It’s Never Too Late To Get “AMPed”. Post-career May Be the Best Time!

Time travel with me for a second, will you?

It’s day one of your life – cleaned up, aspirated, swaddled, lying on mom’s chest.

Were you?

  1. Active and engaged?
  2. Passive and inert?

OK – I tried it and it didn’t work for me either. My recall was a tad fuzzy. Perhaps a little early for those esoteric thoughts.

Let’s roll the camera forward three years. Were you #1 or #2?

Now, we’re getting somewhere. My recall of me at that age isn’t much better, but I guarantee I wasn’t #2.  Nor were you. There was some level of “out-of-control” in your life and mine at that age.  That’s our start-up wiring. Perhaps like you, I’ve watched it through my kids and, now, my grandkids.

Have you ever seen a three-year-old that isn’t curious and pretty much into his or her own thing? Active, engaged, curious, self-directed, exploding with mile-a-minute ideas and creativity, all impractical and unmarketable. As parents/grandparents, we roll with it, confident that “this, too, shall pass” and taking comfort in the fact that #2 will eventually prevail.

And then, like most of us, chances are they will ride the #2 bus to the end, creativity and enthusiasm giving way to cultural expectations and the allure of extrinsic rewards of the work world. The final big dose of #2 will come with a full-stop retirement plan where passivity and inertia thrive.

Our default setting gets shifted!

We have lots of help on this journey. For instance, the “5 P’s” that creep into our lives to make sure that the energy, creativity, engagement, unpredictability is corralled back between the culturally-acceptable fences. You remember the P’s, don’t you?

  • Parents
  • Peers
  • Professors
  • Politicians
  • Pundits

Then,  43 or 57, our three-year-old-self is, well – we’re not really sure where it is. And we don’t get much encouragement to try to find it again. It’s not part of the “model.” The “5 C’s” have taken ownership:

  • Comfort
  • Convenience
  • Comparison
  • Conventionality
  • Contentment

And then, mid-life or later, we hear a voice saying “Is this all there is?” Or somebody reminds us that the number of people attending our funeral is going to be largely determined by the weather!

Ouch!

Very few don’t give in to the 5 P’s and C’s. Most of us do.

Are you “Type X” or “Type 1”?

Author Daniel Pink, in his best-seller “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, unpacks some intriguing corollaries to all of the above, based on extensive research into human nature relative to our innate drivers.

Hugely condensed, Pink’s message is that our best self emerges when our rewards are intrinsic (inside) and not extrinsic (external). As an example, recognition versus money.

He takes it further to point out that there are inner drivers that take us to our full potential and fulfillment. They are:

  • Autonomy
  • Mastery
  • Purpose

A-M-P!

He distinguishes between two types of people, Type X and Type 1, saying:

“For Type X’s, the main motivator is external rewards; any deeper satisfaction is welcome, but secondary. For Type 1’s, the main motivator is the freedom, challenge, and purpose of the undertaking itself; any other gains are welcome, but mainly as a bonus.”

The core message in Pink’s book seems to be (I’m 2/3 through it) that we are awakening to the weaknesses inherent in systems built on the extrinsic rewards that have been the predominant model in business tracing back to the start of the industrial age. Smarter managers are now seeing better results when they appeal to, and create an atmosphere for, the motivating force of the intrinsic rewards of having autonomy, pursuing mastery, and doing something with deep purpose.

His message engendered some not-so-positive memories of my 35 years of corporate life, which ended 18 years ago at age 60. I’m challenged to remember any significant intrinsic rewards from my five different work experiences across three different industries.

I was doing it all for the money. For the eventual retirement dream. What I didn’t have, and was never offered, was (drum roll) A-M-P.

My autonomy gave way to a cubicle, an 8 a.m. at-your-desk-or-else edict, and an under-qualified, forever-threatened boss.

My mastery never flourished because shifting corporate programs, policies, products didn’t keep us in one spot long enough to master something – plus, I had no clue what I might want to master. It was all about hitting the numbers and earning the cash.

Purpose? Oh, it was there – it just wasn’t mine. It belonged to senior management and the satisfaction of shareholders.

OK, I’m a whiner, a victim, an anomaly.

Well, I think not, as evidenced by what Forbes reported in 2018 about how employee engagement continues to shrink in the enlightening article entitled “10 Shocking Workplace Stats You Need To Know.” In it, The Conference Board reveals that “- 53% of American workers are currently unhappy at work.” Gallup’s extensive research reveals nearly 20% are actively disengaged.

One out of two has no A-M-P in their lives. One in five is clearly in it only for the extrinsic.

I’m not out to change that!

I’m done with the corporate scene and have no intention of trying to do what Daniel Pink is doing i.e. transforming the way we treat people in the workplace.

But I am out to plant the seeds of the A-M-P principle in the minds of folks at the mid-life, post-career, early-retirement, “third age” phases of life.

It’s at those stages where a crossroads exists: #1 or #2 for the rest of my life?

Parts of #2 are pretty tempting after 30-40 years of corporate life. What’s not to like about no schedule, no agenda, no alarm clock, and being one with the voice-activated remote.

That euphoria wears out pretty quickly. And then it’s “what’s next?” or “what now?”

My suggestion: Get AMPed!

Will there ever be a better time in our lives to experience the autonomy that was absent in the control-and-command corporate world?

Will there ever be a better time in our lives to be able to achieve a significant level of mastery over something we have longed to do most of our lives?

Will there ever be a better time in our lives to be able to discover a purpose of our own rather than one dictated to us?

The formula looks like this:

AMP = (Doing what I want, when I want, where I want) + (Doing what I’m really good, what I really like to do) + (Making something/somebody/someplace better) 

Simple. Fulfilling. And likely to add more life to our years as well as more years to our lives.

And a chance to be your three-year-old self, active and engaged.

We appreciate your feedback. Have a thought about all this? Scroll down and leave a comment. And thanks for being a reader. If you aren’t on our email list, you can join up, at no cost, at www.makeagingwork.com.  See you next week.

 

After working in a career for 31 years, and then retiring at 57, is it better to relax for awhile or get a post-retirement job fairly quickly?

Recently, I penned out an answer to this question asked on Quora.com:

“After working in a career for 31 years, and then retiring at 57, is it better to relax for a while or get a post-retirement job fairly quickly?”

My answer is my 10th most viewed post on Quora (out of 365 posts) with just under 30,000 views.  A number of readers took the time to comment. I like this one in particular:

Terence S. commented: 

“I had the fortune to take a “mid-life retirement” from 40–46. I learned a valuable lesson that prepared me for the rest of my working life. Money, Friends, Purpose really do matter.

