Find a shiny new career for the golden years

Are you a baby boomer who can’t decide whether to retire or keep working? There’s another option you may not have considered. Why not make the plunge and discover your dream job?
Many of the boomers and seniors who continue to work well past normal retirement age do it because they love their jobs. They get a lot of happiness from being with other people, and they feel the deep satisfaction of doing something that really matters.
If you are eagerly looking forward to retirement, you probably don’t feel this sense of satisfaction. Are you feeling bored with your job? Do you think of your job as nothing more than a daily grind, an endless succession of blue Mondays?
There was a time, not so long ago, when you automatically retired at the age of 60 or 65, if you were fortunate enough to reach this ripe old age. Today’s boomers are healthier than any past generation, and they’re definitely not ready for the rocking chair. In fact, it’s not unusual anymore to find seniors still passionately involved in their work at the age of 80.
If the idea of finding your dream job appeals to you, take some time to prepare yourself. Start making lists of what you like and what you dislike about your job. At the end of a day, mentally review the hours you spent at work. When did you feel really involved in what you were doing? What gave you the most satisfaction or was downright unpleasant?
Does your job take full advantage of your special talents? Do you have a real aptitude for the work? If the answer to these questions is yes, then you’re probably pursuing a career that meets at least some of your needs and just requires some tweaking.
If, however, you’re starting to feel like a square peg in a round hole, then a change of scene won’t solve your problems. Over the years, you have changed. You don’t stop growing when you become an adult. You have continued to change, and you’ve developed different parts of yourself that maybe you didn’t even know about when you were a young job-seeker.
When you were 18 or 19 and choosing a college major, you knew very little about yourself. You were easily influenced by other people, as well as by books, television and movies.
Maybe you chose a career track because you admired a teacher or television personality. Maybe your parents told you that you had all the makings of a doctor, rabbi, or whatever profession they wanted to see you take up.
On the negative side, you may have been told by a teacher that you had no aptitude for a particular career. Whoever made this pronouncement just meant that you didn’t resemble his or her image. This person, who may have changed the course of your life, probably knew little about you and your unique talents. Because we know so little about ourselves when we’re young, we tend to believe what we are told. As you look back, can you see a turning point, a point when you made a choice that stopped you in your tracks?
Who are you really? If you look carefully, you’ll find many clues in your own life experiences. Take a good look at your past successes, both in your personal life and in your work life; patterns should start to emerge.
You were happier and more productive in one job than another. You need an organized environment to be effective – or maybe you’re just the opposite and like a looser, less structured job with fewer rules and more room to express your individuality. Do you like to work alone, or were you at your best when you were part of a team?
What would you be happier doing? What else is out there? If you had chosen a different path, would you have been happier?
Maybe over the years, you have occasionally remembered a youthful dream and wondered if you should act on it. However, each time you considered living your dream, you backed off. You decided that you had advanced too far on the career ladder to start all over again.
Maybe right now, as you consider a job change, that dream remains stubbornly in the back of your mind. Thousands of boomers and seniors have decided they are not too old to begin new career. They are healthier, they are smarter, they know themselves better. There’s no time like the present!

Jeannette Woodward is a founder and principal of the Wind River Nonprofit and Educational Consulting group.

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