What will you do with your third (fourth, fifth sixth) act?
People are living longer than ever before. People have up to a third more years than their great-grandparents. Dividing life into three acts, 0-30, 30-60 and 60-90 (if you live that long) means that people have a whole other act of life available to them once they retire from their current job.
If you are facing your third, fourth or fifth act, do you know what you’d like to do with your time? You could use it to change the world as an activist or start a charity. You can use this time to leave your legacy. Jane Fonda is a great example of a woman who, at 85, is nearing the end of her third act. She’s recently become a vocal spokesperson and activist about addressing the urgency of climate change and reducing our fossil fuel emissions to net zero by 2020. She is my hero and my inspiration as someone who is also in their third act. I started my philanthropy coaching business at age 60!
In her Ted Talk about the Third Act (watch here) https://www.ted.com/talks/jane_fonda_life_s_third_act?language=en Fonda speaks about taking time at 62 to think of about what she wanted her third act to look like. She notes that age is not pathology (predicated on illness and a problem) but age as energy and potential. She symbolises age as a staircase where the human spirit is on an upward ascent.
She walks the talk. In 2019, she decided she’d dedicate the remainder of her years (she’s just recently turned 85) to doing something about climate change. She started climate change fire drills, four months of protests with other activists in Washington, D.C. to target mostly policy makers who receive their money from fossil fuel lobbyists.
After decades of activism, from protesting the Vietnam war in the 1970’s until now, she regularly goes out and protests as part of the Friday Fire Drills, non-violent civil disobedience, and gets arrested with people her grandchildren’s age and younger.
She’s a philanthropist as well and has set up a political action committee, the Jane Fonda Climate Pak, to fund people running for office at the local and state level who favour the Green New Deal, who refuse to take money from fossil fuel lobbyists and who are in favour of the Climate.
Helpfully, she’s recently published a book entitled, What can I do? The truth about climate change and how to fix it. If you want to do something about addressing climate change and don’t know what to do, I recommend you read this book which is full of all kinds of information about how you can engage this issue.
If you’re wondering what to do with your third act but don’t know where to begin, schedule a 30-minute complimentary clarity call with me. I also offer a 1:1 Clarity Day involving three follow-up coaching sessions where we map out your next steps together. During this day, I will guide you through the maze of confusion, paralysis and overwhelm to help you discover how you can make a difference in your local community or the wider world using all the resources of your experiences, talents, creativity and wisdom.
Book a 30 minute clarity session with me at https://calendly.com/nancikhogan and begin your next step today. Why waste another minute?