking at the realities of aging for what they really are, and this means what they are not. Aging does not equal retiring. It does not mean we step back and sit on our rocking chairs while the younger folks take over. We may want or need to work less, or to have more flexible working arrangements, but think about that: Don’t we all need that at every age?

A young parent who needs to be able to work from home or work more flexible hours and a 70-year-old who needs the same arrangement are functionally equivalent. A 40-year-old who wants to “retire early,” meaning she wants to stop working for someone else and pursue her own interests, be they travel or entrepreneurship or both, is no different from an 80-year-old who wants the same thing.

“Retirement age” and similar phrases, in other words, lump together a bunch of characteristics and needs and wants that really don’t have much to do with age at all. People of any age may wish to “retire”—even for just a phase of life, before returning or starting a new career. People of any age may need flexibility and help because of a health- or disability-related crisis or ongoing situation. People of any age may wish to never retire in any sense of the word, not even at 90 or 100. They want to keep working and creating and leading. They simply need to make adaptations in these pursuits that take into account the realities of their lives—just as we all need to do, at every age.

• What if organizations, academia, families, and local and national government started looking at the needs and wants of society on an individual basis rather than lumping us by age?
• What if flexible work arrangements became the norm—for whoever wants or needs them?
• What if lifelong learning were implemented and sponsored in every nook and cranny of society—for all ages?
• What if we sought ways for those with health and disability issues (their own, their parents’, their children’s, their spouses’) to adapt their lives without worry, without having to give up entirely on the idea of doing what they want to do in life and giving back to society through their work, their creations, their leadership?

It sounds utopian, but what I’m saying is actually a pragmatic approach to economic growth, national well-being, investment in the future, and innovation that could save us all and the planet (not to mention individual happiness). The approach is pragmatic in that it is based on doing away with stereotypes about aging, myths that keep huge numbers of people from contributing to society in unimaginable ways simply because they hit an arbitrary number. The approach is pragmatic because it means implementing policies based on reality.

Because the reality is, there is no such thing as a retirement age. I doubt there ever was.

Image by DonkeyHotey

For post-50 women especially, this theme is empowering. On every level, from how we see and feel about our bodies to our potential to kickstart a new era of visionary entrepreneurship, we can surpass the limits of imagined stereotypes about aging and being women. We start by consciously reimagining alternative futures for ourselves—personally and professionally—and for our families and the world seven generations ahead.

Our future is ripe with possibility, yet something is bugging me. It’s like biting into a handful of juicy berries and discovering too late that a few had started to grow hair . . . and having nowhere to spit them out.

I keep feeling like the subtext, the underbelly, of our conversations is not front and center. Everywhere I go, I’m witnessing a new story called in, while an old one pulls in opposition, holding on for dear life in a death-defying tug of war for power over rather than with.

Many of us led the way in breaking through the glass ceiling. We’re all too familiar with those patriarchal old boys’ clubs, which held onto their silos of power for dear life, twisting our demands for equal opportunities and freedom of independent choice and success into a “them vs. us” conversation we never intended.

Now, as we strive to break through—or bypass—the silver ceiling, I can’t help feeling a disturbing sense of déjà vu. I keep putting on my foresight lens, but it’s the past that’s speaking to me. From deep within my belly, a question demands my attention: Haven’t we lived this story already?

I touched on this a bit when I wrote about the Boomer Business Summit, which itself was a top-notch conference. At one of the panels, about making money on the Boomer market, I sat taking notes in the last row, next to a lanky blond guy on his cell phone. Guess we both wanted a fast getaway if the material didn’t grab us. We exchanged cards, minimal chatter, and the session began.

As I glanced at his business card, I chuckled to myself. This was a guy who had already crossed my radar. I had wondered what he was up to with his website aimed at younger Boomer women. I just didn’t get him as someone passionate about women Boomers.

In fact, I couldn’t quite grok what he was doing in the aging field at all. It wasn’t until I explored his site that I learned he had formed a Boomer women platform simply because no one else was marketing to us.

He was in this business because post-50 women were a means, not because we are meaningful.

And that’s when the creepy sense of déjà vu wafted over me. Are we women being coopted again?

In the early ’70s, my cohorts were the Clio feminists who catalyzed and drove the second women’s movement. Part of this movement involved throwing off the medical nomenclature that had coopted us, robbing us of a place at the table even for control of our own bodies.

Women’s concerns were trivialized and our healthy emotions stigmatized with the label “hysterical.” We were treated accordingly to remove the dangerous craziness, emotionality, independence, and so forth that were apparently signs of that horrible disease of simply being female. (See Betty Friedan’s classic Feminine Mystique.)

