Retirement and the “No-Work” Danger Zone

Photo by Raúl Nájera on Unsplash

Here’s a theory to ponder:  retirement can cause brain-rot!

Brain rot?  Never heard of it?  Well, I hadn’t either – I kinda just made it up.

I just wanted to get your attention.

But the thought came to me after I stumbled across a YouTube featuring spiritual elder Rabbi Zalman Schachter  talking about “harvesting a lifetime.”  The Rabbi’s point is that as we move into our autumn years we bring forward an “essential insight” unique to each of us.

He insightfully refers to it as the “ripening” of the advanced portions of our brain (neo-cortex) as we have moved through life’s events, experiences, failures, victories.

As a spiritual mentor, Rabbi Schachter helps people bring forward this essential insight, emphasizing that our purpose is to “harvest” that insight and pass it on.

Unharvested crops rot

I grew up in the world of farming.  My grandparents were homesteading farmers in Wyoming; my uncles lived and died as farmers.

Every year for a farmer is a scramble to “pass on” their crop, be it potatoes, beans, beets or wheat, before it rotted in the field.

There’s not much that’s more unpleasant than the smell of a field of uncollected and rotting potatoes.

Is it too extreme to suggest that a failure to “harvest” this “essential insight” crop that we are carrying may lead to a sort of brain rot?  Perhaps not smelly, but certainly observable – as in drifting listlessness or dying early, its most severe form.

We know that, historically, the lifespan of humans who move into a retirement that binges on leisure is significantly shorter than those who remain active and engaged in some form of meaningful work.  In fact, the RP2000 Mortality Study of men 50-70 released by the Society of Actuaries showed that the death rates of those still working were roughly half the death rates of men the same age who were fully retired.

What if the “work” we entered into in our third stage of life was a harvesting of this “essential insight” and sharing it forward to preserve it and give it an opportunity to grow even more in the hands and minds of its recipients?

Rabbi Schachter uses a softer word to describe the fact that we tend to let our brains – and our bodies – rot as we enter the later phases of our lives.   He uses the word “diminishes.”

He maintains that we diminish because we don’t see the possibilities.

Why do we miss the possibilities?

I submit that our ability to see the possibilities of harvesting and passing on this essential insight is stolen away from many of us by the insidious penetration of our psyche by the concept of an off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure retirement.

Many of us can hardly wait to shut down our creative nature (even more than what a mind-numbing 40-year job has done) and “retire” (derived from the French verb “retirer” which means to “retreat, go backward”) and further continue the assassination of our essential insight.

We not only fail to see the possibilities, but we tag work in the post-career as something to avoid.  We seem to believe that creativity dies at 65 and that post-career work will tag us as a “loser” or an “unfortunate”.

Creativity is work.  Work is creativity.

I like where the Rabbi took me with this.  His message reminds us that this third-age, post-career period of our lives is a time when we can, perhaps for the first time, fully engage in “soul work” i.e. work that emanates from the heart and incorporates the creativity of deep interests and passions that have been crusted over by a multi-decade quest for money, status, and security.

His message is that we can shake off the crust and shed the barnacles from what is for many the empty years of marginally-inspiring, money-chasing employment and bring forward what we learned and use it to advance our world.

I’m reminded that my story to this point is unspectacular against the worldly standard of wealth, status, title – in fact, it’s kinda messy.  But, my mess is my message – and that’s true for you too.  Our messes are a big part of the essential insight that we can bring forward.

It’s helpful to understand and accept that there are no failures – only experiments and research and development.  Even when that awareness doesn’t show up until the seventh decade.

Let me wrap with a quote from a new reading “project” that I started this week:  Laurence G. Boldt’s “Zen and the art of Making a Living: A Practical Guide to Creative Career Design” 

“Most of our lives, we are chasing food, sex, attention, knowledge, security, and – most of all – money.  Without the real engagement of our souls, all this can seem quite empty as the years go by.  For the soul too has its demands.  It has a way of letting us know when we neglect or abandon its imperatives  – authenticity and responsibility, joy and compassion.  At some point, many come to realize that listening to their hearts and souls isn’t a luxury but an essential part of their psychological and spiritual health.”

Are “soul”, “authenticity”, “joy”, “passion”, “purpose”, “essential insights” part of your internal dialog as you move into or toward this third age of your life?  Or is it still just “money”, “security”, “escape”?

Tough – but essential – questions.

Your thoughts and comments are welcomed and appreciated.

 

 

Wishing You the Best!

Thanks for being a loyal subscriber and reader in 2018!  

Wishing you the happiest of holiday seasons.

www.makeagingwork.com

Are Your Genetics Trapping Your Mindset?

Me:  So, John – how long do you expect to live?

John:  Well, I’ve never been asked that question.  Probably mid-eighties.

Me:  John, you’re 72 and healthy – why the mid-eighties?

John:  Oh, genetics, I suppose.  My dad died at 63.  My mom was in her late eighties.

Me:  Suppose I told you that we’ve determined that genetics may play, at most, a 30% role in our longevity and virtually no affect after age 65 – would that influence how you began to feel about how long you will live?

