This is What “Freedom” Means to The Back Forty
Freedom.
It’s a pretty powerful word. This word has inspired countless men and women to lay down their lives for what they believe in. This world is what our country has been built on. And it is because this word is so powerful that we are devoting this post to what freedom means to us.
Many people would argue that we have to give up some of our freedom as we grow older. We have more responsibilities now. We have a job where people count on us, we have a family to support, we have retirement to save for. There are so many things that we have to do, so it just makes sense that we have to give up some of our freedom.
Well, those of us at The Back Forty have a problem with that belief system. Why do we have to give up our freedom as we grow older? If anything, we should be gaining more freedom as we age, not the other way around.
We believe that midlife freedom means moving out of our comfort zone.
Whether you are on a quest to Find Your Bliss or just trying to Become Comfortable in Your Own Skin, you must be willing to move out of your comfort zone.
We believe that midlife freedom means letting go of our past.
It is easy to let our past define who we are today but we believe that you can Stop Investing In Your Viewpoints and Ditch Your Past Struggles to create a better (and freer) future for yourself!
We believe that midlife freedom means being willing to play.
Whether you need a reminder that your Midlife Crisis is Just a Game or if you have decided that you need a Fresh Start, we believe that you have to remember how to play along the way.
We believe that midlife freedom means finding our purpose.
Regardless of if you currently feel like you’re Failing Your Midlife Experience or if you just haven’t taken the time to Consider Your Purpose recently, we believe that your personal freedom has a lot to do with that purpose.
We believe that midlife freedom means believing in our future.
Wherever you are on your midlife journey you have to believe in your future. Whether you still feel that you need to Free Yourself From Your Past or if you need a reminder that You Are In Control, believing in your future is the first step toward freedom.
There are so many things that we believe freedom means but, however you define freedom, we hope that you CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM today!
8 Why’s To Have People Development as Priority 1
What if development of people became our organizational raison d’être?
“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche
What is the purpose of business?
Milton Friedman, a Nobel-prize winning economist, wrote that the purpose of business is maximizing profit for the shareholders.
Peter F. Drucker said that “the purpose of business is to create and keep a customer” and “the purpose of an organization is to enable common men to do uncommon things.”
Blaine Bartlett, bestselling author of “Compassionate Capitalism” says that “the purpose of business is to uplift the quality of life on this planet.”
This is my personal favorite:
“Business is where you practice your human skills. It’s where you grow.” Andrew Cherng, Co-Founder and Visionary, Panda Restaurant Group, Forbes’ 2015 America’s Best Employer.
Part of Panda’s expressed mission is “becoming a world leader in people development.” According to Vipul H. Shah, Regional Director of Operations at Panda Restaurant Group, “Panda exists to better the lives of people, and we build an organization to allow that to happen. How we do this is selling American Chinese food.”
Andrew Cherng has more to say about that: “I’m talking about everyone who works at Panda. They’re inspired to better their own lives. We’re not really selling Chinese food, you know. Our real purpose is about developing people. You have to grow! You grow as a person, and then you will grow in business.”
Why would we, as leaders and visionaries in Conscious Organizations, want to make development of people our raison d’être?
8 Why’s To Have People Development as Priority 1:
- When an organization is committed to transforming people’s life, people bring back to work their transformed self along with new mindsets, behaviors, and ways of being. As a consequence, they produce results and create solutions that were not possible before.
- People become more fulfilled, confident, happy, and self-expressed, often finding a clearer sense of direction in life. Their personal life and relationships improve which, in turn, positively impact their achievement and satisfaction at work.
- Transformation and growth is challenging. As people begin to dig deeper and learn about themselves, they start to understand who they really are and why they do what they do. Their sense of purpose crystallizes, resulting in clearer focus in their work.
- People develop a better understanding of others, causing communication and connectedness to drastically improve. As a result, R&D and Sales work well together, and so do Accounting and Marketing. Teamwork, collaboration and effectiveness skyrockets.
- As people grow, they become willing to “play big,” step outside the box, take on challenges, make mistakes, fail, get up and try again – knowing the company has their back. They achieve results and performance levels that could not have been achieved by “playing safe” and staying in their comfort zone.
- As people are being challenged, how they learn to respond to challenges (rather than react or retract) becomes important. This builds resilience and stamina.
- Everyone in the organization begins to take responsibility and ownership of their work and their roles. This results in a company-wide “buck stops here attitude,” free of blame or finger-pointing.
- When everyone takes full responsibility and 100% ownership of any situation, there is no space for anyone to be a victim. Leadership becomes not a title of authority but a chosen mindset.
This sounds like an organization I want to be a part of!
