Investing in Your soul's Call at Midlife and Beyond

A Woman Who Answered Her Soul's Call

Recently I debated the issue of reinvention vs. reintegration at midlife and beyond on the Harvard Business Review site and in the process I asked readers to join me in forming an organization focused on the idea of reinventing this time of life.  One of the people who responded to me suggested we form a group focused on investing in stocks and bonds as a way of reinventing our lives but to me that is investing in other people's calls and not our own.

A Soul Call is a Call to Invest in Yourself

I read a book years ago called Do What You Love and the Money Will Follow - well a soul call is a call to do what you love.  Now some people love the stock market, Warren Buffet comes to mind, but unless this is truly your call, then getting together and reading the financial pages and or watching the Dow Jones reports is not going to be a satisfying time for you.  A better use of your time and your money is to invest in what your soul is calling you to do at this time of life.  If this idea seems vague and you're not sure what that call is then investing your time and energy in finding out would be a better use of this time than starting an investing group.  Here is why:

Money Provides a Comfort Zone, Not Authentic Happiness

Here is what Martin Seligman wrote about money in his book, Authentic Happiness, he says that making more money has little effect on your authentic happiness once you have enough money to buy his book and that materialistic people are less happy in general.  In other words, if you are living a more or less middle class life and not on the edge financially, then more money will not have much effect on your true happiness. What I also know is that even if at this moment in time, money is an urgent issue for you, once you have stabilized yourself financially you will go back to money not bringing you authentic happiness.

So What Does Bring Authentic Happiness?

Authentic happiness comes from doing what you love to do in terms of work and contribution, what I am calling a soul call and using that call to make a contribution to the greater good rather than simply doing something that makes you money.  Again, Seligman has a lot to say about this and describes the three kinds of lives available to us in terms of happiness; the Pleasant Life, which is filled with pleasure and ways to bring more pleasure into your life - he calls this the Hollywood Life, I call it the Hedonistic Life. The second one he calls the Good Life, this one is where you use your strengths and virtues and do all the right things and go by the rules - I call this the Good Citizen Life and finally the Meaningful Life where you use your strengths and virtues for the greater good - I call this the Soulful Life.  In my work with people and in my own personal life I see most people - about 80% - fitting into the first two categories - they are either looking at life as a pleasure trip and spend all their time on doing things for the pleasure it brings or they are good citizens and try to do the right thing and go by the rules but are not in touch with their souls and get all uncomfortable when someone mentions the idea of a soul call.   The rest, about 20% of the people, are interested in what their soul's are calling them to do but may not yet have a clear understanding of what that is - these are my people - my tribe, my potential clients and friends.

Are You Part of the Soul Call Tribe or Would You Like to Join?

I started this blog post with the idea that we need to invest in ourselves at midlife and beyond rather than creating an investing club and investing in money making ventures.  Here is what I know, if you invest in your own soul's call it will bring you life satisfaction and authentic happiness and the money you need to provide yourself with life's necessities will follow.  This could be a huge amount of money or only enough to sustain you.  I believe that Oprah heard her call early and now she is one of the richest women on earth.  Mother Theresa had little money but lived her calling until the end and was provided the necessities of life as she went along.  Between these two extremes is where you and I live. Yes, we need a certain amount of money to live and I believe we need to use our  gifts and talents to make a living for ourselves but I also believe that when we do use these gifts and talents in a way that feels like a soul call and we contributes to the greater good, the universe will provide opportunities for us to prosper.  I believe this to be particularly true in terms of midlife and beyond, this is our opportunity to reinvent this time of life and the best way to reinvent it is to listen for the call of your soul and invest in that call.  So would you like to join me in this?  If so then send me an email at lorrainebanfield@msn.com and let's get started.

Blessings, Lorraine