Your Second Half Should Be Filled with These Four-letter Words

 

 

 

The second half of life (I’ll optimistically call it the 50-to-100 phase) is rife with both opportunity and challenge.

It’s a time when social expectations expect us to begin to “wind down” rather than “rewind”; to “land” and not “take off”; to retire and not rewire; to retreat and not advance.

It’s a time often referred to with four-letter words like slow, idle, aged, gray, shot, worn, gone, beat, done.

I suggest we boomers and pre-boomers replace those with more appropriate four-letter words.   Here are fifteen to fold into your thinking and vocabulary to overpower the aforementioned:

Work

Work keeps us alive.  We abandon work at our own peril. A study of 83,000 Americans 65 and older published in Preventing Chronic Disease, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that being unemployed or retired was associated with the greatest risk of poor health.

Plan

Retirement can mean getting away from the planning, discipline, and routine that made us successful during our careers.  Why is our later life undeserving of working from a plan, especially when we bring forward so many acquired skills and wisdom?  Find your “essential self”, uncover your deepest passion and put together a plan to put both to work.

Meet

One of the threats to longevity and good health in the second half is social isolation.  Don’t let your social network atrophy.  After retirement, we expect that we will be able to maintain meaningful relationships with former co-workers.  That rarely happens.  It’s vital to replenish those connections with new relationships that are uplifting, stimulating and supportive.

Jim Rohn,  entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker, reminds us of the vitality of our closest connections:: “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”

 According to AARP, social isolation is as deadly as smoking 15 cigarettes a day ( see this blog).

Seek

Continue to seek wisdom and knowledge and new experiences.  The brain is a muscle and will atrophy just like any other muscle.  Push the envelope on new experiences and force yourself out of your comfort zone, which will magnify as you move into retirement. Never stop learning.

Give

Deep down, we are wired to serve. These later years are an opportunity to be deeply grateful and to pay forward what we learned and earned.

Muse

Seek a source of inspiration.  Whether its meditation or prayer, finding a way to connect to the higher power that is the source of all energy, creativity, and imagination is fundamental to maintaining vitality and sense of purpose in the second half.

Move

As in exercise.  A sedentary lifestyle is a major contributor to poor health in the second half.  Keep moving.  Replace the LazyBoy with a treadmill and the TV with yoga lessons.  Oxygenate your cells every day with an aerobic exercise of some form.

Lift

In two ways: (1) lift others up through example, engagement and encouragement and (2) lift weights to maintain good health.  The late Dr. Henry Lodge said it well in the bestseller “Younger Next Year”:  “Aerobic exercise will give you life, strength training will make it worth living.”

Love

It still makes the world go ‘round.  And that love should include – actually start with – loving yourself.

Task

Have a challenging task facing you each day.  Take on something scary, something you’ve never tried before.  Have something that stretches you mentally and physically.  Task yourself with challenging goals and projects focused on paying forward your wisdom, acquired skills and passion.

Idea

Creativity doesn’t die with age unless we allow it.  Idea creation is a great way to keep our cognitive abilities alive and well.  That lifetime of experience is a great petri dish for developing new ways to do things.  What can you create that would benefit others drawing from your experiences, your passions and your core skills/essential self?  Just know that when you do this, you rebuild and add new neuronal connections and contribute to your brain health.

Zeal/zing/zest

Don’t be a “geezer” or a “hag.”  Add zeal, zest, and zing to your persona.  Don’t act your age. Dress young.  Break the rules for someone your age.  Make people want to know what you are up to because your attitude, your appearance, and actions are so far outside “convention” for someone in your demographic.  See elan below.

Lead

Somebody somewhere needs your help to lead them out of some form of darkness, be it in life, business, health, relationships.  Be available.  Be necessary to somebody.  Pay forward what you’ve learned.

Star

Be one by helping others shoot for theirs.

Elan

These synonyms say it all:  flair, style, panache, confidence, dash, energy, vigor, vitality, liveliness, brio, esprit, animation, vivacity, zest, verve, spirit, pep, sparkle, enthusiasm, gusto, eagerness, feeling, fire, pizzazz, zing, zip, vim, oomph.  These aren’t typically used to describe someone in their later years – but you are an exception!

This quote from author Lillian E. Troll is a fitting end to our list:

“To be young is to be fresh, lively, eager, quick to learn; to be mature is to be done, complete, sedate, tired.  What if we consider a different perspective:  To be young is to be unripe, unfinished, raw, awkward, unskilled, inept; to be mature is to be ready, whole, adept, wise.  How valid are our glorification of youth and our shame about having lived many years?   Lillian E. Troll

Scroll down and leave us a comment – or your own favorite, positive four-letter word.

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Corporate Cooking May Be “Cooking Your Goose”

 

I’m a long-time fan of Michael Pollan, author, journalist, food activist and professor of journalism at UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. His books “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and “In Defense of Food” played a major role in raising my awareness of the unhealthy nature of our food industry.

His clever, simple and straightforward book, “Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual”, is one of the best $15 investments one can make toward developing a healthy lifestyle through dietary habits.  Eighty-three simple rules for eating better.

All of them simple – but simply overlooked in our corporate-dominated food-supply environment.

Here are a couple of rules from the book:

Rule # 20:  Don’t Ingest Foods Made in Places Where Everyone Is Required to Wear a Surgical Cap.

Rule # 21:  If It Came from a Plant, Eat It; If It Was Made in a Plant, Don’t.

Pollan has not strayed from his quest to get the truth out about the dark side of our food industry.  Click on this  Pollan Youtube video to get a sampling of some of the behind-the-scenes deception that goes on in big corporate food.

How ’bout the comment toward the end of the video: “Evidence shows that poor women who cook have healthier diets than wealthy women who don’t”.

Ouch!

Convenience at the expense of health

We look to and expect corporations to do more and more things for us in the name of convenience and saving time.  And generally, they continue to do a good job.  One can hardly argue against Alexa, self-propelled lawnmowers, GPS, Google, fast food – oops.  We have to stop there.

Fast food tilts the wrong way on the risk-reward scale of convenience.  Definite time-saver; definite health risk.

I’m sure you get tired of hearing it:

  • 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.

You’d think maybe we’d start paying attention at some point before individual health crises hit.  But it doesn’t appear that we really care – or know enough to really care.

Our taste buds have been hijacked by the food industry.

Pollan refers to the research that the industry does to determine and then feed our “craveabilty”.  We know it centers around clever manipulation of sugar, salt and fat. Once we are hooked on that deadly combination, so cleverly baked (pun, yes) into processed foods, it’s hard to break away.

I’ll attest to it.  My diet is now 95% plant and whole-grain based.  At a recent family gathering, I succumbed to eating a cheeseburger and a brat.  With the brat, it was like I had died and gone to heaven!!  My taste buds were reveling in my sin!

That evening, and into the next day, I felt like crap!  My taste bud cells had loved it – the rest of my cells apparently felt assaulted.

Corporate cooking vs home cooking

Pollan confirms big food manufacturer’s focus on profitability at the expense of our health.  The same holds true for most restaurant food, especially the fast-food type, themselves the purveyors of much of this manufactured, processed food.  Research has shown that restaurant food generally is as much as 26% higher in calories than food cooked at home.  And the food is often calorie-dense and high-glycemic because that’s what people crave, contributing to blood sugar spikes.

