Published in the Dallas Morning News, March 24, 2010 - written by Cheryl Hall.

For many aging baby boomers, the specter of being involuntarily put to pasture is a reality-based nightmare.

Helen Harkness, a noted career mentor, says “no-choice retirements” are on the rise. And while losing your job at any age is traumatic, older workers feel particularly defeated because they think it’s too late to start new jobs or careers.

“Of all the mindless myths that we have, this one is absolutely sheer bunk,” says Harkness, principal of career Design Associates Inc. in Garland. “I tell my clients, ‘Tell me what you would do if you were 20 years younger.’ And we start from there.”

She calls that chronological age vs. functional age.

During my three decades as a career coach in Dallas – helping adults replace the conventional personality Type A or Type B with the Type CC (the Career Change Catalyst) – I have experienced an infinite number of “dark nights” of recession similar to our current one. I have survived and thrived despite crisis changes and the rise and collapse of countless industries, including my original profession, teaching. In the mid-70s, Ph.D.’s were driving buses and painting houses. My reality was that a Ph.D. and a dime could get a cup of coffee. Consider the major industries in Dallas that have “boomed and busted:” oil, finance and banking, real estate, telecom corridor and dot coms. As residential real estate faces new challenges, all businesses face threats from international competition.

Published in the April, 2006, newsletter of the National Association of Working Seniors.

Specific Strategies for Breaking the Barriers of Aging

Millions of Americans suffer from the "finished at 50" syndrome. Based on the numerous negative myths that aging automatically brings irreversible mental, physical, psychological, and creative decline, this belief is foolish and potentially deadly for continuing career success.

Unfortunately, much of Corporate America is nourishing this notion and pushing more mature employees out the door. However, there are strategies that we can use to advance one’s career far beyond society’s limits which are based upon concepts of age. The truth is that absolutely no research has validated that chronological age is reliable in determining one’s “functional” age.

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