Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late)

  

Note: This is the NEW location for John Pearson's Pails in Comparison Blog. Slowly (!), the previous 100+ blogs posted (between 2022 and 2025) will gradually populate this blogsite, along with new book reviews each month.

PIC No. 2: Pails in Comparison 

• Title: Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late)
• Author: Michael Clinton
• Publisher: Atria Books/Beyond Words (224 pages)
• Management Bucket #12 of 20: The Volunteer Bucket

MARCH 1, 2022

Welcome to the second issue of Pails in Comparison, the sidekick of John Pearson’s Buckets Blog. This blog features my “PICs”—short reviews of helpful books—with comparisons to other books in my 20 management buckets (core competencies) filing system.

40 STORIES. 5 STARS.

Well…this is encouraging! Even inspirational! Author Michael Clinton writes in ROAR that he’s “fond of asking eighty-year olds, What is your favorite future?” Clinton says he is on the constant search for role models “who are doing extraordinary things in their seventies and eighties, ignoring self-imposed ageism or the refrain that ‘you are too old to do that!’”

I’m currently in that seventies category. It seemed like yesterday, at 50, that I blinked—and I got old. (I mean, I matured.) Clinton’s inspirational book (have I mentioned that yet?) sold me in his intro. “Forget the words ‘age appropriate’ and focus on ‘person appropriate.’ Be the one who is seen as the role model for an engaged life.”

The title warns: “ROAR into the second half of your life (Before It’s Too Late).” I’m recommending this quick-reading book to anyone 40 or older—with my warning/aspiration, “Life speeds by, but the journey can be deeply satisfying.”

Michael Clinton (check out his bio) has more-than-adequate street cred. He writes from his own reimagined experience: 124 countries, marathons on seven continents, private pilot, and part owner of a vineyard in Argentina. Did I mention he earned a second master’s degree to learn the nonprofit space? There’s more.

The author interviewed 40 people—and their inspirational stories are scattered across the pages of his four-point premise: ROAR.
   • Reimagine yourself.
   • Own who you are.
   • Act on what’s next for you.
   • Reassess your relationships.

I cheated and read Chapter 12 first, “Reassess Your Community and Your Relationship With It.” He quotes H. Jackson Brown Jr., “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

He spotlights Ginny Donohue who at 51 reimagined herself and launched On Point for College. “God had bigger dreams than I did,” she notes. The nonprofit has helped almost 9,000 students go to college!

Don’t skip the poignant story about Mickey, who at age 44 entered the priesthood. Now almost 70, the look back at Father Mickey’s “ROAR” process is instructive. (Did I mention this book was inspirational?)

Or how about Fred Sievert, former president of New York Life, who hung up his business suit in his fifties and enrolled in Yale Divinity School. Now at 72, Sievert writes and speaks on faith and his website has more than a million visits.

Not every story (of the 40 profiles) ends up in seminary or in nonprofits. You’ll find an A to Z array of fun and future-thinking people. Dozens and dozens of “ROAR TIPS” are sprinkled across the pages, such as: “Before you commit to becoming an expert in something, try it out. There’s no sense diving into something until you’re sure you’re going to enjoy it. Do a test run or two and make sure it meets or exceeds your expectations.”

That aligns with Bob Buford’s classic counsel in his bestseller, Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance. Buford suggests experimenting with parallel careers and he also has a warning.

Buford: “Peter Drucker tells me that retirees have not proved to be the fertile source of volunteer effort we once thought they would be. They cut their engines off and lose their edge. Peter believes that if you do not have a second or parallel career in service by age forty-five, it will never happen.”

Clinton gives dozens of examples of people who reimagined themselves much later than 45, so I’ll urge those in their fifties and sixties to also read this book, of course.

And YIKES! My autographed copy of Halftime is from Jan. 31, 1995. It’s been way too long since I read another book about reimagining the second half of my life. ROAR arrived just in time, thanks to Fortier PR who sent me a review copy. Roar!

PAILS IN COMPARISON: I’d compare this book to the helpful books in The Volunteer Bucket, especially:

     • Halftime: Changing Your Game Plan from Success to Significance, by Bob Buford (1939-2018) – Read my review and listen on Libro.fm (5 hours, 37 minutes)
     • Finishing Well: The Adventure of Life Beyond Halftime, by Bob P. Buford (1939-2018) and foreword by Ken Blanchard - Order from Amazon or listen on Libro.fm (10 hours, 26 minutes)

TO ORDER FROM AMAZON, click on the title for Roar: Into the Second Half of Your Life (Before It's Too Late), by Michael Clinton – Listen on Libro.fm (6 hours, 12 minutes). For more book reviews, visit John Pearson’s Buckets Blog and subscribe to Your Weekly Staff Meeting.

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