Midlife Careers: Back to "Purpose"

Hi, as most of you know, Elizabeth & I are dedicated to living a purposeful second half of life and helping OTHERS to live a purposeful second half of life.

We have been helping all of our friends get up to speed on Social Media and simple Web presences because we believe that as we midlifers journey through our second half, that the Web has WONDERFUL opportunities for us to connect with others AND increase the success of our encore/second half careers.

So, back to that topic directly, I was reminded of a couple of great quotes today when I reviewed the upcoming Learning Life Fest at the University of Minnesota.

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"Far and away the best
prize that life has to offer
is the chance to work hard
at work worth doing."
-Theodore Roosevelt

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As you know, we have been helping spread the word about MetLife's Mature Market Study called Discovering What Matters which was just published this past January.

However, in addition, I was just reminded of another study about Encore Careers that Civic Ventures and MetLife published just last year.

Here is a summary of 1 of 3 key findings:

Millions of Americans have already launched encore careers
combining income and personal meaning with social impact.

A surprisingly large number of people between the ages of 44 and 70-a total of 5.3 to 8.4 million people, or 6 to 9.5 percent of this population group-have already launched encore careers.

• A majority of Americans age 44 to 70 want work with meaning. More than half of those in encore
  careers (55%) and two-thirds of people interested in encore careers (64%) say they are motivated
  by a desire to use their skills and experience to help others.
• Of those who are in encore careers, more are women than men (56% vs. 44%, respectively) and
  most are highly educated (67% with college/technical or graduate degrees). Still, almost one-third
  (30%) of those in encore careers do not have college degrees.

If you would like to review the entire study, CLICK HERE.

The gyst is this.  We are not alone, those of us entrepreneurial types who are venturing into very different second half careers than we had in the first.

AND we want purpose…..we want work that has meaning, work in which we are helping others, making the world a better place, etc.

So, I will end my little spiel today with a quote from the poet Catherine Graham.

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"To love what you do
and feel that it matters-
how could anything be
more fun?"
- Catherine Graham, poet

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