This article from Deseret News features an excerpt from an upcoming book by Linda & Richard Eyre on how boomers can live their life to its fullest. Covering seven key decisions boomers should make to ensure their golden years are happy, productive and fulfilling, the steps are general enough that anyone can benefit from.
- Decide how long you want to live.
This sounds at first blush like a pretty ridiculous suggestion—how could someone be expected to answer that? But it’s an idea that has a lot of logic to it, once you stop and consider its implication. By pondering the conclusion to your own story, you stand to have a better say in how and when it ends.
- Decide who you want to spend those years with.One of the benefits of age is the ability to reflect and think about the things—and the people—who really matter to you. As with the first decision, thinking about the important people in your life will help you ensure that you’re fostering the relationships with the people who matter the most.
- Decide how you want to look and how you want to feel.
An ability to articulate how you’d like to look and feel down the road beyond “attractive” and “great” respectively is a useful ability to have as you age. Think of it as you would when you’re describing an injury to a doctor: the more detailed you explain the problem, the more likely you are to have it fixed.
- Decide how much money you will need.
This one is fairly self-explanatory. Yet as obvious as this step may be, many boomers nevertheless fail to consider their finances in respect to the life they’d like to live years down the road. It’s not enough to think about finances in respect to the here and now; a life well-lived is one that pays respect to the expenses of the future, too.
- Decide what you want to keep.
When many boomers take stock in their lives, they do so both figuratively and literally. For many, a lifetime of accumulated baggage refers to physical possession every bit as much as to emotional trauma. The ability to get rid of unnecessary possessions can be freeing, particularly if said possessions are donated.
- Decide which God you believe in and which self you will be.
As the famous postmodern author David Foster Wallace once said, everyone worships—it’s just a matter of what or whom they choose to worship. Finding out what’s truly important will determine how you follow all of the other steps on this list.
- Decide what and, more importantly, who your legacy will be.
At the end of the day, the question of what you stand to leave behind will inform how you live the rest of your life. As the authors suggest, you will find your greatest joy in pursing the legacy you seek.