Encore.org Gives Me Pause

I have been following Encore.org for some time now, an organization which I had thought went along with my views and my mission about people in their second acts.  This group sponsors The Purpose Prize for people over 60 doing work for the greater good.  I discovered them about two years ago when I saw a program on PPS featuring their work and some of the people who had won the Purpose Prize. The show was about reinventing your life.  Since that was a concept I was working on with my book, I was impressed and began to support and follow them.

An Extended Stay in the Work Force - Not a Reinvention 

But recently I  received a post on my Facebook page written by the CEO of this organization that made me reevaluate my continued full fledged support of them.  The CEO, Marc Freedman, wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review entitled The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention.   He says the idea of reinvention is dangerous and not even a doable thing for most people.  This gave me great pause and I wrote several responses which you can read on the Harvard Business Review blog - see link at the end of this post.

A Tweaking of the Status Quo But Not a Real Change

What I see after reading his article and reviewing his website and reading all his responses on the HBR site is that he is supporting and promoting the idea of extending one's work life beyond retirement and then reintegrating yourself back into it either in the same field of endeavor or to transition into a non profit with your skills, talents and gifts.  He likes the term reintegration rather than reinvention since he believes, or implies, that most people are happy with who they are, what kind of work they do or have done up until now, and are happy to continue on in it as long as they can remain employed and then to reintegrate themselves back into the workforce after conventional retirement via going to work for a non profit - as his website says, "Purpose with a paycheck".

I think this is an okay idea for the average person.  In fact I wish him luck with his work, but I realized after a week of back and forth posts on the HBR site, that this was not what I had in mind when I wrote my book. I I believe there are a great many people out there who not only want to reinvent their own lives but want to reinvent this time of life as well.  I find his ideas only a tweaking of what is already the mainstream way of doing things.  But we are being given by science, medicine, and just plain evolution up to thirty more years of life and to simply keep doing what we have been doing seems a waste of human potential given this gift?  Are there not things that need to be done that require a reinvention and not simply business as usual?

But Reinvention is What Needs to Happen 

He does not support the idea of any kind of reinvention or world view shifting except this extension of the time we now have to continue on with the same old same old.  But reinvention is what needs to happen. Even though on first glance this seems to be an organization focused on changing the world of work and the perception of people as they age, it seems to me to be an organization that supports the status quo by extending the working life of the average person.   The only change or reinvention I can see in this is that he is supporting the idea of a new phase of life between midlife and old age, but what he suggests we do with it is conventional and mainstream.   This then is the typical mindset of the average person, they just want an an extended time frame so they can keep working or if they have saved and invested their money then they will just retire and maybe do a little non profit work, if they feel like it. This is simply marketing the idea that people can work longer these days if they want to and then they can do some work for a non profit if they want to do that.  There is nothing new here.  This is the same mindset that has been around for years.  As far as I can see, he is simply encouraging people to stay in their jobs as long as they can and for them to do some good works for a non profit after they retire.  

Become a Pioneer Instead

But I say let's be pioneers instead and do what we have always longed to do and reinvent our lives to suit who we are in the depth of our souls and then to be the leaders and role models of a movement to reinvent this time of life..  There will always be people who huddle up under the middle of the bell curve and live their lives according to the values of the mainstream, but there have always been pioneers and out of the box thinkers as well, who have been the ones that have led in terms of human evolution.

Listen for the Call of Your Soul and Reinvent Your Life 

I'm suggesting that many people, but certainly not all, missed the opportunity to hear the call of their soul's in their first act and now at midlife and beyond they get a second chance to listen for it and act on its message. In most cases this will mean a reinvention of their lives, at least their work life, and not simply a reintegration back into the work world from which they came.  I am also suggesting that this call will impact the world or what I call in the book, the greater good, but it will not necessarily be philanthropic.  It could be opening a little Italian bistro, or starting a seminar business or becoming a sea captain or becoming a watch dog for abuses in your old profession.  It could be championing an environmental cause, running for office, you name it and if it's your soul's call then it is the right thing to do.  It could be owning and running a B&B as two of my friends are doing or going to Second City in Chicago and leaning to be a humor writer as one former college administrator is doing, or maybe like me, you want to write a book.  Whatever you do, if you do it with joy, gusto and passion, then this will have the effect of changing the way people see this time of life and this will indeed change the world.  

Be a Crazy One, a Maverick or a Change Agent

For people like myself and those I work with and hope to work with, we are the mavericks, the movers and shakers, the change agents, the odd balls that Steve Jobs and Microsoft were talking about several years ago in their Superbowl advertisement.

Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do.

So here is to all you crazy ones out there - join me - I'm pretty crazy myself.  I'm here to help you with this most compelling and vital time of life.  So let's get busy reinventing our own lives and reinventing the world too, one person at a time.  .  

Blessings, Lorraine 

Link to Harvard Business Review post:   http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/01/the-dangerous-myth-of-reinvention/#comment-1195262742 .

PS - You may now check out my book at the Anythink Library in Westminster, Colorado.  Here is the link:   http://catalog.anythinklibraries.org/Record/967821/Home

You may also purchase it at the Tattered Cover in Denver - all three locations and on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.  Get it and start changing your life and the world today.