Midlife Goal Setting

Fear appears to be the most common guiding principle of our lives.   The media, advertisers, politicians, teachers, our parents use fear to guide us, to subjugate us into action.   We rule our lives by the fear of the un-known, the fear of what we think will come next.   The fear.   My wife reminds me that fear attaches us to the outcome of fear.   Attach yourself to fear and what you fear will come.   My greatest fear was being 50 and out of work.   Welcome to fear.   I should fear winning the lottery.   I fear winning the $250MM lottery!   I fear winning it so badly I can taste it…! OK – so maybe that fear is hope.   But hope isn’t a strategy.   Hope is attached to a plan that we work toward and strive to achieve in our lives.   Hope is what you have when you’ve decided to enact a change and have a plan to reach an objective.   You can hope your plan succeeds but you still need to drive the process to make sure it’s obtained. I discontinued using th

This weekend I was shown a YouTube video of Mike Yung, a very talented 50+ year old Subway Singer.   It felt very relevant as I'm re-examining and setting my goals for the next 15 years.   Mike Yung had been featured on America’s got talent and made it to the semi-final.   Everyone thought he’d have a record deal before the program ended.   However, according to interviews with Mike the record executives consistently turned him away and politely gave him the feedback – “You’re too old”.   I don’t want to dwell on age and neither did Mike.  It’s not the primary thing of importance when looking at talent or goal setting.   Is age relevant when setting goals?  Well sure, but let's focus back on fulfilling ones dreams and aspirations.   The idea of setting a goal and working toward it, even if others around you say that it can’t be done.    There's always a way to find a yes.   I've always looked at the answer “no” as my customer's way of saying “no not that way…

I was recently laid off after 15 years with the same company.   The layoff was somewhat voluntary because I was offered the ability to move to Albany New York and maintain my executive marketing role in the organization.   However, my wife’s only living relative, a sister that is 15 months older, lives on the same street five doors up from us.   The relocation would create a significant strain on my wife’s support network.   Based on my role in marketing, I’m regularly on the road 50-75% of any given month.   There have been years where I have had “Gold” and “100K” status on more than one airline.     Moving my wife to Albany would leave her with no support network.   “Yeah but she’ll meet other parents through the neighborhood and parent teachers conferences…” We don’t have kids, well we do have four legged, furry kids but the standard social networks that kick in when you move a family don’t really apply to us.   In short, I’m looking for a Unicorn, an executive marketing role wher