Everyone wants long term success. But it is elusive for most.

Long term success is dependent on knowing where you are now and where you are headed. Then closing the gap. Frequently. Continuously.  Whether it’s your business, your career or your life at home., it’s easy to get off track, lose touch or get buried under. Without a true sense of where you are in the moment, it is impossible to realize your dreams or be a leader in your field.

Re-calibrate your profound knowledge

The only way we can take 100% responsibility for sustaining our success is to keep re-calibrating-in every aspect of our lives and organizations.

Key to successful recalibration is to acquire what my dear departed mentor, Dr. W. Edwards Deming, coined as Profound Knowledge. This umbrella phrase emphasizes understanding change and how to measure it, being aware of emerging trends and shifts, and learning how to apply this knowledge to leading and sustaining long term success.

Bottom line: If we don’t acquire Profound Knowledge we cannot know how to prepare for and leverage coming change, thus how to sustain our success long term.

Understanding change means understanding shifts in our personal world as well as tracking trends that capsize us, overtake us, or cause us to flounder.

Learning the Hard Way

Unfortunately one of my Gen X male clients learned this the hard way. A rising star in his field and recently married, he was planning far a great future for his kids, tons of time for fun and all the trappings of success. As if out of the blue, the rug got pulled out from under him. His “Happy Homemaker” wife fled, saying I’m out of here!

Somewhere along the way there was a breakdown or perhaps many small fissures below the surface. Had they been recalibrating an checking in with each other, communicating the truth of what was so for each of them…perhaps they could have saved their marriage…or at least ended it with love, grace, and forgiveness.

Even in the most secure relationships, unexpected change happens to ruffle our plans. A recently returned to work mother of teenage kids reported that her new career is now going gangbusters and she no longer worries about the empty-nest . But, the new ripple in her life is that her once very successful husband, in his late 40’s, now faces an unknown future. Surprised by the shifts in his industry, “suddenly” he and his business partner are facing the probability of closing their doors. What once appeared to be the sure path to their dreams, is no crumbling beneath them.

Change is inevitable. If you can learn what Profound Knowledge is and apply it you can avoid these same pitfalls and NOT LEARN THE HARD WAY!

What steps are you going to take to future cast your long term success?

Perhaps we should drop the label “senior” or redefine it. Clearly this term has helped to embed ageist stereotypes into our societal psyche. It used to be, as David Wolfe, author of the pioneering books Serving the Ageless Market (1990) and Ageless Marketing (2003), wrote,

“Senior is not an inherently negative term…Being a senior used to connote a superior standing in every context but aging.”

Sure, many don’t mind enjoying the “senior” discounts. And for those who do retire—fully or partially—the advantages of having more free time, fewer demands, and less stress overall are additional perks.

But of course we don’t have to wait until we retire to create this kind of lifestyle. We don’t have to retire at all.

In fact, many characteristics of the stereotypical senior citizen don’t really have much to do with age at all. Or at least they don’t have to be related to age, even if we as a society have somewhat arbitrarily decided they

One of the most important tasks we have together, all generations, is to change the story we tell one another and ourselves about aging.

These characteristics can include retirement, volunteer work, adapting our lifestyle to physical changes, having more control over our time and environment. All of these are choices we might make at any age.

So if we strip away other people’s definitions of what it means to age, what it means to be over 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100…where does that leave us? How do we define ourselves as protagonists in our own aging story?

We all have different comfort levels with various terms. Some shy away from “elderly” but don’t mind being seen as an “Elder.” Some don’t mind being called “older” but feel uncomfortable being called simply “old.” Yet another person might get fed up with euphemisms and actually demand to be called “old,” dammit!

I’ve always relished the term “Crone,” the idea of taking back its original meaning of wise old woman. Some, including those who have chosen not to have children, prefer to be seen as grandmother. In ancient times, the Crone was valued and revered as a wise and prophetic goddess in her own right. Traced back to pre-history, societies that are thought to have been the first “partnerships” between women and men lasted for about 20,000 years. Then as Riane Eisler describes in her underground classic, The Chalice and the Blade (1988), these early societies “veered off on ‘a bloody 5,000-year detour’ of male domination.” Along with these partnership societies, the Crone and all images of the positive feminine were devalued, leaving only the Divine Feminine (e.g., Mother Mary) as the preferred universal Mother image to survive intact into our modern day.

Fortunately, today’s twenty-first century women are resuscitating the whole panoply of feminine archetypal goddesses, like those we have buried way below our consciousness carrying the powerful energy of the Black Madonna, the flip side of Mother Mary (e.g., Mary Magdalene, Sophia, Kali Ma, Kuan Yin, and more), so that we can reclaim our fullness by embodying the whole range of our womanhood.