Miriam Hawley and Judy Norsigian, among others, gave us permission to trust our own knowing and smarts, woman to woman, by creating a cooperative manual that was on every Boomer woman’s bookshelf, Our Bodies, Ourselves. Kind of our own Wikipedia of women’s health and wellness.

We began to see that the changes and differences in our bodies once classified in terms of disease and dysfunction were actually part of the natural cycle and beautiful variation in the female body.

Fast-forward 40 years, and here I am at another panel listening to another middle-aged man discuss research done for Big Pharma into sexual dysfunction in younger Boomer women. I described this panel and the research in my report on the summit (here), but I didn’t fully unpack its subtext and why this matters—for all women, but 50+ women especially.

He reported, “Most women are too embarrassed to talk about vaginal dryness.” They suffer in pain for years. It blew me away to find that women still don’t talk about these issues even with each other. I was less surprised to hear that they don’t speak with their physicians either, and that when some do, it’s around two years after the onset.

Worse: 93% of the women report a significant effect on their lives yet they continue to have painful sex . . . as often as once a week.

Hearing this man reveal such private details about the sacred space of women’s bodies brought another wave of déjà vu. I viscerally felt a trespass as yet another women’s health issue was trivialized as a dysfunction, as another path of women’s life cycles was coopted and made into a pathology. The natural changes of aging being discussed as though we were robotic Stepford Wives who had to get fixed, oiled up for our men. Just so Pharma can market and sell a product.

Which came first, the solution or the research?

And who says it’s a dysfunction anyway? Menopause occurs for a reason. Why is it so shameful, so scary, for us to talk about our changing bodies? Why aren’t women talking with each other? Why do we suffer in silence?

Pharma is always ready to fill the void with fear disguised as hope: Don’t lose your man to someone who doesn’t have this symptomology. You can eradicate this. You can stay young, ready, and able, desirable, rather than old and useless.

Something is terribly wrong here. Did we Clio feminists fail after all?

Haven’t I heard this story before?

An even older story comes to mind. Perhaps you’ve heard some version of it. In Greek mythology, the warrior-goddess Artemis is bathing in her sacred lake, hidden in privacy amid lush forest. Actaeon, in the forest on a hunt with his dogs, spies the goddess, vulnerable and unclothed. He is captivated by her beauty.

When Artemis catches him spying on her, she warns him never to speak again or he’ll be turned into a stag. Foolishly, he calls out to his hunting party and transforms immediately into a stag. His own hunting dogs tear him to shreds.

A woman’s feminine psyche, her sacred temples, are still fair game in a patriarchal culture. No, it’s not okay to spy, even under cover of the hunt for women’s health information. No, men shouldn’t speak for us about our most intimate concerns. But men are just as stuck in the patriarchy as we are, in the way things have always been done.

Many are just savvy businessmen in a culture still so infused with centuries of patriarchy that the sexism is almost on autopilot. After all, they can see the magazine headlines and book titles just as we can: how to keep your man, drive him crazy, keep him satisfied at all costs. Anti-aging is the name of the new money-making game, a game still rigged so that even if some women “win,” the men always do.

At least superficially. In truth, the only winners in this game are the businesses exploiting it.

Women today are stepping into their own power in many ways. On so many topics, we are using our own voices, speaking up. Yet we are still being coopted, and not just in the health arena. Have you noticed, for example, how many personal growth and transformative venues for and about women, online and off, are owned by men, even moderated and directed by men?

As women, we need to step up and own our conversations, our her-story telling. Women and men benefit from this, as we can see in many other arenas, such as business, where women are speaking up and leading, and the results benefit the companies, the shareholders, and the world.

What if we women reimagined a new ending that truly serves our womanhood vs. solely refilling big business’s deep pockets at our expense? What if we took control of the conversation about our bodies, ourselves? What if we could change that conversation, and the world, simply by taking one radical step—talking to each other?

An international team of researchers studied more than 500 captive apes around the world and found that chimpanzees and orangutans also experience a significant dip in happiness around their own midlife, measured in marked depression and changes in social interactions, distinct from the individual ape’s emotions and behaviors before and after this time of life, measured using standard surveys by those who know the animals well.

Before this study, many of us already knew that a midlife crisis was not a distinctly male phenomenon, that women experience it too, even if women and men act on their changing emotions and perspectives in different ways. But now, seeing the same U-shaped curve in happiness from childhood to elderhood, with the dip occurring at midlife, even in our ape cousins, supports the possibility that the crisis is genetic and possibly adaptive in our evolution.

