THE ELDERS' MAGIC TRICK AVOCATION INTO VOCATION The Process of Discovering What's Next in Late Life

THE MAGIC STARTS with a question

Excerpted from the Zoom 'invite' for the Elder Group call in preparation for their October retreat.

"Elders are magicians. Elders transform avocation into a vocation. That's essential; actually, it's quintessential." 

"Here's the homework to prepare for the call:

1) How does time occur for you when you are fully engaged in your avocation?

2) What's different about you when you are engaged in your avocation than when involved in your vocation (personality, emotions, mood, ego)?

Bring what you noticed when you engaged with these self-reflective questions?"

DEFINITIONS

·     Dictionary definition.

Ø Street definition.

Vocation

·     a person's employment or main occupation is regarded worthy and requires great dedication.

Ø What you have been doing for most of your life.

Avocation

·     something a person does in addition to a principal occupation, especially for pleasure. 

Ø Your getaway.

Usually, an avocation is an interest or activity taken up in addition to one's regular work; it typically refers to something that is a person's "true" passion or interest, i.e., painting, gardening, fishing, hiking, surfing, writing, playing music, yoga.

In contrast to avocation, a vocation is your principal occupation to generate and sustain a professional lifestyle. Vocation unconditionally demands particular thinking, relationships, and actions in order to succeed – demands dictated by the industry of your vocation.  

Vocation became your sculpture, eliminating whatever impedes your career success. Vocation over time carves diligently away until a skin-tight, sculpted figure is complete and highly polished.

Until late middle age, but most commonly at the beginning of late age (the end of the 50s, early 60s), the thinking, the relationships, and the actions your vocation once gave you lose their steam.

Impermanence – work, body, finances, family, death and dying are now much more present. Who you were, and who you have been, is about to end—uncertainty begins to swell.

A vocation is something you choose in early age from a significantly reduced number of choices available. Choices limited by family, societal, peer, and identity/ego-induced pressures. The path to your choice of vocation had a smidgen of autonomy, but not much. You had to forget the Rock Band. Or, you had to give up on the Happy-Princess-Ending.  

You configured yourself to succeed in a vocation. But, unfortunately, that well-crafted configuration has little or no value in late age. Different playing field. Whole different context.

A core reconfiguration can occur at late age when there is little to diminish, restrict or retard your choices. Your education, career path, jobs, strategies, tactics, key relationships, and the "keeping up" has been exhilarating, but now in late age, tiring and predictable. Is it time for something 'new,' but no 'new' has yet to appear?

With your former vocation, there is often a win-lose; get ahead, a subtle but constant state of urgency—the overarching context, conditions, and commitments to succeed continuously shaping you to deliver as required. But you are departing your history and who you have been up till now. So what will shape you now?

Avocation is not grounded in family and societal commandments or directives. There is no monetary incentive. Instead, an avocation touches that inner place, offering serenity, solitude, and well-being.

Each person is drawn, unaccompanied, unaided, independently to their avocation. No directions are needed. No outside voices. Intuition is writing the script and directing the show.

For many of our clients, the daunting question is what do I do next. What will I do after leaving my business or professional career? How do I navigate the future when I lose public, professional, and even family agreed-upon importance and recognition? What will I do when I am no longer my former vocation and all that came with it?" 

In our model, an elder can consciously extract an avocation's emotional, intellectual, and spiritual elements and turn these into a vocation. So our particular algorithm in eldering is to make the core elements of avocation the bedrock of a higher purpose-driven vocation.

When clients apply our algorithm in their lives, it delivers as designed. As a result, it contributes mightily to successfully operating as an elder in today's tumultuous world. The elder's new work expression contributes not extracts, gives not takes, promotes not negates, uplifts not crushes.

THE BACKBONE OF THE ALGORITHM - WHAT QUESTIONS ARE WE THE ANSWER FOR?

The Contemporary Elder Institute (CEI) is now fully incorporated. A part of the vision was to have a location where letting go of who one has been, to what is available now and in the future of late age was essential.

An environment of peace, tranquility, nature, and no outside voices. Thus the houseboat on the Willamette channel here in Portland was a perfect choice.

The CEI company's design and function were based on the bedrock marketing principle – "What questions is CEI the answer for?"

The Questions Gripping Our Market:

·     Who will I be, and what will I do now that I am departing, or have departed, from my professional career?

·     How do I handle my relationship with my impending impermanence in every aspect of my life?

·     How do I handle getting old?

When your long-standing professional title, status, relationships, colleagues, and who you have been for so many years disappear, realizing the past has no real value is very unsettling. Offering a pathway we call eldering is our answer to these questions.

www.requestingwisdom.com - A Website that is constantly under improvement