Is How Far You Can Go Far Enough?
Is there a point at which we say, I have gone far enough. This is as much as I can do. Time to rest on what I have accomplished. Maybe, but when we rest, we may have gratitude, but we also stop all the juices from flowing.
Notice how some professional quarterbacks just won’t quit. We had Bret Favre of the Packers, Tom Brady of the Buccaneers, and now Aaron Rodgers of the Packers. Each had incredible success and could have said, I have accomplished all I dreamed and now I will go to pasture in my sunset years.
Notice how some entertainers never quit. So many who had hit their peak years ago, keep showing up at smaller venues. It is no longer for the money. They need the juice they enjoyed from being in front of an audience and maybe the creative efforts that made them famous. I love Cher, but there is a lady who just won’t quit. She keeps giving us performances that are a glimpse of her former self, but they are not what she used to be. She is doing it for herself.
Finding Out Who We Are
There is a joy in building who we are. There is that unpredictability of how far we can go. Maybe there comes the realization that we have arrived. Sometimes because the juice of becoming is so great, a person asks what else could I start. We see that with entrepreneurs every day. They started one company and now they are starting another.
Biologically, when we stop growing, we start deteriorating. When the brain stops growing with no more challenges and the body is no longer physically challenged, the biological time clock thinks it must be time to die. We often become pained and senile because we have stopped growing.
Another aspect is that we have set a goal and when we accomplish it we are stuck at what to do next. Maybe at the summit we get a big pay off or it is the end of the road for that endeavor and we are left in limbo with nothing to do. This happens when people retire. The age 65 becomes their summit and then they are often lost in retirement.
The important goal we must have to sustain our growth is self-actualization. The brain has plasticity which means it can grow until we die. In the book, Younger Next Year, the authors say we can be vital until the age 85 if we exercise and hour every day. The big question is whether we want to stop learning who we are and how far we can go.
I personally need the juice of creating, learning, gaining better health through nutrition and exercise, and making a contribution. I retired once and found that with so much free time, I needed to get back in the game to have fun with growing. Growing should be fun.
We should look at our lives as one long growth path. We have more self-esteem and feeling of purpose when we keep contributing. Nothing kills seniors faster than the feeling they lack purpose. Nothing is more depressing in the middle of our lives than thinking we are not living purposefully. This happens from a surcease of growth, complacency, laziness, a lack of discipline, and a lack of challenge and risk.
One of the reasons people are looking for other job opportunities is they know they have more to give and are not being fully exploited in a good way. This is a reason to keep growing and finding the work that is challenging, fulfilling, and makes us feel purposeful.
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As a Thriving Worker Consultant, I can engage in conversations with employers on how to begin the process of helping workers thrive and reach peak performance. It begins with a conversation to see how far an organization is willing to go to change the culture for workers.
Great practices for daily living can be learned with the Markap Series of Books. If your organization would like live presentations or Zoom meetings, they can be arranged for small to large groups.
