Our Greatest Achievements Are Ahead...

Marti Barletta is head of a marketing company Trend Sight Group that consults with companies who seek to market to women. She has determined that women, especially those in their 50's and 60's wield the most purchasing power due to their role in both the workplace and family and their comparatively high disposable income.

For all the amazing strengths that this company brings I still find a singular quote that Marti makes as one of the most revealing and motivating statements about women at this point in our lives. She says that we "experience the joy of being, relish liberation from expectation,rock our world, brim with confidence and live life in drive, who feel our greatest achievements are ahead of us." Amazing in this simple sentence and between each set of commas is a unique profound thought, each segment of the sentence worth thinking on.

We "experience the joy of being". For all its advantages, being young just never let you feel the joy of just being. Or maybe it did, but we were too filled with angst and expectation to really see it for what it was. A deeply thought filled, peaceful, joyful state where there are no expectations or performance requirements and we can see and appreciate a moment for just what it is. We need to expand those moments so they fill a greater proportion of our day.

We "relish liberation from expectation." A whole lifetime of doing what was expected of us from our early years to high school, to marriage and children and jobs. A now we just want to define what it is that makes us tick and shed the shackles of expectation. A virtual explosion of joy each time we are able to make a small change in the process of liberating ourselves from the demands and expectations of life as it should be.

We "rock our world, live with confidence and live life in drive." Get out of the passenger seat and drive. Where was it you wanted to go? What was it you planned to do in your private dreaming moments? We get to find those dreams and create them now. Not easy. Scary...a little. But exhilarating to go towards them. I love that 'rock our world' phase. How long has it been since something has truly rocked your world? Brings us back to the quest for safety and conformity that eventually becomes the self created box in which we live our lives.

In his book Awakenings, Mark Nepo shares an enlightening passage that applies to how we live. This entry is for January 9 in his book and it is called "Life In the Tank". I will quote the passage in order to do it justice. "It was a curious thing. Robert had filled the bathtub and put the fish in the tub, so he could clean their tank. After he'd scrubbed the film from the small walls of their make-believe deep, he went to retrieve them.

He was astonished to find that, though they had the entire tub to swim in, they were huddled in a small area the size of their tank. There was nothing to contain them, nothing to hold them back. Why wouldn't they dart about freely? What had life in the tank done to their natural ability to swim?".

You can, no doubt see the analogy to how we live our lives. We work hard to establish this safe place in the world and then at this point we need to work really hard to shed our quest for safety and move into DRIVE. "Rock Our World!" And the truly amazing part of the phrase is "who feel our greatest achievements are ahead of us." That is simply the most exciting part of the quote. Because the typical view of this stage in our lives is that our best years are behind us. But that does not need to be true. She shatters the typical view that our years ahead should be a gradual slide into old age. Is it possible (and a bit exciting) that our greatest achievements are yet to come? It changes the playing field to think like that and it changes how you look at your personal future. And it makes you accountable to create what could be. Drive!



If you want to read more of the life changing stuff by Mark Nepo:
The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

For those of you who would like to read more by Marti Barletta PrimeTime Women: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big SpendersMarketing to Women: How to Increase Your Share of the World's Largest Market