Pleased to share this article from a member Association that I belong to...Pivotal ASA®
As we age, we go through stages of life, each of which has it’s own developmental agenda. For seniors, their primary developmental agendas are to prevent loss and to determine their legacy. Preventing the loss of things like independence, control over healthcare and/or living arrangements, physical health and strength and consultative authority is a perfectly natural desire, given the lifetime of control they are coming through. Equally important is the need to determine their legacy; what did it mean that they were alive on this planet? Exploring both of these agendas requires one to slow down, take stock of current situations and focus on the past. Boomers, especially the Leading-Edge Boomers born between ’46 & ’55, are following a completely different set of developmental agendas. Whilst their agendas will vary somewhat based on their age and family situation, it’s safe to say that Boomers are concerned with 3 major things:
1) Accumulating as much wealth as possible to last them through their pending retirement, and
2)Getting ready psychologically, physically, and financially, to take care of their aging parents, and/or
3)Finishing raising their own kids – this could be either children still living at home and going to school, or older children.
Much is made in the press of the matter of being a caregiver to family, and Boomer women are now well aware that they are going to spend more years caring for their parents than they did raising their children. This weighs heavily on many people. Not because they do not want to help their parents, but rather because their lives are so busy already. So, you have one generation, the Seniors, slowing down and fearful of the losses they know lie ahead of them, and you have the next generation racing through life, trying to get everything done. And there is bound to be inter-generational conflict. These conflicts present challenges for most people, but none more so than the person who does not know the reasoning behind things. And so, the untrained professional encounters situations where they are not aware that the signs even exist, let alone what the signs might be. And if they figured out the signs, they probably wouldn’t have the slightest idea of how to help people ‘fix’ things so everyone can communicate better and move along the path of their journey. If you have any questions, please reach out to us. We are here because this is our passion, our mission, and our very raison d’etre.