If so, what purpose does it serve? According to the researchers, the most plausible explanation is that the crisis occurs at a time when we are often at the height of our lives—with our children (if we have them) able to fend for themselves without us, our careers in their prime, and financial security at its strongest—a time when the anxiety and depression many of us feel is a reminder not to take all of this for granted.

Many of us know intellectually that these days, we are living longer and healthier lives than ever before, and that the prime of our lives is likely still in the years ahead, yet the primal fears remain and can easily overtake this knowledge.

This research only confirms that our crisis is not a result of some external reality, that we can circumvent or lessen these feelings of crisis by being proactive in our lives. We can take this time to reimagine our futures, to go from good to great, and to plan the second half of our lives to surpass the first half beyond measure.

The midlife crisis may be a product of evolution that can lead us all toward taking the next evolutionary leap for all humans, and for the world.

Featured image by David and Becky.

The tide is changing. A full onslaught of big money is not yet focusing on you and me, but it’s coming. Just in the last year, we’ve seen an increase in the number of reverse mortgage ads and retirement investment and planning offers still hawking the good life. The first push is always in the women’s beauty arena, so the shift to sell us some new wrinkle-erasing magic is nothing out of the ordinary anymore. We are already inundated with anti-aging messaging and promised fountains of youth in a jar, or tube. The guys have it easy—they get a pill with no side effects…unless it goes awry. As a generation, we are a mighty big market, and we are demanding innovative solutions to give us the best shot at outliving the odds and still loving being here, while we make a difference… again. 

Mary’s intention is to bring the two together for mutual benefit, to build “an intelligent network of relationships to drive your Boomer business.” If you’ve got an enormous engaged platform or a beyond-the-box solution to whatever Boomers will need and want, then the Boomer Summit is the place to connect with those who hold the keys to our generation.

Although the event was held in a typical downtown conference site, Chicago’s Hyatt Regency, once I signed in and got my bearings, I felt like I was entering a trade secret marketplace in a land I hadn’t visited in quite some time.  Everyone present was there to learn now to make money on Boomers or to show you how.

I’m all for combining making money with serving Boomers as long as it contributes to the Triple Bottom Line (people, planet, profits), upstream and downstream. Early in my career as a futurist, strategic marketer, and corporate intrapreneur, I became intoxicated with exploring the aging trends and their impact on the markets of tomorrow. So I’m an easy mark. I get off on hearing about all the edgy new technologies and services, and what works and what hasn’t and why. I am a faithful fan for life of this generation, especially its women. This convergence of money focused on our growing older is a fortuitous shift in attention just when we will need it the most.

I knew this was going to be an intense day as I reviewed the agenda of presentations, ranging from money, retirement, grandparenting, trends, tech, and media to the future of global and digital Boomer consumers, and of course, the latest on health and wellness. No way could I attend all the sessions, so I had to be very selective.

Marketing to the People, Not the Stereotype

For my first session, I was drawn to “Money, Retirement, and Grandparenting.” The topic brought me back to my roots in retirement services and marketing at Equitable/AXA. So I still like to do a reality check on the status of MetLife’s current research. The panel was impressive, with Deborah Jacobs, Senior Editor of Forbes Media, moderating Mark Miller, journalist, and Sandra Timmermann, VP and Director of MetLife Mature Market Institute, which produces groundbreaking studies, provides education, and funds innovative ventures to share the implications of this research for business and marketers. Sandra was the real draw for me.

She had a lot to share, too many stats to record. The bottom line was good news: Contrary to the exhortations of media pundits that there’s enormous discord between the generations, she reports that “It’s all in the family,” meaning that the generational war is not found in their studies. It seems to be all hype. Boomers, the media-labeled “Me Generation,” has grown up, choosing “purposeful giving” over frivolous spending. Boomers seek memorable family vacations, quality everyday time together, and being family wisdom anchors. No surprise to most of us, Boomers want to enjoy the rest of their probable 40+ years with friends and family, on special interests, making a difference, and focusing on health, rather than leaving money on the inheritance table.

Then we were all swept into the main ballroom for the keynote plenary, which would be followed by the luncheon, with each table hosted by a blogger, author, or journalist. As a table host, I asked my tablemates about why they came and what they had gotten as takeaways thus far. We chatted and passed around biz cards, fostering new connections, until Gail Sheehy, author of Passages and Passages in Caregiving, introduced Mary Furlong, fearless founder of the day’s event, and Jody Holtzman, Senior VP, Thought Leadership, AARP.

