Chapter 1

While making decisions after 50 may feel familiar, there are several reasons why it’s different. Values, goals, priorities, circumstances, needs and wants all change, as do interests, demands on time, and attitudes toward risk. Levels of experience, knowledge, self confidence and self-awareness are different as well. And you too, as the one who has to make the decision, have changed, although you may not have taken the time to ponder and analyze those changes. Before thinking about making decisions after 50, it’s important to stop and recognize personal changes. If you don’t take the time to reflect, you may find yourself in a cycle, repeating patterns of the past. If midlife is the time to be in a new place, then making new decisions requires taking time to reexamine and adjust the process. If you don’t spend time reflecting and challenging your typical way of responding to requests for your time, you may find yourself without any thoughtful answers to them. You may just go along to get along, letting someone else determine your future for the next few years. You may fall in with colleagues to pursue activities that may not actually bring the type of fulfillment you are personally seeking. You may find it difficult to break out of old habits and even though you may want more, you may be challenged to figure out what “more” is. While there may be an unsettling feeling that the old goals don’t work any more and that the priorities and values have changed, finding new goals and new direction can be daunting. It’s very difficult to break out of old patterns as the years go by, especially because of all the stuff you’ve accumulated over time and because of some deeply ingrained assumptions.