If You Don’t Take Care of Your Body, Where Will You Live?

 I just went through my annual physical check-up with my PCP (If you don’t know what that stands for, we really should talk).  He’s been doing the stethoscope, pointy thing up the nose and in the ears, rubber hammer and rubber-gloved, “roll over on your side” exam on me for 20+ years.

I’m lucky – I usually get 30-40 minutes with him.  For two reasons, I guess.

One, with my 16 years as a healthcare recruiter, he and I invariably end up spending a little time “talking shop” about the challenges he faces running a very busy primary care practice.

Yes, he’s frustrated with the bureaucracy, the electronic medical record requirements, the constantly changing rules, the dropping reimbursement, the paperwork, the patient complacency. He truly loves what he does and just wants to be a doctor.  But, as with all primary care physicians, that’s harder and harder to do

Second, I know I ask more and deeper questions than he normally gets because I’m more tuned into my biology than most of the patients he sees.  I decided over ten years ago to become a student of how this 24 x 7 immune system of 35 trillion cells that I walk around in is designed to work.

Well, the exam went quite well – except for one small glitch.

Elimination of meat and dairy and a 12-lb weight loss have lowered my total cholesterol 15 points to 135 in a year. (P.S. Below 150 is the truly safe range, not just below 200 despite what your pharma-company-influenced PCP will tell you.)  Blood pressure safe – almost too low.   All components of the blood panel safely within range.

All systems go.

Then the glitch.  He said: “You are a very healthy 76-year old – more like a 65-year old.”

Whaa????  65?  How ‘bout 55?

OK.  Ego aside – I’ll take it. Thanks, Doc!

I intend to live to 112 ½ so this body is what I’ll be living in for another 35  34 ½ years.

I know – that’s nuts.  Some of the people I know hope to be taken out back and shot if they get to 90.

If I don’t pay attention to this cellular house I live in, maintain it, help it do its thing – well, I guess where I end up living could get sort of ugly for a long time. My intent is for that “ugly” period to be real short – perhaps like a finger snap.  But certainly no longer than a season.  My progeny don’t deserve a protracted period of needles, nursing homes or neurological nonsense.

I’ll get old and die, just like you.  But, that’s different than aging.  Getting old and dying is immutable – how I choose to age is optional.

No warranty, no trade-in, no owner’s manual

At current chemical prices, you can trade your body in for $3.50.

Organ donation or giving it up to a cadaver lab for aspiring PCP’s to probe is the closest thing we’ve got to a trade-in.

Health insurance isn’t exactly a warranty, although we seem to think of it that way. Oh, look, Mabel – I can get that fixed for a $35 co-pay!!

And still no owner’s manual accompanying dismissal from the newborn nursery.

A century ago, we didn’t know enough about our biology to write an effective owner’s manual.  Today we do, but I suspect it would be soon ignored if it were written.

Suppose we did have a warranty, or a trade-in, or an owner’s manual.  Would that change our tendency to know more about how our Ford Explorer’s catalytic converter works than how our endocrinology can lengthen or shorten our lives?   Or how our digestive system impacts our thinking ability?  Or how – well just about anything about our biology?

Color me skeptical.

The owner’s manual for my wife’s aging Acura MDX is 298 pages.  I can replace the engine in that car for about $2,000.

An easy-to-follow owner’s manual for good health could probably be contained in a half-dozen pages – in large, double-spaced type.  To replace my heart in the U.S. can approach $1.4 million, my liver $813,000.

We know to put good oil in the pan and good gas in the tank of our car.  Yet we persistently dump junk food and bad chemicals into the most expensive transport system on the planet to repair, pound for pound.

Maybe an owner’s manual would change that, but I doubt it.  Our taste buds are held captive by a food industry that knows and cares little about our health. And our commitment to really simple health and wellness habits have succumbed to comfort, convenience, and co-pays.

What a way to treat the most magnificent machine ever developed.

So, for many of us, a protracted period of frailty is in the forecast.  Oh yes, we are living longer.  A 65-year-old today has a 50% chance of reaching 90.  What that stat doesn’t reveal is that for far too many of us, this extended longevity that we rave about is lived in technology-supported agony, isolation, and immobility.

We have the option to be “Younger Next Year” regardless of age.  The book by that same name is a great place to start to understand why and how.  Or “The Roadmap to 100” and his earlier book “Dare to Be 100” by retired Stanford geriatric physician, Dr. Walter Bortz are tremendous no-holds-barred, easy to read “owner’s manuals” for longer, healthier living.

You can also pick up a few wellness pearls from my free e-book: “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”  Click here to download it.

Thanks for being a loyal reader.  If you like the articles, tell a friend about us.   Your opinion and insight counts, so leave us a comment below.

 

You Are Likely Committing Murder Everyday

I’m going public and confess to murder.

Fortunately, I won’t be jailed for this murder, although one could argue that I should be.  A physical jail isn’t needed because the penalty I pay for this murder is tougher than an actual jail cell.

My jail time is mental.

The murder victim in my crime is time.

My commission of the crime is relentless – weekly, daily, hourly.  My most serious jail time comes at the end of a day or week when I look back in wonder at where it went and how absent or non-productive I was.  That’s when I realize I’ve been guilty of a crime – a murder of the most valuable, but unreplenishable, resource I have – time.

Tony Robbins in his book “Awaken the Giant Within: How to Take Immediate Control of Your Mental, Emotional, Physical and Financial Destiny” asks: “How do you define your use of time?  Are you spending it, wasting it, or killing it? It’s been said that killing time isn’t murder, it’s suicide.”

The mental jail I put myself into is for murder, not suicide, thankfully.  But Tony’s rant resonates.  Time has taken on greater significance each day as the number of days ahead of me narrow relative to those behind.

My sensitivity to this shrinking horizon took on increasing influence a quarter-century ago as I moved into my fifties – and it hasn’t let up.

There are no filling stations for time

In a look back in one of my journals recently, I came across a quote about time that I had captured from author MJ DeMarco in a book entitled “The Millionaire Fastlane”.  He says: “We are born rich (with a full tank of gas) and will die broke. Time is the great equalizer. There are no filling stations for time – your one fill-up occurred the moment you took your first breath.”

That makes us kinda like that Visa gift card we got at Christmas – someone pumps in a number you can invest, waste or kill, depending on how you choose to use it.  And once it’s empty, no value.  It occurred to me that we probably give much more thought to how we spend a Visa gift card than we do to how we are spending our time.

You’ve heard it said that we spend more time planning a backyard BBQ than we do planning our lives.

Retirement murders time

As a devoted non-retiree and unretirement activist, I’m usually the odd-man-out in any discussion about the merits of retirement.  Part of my argument against traditional retirement involves time and the distorted use of it as we prepare for and experience full retirement.

My argument starts with the fact that our culture, helped along with our deeply-entrenched retirement entitlement mindset, puts a “use-by stamp” on us as our years pile up. An artificial finish line – retirement at 65 – drawn over 80 years ago still guides much of our thinking and our time use. We distort our use of time from young adulthood into middle-age to strive for that coveted retirement goal where we can then further intensify our misuse of time.  Our culture infers that our time, in our later years, is less valuable. It’s time to go to the sidelines, the park bench, the elder warehouse – where idle time is the expectation on the part of our culture and often the goal of the retiree.