Nonetheless, as I pointed out in a previous blog,  we love the convenience (and taste bud gratification) of eating out.  2015 was the first year that Americans spent more eating-out than they did cooking at home.

Actions have consequences.  We’re getting bigger, but not any taller.

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, I guess it’s not rocket science to tie most of this together. We’re getting fatter, less healthy and dying way too early while corporate and restaurant cooking increase their share of our diet.

Pollan says it beautifully in “Food Rules”, p.9: “What an extraordinary achievement for a civilization: to have developed the one diet that reliably makes its people sick.”

Enough rant, already – solution, please!

Again, Pollan makes it simple with the phrase for which he is best known:

“Eat food, not too much.  Mostly plants”. 

So, the solution, thus described, is really quite simple.  Easy?  Not so much.

Following the discovery in 2016 that I have some cardiovascular disease (CVD) in the form of fairly significant arterial calcification, I’ve eliminated meat and dairy (OK – 99% of it – the brat exposed me), eat very little chicken (may be worse for me than meat) and drastically reduced my intake of anything made with white flour (fiberless and non-nutritional).  A sugared drink hasn’t passed my lips in years (including fruit juice, energy drinks).  And I’ve worked harder at staying hydrated.

Easy for me?  Not really, but probably easier than for most.  Why?  Three reasons:

  1. A minor health scare when the heart scan report came back.  The heart scan informed me that a price is being paid for six decades of inattention to a healthy diet and that rocked my world enough to want to understand why and what can be done about it.
  2. A mindset reinforced by knowledge.  My research into documented proof of heart disease reversal helped me develop a mindset dedicated to habit changes that will enable me to, at a minimum, stop the calcification and possibly even reverse it.
  3. I sleep with a fantastic “gatekeeper”.  My wife controls what leaves the grocery store and goes into our fridge and pantry.  She’s been ahead of me for years on the importance of keeping our food stock devoid of what we know is unhealthy and full of what we’ve learned is healthy.

But, don’t do what I did – please!  Don’t wait for some health scare before you educate yourself and adopt better eating and other health habits.  Begin now to exercise “self-efficacy” and take control of your health and become knowledgeable how your body works and what it takes to make it work optimally.  And, if possible, get on the same page with your spouse or partner on what is good for you.  If that won’t work, take charge and become your own gatekeeper.

Your life depends on it.

You can find deeper content on all this in my free e-book entitled “Achieving Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier and With More Purpose”.  Access it here www.makeagingwork.com

Also, scroll down and leave us a comment or your thoughts on this topic.  We love your feedback.

 

Are You a Fugitive From Yourself?

 

“Human beings have always employed an enormous variety of clever devices for running away from themselves — we can keep ourselves so busy, fill our lives with so many diversions, stuff our heads with so much knowledge, involve ourselves with so many people, and cover so much ground that we never have time to probe the fearful and wonderful world within — by middle life, most of us are accomplished fugitives from ourselves.”  John Gardner

Accomplished fugitives from ourselves?

Ouch! I kinda wish I hadn’t run across that quote again.

I bumped into it on my third trip through a favorite book, “Life Launch: A Passionate Guide to the Rest of Your Life” by Pamela McLean and Frederic Hudson.  That quote is highlighted, underlined, asterisked and the page paper-clipped.  In my lexicon of weird reading habits, that means five-star important – stop, listen, reflect.

Reflection tends to reveal truth. Truth can hurt but truth is reality.

Reality is, I’m still a fugitive.

Feeling better about my fugitive status

Currently, I’m a fugitive with mostly misdemeanors – no new felonies.  A quarter-century ago, at that 50-year middle-life point, I was guilty of felonies, a handful of them, all inter-related.  I’m not going all-naked, but here are a few of the more serious felonies:

  • Suppression of my essential self
  • Succumbing to culturally-defined external roles (aka building someone else’s dream)
  • Thinking only in an ideological/theological bubble, hearing mostly echoes
  • Comparison

It wasn’t enough that I ran into the Gardner quote.  Then Martha Beck stepped up 18 months ago with her book version of a groin kick called “Finding Your North Star: Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live” to remind me that, although I may have expunged some of the felonies, some remain, along with far too many misdemeanors. Much work is still to be done to uncover and release my “essential self.”

I have a paragraph from Beck’s book that I’ve memorized and try to proclaim every day:

“Freed from rigid social expectations, focused firmly on guidance from your essential self, you will stop conforming to any of the pre-designated patterns offered by your cultural environment.  Instead, you will turn your life into a work of art: an absolutely original expression of your unique gifts and preferences.”

Hmmmm. “-unique gifts and preferences.”  “-the fearful and wonderful life within.” “- life into a work of art.”   Ever think about these things?

Maybe (hopefully) you aren’t an off-the-chart, introverted, reclusive, grand –poopah of information gathering like me and have broken out and found those unique gifts and that wonderful inner life.  But I’ll stick my neck out and say you probably haven’t.

It’s a tough journey, this self-discovery trip.

Those unique gifts and wonderful inner life get pretty plastered over by the mid-forties/ the early fifties.  By that point, we’re saying I couldn’t possibly:

  • leave this job to write those books I know are inside me
  • start my own business
  • dig wells in Africa
  • give up my healthcare insurance
  • sacrifice my 401K match
  • betray my hard-won image

So, we crank along suppressing our own dreams in favor of building someone else’s, succumbing to the grip of comparison, maintaining a “look good, smell good” image at all costs, seeking life-sapping comfort instead of life-affirming risk, all the while denying that time is slipping away ever more rapidly.

In the court of life potential, these are all felonies.

Then at mid-life, we create our own internal prisons.  And the prison guards/interrogators in there are cruel, incessant, with questions like:

  • Really? This is all you’ve got to show for your life?
  • Why do you think you are here?
  • How do you feel about just taking up space and using up oxygen?
  • What part of “you can’t take it with you” do you not understand?
  • You’re concerned about what gossipy Joe and Emma next door might think if you break out? What’s up with that?
  • When are you going to let the “real you” come alive?
  • How much longer are you going to refuse to admit that you are uniquely gifted and off purpose?
  • Would a remedial class on having an impact and leaving a legacy help?

The dying have a message

Australian hospice nurse, Bronnie Ware, for many years has spent time with patients who are in the last few weeks of their lives and who have gone home to die.  In her article “Regrets of the Dying, she shares the five most common regrets that they expressed in their final days:

  1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
  2. I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
  3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
  4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
  5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Regret #1 was by far the most common.

For many, the call to break out and be true to oneself while progressing into the second half/third stage of life intensifies and, at the same time, becomes increasingly difficult.

Most of this inertia is rooted in – wait for it – F-E-A-R.

 

False Expectations Appearing Real.

Want a few of those false expectations?  How many of these have NOT run through your mind?

  • I’d like to have my own business, but 90% of new businesses fail.
  • I have a voice, but who would be interested in what I have to say?
  • There’s already too much competition for what I want to write/sell/teach/build/consult.
  • I’d be foolish to put my retirement nest egg at risk.
  • I’m not sure I have the energy to break away and do what I really want to do.
  • My age is too much of a disadvantage in this youth-oriented society.
  • I might lose all my friends.
  • I’d be putting my family at risk.
  • I have no idea how to find this “purpose” thing.