Gail spoke about how writing Passages in her 30s limited her scope to an age range that stopped at 50. Now she realizes, of course, that there are more passages after 50 than we ever could have imagined. She suggested there are perhaps double the number of passages. Each of us post-50 women and men has another 30–40 years to go. Some of us living today will celebrate 105!

Gail went on to describe what gerontologists and developmental psychologists like Carl Jung, Erik Erikson, Beatrice Neugarten, and so many others before us have noted, that mid-50s equals the middle of our midlife transition. I’ve always suggested that there are actually three major stages in the midlife transition, early, mid, and later. Some folks will experience a biggie in their mid-30s or around 45, while others go through all three combined as they leave midlife in their later 60s.

I loved Gail’s metaphor of the lobster shedding its shell so that it can grow larger still as an alternative to the metamorphosis of the butterfly from the chrysalis. This works great for my model of Visionaries Have Wrinkles and creating aspirational ageless futures. She repeated the now familiar stats that are driving us all in the field to scale up and meet the needs of Boomers suddenly starting over.

Next up was Jody Holtzman, who blew my fuses by confirming with hard facts what I and others have presumed for years. Although I’ve heard our times described as “The Longevity Economy,” I really appreciated his explanation that it depicts the upside of longevity and aging. After his yearlong study, he believes the conversation around longevity has shifted. With 100 million people 50+, why leave hundreds of billions of dollars on the table by disregarding this demographic shift? No one can afford to walk away from this opportunity. Entrepreneurs have various marketing strategies available to penetrate the 50+ market. For example:

1. Universally designed products good for all ages, including 50+, such as Apple’s iPad, iPhone, Macbook Air; Facebook, which is rapidly gaining acceptance by women 55+; and Wizard101 games, created for kids but now marketed to grandparents too.
2. Age-targeted products and services, designed with functionality in mind for 50+, that end up crossing demographic lines. BMW X5, for example, is designed ergonomically and marketed to men 50+, but the advertising messaging is in 30+ lingo. NCIS is CBS’s most profitable show because over 50 can watch it on TV and the under 50 can stream it onto their devices.
3. Products and services with a universal design morphed for specific age targets, such as cereals that are good for everyone but now appeal to health-conscious Boomers, dating sites (a proven success) aimed at Boomers, Ferraris redesigned to be easier to get in and out of, and Harley Davidson’s three-wheel motorcycle for hip older adults.

Jody had fabulous slides filled with tables of numbers no one could possibly decipher in his short presentation, but he was able to capsulize them down to three broad categories on how to judge the viability of products and services: 1) utility, 2) maturity of the market, and 3) consumer appeal, particularly combining functionality and hip styling.

What isn’t news, of course, is that to Boomers, age and decline don’t sell. Yet in my post-graduate gerontology program of the early ‘90s, disease and decline were center stage. We continue to see terms like “senior” used to refer to populations who will never see themselves that way, not to mention discussions about our aging population as if we are the “other” that those in the “we” need to deal with. In the media addressing how this larger demographic will affect housing, jobs, and other issues into the mid-21st century, we are left out of the conversation when we would all be far better served by including “us” in the “we,” all working together to make our communities more effective for all generations.

So the big aha for AARP is that they are putting a great deal of new emphasis on startups and innovators. Jody added that the really new innovation is that AARP will allow its members to be a focus group of sorts for new innovations to be piloted and field tested or reviewed by its members. This real-time market feedback will enable new products and services to be tweaked quickly and brought to market sooner, with more probability of success. AARP has newly put its clout and research resources behind venture capitalists.

With the 50+ market spending over $3 trillion a year, the market is ripe for creative reimagination, but this challenge is not being met effectively. All of us should be asking the advertisers, marketers, and venture capitalists, What’s your new 50+ strategy?

Next up was Myrna Blyth, an award-winning editor, Founder of More magazine, inheritor of Mary’s Third Age, and recently named AARP SVP and Editorial Director. Professionals in the field and members like me are thrilled she’s setting the new tone by taking up our positive aging meme, that of “life reimagined” by blending passion and purpose in a new wave of entrepreneurship that “may be the sweet spot for a generation that reinvents aging.”

Then Amy Hilliard, the event’s poster child for successful entrepreneurs 50+, passionately and concretely reassembled her journey with her entrepreneurial venture Comfort Cake, to rousing applause.