Those committed to achieving a traditional retirement sacrifice their time in the present to try to dig out of the savings gap between where they are and what they feel they will need to achieve their retirement financial goals.

In the U.S., we’ve built a $1 trillion dollar financial planning industry around treating people as a math number and capitalizing on their fear or dread of not reaching that nirvana called retirement.

That is what Roger Whitney calls the “savings gap trap.”  Whitney is a highly experienced Certified Financial Planner and author of a wonderful book on this topic entitled “Rock Retirement: A Simple Guide to Help You Take Control and be More Optimistic About the Future.”

He points out that the savings needed to cover the cost of a 30-40 year retirement – a growing possibility today – is an insurmountable number.  Yet the financial planning industry persists in using the “save more, invest more” equation to guide their clients, often with recommendations that call for “sacrificing life today in order to save or sacrificing your life tomorrow, or a bit of both.”

But really, what choice do these planners have?  They are salespeople trained to sell insurance and investment products.  Non-financial life issues weren’t in their training manuals and don’t pay commissions.  One can hardly blame them for being somewhat blind to the time use issue that their recommendations can generate.

So, what’s your point?

Sorry, it would be so easy to go off into the weeds at this point, if I haven’t already.  Let me cut to the chase by saying that our cultural “entitlement” called retirement promotes a leapfrogging from a productive middle age to a non-productive, often aimless old age and compresses the time in which that transition takes place.  To me, that is murdering precious, creative, productive, life-changing time by throwing it to the wind and saying “I’m done.”

We have lots of evidence of this murderous process.

  • As recently as 1995, the Social Security system determined that the average number of social security checks issued was 29 – hardly a nirvana.
  • A generation ago, IBM did a study of its pensioners and found that the average number of pension checks issued before demise was 24.
  • Extensive studies of cultures worldwide with unusually high levels of centenarians (reference Dan Buettner’s book, “Blue Zones”) find that traditional retirement rarely exists and that gratitude for each day (time consciousness) prevails. Okinawans, for instance, can claim one of the highest concentrations of centenarians of any culture on the planet. Yet, they do not have a word equivalent to retirement in their language and no retirement homes in their culture.
  • A study called the RP 2000 Mortality Study of men 50-70 confirms the importance of time usage by revealing that the death rates of those still working were roughly half the death rates of men the same age who were not working.

It’s not easy being an outlier

Centenarians are outliers. Where our culture tells us that our intellectual and physical functions diminish with the passing of time, healthy centenarians have largely rejected that notion by accepting the fact that they will grow old and die but choosing how they will age.  Most take each day as a timeless gift and demonstrate amazing resilience in overcoming adversity.

Yet, in the face of this evidence of the possibility of a fruitful, healthy life to 100 or beyond, to suggest living to that age as a personal goal invites a culturally-conditioned rejection and categorization as kooky, weird, out-of-touch with reality, etc., etc.

How are you going to deal with your longevity bonus?

If I were to ask you how you would use a 30-40 year, post-middle-age time span, what would your culturally-influenced instincts tell you?  Would they say “wind down” or “rewind?”  Would it say “takeoff” or “landing?”  Would it say “crescendo” or “diminuendo?”   Would it say “I’m done” or “I’m inspired?”

I’m hoping that there will be a realization of the fact that this third-age period between middle-age and true old age is rife with the potential for murderous, culturally-induced time abuse.

  • Will it be movies or mentoring?
  • Will it be TV or teaching?
  • Will it Lazy-boy or learning?
  • Will it be bingo or biking?
  • Will it be conformist or contrarian?
  • Will it be vacation or vocation?

Life is a series of choices, each taking a chunk of time.  Our culture does much to show us how to waste it, lose it, abuse it.  But we can all be outliers and reject cultural perceptions.  And nowhere is that more important or potentially more impactful than in this period between our middle age and true old age – our “third age.”

What are your thoughts about all this?  Are you an outlier?  Are you an “audacious ager?”  If you are, I’d like to meet you, talk with you.   Leave a comment below.  Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.  Subscribe to these weekly articles at www.makeagingwork.com

 

What’s Your Life Tempo – Crescendo or Diminuendo?

I’m a slightly above-average guitar player.  One would hope so since I started playing in 1959.  We’re talking Bill Haley and the Comets and early Elvis time zone, folks.

About a dozen years ago, I discovered a player by the name of Tommy Emmanuel.  If you are an acoustic guitar player or aficionado, you know this native Australian to be unarguably the greatest acoustic player on the planet.  Chet Atkins, a Tommy mentor, endowed him with a Certified Guitar Player designation – one of only four or five such crowns awarded by Atkins before he passed.

I consider Tommy E. my guitar mentor.  I have nearly every one of his CD’s.  I’m learning from his instructional DVDs and tablature books.  I’ve attended every performance he has had in the Denver area over the last 10 years.  I’ve actually met him twice, have two autographed instructional books and have a photo with him (it’s a bad cell phone photo so it’s staying in the camera gallery – trust me on it!)

To give you an idea of this man’s talent (and in hopes of adding you to his fan club) click this link to one of his masterful creations.  As a testament to his talent and popularity, you can find hundreds of YouTube videos of his performances.

One thing I’ve observed is that Tommy seems to live his life in constant crescendo, which for you non-musicians means “an increase in intensity”.  He is a prolific songwriter, active teacher and does over 300 live performances a year worldwide.  Now in his 60’s, he doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Despite being able to do things on an acoustic guitar that are often mind-blowing, Tommy’s credo is “to be better tomorrow than I am today.”  I remember him saying that he doesn’t let a day go by without working on and refining his craft.  This after nearly six decades playing the instrument.

When he is performing, Tommy sometimes will pour on the “crescendo” and leave the planet with his incredible technique, creativity, and mastery of the instrument.  I find myself kind of tuning him out when he soars into the stratosphere.

I like him best when he pours his heart and incredible connection with his music into his softer, slower songs – like “Questions” or “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “Digger’s Waltz”.  That’s when Tommy reverts to “diminuendo”, which means “a decrease in loudness and intensity.”  He lowers the volume and the pace but without sacrificing the emotion.

I thought of Tommy this morning as I was reviewing some notes I had made in a journal a few years ago while reading Steven Covey’s “Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.” Covey asks: “Are you living your life in ‘crescendo’ or ‘diminuendo’?”

His definitions for the terms, however, stray a bit from the musical meanings:

  • Crescendo – greater energy and volume, strength and striving
  • Diminuendo – lower the volume, back off, play it safe, become passive, whisper away your life

Tommy E. may “lower the volume” but he doesn’t back off, play it safe, show passivity and has by no means been whispering away his life. He is one of the most ubiquitous, energetic musicians out there.

But I get where Covey is going with the question.  Are you winding up, or winding down?

I’ve asked myself:  at 76, is sustainable crescendo possible or realistic?  Should I accept Covey’s definition of diminuendo as a given, a necessity, a rite, an assumption, an automatic in my life as many seem to do?

Our culture would have us play to diminuendo as we age.  The signs are all around us: a continuing (but diminishing) emphasis on the unnatural concept of retirement; a proliferation of retirement communities; youth-oriented media and institutions; open and rampant age discrimination.

I’m taking a stand for the crescendo role.

But I’ll admit it’s harder than I thought to make the leap.  Naps come way too easy each day; the drive to seek adventure and newness has a pretty thick crust of “you’re too old” enculturation to cut through.  Learning is as deep but takes a good bit longer.  A look in the mirror in the morning generates the question: “Do I really want to put new strings on that??”