In my free ebook “Achieve Your Full Life Potential”,  I relate a story about my own hard-headedness in this area.

The condensed version is that 30+ years ago, in my mid-40’s, I participated in a “spiritual gifts” analysis with a Bible-study group I was part of – a series of questions that purported to isolate what one was best “wired-up” spiritually to be doing with his or her life.

Mine came back as “pastor.”

My response.  Repulsion and sarcastic laughter.  C’mon! I’m a successful sales guy in telecom knocking down a comfortable six-figures.  No way – but thanks for playing!

Humility can be a b*^ch!

Years later, I ran into a thing called “Strengthsfinder”, developed by the Gallup organization and explained and administered through a book entitled “Now Discover Your Strengths”.  I took the test.  The analysis of my strengths was equally repulsive and, in my state of mind at the time, as off-mark as the pastor tag.

But, surprisingly similar.

Not accepting the results, I took the Strengthsfinder test again a year later – same results.  Still pastory.

Same derisive, sarcastic rejection on my part.

It’s an embarrassing confession, but I took the test a third time, this time following the publication of their new book, “Strengthsfinder 2.0”, assuming that they had gotten smarter with their testing.  It was a time when I was battling a debilitating sense of being off-purpose.

Same results. Still sounding an awful lot like “pastor.”

 

OK, God.  Got my attention.

The organized-religion community is fortunate and grateful that I didn’t pursue the pastorate.  And so am I.  But I am grateful that my tree was finally shaken enough to begin to acknowledge and move in the direction of my strengths/calling/purpose – pick the word that works best for you.  It was all three for me.

My extended Strengthsfinder trip revealed, each time, these five dominant talents:

  • Learner – I’m energized by the steady, deliberate journey from ignorance to competence. Hence the insanity of having read over 600 books over the last 12 years with less than a half-dozen novels in the mix.
  • Input – I find lots of things interesting, collect factoids and don’t throw any of them away, physically or mentally. (Please never come to my home office!  And now you can understand why I seem to be in perpetual confusion, flitting around like a fart on a hot skillet.)
  • Intellection – I like to think, stretch my brain muscles in different directions. I’m my own best companion and I’m constantly discontent comparing what I am doing with all the stuff rattling through my head.  (All you ADD/ADHD’s out there can relate, huh?)
  • Connectedness – things happen for a reason and I’m part of something much bigger than lil ‘ol me. MUCH bigger.
  • Includer/Harmony (seem to tie for a spot in the top five) – I steer away from confrontation and toward harmony and I rest on the conviction that fundamentally we are all the same.

So, what does one do with all this?  Well, for starters, few will be this unbalanced and long in their search, thankfully.  But for me, it turned on the lights and helped me acknowledge the “essential self” Martha Beck writes about.  I’m meant to write, teach, coach, encourage, speak, share my accumulation and perhaps, in a small way and on a rare occasion, inspire some to move to the truth of that “fearful and wonderful world within”.

It’s a journey started slowly in my mid-sixties, intensifying in my mid-seventies.  And I recognize it as one with no finish line.  My choice is to be excited about it or to be frustrated by it.  The culture-induced path of least resistance is to simply say “it’s too late to be growing” and settle back into comfort, convenience, comparison and complacency and wait for the end, which I now know would come sooner were I to succumb.

So, as I write, I’m a confessing “bad-ass, obnoxious, sarcastic, audacious-ager” intent on sliding home at 100 or later like Pete Rose slid into second!  My ”fearful and wonderful life within” means I have a voice and the messy story that has been my life is my message, warts and all.

Maybe, just maybe, there is a pearl in that mess that will spark a mid-lifer to seek, or acknowledge, their essential self and take it to the marketplace and leave a footprint.

Hey, I get it if not much of this resonates!  Thanks for enduring the trip.  But if you took this diatribe this far, I’m thinking something is stirring.  I hope you won’t stuff it back in.

 

Avoiding Retirement Chaos

 

 

Wouldn’t it be terrible to find out that retirement can really suck?

After all, you’ve shouldered through a grinding 30-40 year journey filled with marginally-motivating jobs and totally marginal bosses to get to this point.

You’ve sacrificed most of your “today’s” for the “tomorrow” that your financial advisor’s constantly changing charts, graphs and strategies say is out there for you.

In the 3-5 years leading up to the coveted date, your excitement has built, with plans for recreation, hobbies, travel, R&R.  You will be amongst the 91% who expect to be happy and the 80% who expect to be able to achieve their dreams.

You see your retirement as part or all of a remedy for unhappiness.

The numbers are there; the financial risks are isolated and covered and contingency plans are in place. The only thing left is to slide into the new lifestyle and reap the rewards of the sacrifice.  You’ve paid a big price for this third-stage-nirvana.

You’re entitled.

The date arrives.  Jubilation! Liberation!

Average duration:  One year

 

These numbers are courtesy of research done by the AgeWave organization headed by Dr. Ken Dychtwald, gerontologist, psychologist and one of the world’s foremost authorities on aging-related issues.  Dr. Dychtwald’s extensive research of 55,000 Baby Boomer retirees exposed many of the hidden realities of retirement.

AgeWave’s research revealed that there are five stages of retirement.

(I unpack this in my January 6 blog entitled the “The ‘$400 Trillion Time Bomb’ and ‘An Unnatural Act’”. )

Liberation is Stage 3.  The sucky part of retirement emerges and intensifies in stages 4 and 5 – Re-orientation and Reconciliation.

In a nutshell, AgeWave’s research revealed that the retirement honeymoon lasts 1-5 years and wears off with the discovery that retirement is more challenging and less satisfying than anticipated.  Other research has revealed that 75% of pre-retirees expect life to be better after retirement while only 40% of actual retirees report that to be the case.

Clearly, people discover that they hadn’t planned well for their retirement.  Often times, couples are not on the same page.  Boredom sets in.  Relationships diminish.  Health issues begin to accelerate.

In his free booklet “The Darkside of Retirement”   Financial Planner and Retirement Coach Robert Laura reveals some disturbing but important facts about the realities of retirement.

He writes:

“There is a hidden epidemic taking place in the shadows of retirement. It’s a chilling reality that will impact baby boomers and their families more deeply than any economic recession or market crash. It’s the dark side of retirement, where addiction, depression, and even suicide are quickly becoming so prominent that new and soon-to-be retirees must become more aware of the impact these powerful influences can have during retirement and develop a plan to avoid them.”

Here are just a few sobering facts:

  • It is expected that, by 2020, the number of retirees with alcohol and other drug problems will leap 150% to 4.4 million – up from only 1.7 million in 2001.
  • 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. Women are at a greater risk for depression because of biological factors such as hormonal changes and the stress that comes with maintaining relationships or caring for loved ones or children who are ill.
  • Depression is the single most significant risk factor for suicide among the elderly. Recently the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a dramatic spike in suicides among middle-aged people, with the highest increases among men in their 50s, whose rate went up by nearly 50% to 30 per 100,000; and women in their early 60s, whose rate rose by nearly 60%.
  • 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. In fact, one in four couples divorce after age 50.

So, what else does your financial advisor know that he/she hasn’t told you?

Whoa – hold up!  Let’s not hang this on your CFP/CIMA/CPWA/AIF/CMFC/CRPC/AAMS (NOTE: you might want to consider a change if your financial advisor has all of these initials after their name!)

