I’ve never seen anyone talk about the benefits of exploring self-development after you’ve reached an age where you’re assumed not to need it. As a young adult, self-development is a way of defining your potential and identifying your goals, whether personal or professional. As an adult in your 40s or 50s, self-development is typically seen as a way of resolving issues or overcoming limits. It’s a way to shape a more successful life, whatever that means to you. In your 60s and beyond, self-development is different.
Your life as a senior is still about making choices, but it’s also about facing transitions you didn’t ask for and didn’t want. Work changes. Your health might change. Your relationships change, even if your friends and partners still have the same names and addresses. Everything is not worse, but everything becomes different.
What does self-aware mean at 60 and beyond? It means being able to experience your fullest, best self at the same time that you can step back and see that self moving through unchosen transitions. Where will you live? Who will matter most to you from one day to the next? What purpose will call to you? Who will you be as you become untethered from the identities that preoccupied you while you were building a family and career?
Think of all the things you wanted to do and all the things you wanted to be “if only you had time.” Think about grandparenting (not necessarily of biological grandchildren) and the role that elders play in supporting the young (probably not with advice). Think about the self that connects all the different people you have been and will be.
Why? There are two reasons. The obvious one is that you need to be resilient. Old age is approaching and it is not for the faint of heart. The other reason is less obvious: you are fascinating. There is so much to learn from the study of the way you have felt and processed and chosen and behaved. There is so much more to you than you have lived so far.
