Whom am I helping?
This is the third and last post on thoughts about Dolly Parton and what we can all learn from her.
Suddenly, the career that occupied 40 or 50 years of our lives is no longer there. The title is gone. The office is gone. The paycheck may be smaller or gone altogether.
The question becomes:
Now what?
Perhaps the answer isn't simply to stop working.
Perhaps it is to change what we are working for.
Your first act may have been about building your career, your business, your family and your financial security.
Your second act can be about taking everything you have learned, your experience, talents, relationships, wisdom and resources, and putting them to work for something bigger than yourself.
Dolly Parton's example reminds us that our greatest contribution may not be what we accumulate during our working years.
It may be what we give away afterward.
So, as you think about your own second act, ask yourself:
Am I planning only for retirement, or am I planning for purpose?
What passions have I neglected while I was busy making a living?
What gifts have I developed that could now be used to help someone else?
Who could benefit from the experience and wisdom I have accumulated?
And perhaps the most important question of all:
When the second act of my life is over, what will I have done that made the lives of other people better?
Dolly Parton didn't simply make a fortune.
She made a life.
And then she used that life to make a difference.
She didn't have children of her own, but she helped give millions of children something her own family had struggled to provide: the opportunity to learn, to dream and to imagine a better future.
That may be one of the greatest lessons she leaves us.
Don't be so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.
And when the time comes for your second act, don't simply ask:
“What am I going to do with my time?”
Ask:
“Who am I going to help?”
That may be where your real purpose begins.
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