But I’ve “whispered away” enough of my life already.  Got some serious catching up to do – and that takes crescendo.

Crescendo into our 70’s, 80’s, 90’s is possible.  We have a multitude of examples to turn to.  There are the notable outliers like billionaires Ken Langone, T. Boone Pickens and Warren Buffett that I wrote about in my 7/2/18 blog “Time For a New Cultural Portal”.  But there are thousands of centenarians – the fastest growing segment of our population percentage-wise – that will attest to the validity and empowerment of never-ending crescendo.

When we give in to diminuendo, we might as well – in the words of Dan Sullivan – “send an email to the universe that it can start taking the parts back.”

Tommy’s crescendo attitude and his creative perfectionism are highly inspirational.  But, someday, the universe will take Tommy’s parts back – I hope it isn’t in my lifetime.   But when it does, I’d bet on it happening while he is soaring “off the planet” in one of his musical creations, not slowing down for a minute.

Shouldn’t that be how we all should go?

How’s Your Vitality and Happiness?  Not sure?  Test it!

You may already be familiar with Dan Buettner, National Geographic Fellow, explorer, educator, and author of a very popular book on longevity entitled “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,”  He’s the guy who assembled a group of demographers and sent them all over the globe to find the areas of the world where people lived the longest.  Then he tossed their findings to a group of statisticians for analysis and correlation.

Five areas on the globe emerged as unique relative to global averages of length-of-life and late-life vitality: Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy; Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; Lodi, California.

The findings of this extensive effort are widely recognized and quoted.  Buettner has become a prominent name in the growing campaign against our western lifestyle as it pertains to our overall health and longevity.

It’s a worthy read, if for no other reason than to learn what the common factors were across these five Blue Zones that contributed to the extraordinary longevity and amazing late-life health.  I’ll just leave you a hint since I’m sure you will rush to buy the book based on my recommendation (inserting winking emoji!)

Yep, diet, exercise, sleep, low stress and social engagement pretty well sum it up.  There you have the cliff notes on the cliff notes.

With this article, however, I want to call your attention to a fun little tool that Buettner has put out there to test your “true vitality” and “true happiness”. I guess “fun” may not be the best description depending on what your test results are.   But if your results come back “un-fun”, at least the test includes suggestions that will get it closer to fun.

Two tests, eight minutes

Go to this site for the True Vitality Test.  This 3-minute test “calculates your life expectancy and how long you’ll stay healthy” and will “send you personalized recommendations for getting the most good years out of life.”  It’s all kept private.

Then you can go to the True Happiness Test  and do a second test (five minutes) “based on the leading scientific research into well-being” that will “help you improve your environment to maximize your happiness.”  Same deal – a personalized report with recommendations.

OK, it’s all free and it’s designed to lead you to purchase a course that goes deeper in each area.  You know the game by now if you spend any time in the online world.  I’m a thief, out and out.  I steal everything free that I can and never (well, almost never) bite for the “special offer” that follows.

But, I like these two tests and feel they had some substance.  I admit I may have been a bit swayed because I liked the results.  To wit:

  • On 2/9/18, I took the Vitality Test the first time and it predicted my life expectancy to be 92.6 against the average of 76 (which is where I am – whew!).  Since I’m committed to living beyond 100, this test result bothered me.  I looked at the recommendations that accompanied the test.  I found, and added, a couple that I wasn’t doing that made sense.  So when I took the test again on 7/7/18, my life expectancy prospects had improved to 96.9.   Good – getting closer. Note to self:  continue to work on the recommendations.
  • On the same day – 7/7/18 – I took the True Happiness Test and it came back A+, the top possible bracket. It says I scored high in
    • PURPOSE: Your passion, drive, and sense of meaning and connection.
    • PLEASURE: Your everyday positive emotions and experiences.
    • PRIDE: Your sense of satisfaction in the major areas of your life.

Aren’t I wonderful?

I shared the results with my wife.  She gave me the same eye-roll on the age thing that I suspect you may have done.  And on the happiness things, she simply said: “When are you going to tell your face?”

Some work to be done there. I’m just not that exciting to be around and not an exuder.  I guess the internal peace and happiness I feel still has difficulty peeking out.

I suspect that you are highly skeptical about the validity of these tests since they’re free.  I get it.  You get what you pay for, right?  Free always has a hook.

You can easily ignore or spit out the hook on this one.  And you might just gain something.

Look at it this way.  How many eight-minute chunks do you waste every day doing something stupid, mindless or unproductive? Some days, my chunks seem to be legion.  So if I pull one little “pearl of applicable knowledge” out of that eight minutes, I’ve got an ROI.

That’s what I felt I got.  A simple activity that added “1%” to my personal growth.  Do something like that every day and I’ve improved my life 365%.  My life has space for all of that improvement!

How about yours?

If you try it, let me know what you think. Scroll down and leave a comment.

Are You Practicing Self-euthanasia?

Self-euthanasia?  That’s a conversation starter, wouldn’t you say?

I came across the term in a recent Fortune magazine article about mattresses.  Well, actually, the article starts off talking about the severe sleep deficiency that exists in the developed world but morphs into a long commercial for luxury mattresses and new high-tech sleep aids.

Who knew that you can sleep on a hand-stitched mattress made with horsetail hair for which you can pay between $10,500 and $125,000?  If you do, would you drop me an email and tell me about the experience (and put me in your will while you are at it?)

If you sleep on that mattress then you probably are also all over the $500 ergonomic headband, Dreem, that “works with electroencephalography sensors to monitor brain wave, heart rate and breathing during sleep” along with “bone-conduction technology to play sounds to help its users fall asleep.”

Honestly, speaking as a mere peasant, I feel sorry for you – with all this help, you probably have few waking hours in which to check in with your financial advisor.

Well, here’s support for your grand commitment to sleep.  The all-knowing, all-seeing World Health Organization (WHO) found time in their cramped schedules to officially declare sleep deficiency a public health epidemic.

But self-euthanasia?  Sleep scientist Matthew Walker at U. of California, Berkeley apparently believes it and coined the term in his book “Why We Sleep”, saying “Our lack of sleep is a slow form of self-euthanasia.”

Apparently, according to the WHO, the majority of the world’s population regularly clocks six or fewer hours a night, thus putting our health in jeopardy.  According to this collection of experts, lack of sleep increases the risk of obesity, cancer, diabetes, Alzheimer’s and other dementias.

I like another description used in the article:  “sleep has become an elusive luxury of our own making” by which we tag “busyness, long hours, and early rising as badges of honor.”  Apparently, we’ve become an “underslept” and “underperforming” world population, and proud of it.

Well, alas, it’s all true and they are painfully accurate.  We are killing ourselves early by not sleeping enough.  Self- euthanasia seems an appropriate term.

But, there’s more.

I’d like to suggest that lack of sleep shouldn’t claim exclusive title to the phrase.

I can think of two other shortfalls that we could safely put in this category:  diet and exercise. In fact, I lean toward these two as having greater self-euthanasia capabilities than lack of sleep.

