Greetings!
This past Wednesday I hosted a webinar for Diversity MBA on setting personal goals. At the end of the session, I took questions from the audience, and someone had a particularly good one: How do Bold Goals shift when we age?
It’s a given that what we value and strive for when we’re in our 20s would differ–differ greatly, actually–from what we value and strive for when we’re in our late 50s. In fact, if you’re a “Baby Boomer” (i.e., someone born between 1946 and 1964), your generation has a whole set of “Boomer Goals” that are framed by things like retirement, giving back, and maybe even staying active and relevant in a world that feels like it’s getting younger by the minute.
If you’re older, and keen on setting and achieving these Boomer Goals, what do you do?
Thankfully, I made a worksheet for that.
The Pillar Planner is a tool meant to help you determine which areas are more important to you in terms of goals you want to accomplish, and it frames it with a timeline to gauge what warrants immediate attention and what can wait.
Here’s a blank Pillar Planner…
…And here’s one filled out. By using the Seven Pillars to classify your goals, you pinpoint which ones will take longer to achieve, and which ones you want to tackle right away.
What if you’re a Boomer a year into retirement? Obviously, there might be less room to put off some goals until later, and the goals that would take 20 or 30 years to accomplish would be unrealistic goals to set. But this worksheet should help no matter what your age.
So how do Bold Goals shift with age? If you’re a Boomer, or getting closer to retirement, your goals might be centered around what to do with your life when going to work is no longer a daily priority.
It’s at this stage in life that you have the most wisdom, resources and time, and the prospect of doing something wild and crazy and big might have some appeal. However, although a lot of people think they just want to spend all their waking hours on the golf course or playing with their grandchildren, once they retire and have a honeymoon period for a year or two, they realize something is missing.
There are stages to retirement, each one reflecting where a person’s goals may stem from. They are:
- Pre-Retirement
- Retirement
- Contentment
- Disenchantment
- Reorientation
- Routine
When the disenchantment stage is reached, thoughts like “there has got to be more to life than going to the golf course everyday” enter the picture. So what then?
In a future Notes, we’ll dive deeper into the particulars of the Boomer Goals and what they might be. But for now, remember that Boomer Goals are Bold Goals, too, and the Pillar Planner can help figure out what goals need to be accomplished and when.
P.S. PROJECT BOLD LIFE: The Proven Formula to Take on Challenges and Achieve Happiness and Success is a complete system for planning your life to get what you want and has been a top seller in three categories: “Motivational Growth & Spirituality”, “Personal Success & Spirituality” and “Management Skills”. I hope you check it out if you have not purchased a copy.
P.S.S. This past week’s webinar was a success. I hope to share the recording when available hopefully next week. Also, I will be speaking at an upcoming webinar titled “9 Lightning-Round Solutions for a Tight Talent-Acquisition Market” on March 8. More details to follow.