Bottom line is this: if we make development of people the purpose of our business, all other purposes fall into place:
- Shareholder profit is maximized
- Customers will be kept and created
- Common men and women will be enabled to do uncommon things
- The quality of life on this planet is uplifted
How could this apply to your organization?
What is the Surprising Meaning of the Odd Phrase “Back Forty”?
When interacting with partners, sponsors, customers, members, and The Back Forty community in general, there is one question that gets asked over and over.
What does “back forty” mean?
Usually by that point, whoever I’m speaking with knows that our company, The Back Forty, is about making your second half of life your best half of life. So the logical jump is that we are talking about life between the years of 40 and 80. And this common misconception leads to questions like, why do you say midlife starts at 40? What if I’m over 80? What if I’m 37? Why are you putting these strict rules around what defines midlife?
To all of these questions, I say wait just a minute and let me explain.
First, let’s look at the actual definition of “back forty”. Merriam-Webster defines back forty as “a remote and uncultivated or undeveloped piece of land of indefinite size (as on a farm)”.
If you didn’t know this, don’t worry. This phrase is less popular than over 80% of all words in the English dictionary. Like the definition mentions, it was originally used to describe the most remote 40 acres of a farm or ranch and was first used in the 1860s when the Homestead Act of 1862 granted 160 acres of land to anyone willing to farm it for at least five years (thus two front forty acres of land and two back forty acres of land). So, when farmers were too far away to be reached it was usually because they were in the back forty of their farm.
Knowing all of this probably brings up more questions than you originally had. For example, “what the heck does farming in the 1800s have to do with midlife?” Hang in there just a bit longer because it is all about to be made clear.
We use back forty as a metaphor for midlife. Just like the back forty of a farm is usually an uncultivated piece of land, your second half of life is uncultivated. The way we see it, your “back forty” of life is a blank canvas. It is uncultivated, which makes it full of potential.
So, no. The Back Forty isn’t referring to the ages of 40-80. It is simply a complex metaphor demonstrating that midlife is full of even more possibilities than you could ever imagine. Many people believe that once you hit midlife your life gets more predictable. You have a family, responsibilities, a job, you have to save for retirement, or your children’s college…the list can go on and on. We at The Back Forty believe the opposite is true. Midlife is just the beginning and your first half of life was simply research for what is still to come.
Whether you are 35, 43, 67, 92 or anywhere in-between, we believe that the best things in your life are still ahead of you and that you can cultivate your own “back forty” to be full of playfulness, passion, and purpose.
If you would like to learn more about The Back Forty, click the link below to download our Co-Founder’s Top Ten Tips for a Radical Second Half of Life!
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How to Stop Yourself from Preventing Your Success
Today I am bringing you another quote. Have you ever heard the little voice in your head saying, “you can’t do that”? Maybe you think, “it’s too late for me to change careers” or “that’s just the way things are”.
Well, my quote today is here to tell you that those mindsets are simply incorrect. Take a moment to read it through and I”ll meet you on the other side.
Take a moment to think about that. By telling yourself that you can’t do something you are basically sealing your own fate.
If you decide you can’t then you won’t, but what would happen if you decided that you could?
If you decided that you could get that job, that you could change your lifestyle, that you could actually achieve your dreams and goals, then anything could be possible.
You have to potential to have a purposeful, fulfilling, and fun second half of life – you just have to decide that you can.
So this week I have a goal for you. Try to think of something that you haven’t done simply because the voice in your head said that you couldn’t, and go for it!
Expert Tip #6: Consider Your Purpose
Purpose. It’s a word that seems to carry a lot of weight. When someone says their career gives them purpose or their family gives them purpose, it has a kind of awe-inspiring effect.
People with a purpose to strive towards are naturally propelled forward and makes it easier to see long-term goals.
People without purpose (or people who haven’t thought about their purpose in a while) tend to focus more on the short-term and ultimately have a smaller picture than those who are striving for something.
If you take some time to reflect on your first half of life it may be easier for your purpose in your second half of life to become more defined.
The next step is to accept your purpose, the only thing that can prevent you from living out a purposeful second half of life is letting yourself fear failure. When you are truly striving towards your purpose there is no possibility of failure, only progress and learning.
Come back next week for Pro Tip #7 and remember that purpose is key!
See other tips here!
Busy Body
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
– Thomas Edison
True, inspiring and motivational thoughts from one of the Gods of creativity and industry…and yet these words may leave us feeling a sense of weight and sweatshop enslavement.
We want to be busy in pursuit of productive endeavor, yes, but how do we transform the flavor of being busy to one of excitement and exploration vs. serious and heavy?