Before we exited to the afternoon sessions, Mary Furlong shared what she’s learned over the last 10 years about what’s next. She left us laughing and not quite sure if she was serious when she shared that after she started Seniornet, then Third Age, and now Boomer Summit, her husband  recently said it’s now time to turn “what’s next” into “that’s it!”

Owning Our Bodies, Our Businesses

For the afternoon, I headed to a panel that was right up my alley: “Engaging the Younger Boomer Consumer: At Her Stage of Life, She’s a Long way from Old.” Steve Reily, founder of Vibrant Nation, moderated, which struck me as an unusual choice—a young Boomer male leading a panel about younger Boomer women (ages 47–51). The panelists focused on case studies that revealed how to engage this shopper based on her life stage more than her age, going beyond stereotypes of what it means to be a woman 47+.

The best of the case studies was presented by Elizabeth Metz, Brand Director for Kimberly-Clark Corporation. She described the problems they had with their Depends product, which was not exactly a winner with Boomers at any age, men or women. Depends and incontinence meant you were old, with one foot in the grave. She cracked me up when she shared consumers’ description of walking down the grocery or drugstore aisle to get their Depends as walking down the “aisle of death”! Clearly Metz and her team had to reinvent the brand from being a grown-up diaper to cool real-fitting underwear. The branding team had a big aha breakthrough in recruiting celebs, like Green Bay Packer and Dallas Cowboy stars and Days of Our Lives actress Lisa Reynolds, to be spokespeople for the new product and to carry the conversation forward.

Jerry Bowden, Deputy General Manager for Edelman Media’s Chicago Health Division, is the brand strategist assigned to Pfizer. I was looking forward to hearing him speak about his work with Pfizer since I’ve been tracking their launch of GetOld.com, which they kicked off last June with a press release entitled “Have Americans reached a new era of optimism about aging?”

Over the years, Jerry had specialized in serving pharma, and Pfizer was one of his key clients on women’s health care, including breast care, endocrine systems, and menopause. Edelman, on behalf of Pfizer, determined that it would be beneficial to do a study with Healthywomen.org to discover what knowledge and attitudes women have that may be negatively affecting their sex lives. Now why would they want to do such a study?

I chuckled, thinking that Jerry was going to tell us that they came up with an equivalent of Viagra or Cialis for women. Oh wow, think again! Edelman and Pfizer wanted to respond specifically to an issue for younger Boomer women, age 47+, and I wondered if this would be a new product for us peri- and menopausal women. (Women on average enter menopause at age 51.)

The issue? In Jerry’s words, “female painful sexual dysfunction” and the “vaginal dryness” symptomology associated with this dysfunction. I started to feel hot flashes all right, and I’ve been in menopause since I was 42, so they weren’t caused by hormonal shifts.

It wasn’t the findings that threw me off (although they are extremely disturbing). It was hearing about this from a middle-aged man, a pharma  marketer, who spoke about this deeply personal women’s issue, framed as a dysfunction for men to solve.

The subtext of these invaluable findings suggests that something is terribly wrong. We aren’t talking to each other, woman to woman. We aren’t framing this issue in a way that matters to us and that gives us agency in addressing it. History has proven that when we women stop talking to each other about what matters, we lose ownership of our own health. Then our voices truly do go silent.

Having been an affinity marketer for financial services in a much earlier career incarnation, I can truly appreciate that Steve and Jerry are brilliant brand marketers. Each has successfully built and leveraged Boomer women affinity groups with serious client relationship both on the online platform side as well as on the advertiser and marketer end of the equation. This is clearly a win-win strategic partnership business model for marketing and selling to Boomer women. Both case studies demonstrate how invaluable it is to team up with women’s organizations whose platforms then become a rich research base for easier real-time data access, as well as a potential goldmine for new innovation, upsells and cross sales, and exponential expansion of distribution opportunities. There was much to learn and value in what they offered for those of us who serve the Boomer market, but the real lessons for me and for the future of women of all ages lay in the implications, which I’m still sitting with.

A Family Affair

The last session I attended was “The Grandparent Economy,” moderated by Amy Goyer, Family Expert at AARP. I was looking forward to hearing Lori Bitter, President of The Business of Aging and Publisher of Grand magazine, talk about the shift to and growth of spending by grandparents across every product category, and a shift in what grandparents plan to leave as a legacy.

