It’s hard to think of anyone better than Jane Fonda who personifies everything that Switched ON Living advocates and represents.

This lady is Seriously Switched ON and we’re HUGE FANS!

As we’ve seen in the news in the past week, Jane is just as passionate and articulate today about the climate emergency as she was as an anti-Vietnam War protestor in the 1960s and 70s. And that includes getting arrested – AGAIN – if it helps to bring publicity to the urgency of global warming.

While all the team at Switched ON Living fully embrace and endorse the campaign for climate action, it’s Jane sheer spunkiness and get-up-and-go energy that marks her as a Switched ON Living Superstar.

In this short video below, Jane tells us it was the advocacy of the teenage Greta Thunberg who inspired the octogenarian to get out of her celebrity comfort zone and back out onto the streets. Jane says it’s her activism that’s saved her from the depression that cursed her family and ravishes so many of us.

Switched ON Living is all about people aged over 50 breaking out of the cage of traditional retirement. For past generations, traditional retirement was typically a short experience – the effect of five or six decades in the workforce or at home raising families took its toll.

Maybe more pernicious than a lifetime of labour is the sheer boredom of an idle and aimless traditional retirement. It acts as silent killer, first evaporating our love of live, in turn poisoning our mental health, and finally it afflicts our bodies as we decline, degenerate and fade away.

What was true for our parents and grandparents no longer applies. For people today aged over 50, there’s no excuse not to squeeze the last drop out of ourselves. We know better and many of us have the means, the health and the energy to live outstanding second lives.

As a generation, people aged over 50 – the famous and infamous Baby Boomers – have never had it so good. No past generation has ever been so wealthy, so healthy nor enjoyed such a prospect of longevity.

What some of us lack are the imagination and the determination to make our plans and make them happen.

Which brings us back to Jane Fonda. Jane has always been unconventional, and there’s no doubt that saving the planet is a fair attempt at remaining active and relevant.

For us mere mortals, there’s plenty of takeaway from Jane’s life and her message. One is purpose, which she so eloquently articulated at a TEDxWomen event back in late 2011.

Since then, the video has been watched nearly 3 million times, and we only have to read the commentary to know its impact on so many people. There’s no meek, traditional retirement for Jane, she’s showing us that her joie de vivre burns just as bright as it has at any other time of her life.

And that’s why she’s a Switched ON Living icon, she’s the exact exemplar of what we’re trying to achieve with Switched ON Living, and that’s to wake up and shake up the Baby Boomer Generation out of traditional retirement lethargy.

Watch Jane's Third Act below we hope you enjoy it and feel inspired as we do!!