John:  Well, maybe – I’ve never heard that.  I’ve always assumed genetics determined how long I would live.

Thus went a portion of a multi-faceted, catch-up discussion over lunch this week with a friend of mine – a fellow executive recruiter with whom I’ve shared some of my passions for living healthy, not retiring, staying productive.

John’s a guy that subscribes to all of that, so we’ve hit it off well in the several years we’ve known each other.  He’s an energetic, engaging, fun guy to be around. He continues to maintain a successful IT recruiting business, started at “mid-life” 22 years ago after an extended stint in big-company CIO roles.

He has no intention of retiring.

His rationale is pretty simple:

  1. He still enjoys recruiting, although it’s gotten a lot tougher with the advent of the internet and the fact that a number of his key client contacts have retired or died early. He admits to some complacency and the need to resurrect some of the old success habits that got him where he is.
  2. He would go stir-crazy if he retired. John is an extrovert that is empowered by being around people.  He told me he can’t sit still for more than a couple of hours before he has to talk to somebody, live or on the phone. (NOTE:  that has a lot to do with his consistent success as a recruiter.  Mildly demented total introverts, like me, don’t show up in the stats of highly successful recruiters).
  3. The money is still good in recruiting and he’s good at it. Why quit?  What would I retire to, he asks?
  4. He’s in a business that is largely age insensitive. You find a needy client the problem-solving candidate they need, they could give a rip if you are 12 or 92.
  5. He has the lifestyle he wants: good income, industry reputation, total control of his calendar; a “significant other” that he enjoys spending time with (he’s divorced 20+ years with no intent to re-marry); large but dwindling circle of close friends that he consistently spends time with (maybe a few early deaths amongst friends has influenced his perspective on his own length of life – I didn’t probe that.)

Summary:  FREEDOM!

John’s a healthy guy.  He eats right – lots of fish, no meat.  He is slender. He does a little bit of strength training (not enough, I told him.)  He is a gonzo road biker, doing long rides multiple times per week with friends.

I chuckled as he complained that his average mph has dropped in the last ten years from 17 mph to 13mph on the extended road trips.  In the same breath, he proudly states that he hasn’t found many 40-year olds that can keep up with him even today.

Why check out early?

Given all this about John, I was a bit surprised to have him set such a limited time horizon for himself.  It seemed out of sync with the rest of John’s thinking and lifestyle.   That is until I realized that, like so many other 20th- century myths that we have brought forward, he was coming from the outdated assumption that genetics drives our longevity.  He was surprised to hear that this isn’t the case and that our longevity is largely driven by the lifestyle choices we have made and will continue to make.

I think – I hope – I sensed a bit of awakening on his part to the possibility that a mid-eighties demise is accepting an unnecessary shortfall.  He is certainly doing the things that would say that maintaining his current level of energy, drive, and vitality at the age he expected to die is a very real possibility.

When we injected the theory of “self-fulfilling prophecy” into the discussion I believe some new lights came on.

I reminded him of my own personal longevity goal of 112 ½ and how setting a WIG (wildly improbable goal) like that has changed my perspective on what I want to do in this third act and my optimism about being able to do it.

Like all others I share this goal with, he thinks that kind of threshold is a bit nutty.  But I’m predicting that when he hits 85 and he’s still kicking it – be it recruiting, biking, or whatever – he will have a different viewpoint.

John does, and will continue to, qualify as an “audacious ager.”  I love meeting and learning from audacious agers.  If you know of others like John that I could talk with, please send them along.

 

Why Do We Insist on Dying Early?

Maybe you saw the November 30, 2019 Associated Press article in your local paper entitled: “CDC: Life expectancy in U.S. declining.”

I found it buried on page 15A in the birdcage-bottom-quality newspaper we have here in Denver.  No space for this newsflash in the front portion of our paper.  More of the attention there was dedicated to the announcement of the city council’s pending approval of a “supervised drug-use site” where addicts can come to get clean needles and shoot-up under the watchful eye of a “public servant.”

Go figure.

For the third year in a row, our life expectancy has been trending the wrong direction.  After a century of near-meteoric growth (47 in 1910; 78 in 2015), we’ve found a number of ways to turn it in the other direction.

“We’ve never seen anything like this” says the overseer of the CDC death statistics.  Cancer was the only one of the top ten killers that receded in 2017, albeit only slightly.   Seven of the ten increased.  The biggie, heart disease, has stopped falling; the other biggies, suicide, stroke, diabetes, Alzheimer’s,  continue to climb.

I find it interesting that CDC officials wouldn’t speculate about what’s behind the declining life expectancy – and then, in the next breath, hint that a “sense of hopelessness” may have something to do with it, further suggesting that “financial struggles, widening income gap, and divisive politics” are contributing, concluding that therein lies the hopelessness, which therein leads to increased drug, which therein may explain much of this pull-back.

Drug deaths, while certainly a concern, still haven’t cracked the list of top ten killers in the U.S.

The food industry gets another pass

Burger King and Carl’s Junior never got a pixel of ink in the article!  Nor did Coke or Mountain Dew. The meat industry gets yet another pass from the CDC. 

