A Professional's Age Dilemma

Rose asks Coach Linda for Help:

“I have never paid attention to my age until this last birthday. I was very much affected because in my profession, I let executives go at my age. How can I change the way I am thinking and be thrilled about another birthday?”

Thank you for any help.--Rose

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Linda’s Response to Rose

Coach Linda called Rose and was told this one birthday impacted her emotionally like none other. She felt as though she could be one of the people she had to let go. Being on her side of the desk definitely felt a lot different.

SITUATION:

Rose is in a high level executive position with a job to do for her company in which the future of the lives of her contemporary’s lay in her hands on a daily basis. She is realizing her own vulnerability for change at any age, although most especially now.

Rose was trying to process feelings that she had suppressed in order to perform her responsibilities effectively.

Now, she is coming face to face with those feelings and she is unaware of how to change her thinking or process her fear about the age factor and continue to function at a productive level.

OBJECTIVES /GOALS

Rose needed to process her vulnerabilities around change while continuing to perform her responsibilities professionally.

SOLUTIONS

This was a ripe opportunity for her to look at others differently, most especially when they are moving into another leg of their journey with change. Rose started to let herself feel empathetically for them in a new way.

She learned to understand the process of change from her own experience with it. Rose knew that change was inevitable at any age not just this birthday. She began to empower them to make new choices and to flow with the changes versus trying to stop them.

TASKS AND SYSTEMS TO CREATE CHANGE

When Rose looked at her fears of getting older in the corporate structure she was better able to prepare herself and others for change. She now felt their vulnerability and fear of leaving a structure that they thought was secure.

Rose found security in her self and not the structure that she had grown to know so intimately. She realized the structures she had built that could be utilized in any business platform.

AH HA MOMENT CREATING CHANGE

Rose had her ah ha moment when she accepted the inevitability that someday she would be asked to leave and move on to her own new journey and that could happen now or at any given moment.

Security was no longer viewed by her as something a building holds but one she carries with her.

RELEASING A BLOCK TO CHANGE

Rose admitted that this change was a big one for her. She hadn’t realized that she had buried fears about change. “It wasn’t even a thought”, she said. “I am good at what I do and I was afraid that this vulnerability would cause me to loose my edge, but quite the contrary. I became more effective in my understanding.”

CREATING CHANGE RESULTS

Since then Rose has lost her own job. The change that she encountered with processing the vulnerability at turning ‘that age’ allowed her to transition her experience in a positive and productive new direction.

Change happens, and Rose went head on into it and landed on her feet in a much better place.— Linda