So You Think You’ve “Peaked.” Probably Not – Read On!

A question came up recently on Quora.com that intrigued me and motivated me to put the pencil to paper with a response. The question asked:

“At what age is your prime age?”

Fertile ground for thought and opinion, don’t you agree?

So I stepped up with my two cents worth. Here’s an expanded version.

There would seem, to me, to be two different types of prime: physical and psychological.

Physical prime is easier to define. Generally, we reach our physical prime in our mid-to-late 20’s and a gradual decline begins from there. My understanding is that this physical decline in terms of muscle mass and strength really begins to accelerate in the mid-to-late-thirties and picks up serious speed as we approach our fifties unless offset through strength training.

Mental prime may be more elusive as it would seem to be unique to each of us and have so many dimensions. Your psychological/emotional prime is likely to look different and have a different timeline than mine or everyone else’s.

I did some research and found this interesting article on the topic published in 2017 by Business Insider:

Here Are The Ages You Peak at Everything Throughout Life

Here’s the chart that they developed which shows interesting prime ages for a broad selection of phenomena:

As the article emphasized, this is not a controlled study and the points mark the middle of an age range. So these are averages. That’s important for you, my readers, to know because you are all above average on so many levels.

Some things are pretty obvious. For instance, you’re 60 and deciding to learn to speak Russian. Good luck with that. It appears you are 5 decades too late to expect significant results from that worthwhile mental-gymnastics effort.

Double-dipping “Life Satisfaction”

It’s interesting to note, from the chart, that life satisfaction pops up peaking in two spots: age 23 and again at 69 but with psychological wellbeing peaking at 82. This is all according to science.

At 79, I honestly don’t remember what my life satisfaction level was at 23. I was between stints in college and mostly a “wandering generality” into muscle cars and bar hopping. Maybe it’s saying that there is some life satisfaction in wanderlust which was a pretty popular lifestyle with the reprobates I hung with in mid-1960s Cheyenne, Wyoming. Fortunately, sanity returned and I went back for my third and final run at a college degree (P.S. I succeeded). My biggest contribution through that meandering stretch was to the economic welfare of pubs and gas stations.

I will, on the other hand, attest to there being greater life satisfaction at 69 – and in the 10 years since – than all the earlier times in my life. But then, that’s just me. It was in my seventh decade that I grew to realize that my “good spots” came when I stayed true to my birthright of uniqueness and didn’t succumb to other people’s opinions and the pressure of cultural expectations. Unfortunately, it took me that long to recognize and acknowledge that uniqueness – or, as I wrote last week, my “inclinations.”

That discovery, in and of itself, is not an easy or common one. So few of us ever acknowledge and honor our true inborn giftedness. Our culture snags us with our outdated educational system, pounds us with cultural expectations, and hooks us into a life built around comparison instead of our uniqueness.

I’m reminded of the article written by Australian hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, who spent many years with patients who were in the last few weeks of their lives and who had gone home to die.  In her article “Regrets of the Dying, she shares the five most common regrets that they expressed in their final days. Far and away, the most common regret was:

“I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”

Age 82 is a head-fake!

I don’t expect anyone in my cohort to claim they haven’t passed their physical peak. They know my bull**** filter, albeit not great, wouldn’t let that one through.

But what about that “psychological wellbeing” peak at 82? Seems kinda early, don’t ya think? Couldn’t we move that one out another decade or two – and make it a really brief peak, like overnight, maybe? As in “die young, as late as possible.” Sort of like the Okinawans have tended to do – live happy and purposeful close to 100 and then check out with virtually no morbidity period. Unlike we Americans with our average 10 1/2 years of morbidity.

What’s the Okinawan magic? Prior to being invaded and infected with western culture, it was mostly a strong sense of purpose built around community and family combined with non-western lifestyle diet and movement choices. Historically, Okinawans haven’t relinquished their identity and sense of purpose to retirement – they have no word for the concept in their vocabulary.

So maybe we move that 82 to 92 or 97 or – heaven forbid – to 102. Rather than hopping off the cliff from labor-to-leisure at the “obligatory 65”, we turn our retirement into a purposeful, service-filled period that is balanced with labor, leisure, and learning. Your thing, built around your “inclinations”, on your timetable, at your speed, in whatever form you choose but with an eye to changing something that needs changing.