I’ll tell you a secret. Every time I write—for my blog, for a workshop or keynote, for a book or article—I have to stop yet again and consider this issue: What do we call ourselves? Elders? Do I avoid the word “old” or use it unabashedly? Do I refer to us as aging or stick to euphemisms or numbers, like post-50? Maybe the over-sixties? But what about including 40-plus? Boomers…and older? Matures? How do we distinguish between the early and late Boomers, who are as different as the Brat Pack is from the Beatles? At what point do generational labels lose their usefulness?

Amazon #1 Best Seller Author of 11 books including The Ageless Way, Gray is the New Green, Visionaries Have Wrinkles, The Greatness Challenge and more.

Sound financial planning is an obvious answer, but it’s also an ideal-world answer. In the real world, the effects of the recession, the costs of caring for parents and children, and the denial of the eventual effects of aging on our health are just a few factors that can make financial planning not enough to secure the future.

For many, the solution is to work past retirement age, some by necessity but many others out of desire to keep working. Individuals and companies are catching on to the idea of flexible working options, particularly those that allow telecommuting, job sharing, and shorter work weeks. These are benefits not just for Boomers but for the younger working generations as well.

Most age-friendly ideas for the workplace (and indeed for our homes and communities) are beneficial to all ages and stages. The sooner organizations and governments recognize this (and the more we emphasize it), the more prosperous and secure we will all be, in the workplace and as a nation.

In fact, longevity has been shown to have a positive effect on the economy. A 2005 study, “The Value of Health and Longevity,” by Robert Topel and Kevin Murphy, of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, demonstrates massive economic benefit to living longer and healthier than in the past:

Over the 20th century, cumulative gains in life expectancy were worth over $1.2 million per person for both men and women. Between 1970 and 2000 increased longevity added about $3.2 trillion per year to national wealth, an uncounted value equal to about half of average annual GDP over the period. Reduced mortality from heart disease alone has increased the value of life by about $1.5 trillion per year since 1970. The potential gains from future innovations in health care are also extremely large. Even a modest 1 percent reduction in cancer mortality would be worth nearly $500 billion

Therein lies the paradox: Longevity is undeniably good for the economy as a whole while presenting economic challenges for the individual. How do we bring the economic benefits to the individual?

This question is crucial not only for Boomers but also for future generations, especially the equally massive Millennial generation. We need more than short-term fixes. We need lasting changes in the workplace as well as changes in how we—at the individual, organizational, and governmental level—ensure a financial safety net that is adequate for the longer lives many of us will live.

What changes would you like to see in the workplace and in government policy to ensure longevity is a boon for all of us?

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Finding the Best Long-term Care for an Aging or Disabled Loved One

By Dawn Waddell Elledge RN, CCM Board Certified Aging Life Care Professional, Owner @ Elledge Geriatric Care Management

Whether or not you have thought about long term care for an aging or disabled loved one, the reality is that human life expectancy has increased steadily over the past few decades. The number of people living past 70 has dramatically increased, and because of higher standards of living, by the year 2040 the percentage of nursing home residents will jump from 50% to 130%. In the United States, more than 70% of nursing home residents are 75 years of age or older. 92% of those are Caucasian, 6% are African-American, 1% are Spanish, and the remainder are Asian, Hispanic mix or of other Native American descent. Another important contributing factor to the ever increasing need for long term care is the decline of the extended family in our culture. American households consists mainly of what sociologists refer to as the “nuclear family.” This is where the home is downsized to a single unit family replacing the former agricultural and extended family group.

Because we live in a very mobile society, more families are moving miles apart as the children become adults. Siblings are far removed from one another, and parents are very likely to have to care for themselves when they grow older.

The bottom line is that long-term care issues are here to stay. Also very important is the awareness that long-term care insurance premiums are usually less if you buy them when you are younger; this is not a preparation that should be postponed until one is nearing the possibility of needing long-term care facility placement.