1) Having the money to do your bucket list will make you happy. Material things don’t last in my soul, but the remarkable adventures I took in those 7 years make me smile every day. The Corollary to that is get out there and do anything that requires physical effort and stamina before your body gives out! Stay active no matter what. There is a cut off between riding your bike across the United States to riding your bike across the state to just riding 10 miles. Travel while you still can if that’s your thing. Eventually, it will be rocking chair time.

2) Despite having a wonderful time for 6 years I got itchy. The walls started closing in on me. I was bored. I needed a purpose. So I went back to school and got a Masters in Education and have been teaching in an elementary school for the last 14 years. In addition to building upon my previous career’s savings, I’ve now built up a decent pension and 403(b) account. I love what I do and working with kids gets me out of bed every day. Plus I get 2 months off every summer! The irony is that after 2 months I can’t wait to get back to work with the next bunch of kids. As long as I have the stamina I’ll keep doing this.

3) Having community is something I’ve neglected and I realized that as well during my time off. I have a couple of support groups, but I’m trying to cultivate community outside of work.

If you don’t stay active, connected, and purposeful your mind, spirit, and body will give out on you fairly quickly and at that age, it’s hard to recover.”

Terence is in an enviable position that fewer people are going to be able to realize, having been resourceful with his career and the financial side of his life.

I’ve been fortunate to work with folks who are at a similar “life-decision point” and concur that there is a very strong argument for taking some time off, relaxing, and being self-indulgent for awhile.

But only for awhile.

Long enough to do some serious soul-searching, reflection, and consideration of what you want the rest of your life to look like.

It’s important to understand that we have never been where we are now. This is not our parents’ or grandparents’ retirement. Like Terence, many are moving into a “post-career” phase with the possibility of living 25–40 more years.

That’s a long – and dangerous – stretch to spend in the traditional, full-stop, leisure-based retirement model that still pervades our thinking and planning. I’m sure that 30 years of bingo, bridge and boche ball isn’t going to excite many.

It certainly won’t excite our biology which is designed to grow, not decay. Traditional retirement has proven itself a superior pathway to accelerated decay.

Entering into the retirement phase of life is a critical and exciting juncture. We can decide to continue to grow – or decay. We can decide if we want to continue to produce and serve or pursue the traditional retirement route of being a self-indulgent consumer.

The choice is ours. Some time off to reflect on this is time well spent. It’s a time to reflect back on what we have accomplished in this “first two-thirds” of our lives, a time to think deeply about what really excites is, what we are really, really good at, and how that may intersect with what the world needs.

Maybe that will mean getting another job that touches those areas. It may mean doing work at a non-profit (for-pay or no-pay); it may mean starting our own venture that puts our “active wisdom” to work. Much of that will depend on whether we need to supplement our retirement income.

As you can sense, I am an evangelist for redefining retirement. Terence fit the mold of those I strive to reach with the message that this post-career phase of life can, and should be, the most impactful, purposeful, and fulfilling.

Six decades of “labor-to-leisure”, “vocation-to-vacation” retirement have taught us a number of things beyond the fact that it does not honor our birthright to good health. Foremost of these, in my mind, is the wasting of accumulated talent, skills, and experience that folks, like Terence, can bring forward for the benefit of our society.

We are buried in research confirming that work is a vital component of healthy longevity – contrary to what the traditional leisure-based retirement model has sold us for decades.

Few centenarians didn’t work until they couldn’t.

So. let me step down from my soapbox and encourage us mid-lifers, pre-retirees, early-retirees to take some time off, relax, reminisce, reflect, and respond to our inner urges with the realization that we have a long and impactful future ahead for which we can set the tone, the shape, and the pace. That’s the beauty of this phase – at this phase, we now have the most control we’ve had in 3-4 decades

Just beware of the temptation to slide toward comfort, convenience, and conformity. There will be pressure from peers to “just retire.” Netflix and the voice-activated TV remote can be very tempting. Don’t linger too long in your relaxation!

One of my favorite virtual mentors is Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach. Dan once stated that people die early for three reasons:

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

Our mission at this point should be to protect our health and work toward a meaningful purpose for the balance of our lives. Without it, our life may be shorter and full of regrets.

My goal with clients who are in Terence’s situation is to help them find a “balanced, flexible lifestyle of labor, leisure, and learning.”

I wish the same for all of you.

If interested in how we help people explore and plan for the possibilities for a healthy, fulfilling post-career, email gary@makeagingwork.com or call 720-344-7784 to set up a no-cost, no-obligation “exploratory” conversation. Also, join our growing list of subscribers if you haven’t already by going to www.makeagingwork.com and adding your email. You’ll receive a free e-book entitled ““Achieve Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose” and receive a new article every Monday.

We Can Save Us From Ourselves. COVID is Teaching Us How. Are We Listening?

I had a dream this week.

I dreamed that Dr. Anthony Fauci pushed Donald aside from his podium charade, looked the viewing public in the eye, and said:

Stop listening to the media and politicians, get off your asses, change your diet, and stop whining about being a victim! We’re not coming to save you!

And he walked off. All channels cut to commercials.

OK, I didn’t really have that dream. I wish I had. Or, better yet, that it really happened.

This week, Reuters Health News published an article “Why COVID-19 is killing U.S. diabetes patients at alarming rates.” Read it here if you’ve got 10 minutes you would like to waste.

For those with a higher value on your time, let me summarize:

A  government study reveals that 40% of people who died with COVID-19 had diabetes. Among the deaths of those under 65, half had the chronic condition.

In the 1,537 word Reuter’s article, the phrase “type 2 diabetes” appears ONCE! No reference to type 1 diabetes or to the difference. Or to the fact that amongst diabetics, 91.2 % have type 2 diabetes and 5.6 % have type 1 diabetes

In 1,537 words, the word obesity does not appear once!

In 1,537 words, the word diet does not appear once!

In 1,537 words, the word exercise appears once, and only in the context that COVID is disrupting our ability to exercise. WHAT?

God forbid there should be any mention of the fact that type 2 diabetes is largely a lifestyle disease – mostly self-inflicted, preventable, and often reversible.

No mention that roughly 30% of overweight people have the disease, and 85% of diabetics are overweight.

Or that the AMA estimates that 50% of the U.S. population is pre-diabetic and 70% don’t know it.

But then revealing painful truth has never been a narrative amongst the politically-correct or victim crowd. Or politicians. Or ratings-seeking media.

I’m reminded of the Winston Churchill quote:

“Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.”

We stumbled across the truth about diabetes, lifestyle, obesity, diet, immobility, etc. I would guess about a half-century or more ago.  And, yes, we continue to “hurry off as if nothing happened” or, more accurately, as if revealing the truth would mean we’d have to say something hurtful, or unkind, or racist.

 

 

Since the establishment seems given to owning our every move at this point, would it be too much to alter the dialog to something like:

“OK, everybody now must mask up. Oh, and now you are required to eat your vegetables and walk around the block after you do.”