Why not? Remember, these are all averages – and you’re not!

Hope you are coming out of this COVID year unscathed. We appreciate you sticking around and giving us a read. Let us know your thoughts on this peak issue. Scroll down and leave a comment or drop me an email at gary@makeagingwork.com

Oh, by the way. I just launched my new website for the other part of my life – my resume writing, LinkedIn presence development, and career transition and retirement coaching. Give us a visit over at www.turningpointcareerservices.com and schedule a call if you would like to discuss any of the services I’m offering.

Don’t Give Up Your “Unrepeatable Uniqueness.”

I’ll bet you’ve heard this before:

  • No two snowflakes are ever the same. You are a snowflake.
  • You are a unique, unrepeatable collection of DNA.
  • You have a genetic makeup that has never happened before and won’t be repeated again.

It’s true. You are “unrepeatably unique.”

 

So what? Am I supposed to do something with that esoteric insight?

 

Hang with me – I think I can make this less esoteric.

For a big chunk of my life, I have been fascinated by this thing called Mastery. For some time, I harbored a resentment that I wasn’t especially gifted, a prodigy, a genius, or born of genius parents, or raised in the right neighborhood (rural S.E. Wyoming is not known for its production of world changers).

I faced a path to mastery blocked by my DNA and heritage – at least, in my mind. I carried that psychological ball-and-chain around for a long time.

That ignorance began to dissolve when I read a book entitled “Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-term Fulfillment” by George Leonard. In it, Leonard defines mastery this way:

“It resists definition yet can be instantly recognized. It comes in many varieties, yet follows certain unchanging laws. It brings rich rewards, yet is not really a goal or a destination but rather a process, a journey. We call this journey mastery, and tend to assume that it requires a special ticket available only to those born with exceptional abilities. But, mastery isn’t reserved for the supertalented or even for those who are fortunate enough to have gotten an early start. It’s available to anyone who is willing to get on the path and stay on it – regardless of age, sex, or previous experience.”

If this is all true, why do we see so few true masters? What was it about Mozart, or Tiger Woods, or Einstein, or Leonardo de Vinci, or Tommy Emmanuel (my acoustic guitar master/hero), or Seth Godin (marketing guru) that took them to the master category?

There’s no magic to any and all of their mastery achievement. None of these people are or were prodigies.

Prodigies almost never become masters. They fizzle out.

What these masters did was to (1) honor their uniqueness and deepest internal drivers and (2) hop onto a path that they never abandoned, regardless of the twists and turns.

Leonard offers up an explanation of why the path to mastery is so rare:

“The trouble is that we have few, if any, maps to guide us on the journey or even to show us how to find the path. The modern world, in fact, can be viewed as a prodigious conspiracy against mastery. We’re constantly bombarded with promises of immediate gratification, instant success, and fast, temporary relief, all of which lead in exactly the wrong direction.”

In his view, this anti-mastery mentality not only prevents us from developing our potential skills but threatens our health, education, career, relationships, and perhaps “our national economic viability.”

So there I had an answer – I had been conspired against by the very culture I existed in. Who knew?

A “Third Age Master?” Resurrect your inner genius.

In my continued pursuit of an understanding of the nuances of mastery, I dived into a book that’s been gathering dust for a couple of years on my crowded bookshelf: Robert Greene’s “Mastery.” It’s a 300+ page, dense, small-font project with guaranteed nap-generating qualities if you aren’t an off-kilter reader like yours truly. It takes Leonard’s writing to the next level.

Greene pretty well clears up any mystery about mastery using a plethora of real-life examples, ranging from Mozart to Einstein to Buckminster Fuller to John Coltrane.

Honestly, the book started out feeding my frustration at being severely short of having mastered anything other than sitting and thinking about mastery.

But, Greene jolted me out of my drift toward a mid-page nap with the statement that “intensity of effort lies at the heart of mastery” and that:

“-at the core of this intensity of effort is in fact a quality that is genetic and inborn – not talent or brilliance, which is something that must be developed, but rather a deep and powerful inclination toward a particular subject. 

