To make the best decisions about our future lives, it helps to have mentors who can help us navigate the paths we’re going to take. Unfortunately, we often confuse people who’ve been great mentors till now, with people who are more likely to be appropriate for your future.

If you’ve finished school and are ready to start out as an independent adult, you’re probably getting career advice from people who know the current job market. For instance, you might ask friends and relatives who are slightly older, school counsellors or other mentors familiar with the job market for people starting out. The experiences that your parents and grandparents when they started out might not be as relevant because the world was different: they grew up in a non-digital industrial society, not a knowledge economy, with increased use of automation and AI.  

So when you think of how you’ll spend the next 60 years, they also may not be appropriate. I once taught a few classes in another country where there was mandatory retirement by age 60 for women and men. Students told me that their parents and grandparents had to stop work by age 60 and most of them were waiting for them who stopped work weren’t really very productive, just enjoying life in their community. Few had dreams of travel and those that did, couldn’t, due to lack of money. Most students said they didn’t want to end up like them.

Until recently, US found that people ages 50-60 were looking forward to retirement around 65; more recent ones have a reversal: they don’t want to stop working.  Yet, younger workers are still following the pattern set by many of their parents and grandparents, thinking they should follow the norm of “retirement around 65”.  Given the change we’re seeing with older workers, we can expect a reversal to take place in the future as well. 

If you’re the parent of young people starting out in the workforce, help them understand their options. They need to visualize what successful retirement really means – and what it doesn’t – now when they can start the planning process. Age Brilliantly tries to help by showing the wide variety of options available to people who want to lead fulfilling lives into their 80s and beyond by engaging in the activities with purpose and passion, regardless of when those chose to stop working. Join the movement to help adults have fulfilling, elongated lives where they do what they want for as long as they can. Introduce them to role models you know so they can select the lifestyles they think they want now and in the future. Let them start using some of the new tools Age Brilliantly soon will be offering to provide guidance.  Remember, Age Brilliantly is for adults of all ages who want to navigate the path to 100+