Yeah, when hell becomes an ice-factory.

But what if we carved off about 1% of what we pay China for the PPE we outsourced to them years ago and used it to ship a handful of “truth conveyors” into the diabetic states, starting with W. Virginia. People like Dr. Michael Greger or Dr. David Katz. With a simple message of truth similar to “get off your asses, change your diet, and stop whining –“. You get my point.

If we must have a podium parade of purported professionals, can we add at least one other with causal knowledge and credibility to join Dr. Fauci?  Someone like Dr. Greger with a message like this one – watch this video.

Someone that isn’t afraid to say “we are what we eat.”

This past year, early deaths due to poor diet surpassed smoking as the #1 cause of early death in the U.S. So, after several decades of pounding the smoking message we got a little smarter (that is until Juul and their ilk came along to further confirm that adolescent brains stay adolescent until the mid-20’s). But, we’ve filled that newly available intelligence space with “I’ll just Big Mac my way to an early demise instead of Marlboro it.”

Pete Seeger wrote it, Peter, Paul, and Mary sang it: “When will we ever learn?”

Probably never, as Churchill so aptly pointed out. We’ll wait for miracles from medical science rather than let health science take the podium. Because to mess with medical science is to disrupt a medical/pharmaceutical cohort that knows only “cure” and fears the impact a “prevention” message would have on their profit model. And a factory farm/chemical food industry complex that doesn’t give a hoot about our health and isn’t gonna change.

Forgive my rant.

Then again, don’t. Can we collectively get a little pissed and begin to understand that government and corporations can’t and won’t save us from ourselves? And that, in fact, many of their motives and missions are counter to our well-being.

Our healthcare and pharmaceutical industries would collapse if we started thinking like the ancient Greeks. Twenty-five hundred years ago, they had it right.  They identified that medicine had two components – Hygeia and Panacea.  Hygeia equals health preservation and Panacea equals repair.   For the Greeks, Hygeia held precedence.

Do we fully appreciate how far we have strayed from that model?

Hygeia means prevention – it happens on the front end.

Panacea means “fix it” – it happens because of bad “front end” decisions. Type 2 is the accumulation of a lot of bad “front end” decisions.

We can’t expect our healthcare and pharmaceutical industries to start pounding the prevention drum.  Their existence depends on –  thrives on – our self-care naivete and neither attempts to alter that naivete. And certainly, crafty food engineers figured this out long ago and capture our taste buds early with food-like substances that ultimately push us into the fix-it mill.

We’re smarter than this!!

I’ll wrap by repeating this insight from “Forks Over Knives”:

The Standard American Diet (SAD) is deplorable and is killing us early.

    • 63% of America’s calories come from refined and processed foods (e.g. soft drinks, packaged snacks like potato chips, packaged desserts, etc.)
    • 25% of America’s calories come from animal-based foods
    • 12% of America’s calories come from plant-based foods
    • Unfortunately, half of the plant-based calories (6%) come from french fries. That means only 6% of America’s calories are coming from health-promoting fruits, vegetables, whole grains, nuts, and seeds.

Let that last bullet point sink in.

There’s a good reason we abbreviate the standard American diet to S.A.D. The standard American diet leads to standard American diseases that lead to standard American deaths.

Why did we need COVID-19 to confirm something we already knew? What are the chances that we will further confirm it when the next virus comes to town?

And it will.

Leave a comment. And join the “truth squad” and spread the word.  But first, eat your vegetables.  That is, after signing up for our weekly articles at www.makeagingwork.com if you haven’t already.

 

How Old Would You Be If You Didn’t Know How Old You Are?

I believe it was Satchel Paige that asked the question that is my article headline.

You may have heard of (or remember) Leroy Robert “Satchel” Paige, American Negro League pitcher who is notable for his longevity in the game. He became a Hall of Famer, died in 1982 at age 76, and was known for his quotes in addition to his baseball prowess.

Like this one:

“Age is a question of mind over matter. If you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

I like both quotes. At 78, I think you can understand why I like them.

Last week, I talked about starting a revolution to stamp out ageism. With a bit of a twist, I continue the quest.

This week, I sucked down a large dose of Steve Chandler, life and business coach extraordinaire and one of my favorite authors. I had loaned one of my favorite Chandler books to my son some time ago and it found its way (miraculously) back to my house recently. Read? Unread? He’s not saying – doesn’t matter. What matters is that I had a chance to dive back into it and complete my fifth reading (not a typo) of it since 2016.

The book is entitled “The Story of You.- And How to Create a New One.”  One of his most popular books. And, for me, a real gut-punch of reality about life and what we make it.

It’s classic Chandler. As in:

Get over yourself!!

The whole book is about how our lives are nothing more than made-up-stories with us as the authors.

In Chapter 8, “The Story of Growing Old”, Chandler says bluntly:

“Our age and attitude toward it is simply a made up story – influenced by listening to the stories told around us. You can’t be old unless you have a story about how old you are.”

Chandler keys off a prediction by celebrity alternative medicine doctor Dr. Andrew Weill who has predicted that the baby boomer generation will return focus and dignity to aging.  Like Chandler, I hope he’s right because, in Chandler’s words, “-it’s just a made-up story to say that young is better than old.”

Weill makes the point:

“Why are old wines and whiskeys valued much more than young ones? Why are we moved in the presence of old trees? When you age cheese, it improves the cheese. Antiques are valuable because they are so old. Older violins are the most treasured.”
Can’t we consider all the qualities of aging that make these things more valuable and apply them to people – and change the story we have about older people?
We’re up against it when it comes to changing the narrative, the story about aging. But it starts with us. We have to resist the negative aging story which can become very convincing because it’s so prevalent around us.  Chandler puts it this way:

“This negative aging story soon becomes convincing. It even entrances the old people themselves! Some older people, when they retire, start walking differently. They hobble and shuffle along. They speak differently, too, as if in a play with new parts to play. They stop exercising because their story is that they’re old now. Their voices get high-pitched, thin, reedy, and weak. How much of that is the physical decline, and how much of it is living into the pre-scripted story.”

There are legions of those who have rejected this pre-scripted story.

Warren Buffet hasn’t slowed much at age 89 – he still reads 5 hours a day in his office.

William Shatner, also 89, still travels, performs, creates as if his hair was on fire.

Norman MacLean rejected the idea of retirement and, at age 73, wrote his highly acclaimed masterpiece “A River Runs Through It.”

John Housman won an academy award for his performance in The Paper Chase but hadn’t started acting until he was 70.

Chandler had convinced himself for years that he was too old to write books until he changed the story he was telling himself at age 50 and has since turned out over 30 books. His new story? He would keep writing until his dying day. And he was making it up as he went.