Instantly, Amy got the attention of all the grandparents in the room by sharing that there are 60–70 million today and that the average age of first-time grandparents has downshifted to 47–48! Boomers are again redefining roles as they move from parenting to grandparenting, with a focus on improving the quality of life for their grandkids and adult kids while preserving their own. One stat in particular is amazing, harkening back to first- and second-generation immigrant families living under one roof or in tightknit enclaves: Two out of every ten grandparents live in multigenerational households.

Panelist Robert Stephen, VP of Home and Family Portfolio, AARP, told us that grandparents are spending 75% of their monies to contribute to necessities and 25% for medical or health insurance coverage for their kids and grandkids. He also compared AARP’s grandparent membership with Facebook’s 30 million, thus encouraging us to pay attention to the “Grandparent Economy.”

From Lori, we were in for another peek into the near future based on her Grand readership of 4 million (and growing), with 67% (2.4 million) being grandparents. Approximately 40% of Boomers overall are grandparents. Her compelling numbers reveal a fundamental sea change occurring in the role and position of grandparents from solely authority figures to trusted caretakers, conspirators/pals, and key supporters for both adult kids and grandkids alike. 

I wasn’t surprised to hear that the youngest ex-hippie grandparents are highly educated, still working, and culturally diverse. I am glad that my husband and I don’t fit into the Boomer “helicopter parenting” stereotype. Lori asked what I’ve often wondered myself: What impact will Boomer helicopter parents, as newly minted grandparents, have on their  Gen X and Echoboomer children as they become parents, especially new mothers and daughters-in-law? Caught between generational parenting models, I’ve escaped becoming a shrewish interfering helicopter grandmother. But as with the majority of Boomer grandparents, the legacy my husband and I are most consumed by isn’t the money transfer but rather helping our kids and grandkids get ahead by passing along our values, connections (especially family ties), education, and wisdom earned from experience.

What’s Next?

By the end of the day, I could definitely say that Mary’s Boomer Business Summit packed a wallop, fulfilling her promise that we discover how others are developing, funding, and scaling businesses for the Boomer market. For sure this was a day to forge new intelligent relationships and ignite strategic partnerships. The only downside was the one-day format, which was way too short for me to cover all the sessions realistically. There were several more I would have loved to report back on, such as the technologies Boomers and those who market to them are using, the regulatory changes that will drive new business opportunities, and the future of home, work, and play for the Boomer generation.

I certainly hope that “What’s Next” is another, perhaps longer summit in the future, because one thing was clear as this one ended—for Boomers and those who serve them, this is only the beginning.

Women especially find themselves in caretaking roles, even as more and more of us are also working full time. The physical, emotional, and financial strain inevitably takes its toll. Yet the one person who seems to be left off the list for care is the one person who is most crucial to everyone’s needs being met—you.

This is not news to you, I’m sure. Yes, yes, you know you must replenish yourself so that you have something left to give, but who has time? And on the one hand, you can know that you have to make time, even a little, or you will simply wipe yourself out and not be there for anyone, yet even knowing this, you push forward. That superwoman ethos we first imposed on ourselves as working mothers, able to do it all, has not gone away.

Our nest may be empty, but we still feel responsible for everyone’s well-being. We are “younger” and healthier than people our age were a generation ago. We’re thinking about starting a business more often than we’re thinking of retiring from one. Yet we know that we won’t live forever, and we can’t deny that our energy is not the same as it once was. It’s shifting, yet our lifestyles are not necessarily shifting with it.

I’m not talking about recognizing that we really do need to retire. Just the opposite, actually. Too often we get stuck in either/or thinking, that we either keep going at the same pace and in the same way as we have always done or we throw in the towel and retire to some cookie cutter senior complex in the desert. But those aren’t the only choices. Those really aren’t choices at all, frankly.

When I say that our energy is shifting, I mean just that. It is simply moving within us, changing form, no longer the energy of all-nighters to meet a deadline or the kind that fuels caring nonstop for small children. But it is still there, and it is even more powerful than ever before. Especially at menopause and beyond, the energy heats up in us creatively. We can easily miss this, however, if we are focused only on trying to make use of the physical energy we think we need to accomplish everything we want to and need to in our lives.

This is why it is crucial to find time to care for yourself. Not only do you need to restore yourself physically and emotionally, but you need to learn how to get in touch with this creativity so that you can use it to shift gears and rebalance, to determine what you need to do now to start that business, for example, so that it nurtures you and fits best with who you are and who you will be with each passing year. Especially if you are feeling stuck in a cycle of work and caregiving, these moments to pause and reflect, to express yourself and tap into your inner wisdom, are necessary if you are going to get unstuck and find solutions that go beyond quick fixes.