Perhaps you missed my 5/26 blog where I shared these facts:

  • Two-thirds of the American population is overweight; one-third of American men are obese.
  • Type 2 diabetes, which is largely attributable to dietary habits and was virtually unheard of 40 years ago, has now reached epidemic proportions in the U.S. and is now showing up in children.  According to our own American Medical Association, half of our American population is either diabetic or pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it. 
  • The five major killer diseases in our country remain unchanged: heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, and dementia – all highly attributable to what we put in our mouths.

So, we’re pretty good at self-euthanasia.  We can put together a pretty good trifecta for killing ourselves early: poor sleep, Western diet, and immobility.

I think we can euthanize ourselves quicker by being 40 pounds overweight and watching 49 hours of TV a week (the average for the retired American male) while getting 8 hours of sleep than we will if we are thin, active and getting six hours of sleep.

But that’s just the opinion of a thin (175 and holding, down from 190 a year ago), active (six days a week, 45 minutes a day), plant-eating septuagenarian who sleeps about 6-6 ½ hours (20-year old non-horsetail hair mattress).  I tend to make up the sleep shortfall with mini-naps throughout the day, especially when I’m stretching my brain trying to come up with something of value for this blog.  (Note: 10-minute power nap between the opening and this paragraph).

So I’m beholden to Matthew Walker for giving me a new term to use in my arsenal of diatribes about living to our full potential by being the CEO of our own health.  Our food industry, pharma industry, and healthcare system are doing little to prevent our self-euthanasia.  It’s on us to make it happen.

Don’t fall asleep and miss the opportunity.

 

Subscribe to our weekly articles at www.makeagingwork.com and receive my free e-book “Achieving Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier and With More Purpose”.

 

Do You Have An “Ism” Holding You Back?

Paul Tasner is 72 – and a happy, energized, first-time entrepreneur, a late mid-life escapee from the grasp of corporate life.

Well, actually, an “involuntary escapee.”

Paul was fired from his position as an industrial engineer at 64.  He became an entrepreneur at 66 and is having the time of his life today, at 72, with a successful business manufacturing biodegradable packaging to replace the toxic plastic packaging that is polluting our planet.

I found his story on a podcast with Andy Levine of Secondactstories.org where you can hear more of his story – a story that includes a TED Talk that has gotten 1.7 million views.

Here’s a link to the podcast and one to Tasner’s TED Talk.

An elevator pitch of “isms”

Tasner’s story is a cool one, alright.  His elevator pitch is built around three ism’s; entrepreneurism, environmentalism, and ageism.  Two provided motivation and a path, the third he overcame.

Through with corporate life and uninspired by a couple of years of consulting, he defied conventional wisdom and ageism to become an entrepreneur pursuing a life-long passion.  Today, with one full-time partner and a network of virtual and contract employees and vendors, he has a thriving business mostly operated from home.

Many of us, facing this type of forced transition in our late fifties or early sixties, would enter into a deflated-ego, finger-pointing funk and consider entrepreneurism at that age undoable or, at a minimum, impractical.

I’ve witnessed the usual path taken under these circumstances: an attempt to re-enter the job market with the expectation that one can return to the stature and income just exited.

Ain’t gonna happen!

Hello youth culture, ageism, and a rapidly changing job market.

It’s a time when we face the reality of some “isms” we have operating in our lives.

The biggest and the first to come on stage is our old, persistent friend – ageism, “the last socially sanctioned prejudice.”  Those are the words of Ashton Applewhite, writer, activist and author of a seminal book on the topic entitled: “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism.”

Applewhite makes the point that all “isms” – sexism, racism, feminism, ableism, nationalism, fascism, et.al – are socially constructed ideas.  Few carry a positive feel.  In fact, the dictionary refers to an “ism” as an informal, derogatory noun and defines it as “a distinctive practice, system, or philosophy” often “denoting a basis for prejudice or discrimination or a pathological condition.”

Maybe that’s what makes Tasner’ use of “isms” as inspiration so unusual.  Usually, they are in the way, holding us back, being used as excuses or just blocking us from open-mindedness.

I can think of a few beyond ageism that might fit the roadblock category :

  • Egoism
  • Nihilism
  • Perfectionism
  • Pessimism
  • Privatism
  • Collectivism
  • Communism
  • Fatalism
  • Hedonism
  • Socialism
  • Cynicism

But not all isms are negative.  Here are a few that might work for us:

  • Realism
  • Positivism
  • Self-determinism
  • Skepticism (Caution: use carefully.  It can morph into cynicism)
  • Capitalism
  • Conservatism
  • Idealism
  • Libertarianism
  • Nativism

Need definitions?  This site www.phrontistery.info/isms.html has 234 different “isms” and definitions.  Seriously.

I like that Tasner didn’t let “isms” get in his way and that he went against the grain.  He probably could have taken another “settle-for job” at 40-60% less than his last salary.

Or he could have defaulted to an early, under-financed, life-style restricting retirement.

Instead, he developed a “tude” – he refused to let the lack of role models for what he wanted to do get in the way. He fought through a long list of administrative and bureaucratic obstacles to stand his business up. And he is now passionate about wanting to start conversations about the successes happening in this age group.

Go, Paul!!!

He reminds us that:

  • The largest number of new businesses started each year in the U.S. are started by folks over 50
  • 64% of jobs created in the private sector come from small businesses
  • Businesses started by older entrepreneurs have a 70% success rate vs. a 28% success rate for younger entrepreneurs.

I agree with Tasner on another point in his TED Talk.  You’ve probably seen the lists for “30 Under 30” or “40 Under 40” in mags like Forbes or Fortune heaping accolades on Gen Y high-achievers for their commercial accomplishments.

What’s not right about having a “70 over 70” or “60 over 60”?  Especially, given the aforementioned statistics.

Even mags like Forbes and Fortune make their own subtle contribution to ageism.  I’m not holding my breath waiting for that to change.

But I get it.  An old fart building a successful business making biodegradable packaging doesn’t have quite the pop or glamour of an Uber, AirBnB, SnapChat, Whatsapp or whatever latest killer app your progeny just downloaded on their phone.

Plus, we don’t look quite as good with a stubble beard and in skinny jeans and t-shirts.

But all that doesn’t matter.  Tasner is happy, energized, giving back and combining his accumulated skills and experience to bring a passion to life.  A model for the “third age.”

When we are in the “third age of life”, that period between the end of middle-age and true old-age, the “isms” we carry forward can play a big role in filling that age with meaning and purpose.

Just ask Mr. Tasner.

 

Tasner faced up to quite a few “isms”.  What isms might be holding you back?  Or which ones have served you well?   Scroll down and share your thoughts.

 

 

 

Time For a New Cultural Portal

 

“We either ease into age or we’re disrupted by age.  I don’t like the fact that I’m 82, but I can’t fight it – it’s better that I am 82 than I didn’t make it to 82.  I keep going.  I’m not going to stop.  I still go to work every day.  If I didn’t have to sleep, I’d work 24 hours a day!”

********

“You can be old at 30 or young at 90 – it’s all up to you.  I’ve always been in a hurry. I know I’m racing against time, and now more than ever. But I have not lost my competitive spirit, and, in some ways, it’s personal. I still keep an active office and go there every day. Retirement isn’t an option for me. When you retire you have time to do what you love, and I love to work. “

The first quote is from Ken Langone, the billionaire businessman, investor, philanthropist and one of the founders of Home Depot during his appearance in a podcast with James Althucher.

The second is from a recent LinkedIn article posted by T. Boone Pickens, also a billionaire business magnate and financier, hedge fund chairman and former corporate raider, on the occasion of his 90th birthday.