It’s not their job to guarantee you a happy, fruitful retirement.  They are just there for the numbers, the “hard side” of retirement.  And they’ve likely done a pretty good job for you in that regard.

Roger Whitney is a highly credentialed and successful financial planner with 25+ years of financial services industry experience.  In his refreshingly candid book “Rock Retirement” he provides some perspective on why you should only expect “hard number” assistance from your financial planner:

“The professions of financial planning and retirement planning came from the investment and insurance industries.  Until the recent advent of the financial-planning-degree programs at the university level, financial planners came from the sales forces in these industries.  Pause for a second: sales force.  They created the industry; they set the standards.

The truth is, although almost all advisors are well-intentioned and capable, they don’t have the skill set or training to think beyond investment solutions.”

In other words, most financial planners (i.e. salespeople) are not trained to go to the soft side of retirement and discuss the critical emotional, social, mental, psychological issues that emerge in any retirement. Theirs is a world of numbers, not counseling couches.

We’re on our own to prepare for the potential pitfalls of retirement.

We know that, unfortunately, 2 of 3 retirees enter their retirement with NO semblance of a non-financial plan.

Like an iceberg, most of what goes on in retirement is below the surface and outside of the conversations and planning that goes on with most financial advisors.

Serious non-financial considerations such as the mental, social, physical, and spiritual adjustments accompany every retirement. Just as a good, sturdy stool will have four strong legs, a fulfilling retirement will need attention to these four pillars to succeed. And most retirees go into retirement with little or no consideration of those “soft side” elements.

The “soft side” elements – mental, social, physical, spiritual – will raise their heads in any retirement.  But, if anticipated and planned for, they can help lead to a longer, fulfilling and healthier retirement and don’t need to be dark side elements.

But it’s important to get out in front of them.

That’s where a retirement coach can play a vital role.

Robert Laura, mentioned earlier, has been a retirement coach to pre- and new-retirees for years and has combined this experience and his financial planning background with the skills and experience of two psychology Ph.D.’s to develop a new Certified Professional Retirement Coach (CPRC) program.   I have completed the program and received that designation to add Retirement Coaching to my coaching services.  It’s a logical complement to the Career Coaching that I do.

We’ve developed a comprehensive program designed to help pre- and early- retirees avoid these dark side elements by focusing on the four non-financial pillars of retirement – mental, social, physical and spiritual – through a fun and enlightening eight-step process that culminates in a plan focused on achieving a “best-life-possible” retirement.

Curious?  Want to know more about the components and how it works?  Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com or call my office at 720-344-7784 and we’ll set up a no-cost consultation to see if it makes sense for you.

OK, Old-timer. Do Your Part to Combat Ageism.

 

 

I suspect you caught what I just did with that headline.  I appealed for help in combating ageism by committing it.

So easy to let words that are ageist slip off our tongues – like “old-timer.” We’ll use it to describe ourselves.  We’ll casually, playfully tag friends with that monicker not realizing we are contributing to ageism.

It’s just one of a gazillion ways that we use words and phrases that prop up ageism.  It’s almost as if using ageist words and phrases is an expected part of the “rite of passage” as we pass that 50-year threshold.  Little do we realize how damaging it is, not only to the effort to eliminate ageism but also to our own self-esteem and, ultimately, to our aging process.

Words count. 

Holly Lawrence, freelance writer, in an article “How Would We Live If We Forgot We Were Over 50” written for Next Avenue, quotes a 61-year old bank vice president who admits: “One thing I say that I should not say is ‘Oh yeah, a senior moment’ or ‘Forgive me, I’m an old man, so I forget these things.’ I say things like that and I know that some people may find it, you know, humorous. On the other hand, it does depreciate my value as a professional.”

Ashton Applewhite, acclaimed writer and activist, has stepped boldly into the breach in the battle against ageism.  Her excellent book  “This Chair Rocks: A Manifesto Against Ageism” takes it on and the prejudice and the damage it does.  She refers to ageism as the last “-ism” that isn’t being addressed in our culture.   Some have termed it the  “last acceptable prejudice.”

Applewhite is not the only one that views this “-ism” as a problem.  The World Health Organization (WHO) agrees.  From their website, WHO offers up a couple of perspectives:

  • Research suggests that ageism may now be even more pervasive than sexism and racism. This has serious consequences both for older people and society at large. For example, ageism limits the questions that are asked and the way problems are conceptualized and is hence a major barrier to developing good policies.
  • Ageism has harmful effects on the health of older adults. Research by Levy et al shows that older adults with negative attitudes about aging may live 7.5 years less than those with positive attitudes.
  • Socially ingrained ageism can become self-fulfilling by promoting in older people stereotypes of social isolation, physical and cognitive decline, lack of physical activity and economic burden.

My takeaway from these and other sources is that there are two major culprits in the proliferation and embedding of ageism: (1) ourselves and (2) people and organizations of influence who stand to gain by the continuation and deepening of the “-ism”.

The exploitation of the aging is a topic for another article but we need to look no further than the proliferation of advertising for “fix it” drugs and the latest senior-living iteration to realize that we are a big, naive and highly-exploitable market.  But I digress

Each of us a big part of the problem.

Until I spent some time in Ashton Applewhite’s book, I hadn’t really considered how my own use of certain words or phrases are ageist and could subtly contribute to ageism.   Maybe you hadn’t considered it either.

Think about how often you’ve used or heard these:

  • I just had a senior moment.
  • This aging thing is for the birds/is no picnic/sucks!
  • What do you expect at your age? (If this comes from your doctor, change doctors!)
  • You certainly don’t look your age.
  • You’re not retired yet?
  • When are you going to retire?
  • How’s it going, gramps?
  • Whaasup, old timer?
  • “Young lady” when addressing an older woman
  • Old dogs can’t learn new tricks.
  • Can you believe she’s 60 years old?
  • He is 80 going on 60.
  • You shouldn’t be doing that.
  • You could pass for much younger.
  • Good to see you are still up and around.
  • You’re still working?
  • You have a smartphone?

Then we have jokes and birthday cards that contribute, thinking they are innocent and all in good fun.   Here’s the card my daughter gave me for my 75th birthday (I got over it!)

You just think you are being funny!

Ever heard jokes like these?

“At four, success is not needing diapers. At 12, success is having friends. At 17, success is having a driver’s license. At 20, success is having sex. At 35, success is having money. At 50, success is having money. At 60, success is having sex. At 70, success is having a driver’s license. At 75, success is having friends. At 85, success is not needing diapers.”

 “Grandma is so wrinkled she needs a bookmark to find her mouth.”

“My old Uncle Ed still whistles at girls but can’t remember why.”

Whether directed at myself or someone else, when I use this type of phraseology or jokes, I am practicing ageism, plain and simple.  And I continue to engender its use in others.

William Sadler, in his excellent book ‘The Third Age: Six Principles for Personal Growth and Rejuvenation After Forty”, underscores the importance of tending to our own thoughts about aging:

“Our unwitting acceptance of negative stereotypes about age and growing older threatens the development of a rich, vital, creatively unfolding identity. This is why we should free ourselves from myths of aging well before it becomes irrevocably embedded in our neurons.”