Believe it or not, taking time for yourself now will free your time in the future, making it possible for you to not only rise above the day-to-day but to give more to others and to the world in ways that don’t drain you but sustain you. Take the time—make the time—today.

Image Credit: flickr.com – Hygiene Matters

Time,
Time,
Time,
See what’s become of me
While I looked around for my possibilities.

- Simon And Garfunkel
“A Hazy Shade of Winter”

 
Most of us are asking the same life-altering questions as we find ourselves standing at the precipice of change: How do I make decisions now since I don’t know who I’m going to be . . . or what the world will be like by then?

The “then” timeframe for some encompasses the next 2 to 5 years, and for others, 10 to 15. But what is the same for all is that these midlife questions range from the more profound, Why am I here? Is this all there is?, to the more fundamental practical decisions about where to go from here in our personal and professional lives.

• When do I step down and pass the baton?
• What’s my new passion?
• Should I join some company boards, or rev up and start a new business?
• Can I afford to downshift?
• Is this the relationship I want now?
• How do I turn my empty nest into a launching pad?
• How do I make a lasting impact?

The clock is ticking louder and louder. Just as in adolescence, most of us are teetering between in control and out of control. Each What if? requires a multitude of compromises and leads to more complicated scenarios without obvious answers. Caught in the race against time, we are confronted with the tremendous terror of not knowing. The million-dollar question is: How do we live in between?

We have to stay in the center of time and wait it out. We have to sit in our worst fears. I know that if I resist, my fear manifests even more. Instead of staving off the fear of the unknown with my favorite numbing tricks (filling myself with extra helpings of carbs, obsessing over roads not taken, buying something I probably don’t need), I must instead find a safe middle ground. A place within where time doesn’t exist, where it’s okay to not know . . . yet. That’s where real clarity is birthed.

But while I wait, my task is to keep striving for greater consciousness, stretching to unleash my greatness and to re-awaken the visionary within.

Now more than ever, it is critical that we remain flexible and adaptable, making friends with change, with not knowing . . . with certain uncertainty! This is our time to tap our resources—within and without. Seek the counsel of friends, family, colleagues, and coaches, as we prepare for a new phase or a totally new cycle. Now is the time to invite change and embrace transformation.

We must create our own eye in the storm of time, a place of inner calm, where we look objectively at the possibilities around us instead of being pushed relentlessly forward by the ticking of the clock, which inevitably leads us in haste to make the safe decisions, but not necessarily the right ones.

Once we find that center, that space between time and timelessness, we must anchor ourselves with proper assessment tools and the knowledge and experience of every resource available to us. With this anchor in place, we can move forward with purpose, passion, and profit, toward what matters most to us, to our communities, and to our world.

Image credit: HaPe_Gera

Never mistake knowledge for wisdom.
One helps you make a living; the other helps you make a life.

—Sandra Carey

We usually know it when we see it, but what is wisdom exactly?

Wisdom is in a sense a composite of many different characteristics—profound knowledge, conscious awareness, intuition, foresight, patience, the ability to see the big picture, experience, openness, and empathy—but even then, wisdom is greater than the sum of its parts, just as being a visionary has a greater impact beyond the self.

These characteristics alone do not confer wisdom, although developing them can lead us toward it. To do so requires going beyond the surface. Knowledge alone, for example, is not enough, although having much knowledge is often mistaken for having wisdom. Knowledge itself has many layers that go beyond simply understanding facts. Profound knowledge, which can help lead to wisdom, includes strategic knowledge (which often goes hand in hand with experience and foresight), understanding of change and variation, knowledge about context and relationships and about the multiple, often subtle consequences of our choices. Profound knowledge leads to embracing transformation and to knowing, both crucial aspects of wisdom.

Wisdom is often associated with age and experience, and this isn’t entirely false. With years of experience living and working and relating to others, our intuition and foresight are honed and our ability to see the big picture is usually strengthened simply from having a larger picture of experiences in our past to draw from. But we all know that not everyone over a particular age is wise, and most of us have encountered remarkable wisdom in a young person.

As my mentor Dr. W. Edwards Deming said, the past does not always determine the future. Just because you did well at something before doesn’t mean you will in the future, and just because something worked in the past doesn’t mean it will going forward. We can’t predict the future from the past because there will always be unexpected  discontinuous change. Seemingly more frequent “Black Swan events” (high-impact, unpredictable events) disrupt what was and dismantle what appeared solid.