Now it’s Trump-era politics and class identity instead of sugar, fat and salt that are bending the longevity curve? 

Color me skeptical.

Let’s not hang curve-bending clogged arteries and visceral fat on putrid Potomac politics.

This same CDC seems to have a short-term memory.  In 2017, the organization revealed research that suggests 1 of 3 adults in the U.S. has prediabetes and, of this group, 9 of 10 don’t know they have it.  

I’m no medical expert, but I’m confident saying that divisive politics or financial struggles are not likely to appear on the list of things that causes prediabetes, cancer or heart disease.

Oh, I hear your counter argument:  it’s the worrying related to those types of issues that is bumping up the cortisol and adrenaline thus contributing to these diseases. 

Maybe so.

Permit me to provide a very quick, effective tutorial on preventing worry.

DON’T!!  There you have it – probono.  You’re welcome.

It’s the most egregious use of imagination imaginable – and 95% of our worries never materialize.

Maybe someday we’ll get real.

With all the hysteria and new attention, it’s not likely drug deaths will crack the top-ten list of killers.  All current ten killers are considered preventable, some to greater degrees than others.  We’ve known for decades what we need to do to prevent these killers but we persist in killing ourselves slowly by ignoring the fundamentals of how our cells work.

The universe has established a lifespan benchmark of 122 ½years (reference Ms. Jeanne Calment) and we did a marvelous job of creeping toward that in the 20th century.  But with the low-hanging fruit already picked i.e. infant mortality, elimination/reduction of infectious diseases, washing hands before surgery, etc. , we seem to have become Sisyphean and lost the enthusiasm about continuing to push the longevity boulder up the hill.

We still only achieve about 66% of that full-life potential, even though we know what it takes to realize more of it.  

We’ve become complacent in understanding our biology;  we’ve allowed a deceptive food-industry to take our taste buds captive;  we cling to the 20th century model of labor-to-leisure retirement and become  sedentary and disconnected, thus contributing to a persistent “live short, die long” life curve of gradual and extended frailty.

The solution is a pretty simple plan, really.

  • Stop eating crap – cook at home, leave the meat on the cow and pig.
  • Get off your arse and your heart rate up at least three days a week, preferably five.
  • Go lift a few weights a couple of days a week.
  • Rebuild a “friends list” and do something with it – like connect.
  • Burn/Goodwill the Lazyboy and take the batteries out of the remote.
  • Don’t stop working – find a “third age” sense of purpose.
  • Never stop learning.  Become part of the 5% of our population that reads 95% of the books.
  • Spend a little time learning how your body works at the cellular level – it’ll help motivate you to follow through on the above.

Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach says that people die early for three reasons:

  1. No money
  2. No friends
  3. No purpose

Hard to argue.  A sense of purpose is a principal driver that can help us turn the curve back up.  Plus it will render you immune to Trumpian-politics, CNN/Fox, stock market swings and Facebook narcissism.

What can be bad about that?

A Berry Important but Nutty Solution to Cognitive Decline

Photo by Trang Doan from Pexels

I just finished another boring breakfast – the same one I have 7 out of 7 days:  oatmeal or bran flakes over a bed of strawberries. sliced banana, and almond milk with a side order of whole-grain toast with a thin layer of organic peanut butter and a touch of honey.   Then a mixed handful of dry-roasted almonds and raw walnuts.

Throughout the day, I make frequent visits to the fridge (my incentive to get out of my chair more frequently) and snack on a few grapes or blueberries.

I’m pleased to report that this week I didn’t put my car keys in the refrigerator, I didn’t end up at Target when I was headed to 24-Hour Fitness, didn’t mark the wrong ball on the putting green – and my socks matched all week.

I think I’m doing pretty well for a near-octogenarian in the brain department – so far.  Oh, there are still words or names that get stuck somewhere between the neocortex and my tongue, but that’s pretty normal I’m told.

Is my seemingly-normal septuagenaric brain due to my nutty, fruity breakfast routine?  Obviously, it’s much bigger than just that.

I don’t have any Alzheimer’s history in my family so apparently, the APOE4 gene isn’t present.

I’ve been an avid exerciser for 40+ years – gotta believe that may be helping.

And I suppose reading a book a week for the last 10+ years, trying to write something new every day and continuing to add a new level to my guitar-playing every week may help me keep the neural connections somewhat normal.

But evidence would say that being berry nutty on a daily basis certainly isn’t hurting.

In my April 30, 2018 blog, I confessed to being a fan of Dr. Michael Greger, practicing physician and prolific blogger/podcaster on issues of nutrition and good health at www.nutritionfacts.org.

Dr. Greger continues to release near-daily content with provocative research-backed findings on nutritional paths to greater health and longevity.

To add support to my berry nutty routine, I’ll refer you to Dr. Greger’s article on this very topic.  Click here to view. It’s his latest four-minute video regarding the benefits of berries and nuts for maintaining and improving cognition as we age.

Maybe just one little step to help keep that 2 1/2 lbs of fatty acid from getting old before its time.

Enjoy!