“The stereotype of aging embedded in our neurons shapes our attitude and contributes to our decline and eventual placement in a nursing home where we spend a period of prolonged dying.”

Who would have thought that our own use of words could accelerate our trip to an “elder warehouse?”

Let’s start a revolution!

We can start our own individual campaign against ageism by being more attentive to the words we use which in turn help us turn the attitudes of our own aging more to the positive and away from the prevailing negative.

From Seniorliving.org, we find some thoughts on ways to wage your own battle against this entrenched discriminatory attitude:

  1.    Give it back to them. If someone says “I’m glad you’re still up and around”, cordially respond, “I’m glad you’re still up and around too”. If a younger people ask you “Let us know if you need anything,” offer the same as well and say, “Let us know if you need anything too.”

 

  1.    Flaunt your age when someone says you’re young. Be cheerful and say, “I earned my wrinkles,” or “I’m proud of my age,” or “You know I’m old and I like it.”

 

  1.    What do you mean? If you encounter some complement –slash-awkward ageist comment, you can always ask them with a straight face and genuine puzzlement, “What do you mean?”  This way, you wouldn’t be burdened to explain why the comment is ageist and offensive. It works all the time.

We have enough challenges in our fight against ageism without contributing to it with our own language and attitudes.   Let’s start an anti-ageism revolution and clean up our own act.  There are still societies where the elderly are venerated but it ain’t gonna happen in our culture.  But we don’t need to deepen the offense.

How are you battling ageism?  Have you experienced it?  Scroll down and leave us your thoughts about this issue.

Please Fall In Love with Dr. Michael Greger

 

OK, I’m going to wander into new territory with this blog and try to shake some trees.

You’re doctor may be killing you early!

There I said it.  That’s new territory – and pretty radical new territory, agreed?  I don’t hang with any doctors so I’m not concerned about killing any relationships here.

I just feel – based on my research and my own personal health experience – that something has to be said even though most people aren’t going to listen or –unfortunately – care. But that doesn’t include you, right?  You are a “self-efficacy” advocate, right?  You are taking control of your own health, right?

Here’s what I now believe and what we need to know:  our medical system is not designed to optimize your health or extend your lifespan. You already know it’s designed to react and “fix it” (no problem – I’ve got a drug or a robotic scalpel for that!) rather than to be pro-active and “prevent it” (let’s have a conversation about your lifestyle.)

I’m going to take a HWAG (hairy wild-assed guess) that your personal health care plan may be, like most, a $35 co-pay experience that takes you to the doctor’s office only when the physiology has skidded off the rails.  You are likely to be safely ensconced in the non-self efficacy box. You are in step with the reactive nature of our disease-management system that we incorrectly call a healthcare system.

Here’s a suggestion that has the potential to significantly impact your health, your life and help you climb out of your box and live longer.  Get to know this guy – Dr. Michael Greger.  He’s easy to get to know – although a little hard to get used to with his often-weird message delivery style.  All you have to do is subscribe to his amazing website NutritionFacts.org.

Full disclosure

I stand to gain nothing by recommending that you follow Dr. Greger, except the possibility of helping a reader chart a healthier path to a greater longevity.

All of his prolific content is absolutely free.

There are two reasons that I am a serious devotee of Dr. Greger: (1) his research-based content is second to none and (2) he refuses to take money for his content.  He has a book, “How Not to Die”, that he hardly markets and is very understated in suggesting that contributions are welcome to help him defray the expense of the incredible amount of research he does.

His near-daily blogs or videos are short, extraordinarily content-rich and backed by research.  He is particularly effective in picking apart the misinformation and corruptive practices that pervade our healthcare system.   Even as an MD and a practicing clinician, he is very critical of his chosen profession and brings credibility devoid of financial motivation.

Need motivation?

I’m going to guess that, as a Boomer or pre-boomer, you may not be into blogs and vlogs (video blogs).  That’s unfortunate, but that’s a topic for another article.

Let me try to kick-start this attempt to convince you to tune into Dr. Greger.  I’ve randomly picked four of his videos to give you a taste of his content and delivery.  I think you will be convinced to follow him. You can subscribe at any of the videos.

Physicians May Be Missing their Most Important Tool 

The Actual Benefit of Diet vs. Drugs  

Turning the Clock Back 14 Years  

Calculate Your Healthy Eating Score  

So why am I such a fan?

Well, if you’ve followed my story, you know I have a dog in this fight.  Two years ago, a routine test revealed I have significant coronary artery calcification (atherosclerosis I believe they call it) at a level that, based on pure numbers, put me in the high-risk heart disease category.  Subsequent echo-stress and nuclear-stress tests, fortunately, revealed that I have no arterial blood flow problem,  so it’s full steam ahead, life as usual.

The high number put enough scare into me, however, to convince me to deepen my research on the how, why and when of it all and to determine if there is a chance that the condition could be reversed.  Like most of us beyond 60 (for the record, I am 76 at this writing), much of the calcification just comes with having spent considerable time on the planet.  But, it also happened as a result of what has been in the blood that flowed through those arteries.  So, in my case, I attribute my high score to a combination of some genetics and time (minor) and 50+ years of bad eating (major).

I simply wanted to know if it could be reversed.  Asking that question unveiled a dichotomy of opinions.  Both my PCP and the cardiac specialist I was referred to said “no” – the best you can do is stop it, more likely just slow it. Neither offered an ounce of input regarding the role of diet and nutrition in treating my condition.

Drug it or cut it. Yada, yada, yada!

It was more of the same – drugs (statin and baby aspirin) and keep an eye on it (PCP).  The cardiologist, who ironically practices within in one of Dr. Dean Ornish’s Certified Heart Disease Reversal facilities, poo-pooed the effect of food on reversing atherosclerosis.  I was stunned – for about five seconds until I recalled that physicians don’t know, understand or care much about nutrition.

P.S.  There is no money in nutrition – just sayin!

In the face of proof of heart disease reversal coming from programs under the guidance of renowned physicians such Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. Caldwell Esselstyne and others, the majority of the physician community still puts little credence on the impact that nutrition has on our health.

If you watch the first video above, you understand why.  They have little to no nutrition education and are indoctrinated in the “drug or cut” culture that still pervades our health care system.

As for me, I’m going with self-efficacy

The evidence in favor of a whole-food, plant-based diet and against our western-style diet is too deep and clear for me not to make the shift.  I have been able to, with surprising ease.  Meat eliminated, very little chicken, no eggs, dairy eliminated (almond milk is great). I’m now on a diet almost entirely of plants, whole grains, and fruits.  Combined with 6-day-a-week exercise, I feel I’m doing what I can to feel better and live longer.  A twelve-pound weight loss over a three-month period came easy and feet and knees seem to be very thankful.

Knowledge is power – but only if applied.  I truly feel Dr. Greger’s content and delivery system is a valid shortcut to the type of information that we aren’t going to get from an entrenched and corrupt healthcare system.  I hope you’ll subscribe and provide me feedback on the impact his information has in your life.  Scroll down and leave a comment below.  Oh, and share this with any friends or family that will benefit from Dr. Greger’s mission.

 

Good news!  Millennials Can’t Retire!!

 

 

Looks like the media and the financial planning industry is getting their knickers into knots about the prospect of millennials being unable to retire.  The headline for this article from Next Avenue  is certainly an attention getter: “The Bleak Retirement Outlook for Boomer’s Kids.”