Different capitalistic routes to fame and fortune – one central late-life message:

Don’t stop – retirement isn’t an option.

Well, if we are going to splash around in the billionaire pool, then shouldn’t we see where the daddy-of-the-elder-billionaires, Warren Buffett, stands on this retirement thing?  Now 87, he doesn’t seem to be showing any signs of slowing down.

A little Google research reveals Warren’s “playbook” on the topic of retirement.

His clarifying position on reasons to avoid retirement is simple:

  1. You’re healthy
  2. You won’t have a fixed income
  3. You stay engaged and productive
  4. You’ll continue to mentor
  5. You can leverage your knowledge

We can all agree that not one of these three “elders” needs to work to subsist.  They all could have stopped at the traditional retirement age, but blew past it completely ignoring the signpost.

So what? They’re billionaires!

I personally don’t know any billionaires – never have, most likely won’t, ever.  Like you, it’s difficult for me to relate to what it must be like to be a billionaire.  Also, like you (I’m assuming), it’s not a pinnacle that I will experience.

But what I can relate to is a late-life stage of continued work,  productivity, and contribution and the effect that has on the individual and society.  I don’t see billionaires having a corner on that.

But it is this kind of story that just adds to my amazement at how pervasive and deeply rooted the concept of traditional retirement remains in our culture.  These billionaires represent but a tiny sampling of the vast evidence we have that work is a key factor in longevity and good health.  Given that, where is the sensibility in striving to hasten away from it at an age where natural talent, acquired skills and valuable experience can be mixed together and deployed for the greater good of society?

Time for a new portal?

In previous articles, I’ve referred to traditional retirement as adherence to an outdated, politically-inspired artificial finish line, the model for which has no relevance to our current world.

Permit me to coin another term for it: Wasted Cultural Portal.

Cultural portal?  Whaasat?

Neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez defines cultural portals as:  “culturally defined segments of expected beliefs and conduct.” Martinez offers up a cultural portal list that includes: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age.

Quite a contrast.  One-hundred-fifty years ago, we had two portals: childhood-adulthood.

Changing technology, longer lives, creative social scientists and enterprising capitalists have stretched the portal list, in Dr. Martinez’s eyes, to seven.

But something happened on the way to the 21st century.  Baby boomers and technology came along and started redefining the gap between portal six and seven, presenting a strong argument for the need for another portal between middle age and true old age along with a clearer definition of true old age.

This new portal is where we find Langone, Pickens, Buffett.

They aren’t wasting it.  Most of us, as we enter or move through this new portal, will.  It’s called traditional, vocation-to-vacation retirement.

They are outliers.

We are safely within the confines of our comfort zone of conventional wisdom, cultural expectations, and comparison.

They have chosen to push all those aside.

A simpler portal concept.

Perhaps rather than expand the portals to eight we should simplify the portal concept altogether.  That’s what Marc Freedman, founder of Encore.org and author of a seminal book on this topic, “The Big Shift, Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife”, advocates.  Drawing from his relationship with and studies of the 1990’s research done by Peter Laslett, eminent British demographic historian, Freedman has championed Laslett’s solution to “the oxymoronic years, the longevity paradox and to much of what ails us today.”

Laslett predicted, because of declining births and longer lives, an emerging life stage he called the “Third Age.”  With it comes a much simpler and appropriate four-portal alignment which Freedman advocates:

  1. First age – childhood/age of dependence.
  2. Second age – adulthood and mid-career jobs.
  3. Third age – new territory between the end of mid-career jobs and parenting duties and the beginning of dependent old age.
  4. Fourth age – age of dependency and ill health, the doorstep of demise.

It’s important to share Laslett’s prescient view on this.  Laslett foresaw a need to clean up some fundamental mistakes resulting from failure to recognize this third age. Mistakes that impact you and me.

“In his view, lumping everyone with grey hair under the same umbrella, and assuming this population in the future will look like and live like those of that age in the past, produced both a miscasting of reality and miscarriage of justice.  And it led to everything from damaged lives to bad policies.  Laslett saw the conventional wisdom – that this population would be a vast burden to society, a huge drain on the medical establishment, an unproductive class inevitably focused on their own narrow needs  – to be a result of ‘the persistence into our own time of  perception belonging to the past.’ In other words, it was scenario planning through the rearview mirror.” (extracted from Freedman’s book).

Voila!! Yet another definition of traditional retirement

There you have it.  Another appropriate definition for traditional retirement:  planning through a rear-view mirror, following an 80-year old script applied to a hugely changed longevity and promoted by an industry largely unchanged from a late-1970’s model of insurance and securities salespeople promoting a labor-to-leisure retirement model based purely on dollars and cents and insensitive to the wastefulness that model encourages.

Beware of being consigned to “mass indolence”

Laslett’s “third age” represents a liberation of those of us in our (in Freedman’s words) “ – sixties, seventies and beyond from the psychic strain and misclassification and from the very real  consequences of being assigned to ‘mass indolence.'”

Laslett writes: “The waste of talent and experience is incalculable.”

We need look no further than to our cratering healthcare system, the massive expansion of elder warehouses, the unchanged message of the financial planning industry, rampant ageism, and our youth-oriented media and culture to realize that Laslett was spot on.

What’s your third age going to look like?

At 76, I’m about five years into my true “third age”.  Yep, about a 20-year late start following 40+ years of thrashing around in mismatches in the corporate and self-employment world, operating according to cultural convention instead of my essential self.

Not recommended.

There are days when the regret over a late start and thoughts of what more I could have done will occupy more mental bandwidth than I should permit.  But with a strong belief that my fourth stage will be beyond 100 (see my earlier blog on this topic)  and each day functioning at a higher energy level and with more motivation than I recall from any other stage of my life, I feel my third age holds much promise as it slowly unfolds.

At this age and stage, you learn that today is what you’ve got, nothing else – and that success in life ultimately emanates from gratitude, a quality you will hear expressed frequently by the aforementioned billionaires.

That stirring you feel might just be your third age trying to move from cocoon to butterfly.  My encouragement to you is to listen, not hasten it, or cover it over with cultural constructs, comparison, and comfort-zone living and thus kill the butterfly.

We are anxious to hear what thoughts you have about a “third age” sequence in your life.  Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com or scroll down and leave a comment.

You can still access my free e-book “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential” by subscribing to my weekly newsletter articles at www.makeagingwork.com.

 

How To Avoid Becoming a “Bored Boomer” – Part Three

 

“ If you do not know where you come from, then you don’t know where you are, and if you don’t know where you are, then you don’t know where you’re going.”  Terry Pratchett, “I Shall Wear Midnight”

I struggled this week to come up with meaningful content that would be a fitting and meaningful cap to this three-part series on avoiding becoming a Bored Boomer.   Then this quote jumped on me.

It works that way sometimes – the Universe drops something in my mental path out of nowhere.  Many have said that’s the way it works.  You just have to be open and paying attention – which I’m not, a lot of the time.

The quote is a bit like the interchange between Alice and the Cheshire cat I guess i.e. “any road will do!”  But what grabbed me was the first part “If you don’t know where you come from- – “.  It reminded me, as I’m reading it, that we all are nothing but stories.

Life is a series of choices and the stories that follow.

