The Power Years': Make Your 40s the Best Years Yet

Sept. 19, 2005 — -- Retiring at 55 to a life filled with leisurely days of golf and afternoon cocktails is a dying concept, says Ken Dychtwald, psychologist, gerontologist and author of "The Power Years."

When it comes to retirement, "please forget everything you've been told," Dychtwald says in his new book. As the baby boomers reach their "golden years," they are redefining retirement just as they have redefined almost every stage of life up to that point.

More often, people are staying in the work force longer. One major reason is that life is expensive, and as people live longer, they need to work longer to support themselves. But many baby boomers decide to keep working because they are not ready to "fade away." They have more dreams to pursue, and, Dychtwald contends, would be bored if they entered traditional retirement at 55.

Dychtwald offered the following advice to "Good Morning America" viewers entering their "power years."

Dychtwald offers much more advice in his book, and you can read an excerpt of "The Power Years" below.

Do you long for a life without work or pressure in which yourdays are spent baking for the grandchildren or playing eighteenholes of golf in the morning, followed by a leisurely lunch andafternoon of bridge, then cocktails, a delicious early dinner, anda good movie? After all, that's how it worked for our grandparentsand parents, isn't it? We grew up surrounded by this modelof a leisure-filled later life.

Please forget everything you've been told. It's not your obligationto go away just because you're getting older. Nor is it yourbirthright to cede all responsibility to your community andmankind so that you may lead a life of leisure in retirement. Ofcourse, you may choose these paths if you wish, but in our viewthat would be a mistake. Certainly there is no guarantee thatyou'll be able to afford a carefree romp through later life or eventhat you'll enjoy it if that's where you can afford to wind up.Reinventing yourself and repowerment -- ramping up life whereand when you choose and in ways that excite you, not windingdown into obscurity -- is the mold-shattering, exciting new stagethat will come next for our generation.

While we've had our heads down toiling away these past fewdecades, spending more time than we might have envisioned atwork and raising our children, the world has changed enormously.As we all know, the Internet, global trade, medicalbreakthroughs, and more are speeding up the pace of life even aslife itself is being extended, posing new challenges in our careersand families. In this book, we cannot hope to deal with all thechanges confronting our lives. Yet it's vitally important for eachof us to appreciate just how different things really are and willbecome as we move into the next stage of life, a stage that we -- the eighty-four million North Americans born between 1946 and1964 as well as hundreds of millions more maturing adultsaround the world -- will redefine as the power years.

The majority of our parents worked for one company all theirlives. When their careers ended at age sixty-five, the norm wasthat they got a nice party and a gold watch and happily hoppedon board a slow cruise into the sunset. Forty years of toil behindand the kids now grown, both Dad and Mom were done. Theyfloated over the horizon, eagerly retreating to a life of leisure.

For their employers, it was a great deal. They got to bring inyounger, more energetic, and less expensive labor.

For a lot of reasons, many of us won't have the same optionsthat our parents had. For one thing, government and employee-sponsoredentitlements have questionable futures, and the ideaof early retirement, or even for many of us the idea of retirementat sixty-five, took a quantum leap backward when the globalstock market bubble burst in 2000, eroding much of our savingsand more than a few of our dreams.

Demographic trends threaten to foist an unprecedentedlabor shortage on the world economy. Companies of all sizes andshapes are going to want us to stick around longer and will bewilling to provide us with a great deal more flexibility to do so.Meanwhile, our careers have been far more mobile. We'vebounced among three, four, five, or more employers, often in asmany cities, and we won't have been with any one of them longenough for a gold watch, much less the pension and wall-to-wallretirement health coverage that our parents might have beenblessed with.

The slow, lazy cruise that our fathers and mothers eagerlysigned up for turned out to be a little too slow and lazy. Lookhard enough and you'll see that many of our parents havebegun to rebel against the idea that they should fade away;they're going back to school and back to work, taking up writingor painting and otherwise reengaging with a society they haddropped out of. Throughout this book we will lean on the experiencesof what we call Ageless Explorers, the growing number ofleading-edge adults of our parents' generation and some fromeven farther back, to illustrate the changing nature of the poweryears. Our hope is that you'll find these anecdotes inspirationaland that the glimmers they provide will meld into a beam of lightthat helps you navigate to -- and through -- your power years.

These years present a unique opportunity for us. The notionof staying in the game longer, of not having to step aside at a setage, will liberate us, setting us free to lead the lives we want tolead by staying engaged, vital, and youthful as long as we like.Opening before us is a whole new stage of life squeezed betweenour primary career years and a steadily retreating old age. Just aswe moved from adolescence into adulthood three or fourdecades ago, we are now pushing into a whole new period ofdiscovery and personal growth -- what we call middlescence -- asmore and more of us make the most of the many fruitful decadesthat lie ahead.

Our generation is coming to realize that we will have numerousdecades to live past the age commonly thought to be the time to stop working. What we do with that time will set us apartfrom all previous generations.

This book is for people like you who are beginning to contemplatewhat comes next and how to make the most of it. Make nomistake -- this is not a retirement guide. It's about unretiring -- about how to shed your dated preconceptions about life afterforty, fifty, or sixty and stay in the game in ways you'll find satisfyingand invigorating. Money is important, and we'll deal withthat critical issue in Chapter 7. But that's where this book stopsbeing like anything you've read before. Countless opportunitiesare developing to let you live all aspects of your life to thefullest -- from staying connected with your kids and grandkids(and, eventually, your great-grandkids) to choosing emerginghousing designs and lifestyles for a new, active time in your lifewith fewer responsibilities; from finding love all over again withyour spouse (or someone new, should you be searching) to goingback to school for the fun of it; from where, how, and why tomake new friends to where and why you should pick up stakesand move to a city or town that will let you live and thrive as youalways dreamed.

We'll discover new passions and explore long-dormant desires.We'll stay active by working longer or volunteering, by trying ourhand at writing or painting or running a small business, and ourcontinued involvement will promote our well-being and prove avital resource to the communities in which we live.

You are on a far different life track from that of yourparents; you just may not fully understand it yet. But you soonwill, and this book is meant to help you as you ramp up yourlearning curve.

On a recent vacation with his family in Orlando, Florida, Danwas staying at a wonderful resort, the Gaylord, where heobserved an apparent oddity that both encouraged and, at leastinitially, dumbfounded him. The hotel had two equally spaciousand convenient swimming pools on either side of the grounds.One was designated as a quiet zone for rest-seeking grown-upsand marked "No One Under 18 Allowed." That pool area mightas well have been a mausoleum -- not a single person was in thewater. The other pool, by contrast, was overrun with raucousteens and quite a few bawling toddlers.What stunned Dan wasthat many of the mature adults he would have expected to findat the quiet pool had opted away from that morguelike environ,preferring -- even in some cases with no children or grandchildrenin sight -- the lively atmosphere at the pool bustling withthe energy of youth.

Which pool will you choose in the years ahead?

When is the last time you seriously asked yourself what youwill do with the rest of your life? Is there a second or a thirdcareer you'd like to explore? A small business you want to start?Do you want to study art or open a bed and breakfast? Haveyou dreamed of taking up acting or going to cooking school?Where should you live for the perfect combination of weather,fun, friendships, family, lovers, intellectual stimulation, andlifestyle? What will all that free time do to our marriages andother relationships? Where and how will we live? What will keepour minds active and our lives relevant? Will this be the worstperiod of our lives --