If you are one who still clings to the time-worn tradition of checking out in the final third of life (aka retirement), the article will tug at you.  How could one not feel sad that this vilified generation may not be able to wilt away into silent oblivion and/or an elder warehouse and instead have to find a way to keep creating and be productive.

HORRORS!  What is a financial services executive or government entitlement bureaucrat to do????

Maybe these spoiled, self-centered, unloyal, independent, digital-soaked, experience-oriented brats are about to teach us something – again.

Maybe, just maybe, they aren’t gnashing their teeth and ripping their Lululemons over this because they don’t buy into the concept.  Maybe they are picking up on the hysteria that surrounds this “statutory senility” or “ultimate casualty” we call traditional retirement.

Maybe, just maybe, they’ve cast off this traditional 20-40-20 Linear Life Plan – – –

 

 

– in favor of this more sensible 21st Century Cyclic Lifestyle Plan

Source: Ken Dychtwald, Agewave.com

In last week’s blog, I wrote:   “When dying people in a hospice are asked about any regrets they had about their lives, by far the most common regret is “I wish I had pursued my dreams and aspirations, and not the life others expected of me.”

I was expected to follow the 20-40-20 plan, pounded into me by parents, peers, professors, and pundits. How about you?

Maybe, just maybe, these youngers know they are facing a 75% or better chance of living to 100 or beyond and are moving forward with a more salient perspective given the prospect of a longer lifespan – one that intersperses education, work/family, and leisure across the lifespan in a more meaningful, fulfilling “experiential” way.

Maybe, just maybe, a millennial will forego saving for years to go to Machu Pichu to claim the completion of a tiring walk with achy knees and 1,000 boring pictures in favor of moving to Peru, living amongst the Peruvians for two years, learning the language and culture and bringing it home to start a restaurant featuring Peruvian cuisine.  Sounds nutty to someone who drank the 20-40-20 kool-aid, I suspect.  But it’s happening.

I’ll refer you to a fantastic book that deals with this very issue:  “The 100-Year Life. Living and Working in an Age of Longevity.”  Written by Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott, both professors at London Business School, it was rated the Business Book of the Year in 2016 by McKinsey Corporation.  Gratton and Scott combine their psychology and economics background to bring a very profound perspective to the changes that increased longevity are going to have on our society.  Not the least of these changes is going to be changing attitudes toward retirement.

And none too soon, I say.

I may be completely off base

– but I don’t think so.  I don’t hang with a lot of millennials so I can’t speak for them.  But, as a recruiter for 18 years, I’ve experienced and heard and read a lot about how this generation’s attitudes have disrupted hiring and employee retention and development.

It seems that they want what they do to count, to have an impact, to leave a footprint for humanity.  Wealth and creature comforts for many are in the back seat – at least for a while as they explore, develop and mine their self-knowledge and search for their core, driving values.  If a company doesn’t line up with that evolving value system it’s bye, bye! They’re out of there – until they either find one in line with their value system or go create one themselves.

Unencumbered by a three-stage mindset, they are accepting their life as one with a longer span and multiple stages with the stages being a trail of exploration, development, and adventure with much less of the definition and predictability than we, their predecessors, find in the outdated three-stage model.

But why wouldn’t they?  They saw their progenitors sell out and then be kicked in the teeth by companies; they’ve watched us push our health to the margins in favor of accumulation and image maintenance; they have low tolerance for the planet destruction associated with this image-supporting accumulation; they realize that the least safe place today to build a professional life is with a large company “working for the man” and “building somebody else’s dream.”

Maybe, just maybe they just flat don’t want to be like us.

I recently read an online post by a millennial contributor in Inc.com named Nicolas Cole and found this comment that sums it up pretty well from the millennial’s perspective:

“This is the great debate, and the issues, to be frank, go much deeper than just workplace satisfaction.”Making an impact” doesn’t mean we need to be solving world hunger on a daily basis. But I know a whole lot of Millennials that would feel a hundred times more understood if their daily tasks were acknowledged and explained as part of a bigger vision. Millennials are doers. We want to do things. And if that daily habit of doing and being involved isn’t there, then we’re going to go find somewhere else to spend our time. Because we watched our parents plug and chug their way through life, only to get to the end and say, “Don’t forget to enjoy the journey. We didn’t do that very well.” 

That last sentence ought to make any financial planner sit up and take notice.  I’m optimistic that today’s millennials will do just fine financially.  It’s just going to be different and the money may follow a different route.

As Gratton and Scott point out, “this group is already responding to the prospect of a longer life and are keeping their options open and exploring new alternatives.”  Maybe, just maybe, one of those alternatives will be to skip retirement.   Maybe, just maybe, one of those choices will be to “die broke” having poured all their energy and money back into improving the human condition.

Refreshing thought – unless you are a financial planner stuck in the 20th-century mindset.

The Dirty Dozen of Accelerated Aging

 

News alert!!

You’re going to die.  Get used to it!

But don’t get so used to it that you make it happen faster than it needs to.

One hundred years ago, we accepted our short life-spans as fate, God’s will.  Until the last half-century or so, death was largely random and immutable.  It was not that long ago that practitioners conceded conditions such as tuberculosis, hardening of the arteries, Alzheimer’s to be totally due to aging.  Thus, fate ruled and what happened wasn’t challenged.  Thankfully, we now know that fatalism is wrong.

Dr. Walter Bortz in his book “Dare To Be 100” says “Sure, aging and the passage of time play a role, but not nearly to the extent that has been presumed until now.  This is great news.  For conditions of old people not to be due to the passage of time gives hope that counterstrategies can be derived to prevent or reverse at least a major part of them.”

Given that we have a longevity benchmark set for us by Madame Jeanne Louise Calment of Paris, France, who lived to 122 years and 164 days, we can then ask why do we, especially as Americans with our average 80-year lifespan, fall so woefully short of that benchmark.

Now that we know that genetics play a minor role (perhaps 20-30%) in our longevity, and virtually none after age 65, we can then zero in on what do we do, or don’t do, that may be determining our longevity or lack thereof.

Here’s my selection for a “dirty dozen” life shorteners.

