Thrive or Survive?

One Sunday in church my Pastor asked a question: “Do you want to survive or thrive?” It got me to thinking about my life and my business.

As a baby boomer woman in business, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s never too late to set goals. So what if you didn’t achieve your original goals when you were in your tween years. If you’re reading this, it means you’re not dead yet. It means you still have a purpose and a mission to be accomplished. Just because you may have reached the “grandma age” doesn’t mean you have to cancel out those things you didn’t get around to doing. You just didn’t get around to doing them YET. As long as you’re still breathing, you still have time.

As baby boomers and beyond, we’ve been given more opportunities to accomplish the goals and dreams we’ve set for ourselves. So why can’t we take advantage of them right now?

Here are some of my tips for setting and accomplishing your goals at midlife:

1) Make each goal something you really want, not something that just sounds good: The truth of the matter is, you’re not getting any younger so you want to make what you do, from here on, mean something. But don’t do it just because. Some people like to play “follow the leader.” Because Mary wrote a book and it was a best seller, you think you can too but maybe that’s not really your calling and maybe your book won’t sell as well. Concentrate on doing something you are passionate about. Trust me, you’ll do a much better job at reaching your goal!

2) Don’t let your goal conflict with other goals: Your goal may be to purchase a million dollar home but if your salary is only $50,000 what sense does that really make? You should first focus on how you can increase your income or come up with creative ways to do some million dollar improvements on your current home.

3) Develop goals for both personal and business: If you have big dreams for your business, why not have equally important goals for your personal life. All work and no play can create something called S-T-R-E-S-S and stress kills. Develop a plan to ensure that you will spend quality “me” time to give yourself an opportunity to be renewed in mind, body and spirit. That way you’ll have more energy to continue pursuing your business goals.

4) Set high goals: The higher the goal means you’ll work HARDER but the REWARD will be that much sweeter!

5) Create a Vision Board: How do you know where you’re going if you can’t SEE where you’re going? Habakkuk 2:2 in the Bible says: “And the Lord answered me and said, “Write the vision and make it plain upon tablets…” My vision board hangs in my bedroom. It is one of the first things I see every morning. It reminds me of the goals I’ve set and what I must do in order to achieve those goals. A vision board keeps you focused.

Even as a baby boomer, who’s also a wife and grandmother, I still believe in dreams and I’m a witness that dreams still can come true!

Businesses to Face Boomer Challenge

America’s “graying” and “browning” population driven by aging baby-boomers and a growing population of immigrants means that companies will have to look farther and try harder to attract qualified workers in the future, a demographer said.

“At the end of the day the question is, ‘Who is going to take care of you when you get old?’” says James H. Johnson Jr., a demographer and professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Johnson says there are 86 million baby-boomers in the country. Every day, 12,000 of them turn 50 and 9,000 turn 60. The oldest will turn 62 this year.

“What’s going to happen in three years?” Johnson asked. “In demographic lingo, it’s called the silver tsunami, and it’s about to hit.”

The age groups coming up behind the baby-boomers are smaller, he noted. What is more, the median age of Americans has increased to above 35.

Recent immigrants, especially those from Latin American countries, tend to be younger and have larger families than baby-boomers. It is a phenomenon he called the “browning” of America, as the non-immigrant population is not having large enough families to replace themselves.  To read the entire article, click here:  Boomers and Business