Breaking Forth with A Vibrant Life Over 50

The golden jubilee and a vibrant life are great moments of celebration and reminiscing on your life’s success.

Additionally, they are significant milestones and turning points in life, where you’ll start to definitely live a vibrant life. Trust me.

It is 50 years of life.

Half a century essentially and time to prepare for retirement and the experience that comes with it.

Many emotions surface like happiness, fulfillment, and gratitude.

But also the gnawing feelings of confusion, fear, and uncertainty of what the future holds are present in your mind.

For as long as you can remember, leadership became easy for you.

With a good, steady job and its accompanying requirements, you learned how to take care of everyone under you including family.

Being an inspiration and impacting lives, homes, and businesses are easy for you at this time.

You still possess your leadership qualities with a vibrant life.

And you believe you can always perform these functions.

However, with this new milestone you may fear limitations.

And not be able to accomplish so much of these functions adequately.

This can lead to a feeling of redundancy, underutilization, feeling useless, and unnecessary.

These feelings should associate with you as you have paid your dues and made your impact in the world.

But now it is time to take a rest and move on.

After all, the most constant thing in life is change.

You can still live a happy, vibrant life and fulfilled life no matter the prevailing situation.

Now it is time to focus on the next step, adjusting to the vibrant life over 50.

Check out my video “Older Women Breaking Forth!”

No one has it completely figured out on how to balance and adapt to this new vibrant life.

So I suggest to make a personalized strategic life plan containing your set goals, ideas, mission, practical strategies.

Think of this like an overall game plan.  You can certainly make it work.

This plan can help to provide direction and make this transition ultimately easier.

Personalized strategic life plan for a vibrant life

The same way a company needs an action plan for forging ahead, humans need one too, maybe even more critical.

In essence, a personalized strategic life plan is a guide with a description of activities to improve life and maintain productivity.

Creating one will also give purpose, focus, vision, clarity, answers, and hope moving forward, and that is why it is vital.

Among the requirements needed for this plan to work is innate self-discipline.

This is a personalized plan; not a group plan that involves a lot of people.

Now, it is all about you and your self-discipline which will help to keep your focus and interest.

This plan can improve your life, living standard, and help you maintain inner peace.

For each chosen activity, they need to be personal as you should only decide on things you can do, want to do or that you have missed out on due to being busy over the years.

However, remember that these activities are to be exciting and challenging for a vibrant life.

So you need always to strike a balance and ensure that a challenge will always be part of your requirements.

The various steps for making a proper personalized strategic life plan are:

• Objectives to be fulfilled by the plans

To be very productive, anything you decide to do and put into your project, be it a fitness goal or vacation plans need to follow the “SMART” principle i.e., it should be Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Relevant and most importantly, Time-bound.

Every objective of the plan should be specific, clear and not ambiguous and its details, steps.

And processes entirely understandable and recognizable by you and anyone who comes across it and is supposed to provide assistance.

Its operation and output should be measurable in the required terms too.

It should also be something that is not impossible to achieve but balanced, so it’s not too easy either while remaining completely relevant.

It should always be time bound to ensure discipline and a sense of urgency.

• Resources for the fulfillment of the plan

Resources are essential because they are the means through which things get accomplished.

These are the materials, physical or not, through which you can support your plans and make your goals a reality.

They could be in the form of personal resources e.g., knowledge, skills, and beliefs, and financial resources.

But money and financial support are always crucial as all plans would require some level of financing for their implementation.

• Review of the plans

So, the plan(s) has been chosen and has fulfilled the objective criteria. The next step is to review it properly and determine its complete feasibility.

Is the time frame too short of achieving that plan?

Is the goal particular and detailed enough to be followed appropriately?

Review of the plan can be done by asking questions and finding out more information about what you plan to do from someone who already has experience with such activity.

Or, someone who is helping you set up for the action or even from the internet.

A basic strategy plan for a vibrant life may look like this

• Action
• Resources
• Steps involved
• Time Frame

• Implementation of the plans

With your plan known, resources ready and proper review done, the next step would be to start the process and move your plan from paper into reality.

Proper organization is needed here to ensure no detail is overlooked and what was planned is actually being done.

Depending on the plan, it may just require you to implement it or maybe an external party e.g., a friend or professional.

This external party needs to fully understand the support she is there for from your specific plan guide.

• Track your progress regularly

The plans should always be broken down into achievable steps, and each step give a timeline.

Through this, progress can be tracked to ensure each step is complete and at the right time.