It’s like deja-vu all over again, for me. My reinvention to write for the rest of my life is my changed story and I, too, am truly building this airplane in flight. And can’t wait to get up each morning and add one more little part.

Part of that new story is that I started posting responses on Quora.com about 15 months ago answering questions in my sweet spot of health and wellness, aging, longevity, career transition, etc.

On a whim, my first post was an answer to the crazy question: “What is the cause of the common odor many senior citizens have (despite good hygiene)? I know something about it because I had researched it for a book that I have written that remains in what is beginning to look like terminal draft stage.

You can read the Quora post here. If you do click on it, you will see, as of today, it has garnered 306,000 views and over 1,500 upvotes.

Whaa? About why old people smell?  Really?

Since that article, I’ve posted around 350 articles with 1.8 million views, nearly 10,000 upvotes, and earned Top 10 writer in a couple of categories. All of which, together with $2, will buy me a cup of Starbuck’s horrid coffee.

Why do it? Because I changed my story. I want to write. I feel I have a voice and a message and it’s a chance to maybe touch somebody, somewhere.

I get a lot of feedback on those posts, nearly all positive. There is one comment, however, that remains permanently ensconced in my brain because, well, the truth hurts. One gentleman didn’t line up with one of my arguments about something and simply just referred to me as an insufferable p***k.

I relayed that incident to my roommate of 49 1/2 years who responded with a “YES” and a fist pump.

I’ve kept a log of most of the comments (38 pages of them, in fact) because many of them have stories that I find educational and help guide me with my content. I want to share one with you:

A Harrington commented on your answer to: “What is the best advice you can give to someone who recently turned 60?”

6/9/2020

“Thank you Gary. I am female, 52 and have ‘missed the boat’ on a fulfilling, promising career. I did manage a bachelor’s degree after high school but then dropped the ball and simply took various jobs just to keep money coming in and survive. A very big mistake of which I have only myself to blame. (However, I did conceive a beautiful child and had many happy years as a stay-at-home Mom.)

So now I sit with the pain of missed opportunity and a feeling of loss at never having made more of myself. I have been toying with the idea of additional schooling to complete a teaching certificate. It would take me 16 months to do so and I would finish at the later side of 53, but after reading your post I think maybe I am not so crazy for considering it? Possibly someone would benefit from this older gal becoming a teacher?”

That’s why I write, why my story changed. Maybe A. Harrington will move from “victim” to “owner.” Maybe she will pull off a story change from the story she’s been telling herself (missing the boat) and move from toying to doing and touch many young people’s lives.

There are many like it in my comment log. People needing, wanting a story change. Each an affirmation that we are all made up stories, telling ourselves what we think others want us to be.

We are truly masters of lying to ourselves. And we’ve had a lot of help.

So, am I really 78?

Or can I be 45? Or 92? Some would L-O-L at the 45. Most wouldn’t care.  This morning, as I write, it feels like 45. My lower back says 92. But 45 wins.

That’s my story, and I’m sticking with it.

What’s yours?

Got a thought or comment about all this?  Share it below or with an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.  If you aren’t on our mailing list for each week’s free article, you can join in a heartbeat at www.makeagingwork.com. Stay safe, be sensible.

There’s a Longevity Revolution Brewing.  Are You Going to Be Part of It?

 

Do you get the impression that millennials still don’t seem to like us so much, we COVID-susceptible, creaky, white-haired relics?

The “OK Boomer” wave seems to have fizzled but there is still a bubbling resentment. No better demonstration of that than the virus-flaunting that’s taking place by the youngers at bars and beaches.

I suspect if I were to engage a group of millennials in a conversation about a “longevity revolution” in which we “geezers-in-progress” will be living even longer, it wouldn’t be welcomed news.

After all, their general narrative is that we are the big reason life can tilt toward miserable for a lot of them, right? Hoarding the wealth; setting the stage for planet destruction; not vacating the jobs they want/are entitled to; creating the technologies that have reduced their opportunities; creating police departments.

To which I say: “Heads up, whippersnapper!!  It’s gonna happen – let’s get in step together and team up!”

Who knows what is going to emerge from the economic COVID rubble. But one thing is unchangeable. Even with this microbe monster picking off the low-hanging fruit of co-morbid seniors, the 50+ demographic will remain one of the fastest-growing demographics in America.

There are 109 million of us over 50 in the U.S.  Boomers, who make up about 78 million of that, are now being joined in this 50+ group by the front edge of GenXers.

What to do with all us “geezers-in-progress?”

What if we started our own revolution, we prototype “geezers?”

A “longevity revolution.”

If there is some room for optimism in this pandemic, I’m thinking it may come from having the best minds across 150 countries focused on finding answers and that there will be serendipities galore as we gain a deeper understanding of how to protect our biology and extend our time on this mudball.

In other words, we could end up continuing to get even older for longer. We are already living, on average, about 10 years longer than we were a mere 50 years ago.

That possibility scares the s*** out of ageist politicians, corporations, and governments. And millennials. And those who fear aging.

But what if it means solutions to many of the ills that have beset us globally.

Now there’s a mindset with chalkboard/fingernail screechy dissonance! Geezers solving world problems? Really?

C’mon. You getting to 50 or 60 or 70 – or me to 78 – took some level of talent and moxie, right? OK, some luck, too. But, where does it say that it’s supposed to fizzle out at 65? Outdated models would have you to believe it, but don’t tell your body and mind that. They’ve both got a lot of fight left if we’re willing to put on the gloves.

Look, all of us pre-boomers, boomers and early GenXers have a choice. Just be older for longer taking up space and using up oxygen – or do something with this longevity bonus.

We can tack those extra years on the end and continue to cling to the 85-year old FDR model designed to send us to the sidelines to be “consumers supported by society.” Or we can be “producers adding to its strengths.”

I borrowed those words from Joseph F. Coughlin in his book “The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest-growing, Most Misunderstood Market.” I’m on board with Coughlin who says that the FDR-spawned concept of government-supported and sanctioned retirement seized upon by the insurance industry for the creation of leisure-based “golden years” is a “narrative whose time is done.”

The 20th-century idea that “the aged” are inherently unhealthy and uniformly incapable of economic production admittedly led to some important government programs e.g. Social Security, Medicare.

But now, in Coughlin’s words,

“- that narrative has become a liability. it has taken us as far as it can, but it is now holding back innovation in a way that’s proven hard for many to recognize, let alone solve. [The] invention that once served us well must be replaced.”

It’s encouraging to see that we are gradually rejecting the glamour of leisure-based retirement. With the artificial finish line established 85 years ago, we shoved people into a space with “- – no institutions or instructions for how to live, no economic production roles to differentiate one retiree from the next, and nothing to tell them what to do with their time.”

So we invented something – the “we” being insurance companies and the Del Webb’s of the world. The result? Legions of self-indulgent consumers sequestered in large luxury ”warehouses” with atrophying skills and talents, hanging with others with atrophying skills and talents.

