Changing Course: Navigating Life after Fifty

Changing Course is a how-to book for people who want to change the aging game. It is a practical book that provides a new way to think about and experience life after fifty. Changing Coursedemonstrates that people over fifty can redefine aging and retirement by building a different kind of portfolio, a Third Age Life Portfolio.

When it comes to aging, the future is not what it used to be. An array of new possibilities for people over fifty provides options previous generations simply did not have.

Historically, D words have defined becoming older: difficulty, disengagement, decline, degeneration, and disease. But recent research has been showing how people can set new directions with R words: renewal, reinvention, regeneration, rejuvenation, and redirection.

In Changing Course: Navigating Life After Fifty, William A. Sadler and James H. Krefft present path-breaking discoveries from over twenty years research. With life stories and lessons, they show readers how they too can take charge of their lives to redefine both aging and retirement.

This researched-based book follows the pioneering work of Bill Sadler: The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal After Forty (Perseus, 2001).

Research has shown that people with a positive self-identity live an average of seven years longer than those with a negative self-image. People over fifty can reinvent themselves in a positive way by enlarging their life portfolios and embarking on Third Age Careers. People can thus recast retirement as an age of renewal and growth, not deterioration and decline.

Changing Course illustrates the principles for second growth and provides how-to lessons readers can use to change course. Readers can learn how to:

- Make life after fifty the most fulfilling years yet;

- Replace negative stereotypes of aging with positive images;

- Create a positive third age identity that leads to the person you want to become; and,

- Redefine success in terms of what you find personally fulfilling.

Changing Course is not a financial-planning title. Rather, the book addresses people who want to leave their brand on everything they've touched. Many financial-planning guides, especially those pitched to Baby Boomers, miss the point: people are by and large not mainly interested in figuring out how much money they need to retire. They want to figure out how to continue to do their own thing.

What good is it to know to the penny what financial resources you will need to retire if you have not thought through how you are going to spend your life after fifty?

Changing Course is a self-help book for people who want to create a different, better second half of life. Based on twenty years of research tracking innovative individuals, the book provides a positive scenario of new opportunities, as well as challenges that emerge at this time of life.

As part of an emerging international movement that is redefining aging, Changing Course focuses on the Third Age, a long middle period resulting from a longevity revolution that has added an average of thirty years to the life course.

The book shows how people can continue to experience second growth, renewal, and fulfillment into their sixties and seventies. Many books on the second half of life focus only on vital aging in the fourth age (late seventies and beyond).

The bottom-line message of Changing Course: Instead of winding down after fifty, here is how you can change course.

William A. Sadler, Ph.D., has been a professor, senior administrator, author, consultant, community leader, and popular speaker. In a long academic career since receiving his doctorate from Harvard, Bill has authored five books. His last, The Third Age: Six Principles of Growth and Renewal after Forty, led to the formation of The Center for Third Age Leadership, an organization that focuses on maximizing the talents and contributions of people over fifty. Translated into several languages, in 2006 The Third Age was featured as book of the week by the Korean Broadcast System. For nearly twenty years Bill has been professor of sociology and business at Holy Names University, where he still teaches MBA leadership courses. He and his wife Sallie reside half the year in Oakland, CA and the other half on the Maine coast.

James H. Krefft, Ph.D., is president of The Center for Third Age Leadership. He works as a writer, consultant, and executive coach. In his second age Jim plied careers as a university instructor, Army officer, technical editor, Human Resources executive, and management consultant. The eldest of ten and a native of New Orleans, he charged into his third age at forty-two when he left a major corporation. In addition to coauthoring Changing Course, he has written or collaborated on two other books and a screenplay since turning fifty-five, including, along with Stephen M. Dent, Powerhouse Partners: A Blueprint for Building Organizational Culture for Breakaway Results. Jim has a BA in philosophy and an MA and doctorate in English literature. He and his wife Lynn and their two children Michelle and Jim live in Colorado.