This inclination is a reflection of a person’s uniqueness. This uniqueness is not something merely poetic or philosophical – it is a scientific fact that genetically, every one of us is unique, our exact genetic makeup has never happened before and will never be repeated. This uniqueness is revealed to us through the preferences we innately feel for particular activities or subjects of study.”

I bolded the word “inclination” because, as I read on, it occurred to me that it’s the word that best describes what nearly all of us fail to honor in our lives.

How did yours truly, a wandering-generality from rural Wyoming who relished time alone to think, who liked to read and write, and who most enjoyed his three semesters as a journalism major in college end up selling wood-fiber ceiling tile to lumberyards in St. Louis?

It turns out that this anomaly isn’t all that hard to sort out. Like most, my “uniqueness” and my “inclinations” bowed before the cultural expectations of the “big P’s” in my life: parents, peers, professors, politicians, pundits, paycheck.

You recall the not-so-subtle message, don’t you?

Don’t stand out.

Stay in the middle of that bell curve.

Do as you’re told.

Keep your head down and enjoy a “getta” life: getta degree, getta job, getta spouse; getta house, 2.5 kids, fenced yard, 2 SUVs, and golden retriever; getta title, 401K, gold watch, and retirement cake.

Somewhere along that sorry path, inclinations got buried deeper and deeper into the depths of our accumulated, culturally-influenced neural connections.

Then, we bump up against that artificial finish line called 65, roll a stone and permanent seal over the tomb containing our withering inclinations, and call it retirement.

So, you’re tired and can’t wait for retirement because you bought the Koolaid that retirement is the relief you need from a life and “job” that, on a good day, injects an unhealthy dose of cortisol (hint: stress hormone) and has nothing to do with those inclinations you tormented your parents with at age 9 or 10.

So you bag it – or start planning to bag it – and wander into unchartered territory with a timeline that could be longer than the one spent in your “career.” Chances are good you may jump in armed with nothing resembling a roadmap.

Escape is the operative word. Not relaunch or take-off. Been there, done that, through with it.

And the accumulated skills and experience begin their retreat deep into secluded sections of the brain. The highly developed neural connections you formed over 10, 20, 30 years begin to shed their myelin and shrink, helped along with enchantment with the voice-activated remote, Netflix, and an average of 49 hours/week of TV watching.

You’ve just denied yourself the chance to become a “third age master.”

Our youngers, our off-kilter society need you to honor your “inclinations.” Yes, those inclinations are likely barnacled or crusted over by meeting cultural expectations, accumulating, conforming, fitting in. But, they ain’t dead yet. In fact, they are like the flowers that suddenly blanket Death Valley once a decade when perfect conditions develop.

Your “third age” could be that Death Valley flower experience. Conditions could be perfect for massaging those inclinations back to life. And making-a-ruckus in the world, or in somebody’s life.

Don’t waste your 10,000 hours!

It’s generally accepted that true masters have invested 10,000 hours in pursuing their inclinations. Tiger and Amadeus felt and acknowledged their inclinations at age 4 and were pushed into and nurtured along their journey to mastery by their fathers. They had their 10,000 hours as teenagers.

How many of 10,000 hours might you have that can be supplemented and channeled into bringing your inclinations to life?

You were anything but a slug through those career years. You accumulated skills and experiences that are worth a lot. Just think what might happen if you took those acquired skills, experiences, accumulated wisdom and turn it all loose on your “inclinations” with an eye toward making things better for you, the world, and the people in it.

Somehow that just seems to have a better ring to it than just escaping.

Living a Regret Free Life

I recently came across this post by my friend Susan Williams of BoomingEncore. As we emerge from this scourge, I felt its message was appropriate as we adjust to the new reality of a changing world. Be sure to check out the TedX YouTube at the end – a powerful 10-minute message.

Enjoy!

BY SUSAN WILLIAMS

Over the last year or so I have talked with many people who shared with me that how they currently were living was not what they really wanted to do.

Whether it was pursuing a different profession that would allow them to be more creative or wanting to help other people more or even a desire to feel that they were making a bigger difference in the world – they all had one thing in common.