For a long time, I didn’t much care for a lot of my story.  Kinda modest, mottled and messy.  Small town Wyoming upbringing, grandson of homesteaders, a late bloomer in nearly every phase of the first half (50 years or so).  No notable titles, trophies or tributes.  Pretty much a top-of-the-bell-curve sort of story.

But then someone somewhere in some book or podcast or webinar on writing – can’t remember who or where or when  – said: “your mess is your message.”  I think, I hope, it was Ann Lamont, whose last chapter in her classic book on writing “Bird by Bird: Some Instruction on Writing and Life” rocked my world with this admonition (bolding is mine):

“Write in a directly emotional way, instead of being too subtle or oblique.  Don’t be afraid of your material or your past.  Be afraid of wasting any more time obsessing about how you look and how people see you.  Be afraid of not getting your writing done.  If something inside you is real, we will probably find it interesting.  Risk placing emotion at the center of your work.  Write toward vulnerability.  Don’t worry about being sentimental.  Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent and fraudulent.  Risk being unliked.  Truth is always subversive.”

We need to know your story

We all have a story that the world needs to know. We all have a story that will benefit others but runs the risk of being untold as we succumb to the cultural expectation of “winding down.”  This third stage of life i.e. the span between middle age and true old age is where the power of your story can best manifest itself.

I’ve come to realize that the story I was inclined to apologize for and hide for years has led me to discovery of my true passion and purpose and that my messiness can be a big part of my message.

That can be the same for any of us third-stagers.  It should be.

With that as a backdrop, here are the final three Boomer Boredom avoidance suggestions:

#7: Write your memoirs.

Whaaa?  My memoirs, you say?  Who would read it?  Who would care?

Maybe nobody – maybe millions. That’s not the point.  Call it part of self-discovery.  Call it part of legacy preservation.  Call it a letter to your progeny. Call it a thank you to your spouse or partner. Call it boredom avoidance.  Call it whatever.

As Ann Lamont points out in “Bird by Bird”:  “– -it is an honorable thing to have done.  And who knows? Maybe what you’ve written will help others, will be a small part of the solution.  You don’t even have to know how or in what way, but if you are writing in the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper likes its own little lighthouse”

Maybe what you have written will help others.  Maybe that won’t be a big part of the result.   But what will happen is that your true story will emerge – or, more truthfully, re-emerge and gain more salient meaning.

My ever-helpful friend, Pat McClendon, is a Ph.D. nurse and former nursing executive who has now “retired” into working harder than ever to help nurses find meaning through her writing and speaking. (Visit her site at www.makingcaringreal.com).

She took seriously someone’s advice that if you want to learn about yourself, write your memoirs.  My sense is that writing her memoirs was a gut-wrenching yet exhilarating experience that enabled her to confront the truths about what went well and what didn’t in her nursing leader career.  This has deepened her perspective and passion for helping nurse leaders and is turning into a soon-to-be-published book to complement her weekly blogs and speaking on the topic of nurse leadership. The nursing leadership community, which is huge, stands to be the benefactor of that memoir effort.

#8:  Develop and commit to a longevity plan.

Chances are you are going to live longer than you expected.  For some, that’s good news.  For many, it’s a fearful proposition, beset with visions of wheelchairs and walkers, nursing homes and needles, osteoporosis and oxygen bottles, dementia, drool and Depends.

The reality of that grim vision is enhanced by the lifestyle choices we make throughout life, but that intensify in importance as we move through the second half.

Generally, we remain a pretty naïve society when it comes to good health despite all the advances we’ve made in the last century in understanding our biology and how to treat it optimally.

Or perhaps, lazy is a better word.

We’ve been hijacked into a disease-care system where our health maintenance has become a reactive, $35 co-pay experience that comes into play only when the annual physical roles around or when the train leaves the track with an illness or health crisis.

In the face of major advances in understanding how our biology works, we continue to fail to take control of our own health.  And the manifestation of that intensifies as we age.

But it doesn’t need to be that way.  We can – actually, must – be in control of our health if we expect to achieve our full-life potential and live healthy up to, or very close to, the end.  In other words, live long and die short.

I do believe that we can be “Younger Next Year”.  The book by the same name inspired me to put together a longevity plan to support my goal of living past 100.  I was also inspired by the wisdom and experience of Dr. Walter Bortz and his books “Dare to Be 100” and “The Roadmap to 100.”  I heartily recommend all three books as a foundation for moving to a longevity plan for the balance of your life.

I see such a plan having three parts”

  1. Become knowledgeable about your biology, down to the cellular level. Know what you are doing to your body when you do, or don’t do, certain things.  No, I’m not suggesting becoming a molecular biologist – just read what they are already telling us. Frankly, even if you just digested the three aforementioned books, you would be light years ahead of the masses and on a good track to realize a health longevity bonus.
  2. Put together an exercise, diet, social engagement and spiritual enlightenment plan. Here’s mine:

    Aerobic exercise for 45 minutes, 6 days a week. Strength training 3 days a week.  (Borrowed from the recommendations in “Younger Next Year” and inspired by Dr. Lodge’s quote: “Aerobic exercise will give you life.  Strength training will make it worth living.”)

    I “eat food, not too much, mostly plants”. Inspired by this quote from Michael Pollan, author of “Food Rules” and other inspiring books on eating right

    Expanding my social circle to be surrounded by positive, encouraging friends and to include more people 10-30 years younger than I am.

    Daily meditation. It starts my day and helps center me.

  3. Fix your longevity plan on your calendar. What gets scheduled gets done.  And no more so than with these longevity components.  It’s very easy to slide away from each of them.  It takes 66 days to firmly embed this type of good habit.  It won’t happen without a disciplined, scheduled approach.

#9:  Start a project that would positively impact 1 million people.

You may have heard of the “X Prize”.  It’s a concept started by Peter Diamandis, engineer, physician, and entrepreneur.

At the XPrize website,  https://www.xprize.org/about/what-is-an-xprize it is described as:

“- – a highly leveraged, incentivized prize competition that pushes the limits of what’s possible to change the world for the better.

It captures the world’s imagination and inspires others to reach for similar goals, spurring innovation and accelerating the rate of positive change.  The goal is to push the boundaries of human potential by focusing on problems currently believed to be unsolvable, or that have no clear path toward a solution.”

For many of the X Prizes, the solution must be able to positively impact at least 1 billion people.

It has proven to be one of the most powerful tools for world-changing innovation on the planet.

Do you think you could come up with something, drawing from your life experiences and acquired skills and assets, that could possibly impact 0.001% of that? Something that could impact 0.003% (1 of every 326 people) in the U.S.  Just a million people.

What do you know, have experience with, are highly accomplished in, feel passionate about that you just know a million people could benefit from?

Then define it and go share with them, starting with one.

We all have them – those experiences, talents, successes that are our story.  Stories that others need to hear.  Yet, we sit on them when others could grow because we’ve grown.

I’m choosing to take my “messy” story to the 80+million Boomer and pre-Boomers to encourage them to rethink the use of this period between mid-life and old age i.e. the third stage.  To inspire them to leverage this time for good, not lose it to the cultural expectations of park benches and Lazy-boys and Leisure World.

Will 1 ¼ % of that crowd hear my messy message?  Hopefully, in time.  But maybe not.  But today, I’m thinking maybe one will, and that’s a feel good.   It all starts with one.