No youth allowed to interfere with this planned early demise.

The revolution is starting. Join the fight.

The revolution against this has legs driven by demographics, changing attitudes, a drop in immigration, the changing retirement landscape, and the fact that companies will have no choice but to reconsider their positions on hiring or rehiring older workers.

What does a longevity revolutionary do? They start with a commitment to changing attitudes and undermining the rampant ageism in the marketplace.  Not with a sign on the street corner, or mob protests in the streets, or a book (with all due respect to Ashton Applewhite’s fantastic book on the subject), or some other form of a public rant but rather through an individual commitment to preparing for and engaging in the fight smarter and more effectively.

 

Here are ten things you can do to prepare and be a part of the “revolution”:

  1. Protect your health. Get healthy, stay healthy. Become a student of your biology and what it needs to operate optimally and with renewed energy. (HINT: Start with an evaluation of your diet – bad diet is now the #1 cause of early death in the U.S., having surpassed smoking.)
  2. Continue your education, never stop learning. Stay sharp. Keep up with the basic technology. Check out free/inexpensive resources like Senior Planet or One Day University.
  3. Have a proud physical condition and presence. See #1. Be visibly in shape and sport a current wardrobe.
  4. Be an active networker, building relationships outside of the old, tired inner circle. Take a millennial or two to lunch and LISTEN! No lectures allowed!!
  5. Commit to a purpose and build your personal brand around it, using life’s accomplishments together with talents, and strengths. Don’t waste that first two-thirds of life!
  6. Put yourself “out there.” Use social media -professionally, not just socially.
  7. Add speaking skills. You’ve got a voice and lots to say.  Join Toastmasters and learn to speak, build confidence, and hang out with inspiring, positive people (most of them younger than you). It’s a “double-dip” environment.
  8. Get rid of your ageist language. No more “aging is a bitch” or “aging isn’t for sissies” or “whassup, old-timer” or “you certainly don’t look your age” or “I just had a senior moment” or “you’re not retired yet?”
  9. Don’t be afraid or ashamed to show up at the fitness center (when they return) and work on #1 above amongst the tattoos, tank tops, and lulu lemons.
  10. Adopt a “Modern Elder” mindset and not a “Senior Citizen” mindset. See my 10/21/19 article on this movement here.

We can “whine and wait” for the industrial complex to come to their senses and start reconsidering the role of over-60 people in their organizations.  Or for that fistfight on the Potomac to find some chill and smart pills.  Or we can make it impossible for them to ignore us by how we prepare, present ourselves, speak out, and defend our space.

Viva la revolution!

Not ready to join a revolution? Then at least join our mailing list if you haven’t, at www.makeagingwork.com. And leave us a comment, below or at gary@makeagingwork.com. Stay safe.

Do You Have an “Escape Tunnel” or “Glidepath” to Your “Retirement Victory Lap?”

OK – I’m guilty. I’m full-on plagiarizing!

I stole all of the terms you see in quotes in the headline from Mike Drak, Rob Morrison, and Jonathan Chevreau (henceforth known as M, R, & J)

Secretly, I hate them!

You see, they put into 209 wonderfully written pages what I’ve been blogging about for three years. They co-authored a book entitled: “Victory Lap Retirement: Work While You Play, Play While You Work”.

It’s the book I should have written a couple of years ago. But, I let my constant sidekick dominate. You’ve met him – his name is P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-I-O-N!

So, you go, guys! You’ve done masterful work with an amazing combination of advice from both financial and non-financial perspectives.

Dear reader: if you are at, close to, or even thinking about retirement, buy the book. It could be the best $15-18 (Amazon) investment you’ll make on behalf of the post-career phase of your life. (Disclosure: if you buy it through either Amazon link above, I will earn a pittance of an Amazon Affiliate commission).

An “escape tunnel” or a “glidepath”.

These three musketeers introduced a concept worth sharing because it fits so well into the evolving retirement landscape.

For several years now, we’ve been tossing around terms like “encore career”, “semi-retirement”, “unretirement”, “rewirement”, “reinvention”, etc., etc., ad nauseum. All an attempt to put a reasonable tag on this “new frontier” of extended longevity trying to co-exist with an irrelevant, worn-out, 85-year-old concept called traditional, full-stop retirement.

It’s taking us a while, but we’re finally admitting that it doesn’t fit for today’s healthier, more savvy “third agers” who are entering that period between end-of-career and true old age.  That space used to be about 3-5 years – now it could be 30-40.

Close your eyes: Imagine 30 years of bridge with three others your age, all with that curious old people smell.  Or 30 years of bocce ball, pickleball, bingo, golf. Or a couple of decades of “pity parties” and “organ recitals” with full-stop retirees discussing the latest surgery, arthritic area, immobility issue, slipped memory incident, or an acquaintance experiencing all of the above.

If I haven’t sufficiently pissed you off and you are still with me, close your eyes again. Imagine having gathered together all your natural talents, stirred them together with acquired skills and experiences and stepped into a vibrant life with inordinate energy, an inspirational reason to get up in the morning, and going to bed experiencing a “good tired” because you completed a day having served, contributed, and impacted someone or something.

That’s what M, R & J call the “Victory Lap” – a celebration of what you are all about, on your terms, on your schedule, doing what you are best at and doing it when, where, and how you please.

But you don’t hop off a cliff to get there. It calls for a “glidepath” or, if you are corporately-snared, an “escape tunnel” (close your eyes again and think Andy and Shawshank Redemption and the swim through the sewage).

Start digging your “escape tunnel” now!

Remember the line from Red (Morgan Freeman) in Shawshank when he ‘reminisced” about his lengthy incarceration:

“These walls are funny. First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That’s institutionalized. They send you here for life, that’s exactly what they take. The part that counts anyway.”

Show of hands. How many just read a description of their corporate job?

Andy refused to get used to the walls – his escape tunnel took 20 years. The authors draw a parallel to Andy in the movie:

“The smart ones among us do as Andy does and start digging their escape tunnel toward freedom (financial independence) the minute they join the Corp. They view the time they spend in the Corp as part of a bigger plan, adopting the institution purposefully and using the benefits it provides to help them reach their long-term goals.”

When I started corporate life a half-century ago, there was a palatable combo of loyalty to employees, security in a position, and pension plans. Today, toss them all. Recent research is showing that over 50% of corporate employees don’t like their jobs. READ: they are doing it for the money.

An escape plan from today’s Corp is the appropriate mindset from day one. Use the Corp instead of it using you.

Sage advice from the authors: “ … begin planning today for your “jailbreak” by creating your own destiny and charting your eventual Victory Lap.”

Takeoffs only – no landings allowed!