They were talking about doing something different but were not actually taking steps towards doing anything about it.

It made me wonder – what stops us from pursuing what we say we really want to do?  

Here are just some of the things that I think stops us;

1. Fear

Fear of failure, fear of what other people would think, fear of changing relationships, fear of not having enough time are just some examples of the fear that can stop someone from making a significant change.

2. Financial

In some cases – especially changing careers – I think that facing a potential financial impact may sometimes be even a bigger challenge than facing fear.

As we get older to think about changing from a comfortable lifestyle to possibly something less secure can be a real challenge.  It may not only affect you – in many cases, it can affect an entire family.

3.  Easier Just to Talk About It

Let’s be honest.  It’s easier to just talk about what we would like to do in our lives rather than actually doing anything about it.

If we think about all the people who talk about losing weight, getting more exercise, seeing friends more often – but don’t – this is the same type of thing.  It takes time, work, dedication, and commitment to actually pursue something new.

4.  Support

To make a significant change can often require support – family, friends, colleagues – especially if your decision could impact others.

So why bother?  If we have to get over some of these hurdles is any significant change really worth it?

As I thought about this question, I was reminded of a TED video I watched a while back presented by Kathleen Taylor, a mental health counselor who worked with people in their final days of life.

In her presentation, Kathleen shared what was discovered as the number one regret at the end of a person’s life.  She shared the following thought that was voiced by many in their final days;

“I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself and not the life that others expected of me.”

Based on this thought I think the answer to make a change or not make a change is truly a very personal decision.

The “follow your passion” or “pursue your dreams” advice looks great on Facebook and Twitter images but any significant change is a very personal decision with many different facets to consider.

I think the really big question is to ask ourselves how we think we will feel at the end of our lives – will the choices and decisions that we have made allow us the opportunity to live the life we really wanted to live? 

I think if we can answer this question honestly and have made decisions based on this question then the choices as to whether we decide to undertake a significant change becomes easier.

Our lives will then be something to look back on with both joy and satisfaction – and without any regrets.

Here is the TED Talk given by Kathleen Turner – Rethinking the Bucket List;

This article originally appeared on Booming Encore and was reprinted with permission.

Susan Williams is the Founder of Booming Encore , a site that has grown to become a globally recognized social media influencer and expert for baby boomers on retirement and aging and is ranked as one of the top baby boomer blogs worldwide. As a baby boomer herself, Susan was interested in doing something that really made a difference and has dedicated herself to overcoming the limited dedicated resources and information to support this unique time of life for baby boomers. Booming Encore also partners with some amazing contributors who generously share their experience and expertise.

The Size of Your Funeral Gathering Will Be Determined By the Weather. Whaaaat?

I remember how that quote rocked my world a few decades ago when I first read it in my mid-50s. I was in that life phase characteristic of most American males where there is this sinking realization there are more yesterdays than tomorrows and the “is-this-all-there-is” questions start surfacing. 

Am I relevant?

Will I ever be relevant?

What is relevant?

Does anyone care that I’m here? (News flash: Most don’t!)

You would think that by 45 or 50 or 55 that we would have most things about life figured out. But, we don’t. We’ve been too busy being heads-down, meeting cultural expectations.

Maybe the timing of this speed bump is built into the male genetic arrangement. Women don’t seem to bother with it so much. More likely, it’s because we’ve pulled up short of the cultural goalposts expected at that age – image, title, boys toys, neighborhood, retirement account, etc.

And there is that sinking feeling that there isn’t enough time or enough gas left in the tank to catch up.

 

The hour-long funeral procession

Coming across this quote reminded me of an experience I had nine years ago. I was doing my recruiting thing ensconced in my 9th-floor office in a building that overlooked one of Denver’s busiest east-west thoroughfares. I was on the phone with a candidate when I heard the “woop-woop” of a police siren. I looked out my corner window and saw a group of motorcycle policemen blocking off intersections ahead of a funeral procession.

From my perch, I could see a couple of dozen cars behind the hearse winding around a curve a few blocks away. I thought nothing of it and turned back to my phone call which continued for another 15 minutes or so. As I hung up, I glanced again down to the street and saw the funeral procession continuing to steadily stream by with the trail of cars still disappearing around the curve.

