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I
receive a number of online newsletters through email every week. One I
always take time to read comes from a man named Michael Josephson who
operates a web site called “Character Counts”. He recently sent out a
commentary about something that was written by Peter Drucker, a management
consultant from the
United
States
.
Drucker pointed out
that as highly accomplished people get older, they often feel a need to
measure their lives more in terms of the impact they have rather than by
what they have. Let me repeat
that last sentence. “As highly accomplished people get older, they often
feel a need to measure their lives more in terms of the impact they have
rather than by what they have.”
Drucker calls this the
shift from “success to significance” and explains that. “Success is
achieving your goals; significance is having a lasting positive impact on
the lives of others.”
Drucker stated that for
some, particularly those people who have accumulated enormous amounts of
money and worldly possessions, “This desire to be significant is just
another form of vanity or yearning to achieve a kind of immortality
through good deeds long remembered. For others, it’s simply a desire to
live a worthy life.”
“Whatever the reason,
when people begin to think more deeply about significance, they tend to
place greater emphasis on enjoying what they already have and enriching
their lives through service to others,” he went on. “The irony is that
living a life focused on the pursuit of significance is much more
personally gratifying than one devoted to climbing the ladder of success.
As author Stephen Covey warns, it’s no good climbing to the top of a
ladder that’s leaning against the wrong wall.”
Many people, especially
baby boomers, are approaching the age of retirement and they are asking
themselves some very serious questions about life. In fact, in one recent
survey, 80% of baby boomers indicated that they expect to continue working
past the age of 65. Some are going to do so because they are afraid of
running out of money now that they are living longer and the cost of
living continues to rise, but many say that they do not want to spend the
rest of their life laying around waiting to die. They are feeling the
shift from success to significance and want to remain engaged in life.
They want to do something meaningful with their life and many of them are
finding that the skills they developed during their working years are very
much in demand now.
I personally know an
awful lot of people living in the City of
Greater
Sudbury
who have achieved a huge amount of success during their lifetime. Many of
these people are now reaching the age when they will feel the call to
shift from “success to significance”. The opportunities for these
people to do positive things for the community will be tremendous during
the next decade.
I see many examples of
this shift from “success to significance” occurring every day. I see
people who have worked in a career their entire life and who are now
volunteering for a number of service organizations and giving of their
time and money to help others. I see successful business people going out
of their way to help the less fortunate, demonstrating that it is
important to give back to the community. I see struggling families who
still have time to help out others who are struggling even more than they
are. I see young and old alike volunteering to organize recreational
activities that are affordable and yet still allow people to spend time
with their family, friends and neighbours.
I also see many people
who still want to work when they hit retirement age, but they don’t want
to be in the “rat race”. They want flexibility and they want to work
on their own terms. This means that they are available to work on a
part-time basis and when needed, which suits many companies in the
marketplace today that have are turning to “outsourcing” as a way of
meeting their needs. It is not uncommon to see former company managers
working on the floor in a hardware store helping younger customers find
solutions to their problems. This low-stress employment keeps the older
worker active and contributing in a meaningful way to the economy. |