Thanks for taking the time to slog through this series.  Hope it has some pearls for you.  Let us know your thoughts regarding the suggestions by scrolling down and leaving a comment.  Or better yet, let us know what you do to stay inspired, motivated and active as a Boomer.

Get a copy of my free e-book “Achieve Your Full-life Potential” by subscribing at www.makeagingwork.com

How to Avoid Becoming a “Bored Boomer” – Part Two

 

Last week, the first article of this three-part series on avoiding boomer boredom focused on (1) finding your essential self, (2) reintegrating yourself and (3) starting a lifestyle business.  This week, we’ll take a look at three more boomer boredom fighters.

Why all the concern about boredom?

Boredom can lead to the development of non-healthy habits and erosion of the good habits that contributed to previous life and career successes.  Stagnation and even narcissism are by-products of boredom as is the threat of a slide into depression.

The evidence is overwhelming that depression and other dark-side elements are becoming significant factors in the lives of retired boomers. For instance, these sobering facts are emerging:

  • It is expected that, by 2020, the number of retirees with alcohol and other drug problems will leap 150%.
  • The National Institutes of Health reports that, of the 35 million Americans age 65 or older, nearly 2 million suffer from full-blown depression. Another 5 million suffer from less severe forms of the illness.
  • Depression is the single most significant risk factor for suicide among the elderly with the highest increases among men in their 50s and women in their early 60s.
  • A recent New York Times article noted that the overall, national rate of divorce in the United States is trending down. Except for one group: the 50-plusers, who have seen their rate of divorce surge 50% in the past 20 years.
  • One in four couples divorce after age 50.

 

Here are three more anti-boredom suggestions for you to consider:

#4: Adopt generativity as a goal.

Deep down, don’t we all want to check out having left a footprint of some sort?  Generativity is one path for accomplishing that.

Erik Erikson, Pulitzer Prize-winning developmental psychologist best known for coining the term “identity crisis”, put forth a life model with an adult stage that includes the task of “generativity.”  Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines generativity as “a concern for people besides self and family that usually develops during middle age; a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation.”

Erikson considered generativity equivalent to paying-it-forward, saying “I am what survives me.”

Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a Harvard professor and preeminent expert on the importance of relationships in the development of young people.  As an advocate of generativity, she underscores the importance of boredom avoidance by stating that those who fail to be generative in this late adulthood period “ – are prone to stagnation and narcissism.  They often begin to indulge themselves as if they were their one and only child.”

We’ve all seen friends, family members, acquaintances or former workmates slip into roleless, goalless lifestyles in retirement. Invariably, the results are an accelerated physical and/or mental decline.  Conversely, we’ve all likely known those who have sustained a vibrant vitality and perhaps an extended longevity through their commitment to volunteerism or other methods of generativity.

The opportunities for generativity are endless and varied.  Maybe it’s being a tutor for underprivileged, inner-city kids; or providing resume writing and interview skills training for new tech school graduates; or participation in a Big Brother program.

Whatever form it may take, it is guaranteed to kill boredom when it’s aligned with a passion and a skill set.  Personally, I never achieved the level of motivation and daily enthusiasm in the corporate world that I do now in my own version of generativity.  I’m striving each day to craft an effective message and process to help the one or two generations behind me to overcome ageism and the negative voices around them about aging and to unleash the power and impact they can bring forward in their second half of life.

#5:  Become a mentor

Hand-in-glove with #4, becoming a mentor is a concentrated form of generativity. Bringing forward skills and experiences gained in the first 40-50 years of life and career can provide advice and connections that can help a mentee, or group of mentees, reach heights otherwise not possible alone.

But there is also a serendipitous, anti-boredom component to mentoring.  Mentorship benefits are shared by both mentees and mentors.  In a successful mentoring relationship, the mentor gains new perspectives and experiences growth along with satisfaction by providing guidance to the mentee.

Being a mentor helps one to become a more understanding human being and helps keep skills fresh and minds young.  To not mentor may mean losing touch with our own excellence.

Author, speaker, and coach John Maxwell reminds us in his book “Intentional Living: Choosing a Life That Matters” that “- significance and selfishness don’t go together.  You cannot be a selfish, self-centered person and live a life that matters.”  He also reminds us that most people who don’t add value to others do it, not out of hate or self-centeredness, but out of indifference.  Indifference and a life of significance cannot coexist.

I wonder.  Could indifference be a first cousin to boredom?

#6:  Craft a new 25-year life plan

One of my favorite “virtual mentors” is Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, the most successful entrepreneur coaching program on the planet.  Sullivan has coached over 18,000 successful entrepreneurs in his 40+ years as a coach.

He has a number of fundamental rules that have guided his success and that he teaches his coaching students.  He has a book entitled “The Laws of Lifetime Growth” in which the first law is “Always make sure your future is bigger than your past in terms of what you are interested in and what your goals are.”

How’s that for a boredom antidote?

Accompanying this rule, Sullivan has, for years, kept a rolling 25-year plan out in front of him with progressively bigger and more aggressive goals built on what each succeeding year has brought him in terms of new learning and technology developments. His life and impact get bigger every year.

Dan is not a bored – or a boring – guy.

At 74 (in 2018) and with a goal of living to 156, I have a hunch he will be around longer than most and will continue to rack up successes in transforming lives much longer than others in the coaching professions.

Antithetical to the core!

Yup, it’s all antithetical and totally contrarian.  It flies in the face of what we’ve been led to believe that this final phase of life is destined to be:  a time to land, not launch; a time to wind down, not wind up; a time to kick back not kick-off; a time to ebb not flow; a time to decline, not develop; a time to retire, not rewire.

Social expectations will tell us a 25-year plan at 55 or 65 or 75 is nuts. Certainly, I’ve grown accustomed to the raised eyebrows when I reveal that, at 76, I’m refining my 25-year plan.  And it is a work-in-progress.  But I’ve come to realize that a goal to live past 100 or develop a lifestyle business that will outlive me will never happen if I don’t articulate it and plan for it in my mind.

A goal unarticulated is never achieved.

 

What would you like your life to look like 25 years from now?  Can you visualize it as vibrant, active and highly mobile, devoid of dementia, drool and Depends?  What would you like said of you at your funeral?  You might even try writing your own eulogy to kickstart your 25-year plan development.  Or write a 100th birthday speech.

Don’t be ordinary!

Next week, we’ll wrap up the series with three more boomer boredom antidotes.  Let me know what you think about 1-6.  Scroll down and leave a comment or a criticism.  We welcome your feedback and suggestions.

New to this blog?  Subscribe at www.makeagingwork.com.  We pass along a free e-book when you subscribe entitled “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential.”

How to Avoid Becoming a “Bored Boomer” – Part One

 

A Certified Financial Planner friend of mine shared a story over breakfast recently.  One of his long-standing clients – let’s call him Jack –  who had fully retired six months earlier called out of the blue with a plea for help.  Having entered his retirement in great financial shape, his call went something like this: “John, you’ve got to help me.  I’ve got to go back to work doing something.  I’m going crazy not having something important to do.”

A “Bored Boomer Retiree”

Jack appears to be another captive of an irrelevant retirement model – a casualty of an off-the-cliff leap from labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation.  An emerging rebel against the archaic, politically-inspired artificial finish line called traditional retirement.

Seventy-eight million strong and hitting this artificial finish line of 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day, Boomers everywhere are beginning to discover that retirement, as we’ve known it for decades, needs redefining.