I remember thinking that there must have been some dignitary that passed but I hadn’t heard or read of any.

I turned back to the paperwork on my desk and stood up a full 30 minutes later to discover the funeral procession still streaming by.

Over an hour passed before the last car and trailing motorcycle cop passed.

As far as I knew, the governor was still alive, as was the mayor. And I hadn’t heard of the passing of any mega-church pastors. Or any Broncos/Rockies/Nuggets/Avalanche sports heroes. Or any of our small collection of Colorado billionaires.

Who was this person?

I still don’t know. The obits revealed nothing out of the ordinary.

This much I know – –

It was a sunny, warm spring day. But good weather didn’t explain this procession. This person, whoever he or she was, had touched a lot of people in a positive way.

This had “silent hero” written all over it.

The event has stuck with me and is a constant reminder that it’s the “internal” and not the “external” and the “give” and not the “get” that ultimately counts.

That’s a hard part of this mid-life transition for many. It’s a point where some of the hardest career and life decisions are made. I’ve written before about the “happiness curve” and the research that has revealed that age 47, on average, is the low point of happiness for most men.

Having been there personally and listened to lots of stories from folks at this stage, I’ll offer up a few thoughts on what one should know or begin to discover at this phase of the life span.

  • You should know if your life quest is aligned with your core essence. By age 45 – 55, you should feel, at the gut level, that you are, or are not, doing what you were designed to do. For most of us, our decisions up to this point have been largely driven by cultural influences and not by recognition and acknowledgment of our deepest talents, strengths, and dreams. It’s important to take seriously those aforementioned questions that are starting to dog us. They are a sign that there may be a misalignment that, if not acted on, could carry us into a second-half full of discontent and the negative biological consequences that can accompany the discontent.
  • You are now on the “back nine” and don’t get to do the “front nine” over. I love the golf analogy. I borrowed it from pioneer exercise physiologist Dan Zeman (see this article) Dan is on a life quest to raise awareness amongst male boomers of the health and wellness impact of decisions made in the back-nine or second half of life, reminding us that we don’t get to play our front nine over. There is a good chance, as Americans, that our “front nine” didn’t do us any favors, physically and emotionally. More than likely, we have coupled the stress of striving to accumulate and meet cultural expectations with a relatively unhealthy lifestyle of poor diet and immobility in a quest for convenience, comfort, and conformity.

We don’t have to look far for proof of the significance of marginal “front nine” decisions. The “happiness curve” seems to confirm that the mid-40s is a point where “turning point” decisions need to be made as one heads into the “back nine.” It’s also a time when the accumulated effects of poor “front nine” lifestyle decisions begin to manifest in the form of health issues. Most of us enter our mid-40s in pretty good shape but beginning to demonstrate signs that a downturn is underway that needs attention. Most common are weight gain, hypertension, increased cholesterol, arthritis, anxiety/depression.

The CDC has announced that over 60% of American males are overweight and 25% are obese. Nearly 70% of the American population is pre-diabetic and 50% don’t know it. This age and later is when all this begins to show up. That alone is a call to action at this point in life.

A few other things come to mind that we should know if we don’t already:

  • Things are rarely as good or as bad as they seem. Most anxiety is self-inflicted.
  • Most of the things we worry about are out of our control. (Reference the Serenity Prayer as a guide).
  • Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery. The treasure is in today and doing what’s important to you. Today is all we have.
  • We will rise to the level of the five people we hang out with the most. It behooves us to be careful of our relationships and not be afraid to glean.
  • Our potential in life is limited not by the external but the internal. Live internally and accept that you are gifted in a special way. Don’t let our culture take it away from you.

It’s possible, as medicine and the biosciences continue to advance and we learn more about self-care, that 45-55 may not even be life’s true mid-point (more on this in a future article).  We can seize the opportunity and couple our inborn talents with accumulated life experiences, skills, and knowledge to virtually explode into your second half, be a world-changer, and have the time to do it.

The only thing holding us back is what we allow to happen between our temples.

Maybe the visual of that hour-long funeral procession will help.