  1. No exercise. I know, you’re tired of hearing it.  And I know it’s likely you will buck it up at some point and renew that gym membership and just as likely you will fall off again six weeks later.  It’s just not built into your lifestyle and it won’t sustain until you do.  Think of it this way.  Can you find 2.6% of your week that is going to unhealthy activities (TV, barstools, Facebook, et.al.) and convert that to 45 minutes of combined aerobic and strength training six days of the week?  That’s only 10% of the time the average American male spends each week watching TV (49 hours). The potential ROI:  living longer, dying shorter; more vitality longer; look better, feel better; amaze your overweight, sedentary, deteriorating friends; lower healthcare costs.  Perhaps this admonition from Dr. Henry Lodge in the book “Younger Next Year” will help:  “Aerobic exercise will give you life; strength-training will make it worth living.”
  2. Diet heavy in animal products. Heart disease remains the number one killer in our culture.  The link between heart disease and a diet heavy in animal products i.e. meat and dairy is indisputable despite all the claims to the contrary by those industries.  A whole-food, plant-heavy diet brings with it a long list of benefits, only one of which is the reduced likelihood of heart disease.  It also reduces the possibility of cancer, stroke, diabetes, and dementia which round out the rest of the top five killers in our culture.
  3. Mindset.  It’s amazing and disturbing to me how many of my generation are still of the mindset that senescence and frailty are automatic when we have so much evidence and knowledge to the contrary and many weapons against both.  Any personal move to add years to your life and life to your years has to start with a mindset that doesn’t accept this old thinking.
  4. Healthcare illiteracy. We’ve allowed our personal healthcare to become a $35 co-pay experience with a physician who is entrenched in a disease-care system focused on cure and not on prevention. As such we put our self-care in a reactive mode versus a proactive mode.  We think health only when something skids off the rails and then face a system that only knows drug it or cut it out.  One of the major keys to longevity is “self-efficacy” i.e. taking control of your own health destiny by understanding how your biology works, knowing where you stand against the key biomarkers of good health (see Key Step #2 in my free downloadable e-book Achieve_Your_FULL_Potential (2)), and taking charge of your own health through increased knowledge and proactive action.
  5. Conformity. Sir Walter Scott said he would trade whole years filled with mindless conformity for “one hour of life crowded to the full with glorious action, and filled with noble risks.”  When dying people in a hospice are asked about any regrets they had about their lives, by far the most common regret is “I wish I had pursued my dreams and aspirations, and not the life others expected of me.”  ‘Nough said.  Conformity involves comparison.  Comparison is one of the biggest killers of happiness.
  6. Suppressing courage. In the same hospice study, the second most common regret was “I wish I had the courage to express my feelings and speak my mind.” The author of the study, an Australian palliative care nurse by the name of Bronnie Ware learned that “many of her dying patients believed they suppressed their true feelings and didn’t speak their mind when they should have because they wanted to keep peace with others.”  Most of them chose not to confront difficult situations and people, even when it offended them. By suppressing their anger, they built up a lot of bitterness and resentment which ultimately affected their health.  See the complete article here.
  7. Toxic relationships. Jim Rohn, the renowned businessman and motivational speaker, famously said that “we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with.”  Relationships with toxic people steal away life-giving energy while being around positive, encouraging, supportive people who are continuing to grow can restore energy.  Choose your relationships wisely and dissolve those that are harmful.
  8. Stopping learning. Historian Peter Laslett emphasizes that only by living into our natural lifespan are we able to exploit our true potential. As we age, our brain cells can become intimately connected with new and emerging realities.  A lifelong strategy of learning is a potent force for good.  Smart people live longer.
  9. Isolation. According to the AARP Foundation, the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Research has shown a 26 percent increased risk of death due to the subjective feelings of loneliness.
  10. Not working. Evidence has been in for a long time.  Work is necessary for longer, healthier living. Polls of centenarians have revealed that an astonishingly high percentage of them continue to work and that they rank working alongside being able to walk as one of the keys to their longevity.
  11. Narrowed comfort zones. As we age, we may tend to narrow our comfort zones.  For example “I’ve never done that” or “I don’t know anything about computers” or “I’m too old to start that”. These responses are indicators that the fossilization process is underway. The fact that you hear 50-year olds making these statements is proof that “old” can start at any age.  Source: The New Retirementality.
  12. Traditional retirement. Going over the cliff from labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation retirement can erode sense of purpose and identity.  Without purpose, many of the life-shortening elements of retirement begin to creep in – boredom, increased isolation, declining social engagement, reduced physical activity, depression.  One in five of Americans over 65 suffer from some level of depression.  Men aged 75 and older have the highest annual suicide rate of any group.

In the final pages of his book “Roadmap to 100”, Dr. Bortz leaves us with this poignant thought: “Our ripples, the energy signature of our life, remain and endure.  Rippling exalts Mozart, Buddha, Aristotle, Christ, Einstein, Darwin, to name a few, whose lives’ energies persist and penetrate today in a larger way than they did while alive.  Similarly, even the most modest among us leaves ripples behind.”

“Once we confront our own mortality, we find it vastly easier to re-arrange our priorities, communicate more deeply with those we love, appreciate more keenly the beauty of life, and increase our willingness to take the risks necessary for personal fulfillment.  And imprint our ripples on the cosmos forever.”

 

 

On Climbing the Himalayas and Eating a Cobra’s Heart

Don’t you hate it when someone says or writes something that you wish you had said or written? The more I research to write, the more it happens to me.  And it happened again today.

I surfed into an article this morning by Jonathan Look entitled “The Magic of Leaving Your Comfort Zones in Retirement.”  Look is a retired U.S. traffic controller who sold it all at 50 to “travel the world.” He now resides overlooking the Atlantic in Lisbon, Portugal.

Mr. Look has an important perspective on fulfilling retirement.  For him, it includes scaling Himalayan mountains and eating a still-beating cobra’s heart.

OK, stick with me here for a second – I’m not off the rails.  Nor is he.

Look’s point with the article has to do with the importance of, in his words, “pushing the boundaries and seeking new horizons to achieve a fulfilling retirement.”  In addition to the Himalayas and eating a beating cobra’s heart, his activities have included things such as swimming with whale sharks, running the London marathon, rescuing street dogs from the meat trade in Thailand and living for a time on the Mekong River in Laos.

While his activities seem more self-aggrandizing than doing anything to advance humanitarian causes, the principle of moving out to the edge and away from the comfort zone in retirement is the key takeaway from his lifestyle choices.

As I portrayed in last week’s blog, the dark side of retirement in terms of disease, decline, and debilitation is very real, and disturbing.

Comfort zones are so enticing and so – well – comfortable.  We are drawn to comfort which means we are drawn away from challenge.  And nowhere are comfort zones more apparent than in retirement, certainly in the earliest stages.

No more alarm clock, no meetings, no commute, Lazyboy available 24/7, favorite series on Netflix mid-day, multiple daily naps.  After all, this is why we busted the hump for 40 years, to get to this point.  That’s what all the ads tell us it’s supposed to be.

But, as it’s said, “man makes the habits and the habits make the man.”  Comfort zones have a way of holding us hostage.

Here are three areas critical to a fulfilling retirement and optimized aging that comfort zones will hinder:

  1. Physical condition. The two greatest fears as we age are (1) running out of money and (2) experiencing extended frailty.  In retirement, our habits can easily make that second fear a reality far too early. We’re made to move, regardless of age.  According to a number of studies, the average retired male watches over 40 hours of TV per week.  The Lazyboy/TV partnership is the ultimate comfort zone. It’s so easy to skip the trip to the gym or to the treadmill in the basement when one is accountable only to his or her self.
  2. Mental acuity. Have I mentioned the brain-mapping study that showed that the watching TV generates the same level of electrical stimulation in the brain as contemplating a brick wall?  Unfortunately, the brain is very much like a muscle.  It needs exercise to stay vital.  Educational TV and crossword puzzles only go so far.  Life-extending mental stimulation calls for “pushing the boundaries.” Neurologists favor activities such as learning a new language or learning to play a musical instrument as examples of healthy brain-stretching activities.
  3. Social isolation. In my March 5 blog, I referred to the AARP Foundation study that claims that prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.  The AARP article points out that retirement is on the list of “Risk Factors for Isolation” while pointing out that there is a 26% increased risk of death due to the subjective feelings of loneliness.  New retirees often overlook the fact that they are faced with replacing workmates with new playmates.  Failing to push the boundaries and be proactive in rebuilding a social network is a major contributor to early deterioration.

