Grow old on purpose. This book invites readers to navigate a purposeful path from adulthood to elderhood with choice, curiosity, and courage.
Everyone is getting old; not everyone is growing old. But the path of purposeful aging is accessible to all-and it's fundamental to health, happiness, and longevity.
With a focus on growing whole through developing a sense of purpose in later life, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Old? celebrates the experience of aging with inspiring stories, real-world practices, and provocative questions. Framed by a long conversation between two old friends, the book reconceives aging as a liberating experience that enables us to become more authentically the person we always meant to be with each passing year.
In their bestseller Repacking Your Bags, Richard J. Leider and David A. Shapiro defined the good life as "living in the place you belong, with people you love, doing the right work, on purpose." This book builds on that definition to offer a purposeful path for living well while aging well.
DISCOVER WHAT YOU'RE HERE TO DO
It's the end of work as we know it. Career paths look nothing like they did in the days before phones got smart. We work more hours at more jobs for more years than ever before. So it's vital that we know how to find work that allows us to remain true to who we are in the deepest sense, work that connects us to something larger than ourselves—in short, our “calling.” We all have one, and bestselling authors Richard Leider and David Shapiro can help you uncover yours.
Through a unique Calling Card exercise that features a guided exploration of fifty-two “natural preferences” (such as Advancing Ideas, Doing the Numbers, Building Relationships, and Performing Events), Leider and Shapiro give us a new way to uncover our gifts, passions, and values and find work that expresses them. Along the way, they mix in dozens of inspiring true stories about people who have found, or are in the process of finding, their own callings.
Uncovering your calling enables you to experience fulfillment in all aspects and phases of your life. And here's the even better news: you'll never have to work again. When you choose to do what you are called to do, you're always doing what you want to do. Work Reimagined offers an enlightening, effective, and entertaining approach to discovering what you were born to do, no matter your age or stage of life.
NEW EDITION, REVISED AND UPDATED
To get a life, get a purpose!
Purpose is fundamental and gives life meaning. It gives us the will not just to live but to live long and well. In this new edition of his bestselling classic, legendary personal coach Richard Leider offers brand-new tools and techniques for unlocking it.
The third edition has been completely revised and updated. In addition to new stories, examples, and resources, it features four new chapters. "Purpose across the Ages" looks at how purpose can evolve during our lives. "The 24-Hour Purpose Retreat" includes seven mind-opening questions to help you unlock your purpose. "The Purpose Checkup" offers a new tool for periodically evaluating the health of your purpose. And in "Can Science Explain Purpose?" we learn what researchers are discovering about how an increased sense of purpose can improve our health, healing, happiness, longevity, and productivity.
Purpose is an active expression of our values and our compassion for others-it makes us want to get up in the morning and add value to the world. Leider details a graceful, practical, and ultimately spiritual process for making it central to your life. This revitalized guide will help you integrate it into everything you do.
Are You Ready for Your Life Reimagined Moment?
Are you at a point in your life where you're asking, "What's next?" You've finished one chapter and you have yet to write the next one. Many of us face these transitions at midlife, but they can happen at any point. It's a time full of enormous potential, and it defines a whole new phase of life. It's called Life Reimagined.
Here is your map to guide you in this new life phase. You can use the powerful practices and insights-enhanced with online tools and exercises at AARP's LifeReimagined.org website-to help you uncover your own special gifts, connect with people who can support you, and explore new directions.
You'll be inspired by meeting ordinary people who have reimagined their lives in extraordinary ways. You'll also read the stories of pioneers of the Life Reimagined movement such as Jane Pauley, James Brown, and Emilio Estefan. They show us that this journey of discovery can help us find fulfillment in surprising new places.
One of the profound truths that underlies this audiobook is the liberating notion that each of us is "an experiment of one," free to find our own path in this new phase of our lives. No old rules, no outdated societal norms, no boundaries of convention or expectation. Let Life Reimagined help you discover your new life possibilities!
The first and second editions of Repacking Your Bags helped people develop their own unique vision of the good life and take practical steps at home and at work to make sense of their lives and live in an authentically meaningful way. Written as a travel guide iIt helped people to put together a "trip checklist" that provided the elements of the good life: work, love, place, and purpose.
But Leider and Shapiro came to realize that repacking is not something we do once or twice in reaction to a sense of disillusionment or frustration in our lives. Developing one's own vision of the good life is a matter of constant and evolving choice, as the inevitable shifts and surprises life has to offer continually unfold before us. With each step along the way, it remains necessary to re-examine what has brought us here, to continue asking ourselves if the choices that have sustained us so far are continuing to do so-or if they're just weighing us down.
This edition has been thoroughly revised to make it applicable for listeners today. The changes include:
-Refocused message on the new life and work realities and the survival skills required to succeed
-More practices and experiences for "lightening your load."
-Fresh new stories of "people just like me", the listener.
-A new "Repacking Journal"
-Addition of Leider's immensely popular Calling Cards exercise for discovering your gifts, passions and values, with access to a Calling Cards online profile