A 2016 Federal Reserve Study revealed that a full 1/3 of retirees eventually reconsider retirement and return to work on either a full or part-time basis.

Another study published in 2019 by the Rand Corporation revealed that 39% of workers 65 or older who were currently employed had retired for a period but decided to return to the workplace for more of their “golden years.

A share of this trend can be attributed to the fact that 2 of 3 retirees enter retirement having given little or no thought to the non-financial components of retirement life only to discover that those “soft side” elements play a much larger role in retirement than the “hard-side” financial elements where the major planning effort is focused leading up to retirement.

Unfortunately, this discovery often comes later than it should.  Much of early, prime-time retirement is wasted as a result of this lack of non-financial planning.  New retirees typically experience a 1-5 year ”retirement honeymoon” period, during which the mental, social, physical, and spiritual challenges emerge that were never discussed or planned for in the offices of their financial planner.

Issues such as:

  • Overcoming a loss of identity.
  • Divergent post-retirement interests between spouses.
  • Boredom due to lack of challenge and social engagement.
  • Depression and physical deterioration because of reduced activity and social interaction and lack of a sense of purpose.

NOTE: My 5/14/18 blog provides additional insight into the dark side elements of retirement.

How do you avoid becoming a “bored boomer?”  A three-part series. 

This article is the first of a three-article series on this topic, each with three suggestions for avoiding this plight.  You don’t have to be retired to consider these.  In fact, considering them at the pre-retirement stage will bring even more benefits.

Suggestion #1:  Unmuzzle your “essential self”.

What was your 6-, 8-, or 10-year-old-self good at, passionate about, naturally drawn to, and undeterred in pursuing before parents, peers, professors, politicians, and pundits tamped it all down and out?  There are clues to your essential self in all of that.

In her seminal book “Finding Your Own North Star, Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live”, Martha Beck reminds us that most are “- – responsible citizens who have muzzled their essential selves in order to do what they believe is the ‘right thing’”.

For most of us that “right thing” has been 30-40 years of “cubicle nation” building someone else’s dream believing that a fuzzily-defined, nirvanic, rewarding escape waiting at the end will be worth it.

For some, the “right thing” is in step with the “essential self” – for most, not so much.  Why else would we covet getting away from it and  “give up” or “withdraw”?  Which, by the way, is the definition of “retire.”

When the “right thing” goes away or morphs into that “rewarding escape”, we can find ourselves face-to-face with that uncomfortable question: “Who am I and why am I here?”

There it is – the perfect mental launching pad for resurrecting what really lit you up before social expectations locked you down.

I’m slower than most.

I chased the “right thing” across four different industries for over three decades and traveled deep into my sixties before finally unmuzzling my essential self and honoring my bent toward writing and teaching/coaching.

A couple of retired friends of mine are integrating their essential selves, passions, and their natural and acquired skills and leveraging them back into the marketplace where they will continue to do good.

For a recently retired hospital CEO in Missouri, it is choosing to broaden and deepen his passion for civic and community involvement through board-level positions to pay forward his executive administrative experience as well as satisfy a passion to serve.  To satisfy another passion, he builds and refurbishes black-powder, muzzle-loader rifles.

For a retired nurse executive friend, it’s taking her doctorate in nursing and decades of top-level nurse management experience back into the marketplace to help nurses cope with the pressures of today’s broken healthcare system and be more caring patient advocates.  She’s doing it through a childhood passion for writing and teaching, using the internet, social media, and book publishing.

Suggestion #2:  Reintegrate yourself

I was tempted to suggest “reinvent” instead of “reintegrate.”  The idea of reinvention is omnipresent these days, especially in the self-help world and particularly when it comes to those of us in the second half of life.  Retirement itself has become a deserving target of reinvention.

I was persuaded to reject reinvention in favor of reintegration after considering the position taken on this by Marc Freedman, CEO and President of Encore.org and one of the nation’s leading experts on the longevity revolution. In a Harvard Business Review article “The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention”  Freedman makes the point that reinvention is too daunting and not practical because it infers discarding accumulated life experience and starting over from scratch.

Freedman makes a very valid point in the article:

“Isn’t there something to be said for racking up decades of know-how and lessons, from failures as well as triumphs? Shouldn’t we aspire to build on that wisdom and understanding?

After years studying social innovators in the second half of life — individuals who have done their greatest work after 50 —I’m convinced the most powerful pattern that emerges from their stories can be described as reintegration, not reinvention. These successful late-blooming entrepreneurs weave together accumulated knowledge with creativity, while balancing continuity with change, in crafting a new idea that’s almost always deeply rooted in earlier chapters and activities.”

Reintegration dovetails nicely with point #1 above.  Combining accumulated skills and life experiences with a forgotten or long-suppressed passion won’t give boredom a foothold. And it lifts away the intimidating idea of a reinvention.

More and more Boomers are finding this to be a path to an energizing, inspirational second career in which income, new meaning and contribution and service intersect.

Suggestion #3: Start a lifestyle business

Can you imagine a greater boredom antidote than taking #1 and #2 above and putting them together into a lifestyle business?

What is a lifestyle business?  Three components:

  • A level of income that you desire in your life.
  • Time freedom. Work when you want, as much as you want.
  • Location independence.

But wait, I’ve busted my hump for 40 years to get away from business.  Plus starting a business at any age is too risky.

Well, let me take some air out of this instinctive negative reaction.

In 2016, new entrepreneurs 55-64 swelled to over 25% of new businesses started according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship.  Check out these two Kaufmann graphs and note how over 50% of business startups happened by Boomers

Those figures didn’t change much in 2020:

 

 

Source: https://indicators.kauffman.org/indicator/rate-of-new-entrepreneurs

And according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, Self-Employment in the U.S., the self-employment rate among workers 65 and older (who don’t incorporate) is the highest of any age group in America: 15.5 percent. In sharp contrast, it’s 4.1 percent for ages 25 to 34.

Consider this: Boomers with experience have an entrepreneurial edge in today’s knowledge-based economy.  And start-up costs and risk levels have been mitigated like never before by digital technology.

Still skeptical?  Here’s a Youtube video by Miles Beckler,  internet marketing and entrepreneurship guru (an apparent Gen X’er) with ten ideas for lifestyle businesses just to prime your thinking pump.

I’ll list them here in case you aren’t into Youtube or just want the cliff notes.  Go to his video for details.

  1. Information products
  2. Become an author
  3. Affiliate marketing
  4. Print on demand (t-shirts, fine art, coffee mugs, a virtual store with no inventory, photography/online gallery, etc.).  Pairs well with F-B marketing
  5. Selling services – WordPress training, hosting, web design, graphics services, copywriting, etc.
  6. Drop shipping – selling other people’s products without owning inventory
  7. FBA – fulfillment by Amazon.  You find products send them to Amazon and they do the fulfillment.
  8. Coaching and consulting
  9. Selling advertising
  10. SAAS (software as a service )

This list barely scratches the surface of the types of businesses being started by enterprising – and formerly bored – boomers.

Stay tuned.  Next week, we’ll jump into three more tactics to save ourselves from Boomer Boredom.

How have you avoided Boomer Boredom? Would love to hear about what’s kept you out of that abyss.  Scroll down and leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Don’t forget the free e-book “Launching Your Full-life Potential” available when you subscribe to this weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com.