ReFIRE Your Life to Achieve Fulfillment

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

You’ve lived most of your life according to one plan or another and now you’ve reached the age of retirement. Some people might call you old now. However, I’m betting you feel a lot like me. I feel like I’m just getting started.

The first part of my life was to gain experience and get all of the “should’s” and “have-to’s” out of the way. Now I’m looking around to figure out what the best part of my life will be.

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” – Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez

I’ve worked with the senior population in several venues in my role as a social worker. I’ve seen the vast difference in their lives and it really did come from their attitudes towards life. Some were really old at 60 while others are still young at 90.

ReFIRE Your Life

How then do you reFIRE your life in such a way that you maintain a youthful attitude and the health to go along with it? It will require some change on your part.

First of all, where are you now in relation to where you thought you would be at this age? Have you already lived everything you set out to do? This was me. I had either already lived the dreams I dreamed or watched other dreams die a painful death. I was fulfilled in many ways and disillusioned in other ways. I think that’s pretty normal.

Have you lived your passions?

Do you even know what your passions are now? This was my biggest challenge. Now what? I was divorced from my first husband and widowed way too young with my second husband. My kids were all raised and on their own. Many of them had blended families so I became blessed with 17 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren (so far).

I went on a course of discovery.

• Millionaire Mind Intensive with T. Harv Eker.
• Joined his Quantum Leap program which consisted of several week long courses, e.g. Ultimate Internet Boot Camp, Warrior Bootcamp, Train the Trainer, Life Directions, and several others.
• Took off on a journey telling everyone I would be back whenever I got back. I was going to enjoy this time. I was gone for 6 weeks. It was wonderful!
• Joined Empower Network which has a mission of transforming lives so people can reach for their dreams.
• Began learning about blogging, marketing, autoresponders and lead pages and oh so much other stuff.
• Began reading books like Think and Grow Rich, Start with Why, and The Slight Edge
• Began listening to audios of very successful people

I began to dream again. My dream is still being defined and constantly being refined. I remember when I was young, I always wanted to be a published author. Somehow that is one dream that never really took off. I wrote a lot of papers for school while getting two degrees. Even had a couple of professors tell me my work was publishable.

So now…… ta da. I’m writing, only now it’s called blogging and it’s self-published. One day I’ll put together an ebook or two. This then is my passion – to dig down deep and get my thoughts written down, to share them with others in the hope that it makes a difference for someone else.

My Why

What motivates me? Plain and simple – it’s my family. One of my daughters said something to me a couple of weeks ago which really struck home. She said, “Mom, I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to get anything. It is always such a struggle.” Well, I knew why. She had been taught very well by her parents. We always struggled to have anything.

My WHY for pursuing writing this blog and helping others is much bigger than my passion for writing. My WHY is to become successful doing what I love so I can demonstrate it’s possible. My WHY is to teach my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren that they really can do what they love and earn a very nice income so life isn’t a struggle.

Identify Your Passions

Enough about me. What about you? What did you want to do when you were young that you haven’t done yet for whatever reason? What is stopping you from doing it now? Do you even know what you are passionate about? If not, I recommend Jonathon’s blogpost How to Identify Your Passions.

If you only had 24 hours to live, what would you do if you could do anything your heart desires? Would you get a great massage? Would you spend it with family? Would you do something outrageous? Personally I would call all of my loved ones and then go to a spa and be outrageously pampered so I could go out of this life feeling very loved and relaxed.

On the other hand, what if you were going to live for forever? What would you do? I don’t know about you, but I am a life long learner. I plan on being around for a very long time. That means I have a lot to learn about a whole bunch of topics. It takes me a bit longer to learn now, probably because my file cabinet upstairs is a lot fuller than it used to be. I’m having the time of my life exploring my new skills.

Path of ReFIREment

 I invite you to join me on the path of ReFIREment. It’s made life more exciting than ever. Who knows? Maybe I’ll even find the new love of my life on this journey. I am forever hopeful. <grin>

 What’s your dream? What’s your passion?

What are you going to do to ReFIRE your life?