Retirement:Make your last act outrageous!

What is holding you back in retirement?

One of the things you notice as you get older is everything that you accumulate. Certainly you accumulate relationships. You also accumulate assets. You want those accumulations because this is the wealth to sustain you as you finish life. Without the assetts and relationships, old age is empty. You also accumulate attitudes and a body of beliefs that form the foundation of who you are. You have learned over the years what you can and can’t do and you accept that you exist only within those limited boundaries. In other words, you stop growing or changing and live out your life within the cage you created never venturing outside those limits.

Life’s lessons or heavy baggage?

You keep this baggage of what you think you are because it was hard earned. Whatever you are today is the result of the situations you put yourself in and how you made the best of them. Maybe you didn’t become the success you wanted to be but it doesn’t mean you are done with life. Getting old to most of us means carrying the baggage of the life experiences we have experienced and the lessons we have learned. We trudge on burdened with the weight of our life experience and the limits we have learned to accept. The possibilities of life exist only withing the narrow range of movement left to us loaded down as we are with all that baggage. We accept those limitation because we think we don’t have a choice. Only a few of us see the truth and recognize that we do have a choice. We can put the damned baggage down on the side of the road and leave it. We don’t have to take it with us. We don’t have to let it limit us. We don’t even have to think about it again. When we drop those burdens, we are free to see other options and opportunities. We can forget our conventional thinking and expectations. In short, without all that baggage we can are free to be whatever we choose – even outrageous.

Be open to change

On of the hardest things to do when you get older is to believe in change. Society tells us that with age, we develop wisdom and there is truth to that but along with that wisdom we acquire rigid thinking and limited vision. We are less inclined to listen to ideas, particularly from youngsters still wet behind the ears. It is hard for a millennial or a boomer to listen to advice from a gen Y, let alone apply it to their life. But who do you listen to?

Now what?  Claim the most outrageous identity you can imagine.

When you decide to drop the baggage from the past, what do you do? Who are you and where are you going. Who inspires you to try new things? That is the challenge and the excitement because it can be anything that you want. Who do you want to be? Claim the most outrageous identity you can think of and then make it your own. After all, it is only the rest of your life. Stop living it on someone else’s terms and make it your own. It may be confusing but it will certainly never be dull.

Become a master at branding.

I am taking my cues here from the most outrageous blogger I know even if he is a youngster. I will be applying his lessons to life style design and the finishing strong generation Don’t hesitate to check out his information and share your impressions or thoughts back here. For now, stop and think about all the baggage you are carrying. Is it providing value to you or is it just dead weight? Give some thought to dropping it on the side of the road. Are you ready to sprint now that the weight is lifted? How outrageous are you willing to be?  I want to hear your story.