What Am I Going to Be When I Grow Up: Baby Boomer Edition

Have you ever found yourself wondering what you are going to be when you grow up?

Read that sentence again carefully. Notice that is in the future tense. Since it is in the future tense, it may seem a strange question to address to Baby Boomers but let’s think about it a minute.

When you were a kid – say, a third grader like my grandso
Thomas or even a first grader like his brother Joshua – you may have had all kinds of ideas, day-dreams, hopes and fears about what you would be when you grew up. Maybe you wanted to be a ______________ like your father. Maybe you wanted to be an astronaut or an archeologist or a ballet dancer, race car driver, Saturday Night Fights wrestler, movie star, President of the United States.

As you grew older, say, in your teens, your ambitions might have changed. In your world-wise and weary way maybe you noticed that your dreams and hopes had become a little tarnished and battered. Growing up to be a _______________ like your old man had lost its attraction because you had realized that your old man was just another cog in the wheel.

Maybe enough people, adults and your peers alike, had laughed at your aspirations. Maybe they had told you that you had as much chance of becoming President as a snowball in Hell. Maybe they had pointed out, in the kindliest manner, that very few people (especially girls) qualified to be astronauts or that you couldn’t make a decent living being a romantically starving artist in a Paris garret.

Whatever it was, your goals and ambitions had changed. Now you wanted to be secretary to a high-powered executive – or the high-powered executive. Or maybe you decided that you wanted to be a politician – not President (after all, how many people actually get to be President?) – but maybe a local politician or even governor. Or you decided to become a firefighter or a policeman or a small-time crook or an “enforcer”.

It is just possible that you didn’t really decide to be anything. Maybe you just followed the path of least resistance and took the first job that came along. Maybe you couldn’t find a job or couldn’t afford to go to college and life closed in on you, forcing you down a path that you hadn’t really chosen.

But now you’re at the other end of that span of time that used to be known as your “productive years”. Your life has been what it has been and now the question would seem to be not what you are going to be when you grow up but what you are going to do with yourself when you retire – or maybe even whether or not you’re going to be able to afford to retire.

Now is the time to decide what you want to be when you grow up. In fact, now is the time to grow up and stop listening to the limiting voices from your past.

Now is the time to look around for new dreams, new challenges, new ways of thinking about yourself and your future. The whole world is at your fingertips through the internet. There are contacts, networks, classes, courses and challenges that can help you build the next ten-thirty years into the best years of your life.

If you don’t know where to start, I would suggest Googling “self-help” or “self-development” and see where that leads you. One word of caution: you may find yourself quantum jumping around the universe or getting in touch with your ancestors. If that seems too – uh – “out there” for you, go for the more traditional programs. A couple that I would recommend – because I have experienced them myself – are to be found at http://www.withinsight.com/lifepurpose/ and http://www.boundlessliving.com/ (I am not an affiliate of either program)

Don’t be too quick to dismiss something just because it is different than what you are used to. When you were in third grade, you were probably able to approach the future with an open mind and face all kinds of possibilities. Recover some of that openness and sense of possibility and great things can happen to you – when you grow up.