Of course, with the Administrations changing and the budget cuts coming in corporate legal departments, older, well-compensated lawyers could lose their employment.
Also, age bias in professional life is real.
Primarily because of it, documents builtin.com, by your mid to late 60s, 90% of you will stop working. That's despite the reality that most of you do not have adequate financial resources to see you through your 70s, 80s and beyond without bringing in more income from work.
But, that's not the whole story.
The other part is how too many of you are shooting yourself in the foot when it comes to searching for work, pushing for a promotion, moving on to better work, starting a business and/or growing a business.
In my coaching those over-50, I have observed five specific ways in which you are stuck in self-defeating patterns when it comes to work.
Gluing the aging stigma onto you. You buy in. No need to. You know your value as a member of the labor market. In addition, that mindset hardens into self-hate.
Pivot from apologizing for "being old" to talking the language of results. Explicitly let employers and clients/customers know what you can do for them better, faster and more affordably than your competition.
Sure, there will be lots of rejection. Just move on. Remember how much rejection there also had been when you were just starting out in the labor market. Also, when you aimed for promotions or to expand your business ventures.
Feeling compelled to explain (usually with too much detail) how things used to be done. You may be assuming such a description showcases your deep knowledge of the industry. Instead, though, it can brand you as stuck in yesterday. Those in power probably conclude you might not be flexible enough to catapult into all the changes going in that work setting. Embrace as your new mantra: The past likely has become irrelevant.
Still chasing status. Work has to become a matter of income. Not career paths and especially not prestigious ones. That's not only a situation with the over-50. Increasingly, predicts Wallis Towers Watson, careers are being replaced by what you put together as a portfolio of skills and experiences. The path probably won't be linear.
Members of all generations are finding that, to continue to bring in income, they have to start over, again and again. Their industry might have gone kaput. Their skills are no longer marketable. The region they're living in is losing jobs to other regions. That re-start likely lacks status. It may pay less. But, as the old adage goes: Nothing gets you work like work. Working is more productive than not working. Also, when not working skills atrophy.
Here, a free read, is the bible for the over-50 on landing, holding and moving on to better work Download Outwitting ageism.
Allowing yourself to be overwhelmed by technology. The reality is that you only have to know the technologies associated with your work or those which will soon enough be part of your work. You don't have to know everything. And, your objective in learning is not to become a whizz in tech per se.
Technology is a tool. It's your responsibility to have all the tools you need or might need in your tool box. No employer or client/customer is requiring you to have the expertise or even the perspective of an insider in the tech industry.
Never learning the art of self-compassion. The burden of your past setbacks, errors of judgments and actual crashes is what you continue to carry around. You are not alone in looping into the negative, without the ability to understand and forgive yourself. That's exactly why the emerging meme is self-compassion.
Capitalism is a brutal economic system. You can't expect others to nudge you on the path of accepting the past and your own role in what didn't pan or went very wrong.
That's an inside job. How to learn the fundamentals of self-compassion?
There are religions which teach those. Shop around for a religious organization which is a good fit for you.
Also, meditation can clear the channel in the mind. You can learn that exercise free on the Internet. For example, here is American Buddhist nun Pema Chodron on YouTube guiding you how to calm the turmoil of the mind. In one school of Buddhist thought, the mantra is: Clear thinking, don't know. That helps you from assuming you should have been infallible in your past decisions.
There are free 12-step programs such as Emotions Anonymous.
If you have good medical insurance, your co-pay for psychotherapy can be low.
Or, you can start your own support group for acquiring the art of self-compassion. You may be surprised that youth will want to join.
If you can find your way out of these five self-defeating behaviors, aging can be a gift. You can enjoy working without being excessively driven. Also, you have the wisdom to know when to stay and when to leave. That gives you the edge in the entire process of earning income from work - as an employee, gig player or business owner.
You may even become a late bloomer. University of Chicago researcher David W. Galenson documented there is such an entity. The book he published on that phenomenon is "Old Masters and Young Geniuses."
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