Here’s a rundown of some of the types of long-term care settings most commonly found in communities throughout the United States today…

Adult Daycare alternative

Accessory Dwelling Units alternative

Subsidized Senior Housing

Board and Care Homes

Assisted Living Facilities

Continuing Retirement Communities

Certified (Medicare) Home Health Care option to facility based alternative

Hospice Care alternative

Respite Care alternative

Home and Community-Based Waiver Programs for the Medicaid & V.A. Eligible

Programs of All-inclusive Care for the Elderly who are Medicare/Medicaid

Nursing Homes (custodial-non-skilled-non-Medicare-long-term care)

Retirement Centers/Apartments

Multi-level of Care Complexes

Personal residential or facility based private pay sitter

For senior citizens and their loved ones there is a vast number of resources within every community, these are just a few examples:

Local Community Senior Citizens Centers for Supportive Services

Transportation Programs

Non-Medical Care Agencies

Certified Home Health Care Agencies

Geriatric Care Management (Aging Life Care Professional)

State Ombudsman

State Dept. of Health

Council on Aging

Veterans Services

Mental Health

Dementia & Aging Care-Giver Support Groups

Admin. On Aging at www.aoa.gov (1-202-619-0724)

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services at www.medicare.gov

ELDERCARE LOCATOR www.eldercare.gov

Long-Term Care Ombudsman (1-202-332-2275 FOR MORE INFO)

State Health Insurance counseling & Assist. Through St. Dept. of Health

Area Agencies on Aging at www.eldercare.gov

Aging & Disability Resource Center at www.adrc-tae.org

For more information on dementia care go to Alz.org or contact Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Cntr.

__________________________________________________________________

Dawn Waddell Elledge RN, CCM Board Certified Aging Life Care Professional, Owner @ Elledge Geriatric Care Management

I’m currently transitioning from professional board certified geriatric care management to becoming a hospice nurse manager in the home health sector. I write books that outline how “it will dawn on ya, life’s a journey….” Life has certainly been an interesting journey for me as a nurse person who has keen insights on living, aging and accepting the natural process of it all, like you mean it. Intentional living is what the journey is all about!!

However, from the vibrating heart of our dissipating structures comes the promise of our true greatness: a greatness of awareness and action that will change the world. From the midst of the evolving Great Transition, we leave the Great Recession and the uplifting Obama era behind us as we enter an unknown, unchartered new cycle of populism and extreme radicalism ripping our valued democratic tenets to shreds and putting each of us on the line.  This Great Shift demands that we each unlock our potential for greatness which lives in each of us, and we are being called to make a difference. That is the premise of The Greatness Challenge, in which I offer a template for embracing and embodying our unique Signature Greatness DNA^SM to unleash our personal and collective greatness.

The Greatness Challenge is a manifesto for the growing wave of us who want to add value in all we do and who are being called to personal and collective evolution—from dentists to doctors, executives to engineers, artists to teachers and visionary leaders and futurists who are looking to redesign their lives so that every moment counts . . . for those of you who seek work that not only fills your bank accounts but your “values” bank as you yearn to do well doing good . . . for leaders who seek a pathway to visionary leadership, so the impact you have is of the greatest benefit for all.

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His closing resonated with me in particular, and I just have to share it with you in its entirety:

My father, who lived to 94, often said that the 80s had been one of the most enjoyable decades of his life. He felt, as I begin to feel, not a shrinking but an enlargement of mental life and perspective. One has had a long experience of life, not only one’s own life, but others’, too. One has seen triumphs and tragedies, booms and busts, revolutions and wars, great achievements and deep ambiguities, too. One has seen grand theories rise, only to be toppled by stubborn facts. One is more conscious of transience and, perhaps, of beauty. At 80, one can take a long view and have a vivid, lived sense of history not possible at an earlier age. I can imagine, feel in my bones, what a century is like, which I could not do when I was 40 or 60. I do not think of old age as an ever grimmer time that one must somehow endure and make the best of, but as a time of leisure and freedom, freed from the factitious urgencies of earlier days, free to explore whatever I wish, and to bind the thoughts and feelings of a lifetime together.

I am looking forward to being 80.

This is what it means to be ageless. It doesn’t mean denying age or pretending to be something we’re not. It doesn’t mean being this perfectly confident person who is doing and being everything she wants to do and be. Earlier in the article, for example, Oliver comments on feeling as though he should be completing his life.

But this feeling doesn’t stop him from feeling complete in his life.

Being ageless means, in part, developing this ability to step outside our lives, to step outside time, and see the world and life as it really is. To go beyond simple knowledge and take that step into knowing. To feel in our bones what time really is and to appreciate both the transience and the beauty.

It also means stepping inside ourselves, to curate our lived experiences, thoughts, feelings, and wisdom, to learn and constantly refine what really matters most to us so that what we add to this collection from here on out can be nothing short of masterpieces, even in the simplest of acts and quietest of moments.

Time is just a page number. It’s not the story itself. 

Featured image by Sumayah.