I agree with M, R, & J when they say that your “victory lap” is limited only by your imagination (see my 6/22/20 blog here). Full-stop retirement tends not to tax the imagination. Their glidepath strategy presents an opportunity to be creative and continue to work on one’s own terms as long as one pleases. It may call for continuing with a current employer if the work is enjoyable, but on a part-time basis. Or it may be with another organization within the same industry.

I see it a lot with healthcare executives who glidepath into consulting.

A glidepath may team up with a Passion/Hobby Strategy with the full- or part-time work satisfying the desire to pursue a long-delayed passion. There is more risk here because it may be a major “lane change.”

I recall wasting a ton of time 15-20 years ago doing deep research on starting my own fly-fishing retail shop because I was so deeply passionate and immersed in the sport. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and I conceded that it would be turning a hobby into drudgery at 1/3 of the income I was making at the time.

Be sure to give more than a second thought to making a passion or hobby your escape tunnel or glidepath.

Do as I say, not as I did!

I broke from the Corp at age 60. But it was a “jailbreak”, no escape tunnel. I was mentally checked out probably two years before the jailbreak. An industry collapse and looming bankruptcy left me no time for an escape tunnel, even if I had conceived of the idea. My jailbreak was from MCI.  You may remember them – jail time for Bernie Ebbers (now deceased), Enron era, lot of craziness and Corp knuckleheads.

Sans escape tunnel or intentional glidepath, I went over the cliff into my own recruiting business, insufficiently prepared and with illusionary visions of being entrepreneur material.  If M, R & J and their book had been around then, I may have rethought that step, perhaps hanging in the Corp world for a few more years, continuing to feed a pretty healthy “retirement nest egg” with full intentions of absconding on my terms.

But, then again, probably not because I’ve never been good at relinquishing my time to another and, for decades, had found the Corp very stultifying relative to my inflexibility in the time ownership area.

Plus, retirement as a concept had exited my vocabulary and mindset years prior to this big step.

I guess you could say I ended up on a 15-year glidepath as I stumbled and humbled through at least two “reinventions” ultimately discovering my own version of a Victory Lap doing what I am wired up to do and which I intend to do until I can’t. I’ve unashamedly set that “can’t” as past 100 years.

Thanks to M, R & J for advancing the argument that full-stop retirement is dinosaur territory and that it’s well nigh time we redeployed the accumulated talents, skills, experience, energy, and enthusiasm of this 55+ group back into a marketplace and culture in bad need of a large dose of wisdom and stability.

Let me know what you think of the book – and this article with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com. If you aren’t on our subscription list, it’s free and easy at www.makeagingwork.com.  Plus, a subscription comes with a free ebook: “Achieve Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Sixty-years-old or about to be? Here Are Some Experience-based Suggestions for the Path Ahead.

As a 78-year-old I’ve been there and done the 60-year-old thing.

The experiences and decisions of my late 50s and early 60s played a big role in developing the roadmap I’m navigating for the rest of my life. I’m dedicated to sharing this experience in hopes that what I’ve learned will help others at this juncture to develop a roadmap for their own “third age” or “post-mid-life-transition” phase of life.

The late 50s, early 60s present us with opportunities to make some of the most critical and significant decisions we will make in our lives.

I’d like to share just three thoughts that may help pave a healthy and purposeful path for this “third age”.

1. Reject the conventional, decades-old cultural expectations for what lies ahead.

By that, I mean rejecting the view that this next phase is a time to “wind down and come in for a landing”. At 60, we are carrying forward decades of “retirement indoctrination” e.g. time to slow down, kick back, indulge ourselves.

With COVID, many more of us will join the growing number who are unprepared financially for traditional full-stop retirement – perhaps as high as 60% of us, according to some recent reports. With that may come the joint fear of running out of money and the subtle condemnation that our culture lays on us if we don’t retire on or before that sacred number 65.

Yes, there remains a significant number who are “financially prepared” and still anticipate a full-stop retirement convinced they have earned and are entitled to the self-indulgence it allows. Although declining, it’s still an attitude that persists with the help of a powerful but relatively unchanged financial-services industry. It’s a model with 85-year-old legs, conceived for political reasons in 1935 that established an artificial finish line of 65 when the average American didn’t make it past 62.

Facing 3–5 years of retirement, it made sense for your parents or grandparents to head to the beach, golf course, or Leisure World. Today, with us living 20–40 years longer, the model doesn’t fit. Thirty years of golf or bingo, bridge and boche ball, and the bulging waistline that accompanies it doesn’t make sense.

Whether you are financially prepared on not, my suggestion for this life juncture is to consider redefining retirement. Consider that you may be going forward with a mindset that is out of step with the world around you – not to mention your biology – if traditional retirement is the model you are pursuing for the balance of your life.

If you agree, or this interests you, here are three solid resources that you will find helpful:

There is considerable duplication across all three books but each also contains unique and powerful suggestions and preparatory activities.  Read all three, and you have the equivalent of a master’s degree in “non-financial retirement planning.”

FULL DISCLOSURE: Should you buy any of these by clicking on the live link, it will be at the regular price but I will earn an Amazon Affiliate commission – about enough to buy a quarter cup of Starbuck’s awful coffee.

2. Take some time to reflect, reassess, and resurrect.

Have you had questions like these bouncing around in your head? “Why am I here?” “Is this all there is?” “Is it too late to leave a footprint?”

Or the one that really stung me years ago: “Is it true that the number of people attending my funeral will largely depend on the weather?”

If so, you are at a healthy spot. This is the perfect time to respond to those healthy questions and carve out some time – alone or with a supportive partner – to reflect on what your life has amounted to. But, with an eye on the positive.

Then start asking yourself even tougher questions.

I’ll reuse the important quote I used in my 6/15/20 blog from author Laurence C. Boldt:

“All imaginative journeys are prompted by questions. The mind runs on questions. Questions form a kind of skeletal structure upon which your life is built. New questions, deeply asked, will shape a new life.”

Questions like:

  • Is there a story to my life?
  • Do I have a basic philosophy of life that is my own?
  • Do I have a purpose for the rest of my life?
  • What is my part in this grand play of life?
  • How can I make a difference?
  • What do I want to do?  What must I do?
  • What can I realistically achieve in the span of my life?

We don’t reach 60 without doing a lot of things right. We got there consciously or unconsciously using some skills that were wired into us at conception.

There is also a chance that some of those skills or talents were “barnacled over” as you dedicated yourself to “provision” rather than “aspiration” and helped build someone else’s dream with your career.

It’s a good time, if you haven’t, to consider doing some basic personality or strengths assessments (DISC, Strengthsfinders, Enneagram, etc.) to uncover or remind you of how you are wired up. Chances are fairly high that you have been operating outside of your core talents and strengths. We all do it in the interests of providing and meeting cultural expectations defined for us by the “big Ps” in our lives – parents, peers, and professors.

