Waking Up to You

Jane Pauley, Jane Fonda, Oprah, Marlo Thomas. Recently, they’ve all been writing and speaking about it. Along with many others. Including me. I have just not been as vocal or visible.

Well, it’s time to get visible; to get vocal. It’s way past time. This is too important to stay in the background. Here’s what we’re talking about!

We’re all talking about you. Well, about ourselves as well but we want you to be talking about this, too. We’re talking about re-imagining, reinventing, rediscovering ourselves. We’re talking about our third act or our second half. We’re talking about the point at which we wake up to the possibility of who we are and take our first tiny step. Like a toddler discovering a whole big world but this time bringing a lifetime of experience into it.

I can’t, nor do I want to, speak in their voices. I can only tell you what my reading and learning and ponderings have led me to; the beliefs and knowing that have evolved.

First, in thinking about this stage of life I prefer the label of “Third Age”. I first heard this term in Marc Freedman’s book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife. He refers to a report titled “Inquiry into the Third Age” by Cambridge demographic historian Peter Laslett. In this report Laslett suggested that the aging of British society was actually the emergence of two distinct stages of life which he called the Third Age and the Fourth Age, two phases that should be viewed as separate in the same way childhood and adulthood are. He argues that the “difference in contemporary lives is the new territory emerging between the end of midcareer jobs and parenting duties (Second Age) and the beginning of dependent old age (Fourth Age).

That is a vast, rich, often unmined, span of years.

I also call this The Creativity Age.

Second, I would dispute the term reinvention which is used so often when talking about midlife. To me this implies a need to improve on an older version; to sometimes add layers to an already packed self, other times strip down to nothing and start anew. It’s working from the outside in as opposed to the inside out.

The reality is that we came into this world with an essence, a uniqueness that will light our path but that often goes dim in the hustle bustle of life, the striving and straining, the distractions, the building of careers and raising of families.

Martha Graham says it so well: “You are unique, and if that is not fulfilled, then something has been lost.”

In your Third Age you have the opportunity to wake up to that uniqueness. To recall it, bring it forth, nurture it and offer it to the world.

This is your Creativity Age.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, you’ve already got what it takes to do this, to make your third act a custom fit for you: your creative power. You have it, you were born with it. Are you working it? Really working it? You can start small. You can begin with small Kaizen steps. There does not need to be a great, clanging gong; a choir of angels; an epiphany. That’s how I always wished to be enlightened but I now know that small steps along with the joyful inspiration of Modern Day Muses can ease us into this wonderful time. There isn’t and there doesn’t have to be a bold line between the two ages. It is a process. It is a creative process in which your small steps build and a magnificent new age develops. Just like learning to ride a bike – one day you look back and realize you’re on your way!

Do you want to wake up to your Creativity Age? Would you like to dig down and start a fun discovery process that uncovers what you were put on this earth to do? Would you like to unleash the powerful creative force deep within you?

Click here for times and places to join me live in a 2 hour free introductory program to get you started. Not local? Register for a 1 hour teleclass that will get you going (type TCA Teleclass in subject line). Or, contact me me for a 30 minute, one on one, complimentary discovery session.

This is your life. This is important. This is way too important to do alone!