Mr. Look says further:

“Retirement is the perfect time to explore and take advantage of new opportunities. Comfort zones should be places where we go to relax, reflect and rejuvenate. They should not become permanent retirement destinations where we passively allow time to slip away.”

I’ve had the pleasure recently to work with two very talented ladies, Judy, 77, and Jean, 64, who are thumbing their noses at traditional retirement and pushing boundaries.  Judy, a retired attorney, is passionately driving a non-profit that is improving educational opportunities for over 150 young girls in a village in Senegal.  Jean, a semi-retired veterinarian, is a central figure in the drive to outlaw the declawing of cats and to improve the nutritional quality of pet food.

I am humbled by the drive, energy and smarts these ladies demonstrate as they push their personal and professional boundaries. They reinforce my belief that senescence is not automatic and that vitality need not wane in our later years.  Their only reference to retirement is to say that they retired to something of greater importance.

What are you doing to push the boundaries?  Do you have a story to share with us?  We’d love to hear from you.  Scroll down and share your story with us – or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Pivot Your Retirement Before It Kills You!

A generation ago, IBM did a study of their pensioners and found that their average retiree didn’t make it past the 24th pension check.

John E. Lang, a petroleum engineer and 45-year employee of a single oil company, succumbed to a heart attack in his sleep 10 months after receiving his gold watch – and a few days after receiving a clean bill of health from his doctor.  He was my father-in-law – a great man and sorely missed.

Shell Oil studied thousands of its employee and found that retiring at 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching 65 compared to those who worked beyond age 65, challenging the notion that retiring early boosts longevity and, in fact, demonstrating the opposite – mortality rates improve with later retirement.

The National Institute of Health reports that 1 in 5 of the 35 million Americans 65 and older suffer from depression –  2 million suffer from full-blown depression and another 5 million suffer from less severe forms of the illness.

Men older than 65 take their own life at more than double the overall suicide rate and men age 75 and older have the highest annual suicide rate of any age group

OK, can I ask it?  Isn’t it time we redefine this retirement thing?

If you are in or approaching retirement, I suspect you weren’t aware of the dark side of this coveted late-life prize.  If you have been working with a financial planner, was this ever a part of your discussions with her/him?  Not likely – that’s all about the soft side of retirement and, with a few exceptions, financial planners only deal with the hard side of retirement – numbers.

The financial numbers are really important but not if they hasten you into a retirement for which you aren’t emotionally and psychologically prepared.  And that’s the rub.  Estimates are that 70% of retirees go into their retirement without a semblance of a non-financial retirement plan.

So where can it go wrong?

Ah, let me count the ways.  In fact, the husband and wife team of Jeri Sedlars and Rick Miners, veteran executive recruiters and authors of a really good book on this topic entitled “Don’t Retire, REWIRE!” did just that.  Following hundreds of conversations with retirees and uncovering this high level of discontent amongst retirees, they compiled a list of the “Top Ten Reasons People Flunk Retirement.”  Here’s what they heard the most.

  1. Retired for the wrong reasons.
  2. Didn’t realize the emotional side of retiring
  3. Didn’t know myself as well as I thought I did.
  4. Didn’t have a plan.
  5. Expected retirement to evolve on its own.
  6. I thought rest, leisure, and recreation would be enough.
  7. Didn’t stay connected with society.
  8. Expected my partner to be my social life.
  9. Didn’t know what I was leaving behind.
  10. Was overcome with boredom.

For better or worse, but not for lunch every day!

Take number 4 and number 8 on that list.  This combo illustrates one of the most dominant problem areas when it comes to retirement.  The fastest growing divorce rate in our culture is with couples over 50.  Couples often fail to plan and consider the impact on their relationship when retirement rolls around for one or both.

For example, the man comes home full-time and the spouse is burnt out on being home full-time.  She wants to go her own direction, perhaps even starting a late-life career doing something that has been suppressed for years running the household. The husband has an agenda for retirement, unarticulated until after retirement, and the spouse has different ideas. And gradual separation begins.

I recall a quote from a spouse with a recently retired husband:  “I have twice the husband and half the space, and he’s getting bigger.  If he rearranges my kitchen drawers one more time, I’m going to kill him!”

It is a little strange. 

Couples do quite a job of planning and working their way through other significant life transitions successfully.  But with retirement, which is a permanent resident on the top-10 list of life’s most stressful events, couples often ignore planning for it.

The aforementioned stats speak to the dangers of only planning retirement from a numbers perspective.  And it’s this evidence and my own personal observations of the dark side development amongst retired friends that have inspired me to become a Certified Retirement Coach to complement my coaching in the area of health and wellness and late-life career transitions.

Time to unwash the brain.

Most of us in the 50+ genre still operate with this linear life plan indoctrination – I call it the 20-40-20 plan that looks like this.

It has been the “social expectation” pounded into us by parents, professors, peers, and pundits:  get an education, get a job with a  good company, get a spouse, get a car, get a house and big mortgage, 2.5 kids, fenced yard and a golden retriever. Bust your hump for 40 years doing what you marginally enjoyed doing, stretching to reach that coveted final 20 so you can do what you really wanted to do back in the early stages of the first 20.  Only to find out that the 20 or so beyond the artificial finish line that our culture establishes isn’t as advertised.  In fact, for many, it ends up being a period of decline due to becoming sedentary, socially isolated and functioning without meaningful purpose.

This 20th-century traditional retirement model is a big part of what continues to keep us locked into the “living short and dying long” condition that taxes our health care system and has created a very profitable opportunity for the creators of the massive “warehouses for elders” that are proliferating nationally.

Oh, by the way, I understand there are few nursing homes in Okinawa where elders are venerated and “live long and die short” at home with family.

The solution, please.

Thankfully, the traditional retirement model is dying a slow death, thanks in large part to Boomers who aren’t willing to disappear silently into the night.  Research on 55,000 retired Boomers by the Age Wave organization found that only 30% had no intention of ever working again after retirement, while 70% engaged in some level of work, ranging from total volunteer to re-entering the workforce to starting their own businesses.

Successful “retirees” fit a pattern that Mitch Anthony calls the “Four Pillars of the New Retirementality” described in his book “The New Retirementality”:

—Vision – successful retirees retire to something; failed retirees retire from something.

—Balance – successful retirees find a balance between vocation and vacation; failed retirees move from bingeing on work to bingeing on leisure.

—Work is important – successful retirees keep themselves plugged into meaningful pursuits; failed retirees devolve into boredom and aimlessness.

—Successful aging is important – successful retirees focus on growing and well-being; failed retirees just take what comes.

Alas, for most going into retirement, this becomes an after-the-fact discovery where productive, healthful time is lost.  A Retirement Coach, or a financial planner that includes a holistic, non-financial retirement planning component in their service, can help prevent this dark side of retirement.  Dialog on these “soft side” elements should begin 3-5 years ahead of the anticipated retirement date.

Retired or anticipating retirement?  Let us help you get it on the right footing. Inquire about our “Retirement Wellness Plan.”  Email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

What’s your retirement experience been?  If close to retirement, how much planning on the “soft side” have you devoted to it?  We’d love your feedback – scroll down and leave us a comment.