I’ve noticed in my own growth toward expanding coaching services, delivering transformational programs, and growing brand awareness that there’s rarely the old gaps in between activities or big plays.
Though not running a country or even a huge corporation, it causes one to wonder how to best keep playing big when being busy can start to wear on you.
For myself, I see that what’s needed is a transformation in my relationship to “busy”. So, when clients are double booked, there could be excitement at having seen a hole for an upleveled system to implement vs. the self-judgement of having “messed up.” When there’s an ad campaign that spent good money with no results, there can be a jubilant “Hooray!” because we’re finding out what doesn’t work first (like Edison) vs. the woe-is-me marketing-loser feeling.
Bringing the element of “play first” into the mix – where you only consider “learning experiences” vs. mistakes – is a good antidote to oppressed busy-ness. It provides the willingness to keep getting busier and playing fuller until things don’t work anymore…and learn and grow from the insights gained vs. pull back.
When production starts to stretch the current systems — we miss scheduled appointments, the ordering systems fail, longer hours are required to fill demand — these are all good news and opportunities to level-up, system-up, and play-up.
An attitude of gratitude for things starting to fall down on the job — vs. making ourselves or others wrong because things didn’t work “perfectly” — can support the “Bring it on!” thrill of growth.
Where can you joyously thank your breakdowns today for leading to your breakthroughs tomorrow?
Got a busy body?
“He not busy being born is busy dying.”
– Bob Dylan
Reclaim Your Playful, Passionate, & Purposeful Future
So many people think that they don’t have control over their future once they find themselves in the midst of midlife. We want to change all of that.
The Back Forty teaches that:
“The only way you will ever be able to create your own radical future of play, passion, and purpose is by enabling yourself to have a say over how life will go from here on out.”
– Darrell Gurney, Co-Founder of The Back Forty
Take a moment to think about that. How many times have you caught yourself thinking that you are who you are or that you can’t change the path of your life?
The Back Forty teaches that you have a say over how your life will go. You can control your future, if you just take the time to invest in it. The second half of your life can be full of playfulness, passion, and purpose. You just have to decide that you want it to.
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6 Ways to Fail Your Midlife Experience
Everyone’s midlife experience is different, but regardless of the path you are following, here are 6 ways to absolutely fail at midlife!
- Believe that your life is already decided and you can’t change the way things are: Your second half of life isn’t set in stone. Thinking that you “are who you are” isn’t only a defeatest viewpoint, it’s also wrong. Yes, you have done a lot of soul searching to become who you are today. You have experiences that have shaped you, but that doesn’t make you stuck. That doesn’t make it impossible to change your life for the better.
- Hang on to your past struggles and mistakes as part of who you are: Everyone has hardships and struggles, but letting those struggles define who you are is a big mistake. To thrive in your midlife, you must first decide to plan for the future instead of dwell on the past. Your struggles do not decide your future, you do.
- Embrace your “midlife crisis”: Not only is embracing and dweling on your midlife crisis dangerous, but research has actually found that midlife crises are based largely in fiction. Deciding that you are going to embrace what you feel is a midlife crisis can cause a lot of unneccessary hardship. If you feel you are going through a midlife crisis the first step to getting out of that funk is to change your perspective. You aren’t struggling through a midlife crisis you are growing due to midlife opportunity.
- Decide that it’s naive to think you can do what you love and find your purpose: This is a common misconception among midlifers. Many people look at younger generations, whether it is their children or co-workers, and think that the reason for their positive outlook is simply because they are inexperienced in the “real world”. This thought process hinders your ability to make your second half of life better than your first. Think of the first half of your life as research and development for your second half, and realize that you can find your dream career and your purpose in midlife.
- Understand that you have already learned everything you need to know and that there is no reason to spend time being curious and acquiring new knowledge: You are never too old to learn something new. I don’t know many people who would disagree with this statement, but at the same time I know many people who live their lives like they don’t need to learn anything new. It is easy to get stuck in your day-to-day routine and go days or weeks without bothering to learn anything new. In order to thrive in midlife you must rembember to be curious about the world around you and never stop learning.
- Believe that it’s all downhill from here: This is a relatively common viewpoint of people in midlife. You’re getting older, you’ve reached a plateau in your career, the reasons are endless. But who decided these things are bad? Life has the opportunity to continue getting better and better, you just have to decide that you want it to. Learn to love your wrinkles, decide it’s time to ask for that better position or get a new one. You have the power to change your future.
As I said earlier, those are some absolutely wonderful ways to fail your midlife experience. If you noticed yourself as being subject to some of those thoughts or if you are just looking for a way to make your midlife better, click here and get your Top Ten Tips for a Radical Second Half of Life!