In case there is an issue with the growth of work, then a plan can be made to solve it and ensure the end goal is still very much achievable.

• Review and amend on a recurrent basis

To make sure you are correct on track, reviewing should occur throughout the whole process.

It is essential because some plans may become obsolete and may need to be scraped off entirely.

Others may require some changes and adjustment to fit into the present situation to remain viable.

A proper review is also done to ensure that the plan is being carried out correctly and on schedule as planned.

Areas for personal growth with a vibrant life

At this stage in a vibrant life, career growth may not be the priority, but instead physical, social, and intellectual growth are the more essential forms.

These other forms are to be included amongst the personalized strategic life plan to ensure you live an all rounded vibrant life at this age.

Career growth and success have been achieved and can be maintained, but most likely cannot be improved upon at this point.

However, to fill up your vibrant life and adjust to the grand feeling of being over 50 years of age, the other forms of growth to focus on are:

• Physical growth

Physical growth here refers to properly taking care of our health and everything health related.

This is the most critical aspect as almost everything is possible as long as we are in the right state of health and mind.

It involves healthier living in terms of a healthy eating lifestyle and exercise.

At this age, there is a higher propensity for most metabolic disorders and age-related conditions.

Therefore the watchword now is “prevention is better than cure.”

To achieve this goal, a plan that involves regular check-ups, reducing stress, eating healthy, losing excess weight, and especially tummy fat and exercising daily.

You do not have to undergo extremely strenuous activity but may incorporate 30 minutes of light cardio exercise e.g., brisk walking, swimming or jogging.

Your end goal is reducing joint pain, decreasing blood pressure and blood cholesterol level and also increasing normal blood flow and metabolism within a particular period.

With time, you might increase your workout routines and plans, but do not take on tasks too stressful.

Additionally, consider changing your eating lifestyle to more organic, natural, and healthier foods.

These are inherently healthier and safer than canned and processed meals and should be fully a part of your eating habits.

Therefore, the plans that align with this aspect relate to exercise, dieting, strength building, stamina, and nutrition.

Mental health is usually the last on the list to discuss,  but is also as important and awareness is key.

Avoid stressful activities and games to improve mental health stability that’s apart of healthy living.

• Social growth

Social growth affects your relationships and how you should strengthen them during this transition with the vibrant life.

With more time on your hands, why not go on that vacation you have been postponing or go for that visit that wasn’t possible before?

In this aspect, the primary goals are relaxation, boosting energy and pleasure.

It is also about improving relations with family, friends and loved ones and even members of the community by making a better presence in the lives of everyone around you.

Activities and plans that are under this aspect include sports, holiday, reading books, watching documentaries, etc.

• Professional growth

Along with being healthier and more socially aware, you need to balance your professional life, and this aspect involves your financial stance, especially how you spend your money.

As a retiree or soon to retire worker, you may have a lot of pensions given all at once, or receive pay monthly, but this is not the time to spend it all and mismanage.

There should be a financial plan; either to stash, save or invest or even to probably start helping with a college fund for a grandchild, based on your personal ideals.

A little fun and spending on yourself are fine, but any activity or indulgence that may completely waste the money to take care of you throughout retirement is not acceptable.

• Intellectual growth

The last growth aspect to consider is intellectual growth.

This type of growth usually considers career growth, but besides, it encompasses the knowledge and plans to increase learning, clarity, memory, reasoning, etc.

The plans to achieve our critical thinking, analytical thinking, etc.

Conclusion

Overall, being over 50 and facing the vibrant life should never be the reason for uncertainties and feeling of worthlessness.

It is necessary to understand that the vibrant life comes in phases, and we only get to stay in one stage for a required time, and not a second longer.

As a vibrant woman leader, you may have impacted as a senior level executive, business owner, operator and head of a small business or even worked in a non-profit organization providing humanitarian services but all that must come to an end one day.

Try to accept the next step in life entirely and appreciate the perks. Career growth plans may still be a great idea to keep you in the know.

It should not surprise you that this new phase can be even more impressive than your life before.

You will gain much more to provide fulfillment, keep energy and continue working hard.

With the proper utilization of this personalized strategic life plan, you can achieve many breakthroughs.

I would love to come to your next event, seminar or workshop to speak more on my signature topics! Contact me here for more inquiries and details.

About Dr. Geneva

Dr. Geneva J. Williams is a Master Leadership Strategist & Vibrant Life Architect.  She is also the author of Justice on the Jersey Shore and reigning Ms. Black Fit and Fine