Does Life Design Work at 50?   

If you've been reading this blog, you know we talk a lot about making life decisions and life coaching, especially when you are 50 or more. If this is your first visit, welcome!

Designing your life is about applying the principles of design thinking to creating the life you want to be living, instead of letting life just happen to you.  The question I'm asking here, and you may be asking, is, Is It Too Late for Me?  Does Life Design Work at 50?  What about 60?

The answer is an unequivocal YES!  The principles of life design work at any age…and they work over and over again.

Does Life Design Work at 50?

The truth about our lives is that we end up living several different ones over time…the average today is seven different career changes, for instance.

What about other changes…

• dating
• getting married
• getting divorced
• remarrying
• having children
• going back to school
• taking up a new hobby
• starting a business
• retiring
• moving to a new part of the world

and then the more negatively challenging ones, like

• losing a life partner
• illness
• death and grief

I did put getting divorced in the first list you may notice…divorce can be the worst day of your life, but then it can also be the best. It can come down to using principles of life design to determine how any event in our lives impacts us.

No way do the principles not apply at any age!  It is not too late or too early…does Life Design work at 50.  Oh, you bet!

Finding Your Own Place

I tuned in to a YouTube video earlier today…it's on liminality.

OK, that's a word I wasn't familiar with..it's an in-between state, a kind of gray area that is neither black nor white.

Take an example of a boy of 12 from a tribe who is going through a manhood ritual…while in the ritual he is neither boy nor man, he is in-between.  When the ritual ends, he is considered a man.  Before he was still a boy.  The transition time is liminal.

We all go through liminal periods in our lives, Marianne Cantwell says in this video.

Being in a liminal space is like the place when you first wake up in the morning, she says…where you're not quite awake or asleep, where many times we have creative thoughts.

Being creative and curious is the first stage in Designing your Life.

That's why I've put up a lot of posts on developing creativity and creative thinking in this blog.  Creative thinking got educated out for many of us in our early years…to design your life at any age, you need to be creative and curious…open to new ideas and new ways of looking at things.

Role Models are Not the Ideal

The ideal is being who you are….

Role models can give some idea of direction.  They are useful certainly.  But we want to be sure not to lose ourselves by boxing ourselves in to become the role model.

Boxing in is like taking on a set of rules and regulations.

Rules are helpful in shaping the playground of life.

BUT remember life is a game…rules can restrict freedom, curiosity and creativity.

That is not to say there are none.  But some of them we can form for ourselves, can't we?

In the game of life we design, we use some rules we get from others, from societal norms, from laws, from our parents and teachers, and from our chosen role models.

We also will be happiest when we don't lose who we are, and subvert our personalities and likes and dreams to try to become a carbon copy of a role model, or to try to conform to the expectations others have for us and our lives.

Free Range Human

What really attracted me to this was the terminology, Free Range Human.  I like that.

Not being in a box.

Being free to roam and explore.

When you ask does life design work at 50, you are asking are you still a free range human at 50?

When you know the rules of the game of life, you are free to play, and to give your life and injection that makes it your own.

You don't give up your power to be you.

How to Help Your Loved Ones Accept Your Life Design

Change isn't easy for many.  We've all heard of situations where people stay in a dead-end and boring job rather than risk the change of starting your own business, for instance.  Or people staying in abusive family situations, rather than risking going out on their own.

The Life Design Principles show how to prototype possible changes, so you take baby steps rather than risking everything in one big swoop.  They also talk about getting help.

One of the parts in this video, toward the end, is about designing and living your life the way you want, the way that makes you happy, rather than to please others.

Doing what you love, not what makes others approve of you.

To get the approval and endorsement of those who matter, whether we are talking about life changes or career changes, it's a matter of telling your story.  How you frame your choices to others will help them to relate to them.

You're in control of your narrative.

Does Life Design Work at 50?  Oh, yes.

Retirement and Aging just open the door to more and more life choices.

What choices are you considering today?  Share and inspire us!