But when we can meld earned wisdom with constantly evolving profound knowledge about chaos and transition, about Starship Earth and each other as visionary cohabitants navigating into the future, we can prepare for alternative futures . . . opening the gateway to greater creativity, innovation, and resiliency to sustain all that matters most—in our personal lives, our professional endeavors, and as a stewards of today’s tomorrows.

A wise person tends to be optimistic about these tomorrows, although whether this is the result of wisdom or a necessary factor in developing wisdom is interesting to ponder. For example, wisdom enables us to face uncertainties and chaos with confidence that we will be able to solve the problems before us, even if it takes us a while (and no small amount of patience) to do so. Wisdom also enables us to distinguish between the problems we can and should solve and those we need to let go.

We are moving into an era of increasingly available information at our fingertips, yet as a nation and as a planet, we are clearly not using this information wisely. One major reason for this is that the speed of information is overwhelming, and few of us take time regularly to reflect, a necessary habit of the wise—and our environment and our social and political landscape are paying the price.

We’ve never needed wise, visionary leadership more than we do now. This year, will you be one of the visionaries the world is waiting for?

Image credit: Photograph by Rick Audet.

For many people, though, one purpose (or a welcome effect) of saving money is to refocus on how we spend our time. Even the converse is true—the more we focus on the quality of how we spend our time, the more likely we are to save money.

For example, with gift giving, more and more families are creating gifts for each other (e.g., photo collages) instead of going on impersonal shopping sprees, and these gifts are invariably more meaningful—to give, to receive, to keep. Others are giving experiences—such as taking a friend or family member to a play or a concert. This is not only a gift based on the person’s interest, it is a gift to both of spending more time with loved ones, with the people who inspire us, make us laugh, keep us young. More and more companies (like Groupon and Living Social) are recognizing and supporting this trend with deep discounts on shared experiences.

This extends beyond the experience as a gift and into our everyday experiences, as more people discover the free and low-cost entertainment options out there. In an era when people risk isolation by spending all their time behind a computer screen, the economy has kind of jump-started a trend of inexpensive entertainment being more and more social—festivals and art shows; free or low-cost outdoor plays, movies, concerts; free or discount days at museums; more and more community-run (instead of corporate-run) conferences on various interests, from gardening to science fiction. Many of these kinds of events have always been around, but in the last five years or so, they have multiplied exponentially.

Even in travel, focusing on spending quality time often leads automatically to saving money. This might mean less travel abroad and more travel in the States to see family and friends all over. It can also mean that when you do travel to other countries, you eschew the expensive tourist traps and end up enjoying more of the real flavor of the country and its people.

In a way, opportunities for more quality time are one of the unexpected gifts of the Great Recession, and one I hope we hold on to long after the economy recovers. I urge all of us to make quality experiences an integral part of the new world we are building so that they last beyond the immediate need to save money.

Start new traditions with family and friends based on the inexpensive experience. Set up new gift-giving traditions with family and friends. Change the workplace culture to provide time, flexibility, and opportunities for quality experiences—both within and outside the company.

The possibilities are endless once we start thinking creatively about how we spend our days and our money. Because in the end, economic recovery, individual happiness, health, and even achieving our most deeply held visions—it’s all about time.

How are you saving money and focusing more on quality time in your life?

image credit: flickr.com, photograph by emdot

—Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Address
June 15, 2005

When Steve Jobs passed away at only 56 years old, the world lost a bright visionary innovator, but the legacy Jobs left was an enormous gain for the world. He was a man who, for better or worse, trusted his gut, his inner voice, even when it made him unpopular, and even when it led to what seemed at the time to be disaster, such as getting fired from his own company:

“I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.”

And this is the key to being visionary. It isn’t in young geniuses tinkering in their garage. It is in the seasoned, fallible humans who use an unexpected and unwanted transition as an opportunity to reinvent themselves in ways that surpass anything they accomplished in the past.

In other words, no one is born to greatness. We all have that visionary voice inside us. Those who become truly great in this world are just like everyone else except for one thing—they listen to that voice, even when it’s saying what they don’t want to hear, what they are afraid to hear—even when every other voice around them is telling them the exact opposite.

The more you tap into that visionary inside you, the more opportunities will present themselves when you are prepared to act on them. As Jobs described of his own success, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”

No matter what age or stage of life you are in, the only way you’ll be able to connect the dots to create your vision is if you put those dots out there today. Listen to that voice and start leaving your mark. Everything else is secondary.

What does being a visionary mean to you?

Source: “‘You’ve got to find what you love,’ Jobs says,” Stanford Report, June 14, 2005.

Image credit: Danny Novo