I finally had to acknowledge all this in my mid-sixties after leaving corporate life at 60, starting my own recruiting business and realizing that my corporate sales and marketing experience – although successful by monetary and title standards – was not ideal for how I was equipped.

I ignored the results of multiple assessments that consistently suggested that I was at my best in a learning and teaching mode. My career in sales and marketing wasn’t ideally aligned with that. Yet I forged on, yielding to cultural expectations and rejecting the input of the assessments.

For instance, I took the Strengthsfinder assessment THREE times, refusing to accept the results, which, BTW, were always consistent.  I just knew that the Gallup organization would have come to their senses by the time I took it the third time.

My venture into the recruiting business gradually moved me in the direction of these core talents and strengths to where now I feel that I am achieving the intersection of what I’m best equipped to do, what I’m good at, and a need that exists in the marketplace.

The Japanese have a term  “ikigai” – a reason for being. Or a reason to get up in the morning. I’m getting closer to “ikigai” day-by-day. But I had to shed some deep-seated cultural influences.

Based on experience and feedback from others, I’ve learned that the process of reflecting, assessing, acknowledging, and resurrecting latent talents and strengths can effectively put one on a path that will turn this extended period of life into the most productive, fulfilling and purposeful time of your life.

3. Get serious about, and take control, of your health.

Quick reality check: have you done your body and brain a lot of favors up to this point?  I didn’t think so.

I hadn’t, despite being a gym rat for 25 by the time I hit 60.  The statistics on length of life and the level of extended morbidity and early frailty amongst our general population in this third age bears out the fact that we generally do a pretty crappy job of taking care of ourselves – especially through those grinding years of accumulating stuff, titles, image.  You know what I mean – that period where we let a culture that isn’t friendly to good health dictate our lifestyles.

We can make all the grand plans we want for this new period of extended longevity. It will be meaningless if we don’t feel good.

Dr. Mario Martinez, in his book “The Mindbody Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Are Inherited” makes an important point when he says:

“We inherit millennia of wisdom on how to achieve optimal health. Rather than mechanical products of our genes, we are the coauthors of their expression. With few exceptions, illnesses are only genetic propensities, not inevitable disruptions waiting their time to unfold.”

In other words, we start life with a birthright of good health. Our bodies are a collection of 35 trillion cells, or thereabouts, that have somehow been kludged together into this amazing 24×7 immune system that works its butt off to keep us healthy. That’s our inheritance.

Through our culturally-influenced lifestyles, we choose to screw that up.

 

Excuse the brashness, but collectively we are very health care illiterate. We don’t know how our bodies work and what they need to carry us through life optimally.

We succumb to a lifetime of seeking comfort. convenience, and conformity. We view good health as the absence of sickness and have turned healthcare into a $35 copay experience with our doc when things skid off the tracks, within a healthcare system that only dispenses medical advice, not health advice.

Rather than adopting a lifestyle of “proactive prevention” we turn to a system designed to provide “reactive cure.”

Over 60% of early death in our culture is due to an inappropriate diet. Early death due to poor diet just passed smoking as the #1 cause of premature death!!

Yet, doctors receive no training in nutrition. So we are functioning within a healthcare system that doesn’t care much about what we eat. Or doesn’t seem to because you won’t get nutrition counseling in our “drug it or cut-it-out” system.

Couple that with a profit-driven food industry that doesn’t give a rip about our health, we are fighting countervailing forces to maintain optimal health.

That’s why, regardless of age –  and especially at 60 and beyond –  it’s important to become the CEO of your health, become literate about how your body works at the cellular level, take charge, and change to habits that will support you with good health going forward.

It’s never too late to start. It’s always too early to quit.

The five top killers in our culture – heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, dementia – have not changed in decades. These are all lifestyle diseases and all are preventable.

We have a “whole-life potential” benchmark already establish for us. We know that the body is capable of lasting 122 years and 164 days because Jeanne Calment of Paris lived that long – the longest living human on record.

Yet, on average, we fall seriously short of that benchmark, achieving only 66% of it on average.

The gap is lifestyle.

I was heavily influenced, in my 60s, by two books that helped me deepen my commitment to protecting my health, although I have been a strong health advocate and avid exerciser for over four decades. You may find them enlightening as well.

“Dare to Be 100” by Dr. Walter Bortz, semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician helped me understand why “there is no biological reason that I shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond” and what I can do to enhance my chances of getting there.

The other was “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond.” This perennial best-seller helped me understand how my body works at the cellular level and what those cells need to support me with good health.

Let me quote the late Dr. Henry Lodge, co-author:

“The simple fact is that we know perfectly well what to do. Some 70 percent of premature death and aging are lifestyle-related. Heart attacks, strokes, the common cancers, diabetes, most falls, fractures, and serious injuries, and many more illnesses are primarily caused by the way we live. If we had the will to do it, we could eliminate more than half of all disease in men and women over fifty. Not delay it, eliminate it.”

I’ll leave you with this guideline, also from Dr. Lodge. It’s called “Harry’s Rules” and it is a simple, hard-hitting set of rules that will enable good health and successful aging.

Harry’s Rules

Exercise six days a week for the rest of your life.

Do serious aerobic exercise four days a week for the rest of your life.

Do serious strength training, with weights, two days a week for the rest of your life.

Spend less than you make.

Quit eating crap!

Care.

Connect and commit.

Good luck on your journey. You are about to step into the most exciting, most exhilarating, most impactful, and fulfilling time of life.

If you so choose.

Agree or disagree? We’d love to know. Scroll down and leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com. If you aren’t on our weekly email list, you can join at www.makeagingwork.com.  It’s free – we publish a new article every Monday.

The Idea of Retirement Has Stolen Our Inner Magician. Let’s Get It Back!

“We all know that nature abhors a vacuum. The same is true of our imaginations. The Magician makes this principle work for him. Drawing a magic circle, he creates an empty space in which to work his magic. You can think of your goals as providing the boundaries of this inner circle. Within the empty spaces of this circle, your imagination or inner magician works to create the outcomes you desire. On the other hand, if we don’t give our imaginations constructive things to do, they tend to fill up with junk and recycle images of negativity and doubt. It’s up to the Hero to supply the inner Magician with challenging creative demands that will keep it constructively engaged and out of mischief. Because our imaginations abhor a vacuum, they are our best friends or our worst enemies. The true Magician makes her imagination her friend.”

Laurence G. Boldt, “Zen and the Art of Making a Living”

Where is our imagination?

I guess you can tell I like this book since I quoted Mr. Boldt extensively last week. I find it to be one of those “hidden gem” books loaded with “contrarian common-sense” applicable to my purpose (READ: it’s not for everybody) that comes more alive with each reading.

