I have read that middle age is when you start counting the number of years you have left. I have also read that men in their 50s are more conscious of, and worried about, the time they have left than men in their 60s, 70s and beyond.
It is as though some internal mechanism is triggered in our 50s to remind us that if we have been putting off reaching some important personal goal, we had better get started.
One thing I have found in coaching individuals and farm and ranch couples is they almost invariably have a dream of what they would like to do some day. It might be a trip or a community project, learning a skill or helping in a third world country.
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Most of them don’t have any kind of plan to carry out their dreams, however. They are putting it off until “when they get time” or “when they can afford it.”
They don’t realize that most of their dreams are far easier to achieve than they think and that what they need is concrete planning.
One couple’s dream was to visit Europe and to tour organic farms. They had switched to organic production six years before I met them and wanted to see how others did it. They put off planning the trip because they assumed it would be too expensive. I challenged them to make their dream a reality and within eight months they had taken the trip. They got creative and found a couple of ways to save a lot of money:
- A friend of theirs was a business executive who travelled a lot and had more air mile points than he could use. They traded some grass-finished organic
beef for enough of his air miles to get round trip
tickets. - They connected with organic farms in Europe through the World-Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms Association and arranged to volunteer their time on farms in exchange for room and board. They saw a lot of country, learned a tremendous amount about organic farming and met interesting people on a budget of less than half what they had anticipated. It’s amazing what a little research, open-mindedness and creativity can do.
Dashed dreams
Some of the people I talk to gave up their dreams so long ago that they don’t even know what they are any more. Many children were told so often that their dreams were unrealistic by well-meaning parents and other adults that they forgot about them.
Sometimes they remember their dreams, but have given up on achieving them. When I ask, they say something such as, “Oh, I used to think I wanted to travel to China,” “learn to fly,” “become a cabinet maker” or you name it, but “it’s really not practical,” “I could never do it,” “I’m too old now,” “I can’t afford it” or some other reason.
If I challenge their assumptions about why they can’t realize their dreams, they often begin to realize they have simply been telling themselves the same stories their parents told them long ago and maybe the stories were not true. I can hear the energy in their voices rise as they begin to think about ways they might carry it off. From there it is mainly a matter of commitment and planning.
Are you starting to think about “how little time you have left?”
If you are starting to feel anxious and if you have dreams or personal goals you have yet to achieve, this might be a good time to make a plan.
Priorities in life
Don’t know what your dreams are any more? Here is a simple exercise I use to help people get in touch with what really matters to them.
Write down the answers to these three questions. Don’t ponder them. Just write down what comes to you. Do this for about two minutes per question.
- If you knew you were going to suddenly die in five years, how would you live until then?
- If you knew you were going to suddenly die in six months, how would you live until then?
- If you found out you were going to drop dead in 24 hours, what would you regret not having done?
Once you have answered the questions, start planning to do the important things that showed up.
One of the best direct marketing advertisements I ever saw was in the 1970s for a book called Lazy Man’s Way To Riches by Joe Karbo.
The last line of the ad said something like “six months from now, you could be on your way to living the life you have always dreamed of or you could just be six months older. You decide.”
That edgy feeling you have about getting to the end of your journey might be trying to tell you something. Pretty soon you’ll be six months older anyway.P. Goal-setting exercise
It’s five years from today. Answer these questions in the present tense: (For example, it is 2009 and I am 58 years old.)
1. Your age. (I am _____ years old.)
2. The ages of your spouse and children.
3. What you are doing for a living.
4. What recreational-social activities you are participating in.
5. Where you are living. What kind of accommodations you have.
6. Who the most important people in your life are.
7. What lifetime dreams-objectives you have accomplished in the previous five years.
8. What you did the previous five years to achieve those dreams-objectives.
9. Any obstacles-logjams you had to overcome to achieve your dreams.
10 Any attitudes-beliefs you had to change to achieve your dreams.
