Dean Niewolny - Trade Up: How to Move from Just Making Money to Making a Difference

Why Your Second Half May Outperform Your First

In 1996, I wrote about my journey from success to significance in a little book called Halftime . I crossed my fingers, and book sales limped out of the starting gate. And then they picked up by the box-load. People were saying, My friends need this too.

Twenty years later, this slender volume from my friend Dean Niewolny, Halftime CEO, confirms that Halftime is no longer just one persons story. In one important sense, its a significance-to-succession tale. Dean is a natural leader; oficially, he takes the torch now. But you take it, too. The first journey may have been mine, but the next one is wide open. And theres more to know.

If youre ready for the work you were made to do, this book is for you. As you start it, let me tell you from my own experience why your second half, at whatever point in life it begins, stands to beat everything youve done so far.

. Youre more focused now, less likely to drift off course. If you can picture your needs in life as four concentric circles, the circle furthest out is your need to make money and spend it. One circle in is accomplishments, your need to achieve. Next in are your relational needs, met by spouse, children, and close family or friends. The inner circle holds your transcendent needs, what Jesus referred to as bread of life and living water. In the past you may have camped mainly in the two outer circles, but whats ahead invites you to new balance, a keener sense of what falls to the outer circles and what holds your center.

2. Youre ready to live out your own agenda. In lifes first half, you get a job and put to work the skills that, in most cases, you paid to learn in college. Its true you must make a living, but too often its someone elses idea of a living. Between duty (which is real) and desire (no less real), a still small voice says, Is this all there is? The answer is no, theres more. And you can get to it.

3. Youll gain control of your life. If youre already in your second half, you know the pleasure of that two-letter word no . In the past it may have been difficult because you were less sure where to stake your firmest yes . All your options looked good, and were good, but not all of them deserved all of you. To know your mainspring and to fix your energies on your capital-M Missionthats gaining control.

4. You have many resources now. As the decades progress, most of us build up reserves, and not just monetarily. Our knowledge base grows wide and deep. We build a network, and it can hum. We figure out when were working harder versus working smarter. If life is a car, by our second half we gain speed, traction, fuel, and handling. Some days were struck by how all those features perform in concert, and this period in our lives can be wildly effective.

. Demographically, theres more for you. Whatever happened to old age? Our grandparents retired at sixty-five, and their seventies featured orthopedic shoes and hot water bottles. My parents generationthe Greatest Generationslowed down for retirement. The good news/bad news now is that a typical retiree is still hale and hearty, and can reasonably anticipate another thirty years, most of them in good health with an active mind and the means to grow and go and serve. If youve ever ruminated on what you would do if you were just starting out again, nows the time to bring that out.