Life Reimagined

Book excerpt: Winner of the 2014 Silver Nautilus Award This enhanced edition includes nine moving video portraits of people who found passion, purpose, and profound fulfillment in places that surprised even them. Anybody can have a Life Reimagined moment! Are you asking, “What's next?” You've finished one chapter of your life story and you have yet to write the next one. Many of us face these transitions at midlife, but they can happen at any point. It's a time full of enormous potential, and it defines a whole new phase of life. It's called Life Reimagined. Here is your map to guide you in this new life phase. You can use the powerful practices and insights—enhanced with online tools and exercises at AARP's LifeReimagined.org—to help you uncover your own special gifts, connect with people who can support you, and explore new directions. You'll be inspired by meeting ordinary people who have reimagined their lives in extraordinary ways. You'll also read the stories of pioneers of the Life Reimagined movement such as Jane Pauley, James Brown, and Emilio Estefan. One of the profound truths that underlies this book is the liberating notion that each of us is “an experiment of one,” free to find our own path in this new phase of our lives. No old rules, no outdated societal norms, no boundaries of convention or expectation. Each of the videos in the enhanced edition exemplifies the Life Reimagined manifesto of choice, curiosity, and courage. These are stories of ordinary people who hit a roadblock, looked around, saw something that spoke deeply to them, and boldly set off in a brand new direction. From a grandmother running her 73rd marathon, to a tattooed truck driver who teaches Zumba on the side, to a reluctant computer geek who had a “pizza epiphany,” they show that each of us has the freedom to choose our own way, in our own way, throughout all the years of our lives.