I pondered and meditated on Boldt’s paragraph this morning after allowing myself to do a mental swim in all the junk and crap that is going on around me.

I’ll bet you’ve been there. Perhaps still there. Doing that type of mental swim is never a good idea. It’s really easy to do, isn’t it?

I’m realizing I’m not being very “imaginative” when it comes to filters. How imaginative is it to flip back and forth between Fox News and MSNBC?  Which I’ve been guilty of so that I can say that I am “considerate of both sides” of the insanity that they both peddle.

Or to scan through the Denver Post over my oatmeal fully aware that I’ve just wasted 30 minutes swimming in more junk.

As I wrote about last week, while in this unimaginative channel, do I fret over riots or respirators? COVID or cops? Conspiracy theory A or conspiracy theory B? The stock market or the wet market?

This is as crazy a mash-up of insanity as ever in my eight decades on this mudball. A media field day, nirvana. And energy-sapper extraordinaire!

Nobody is coming to save us!!

Except our imagination. A sense of purpose. Undying principles.

Last week, I posed the question “Is COVID a Cataclysm or a Catalyst?” I suggested that COVID, in many ways, may be a catalyst in the form of a receding tide revealing our “nakedness.”

What is that nakedness?

  1. That we are rudderless with the loudest voices and knee-jerk decisions guiding the ship instead of common sense and a true sense of community.
  2. That a larger-than-self-purpose or spiritual quest has given way to societal conditioning, conformity, to “get-mine-now” consumerism, to “garage-door- up, garage-door-down” sense of community, to “us” versus “them” at every turn.
  3. We’ve come to expect “big government” or “big business” to save us, both of which have proven themselves deeply skilled at altruism head-fakes.
  4. That some long-standing practices have been exposed as harmful and/or fraudulent. As in a consumerist lifestyle. As in retirement!

“Anxiety is the hand-maiden of creativity”

I wish I knew who to attribute that quote to since it is so timely.

COVID-spawned anxiety is very real and ubiquitous. We can be creative within that anxiety or be crushed by it.

Here’s a dose of anxiety: fully one-third of Americans now feel they will never be able to retire. According to Yahoo Money, seven in 10 Americans expect the pandemic to hurt their retirement savings, with a fifth predicting a severe impact.

I can think of few things that can create more anxiety – aside from severe health issues – than something that futzes with our ability to retire. It would seem that there isn’t much that can dump more cortisol/adrenaline/norepinephrine into our increasingly fragile immune system than the prospect of not being able to achieve that pseudo-entitlement and to have to – oh, horrors!! – continue to work.

This should be music to our ears!

I heard you say it: What, are you nuts? Risk your readership with a direct frontal assault on this revered institution?

Nothing new here – for three years, I’ve been part of the growing crowd that is exposing traditional retirement for what it really is – a trojan horse with few upsides and a plethora of downsides.

I’m encouraged that one of the greatest catalytic impacts of COVID may be to finally put traditional self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement on life-support.

Name something less imaginative than retirement.

Let me help as you ponder the question.

  • The word came from the French verb “retirer” which means to “withdraw, go backward, retreat to a place of seclusion.”  Will you find that in your DNA? Only if you’ve tabled your imagination.
  • It’s an 85-year old concept, designed for political purposes with an arbitrary, “artificial finish line” of 65 at a time when people rarely lived to 62. Let’s spell it together:  i-r-r-e-l-e-v-a-n-t.
  • With help from the media and the product-peddling financial services industry, we’ve been convinced that “work” is a dirty four-letter word and something to jettison when in fact it turns out to be a central tenet of good mental and physical health.
  • It exploits the myth that senescence is automatic and unalterable when in fact the opposite is true.
  • Some of its most identifiable fruits are boredom, sedentary living, withdrawal from continuous learning, and ultimately “living too short and dying too long.”  Kinda like this life-model that still persists today:
  • Retirement doesn’t exist in nature and didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago. It’s yet another manipulative tool designed by man for political advantage that morphed into an “entitlement” that appeals to and exploits our decadent, lazy nature.
  • How imaginative is it to suggest one pack up their accumulated skills, talents, and experiences and trade them in for bingo, bridge, boche ball, and beach bungalows while denying society the power of that accumulated wisdom and common sense?

End of rant. The list can go on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imaginative would be to say:

I was created with unique skills and talents that I choose to continue to make available to humanity until I can no longer.

How can that not be healthy for our sagging culture?

How can that not be better for a personal biology that offers only two options – growth or decay?

How can that not be better for those behind us who are so uncertain of what lies ahead?

Wisdom and experience redeployed and not wasted, common sense resurfaced, timeless principles resurrected – somehow it just sounds more imaginative.

A “New Retirementality”, a “Victory Lap”, and a “REWIRE!”

COVID is accelerating the much-needed redefinition of what post-career, post-parenting life can be.

If you are at that life juncture, here are three books you may want to check out that do a great job of delivering imaginative “redefinition” messages along with actionable ideas to assist in the transition:

Let ‘s refind our inner magician and imaginatively reinvent our way out of this chaos.

Because no one is coming to save us!

I appreciate you and thank you for reading. I also appreciate and benefit from your feedback.  Let me know what you think with a comment below.

If you are not on the list, it’s free and easy to do so at www.makeagingwork.com.  Come join the growing tribe.

 

 

Is COVID a Cataclysm? Or a Catalyst? I’m Going With the Latter

 

 

How’s your whiplash going? Mine sucks!!

I’m coming off a bad week. Actually, two weeks of funk.

Last week was the first time in over two years that I missed a Monday 5 p.m. blog post.

Couldn’t do it. The draft that I ran by my first-level “copyeditor” (my roommate of 49 1/2 years) got me a diplomatic groin kick.

As in: “Are you serious?”  “Who are you trying to be?” “Reel it in, Bucko!” “I don’t know you!”

Seems the article was a tad political and wholly judgmental – from an old dude who is in no position to be judging anybody on anything.

It had to be the whiplash.

I’m blaming COVID whiplash for resurrecting my arrogance, thinking my poison pen would move the societal needle. Never has, never will. Always backfires.

Which WHO/CDC directive do I believe or follow this week?

One rogue cop = elimination of police departments.  Whaaa?

A death in Minneapolis = free big-screen TVs at Walmart in California.

Stock market or wet market?

Hannity or Maddow? (Both are nuts!)

Open, don’t open.

Return to work, don’t return to work.

Retire, don’t retire.

All but the last two will fade away from our immediate consciousness. I’m guessing the last two represent a couple of the most pressing and lingering questions facing us going forward, especially in the 50-55+ demographic I enjoy working with as a life transition coach.

Emergence from adolescence?

Some have suggested that COVID may be a catalyst, perhaps the last vestiges and the most painful growing pains of us growing out of “adolescence” and maturing into “adulthood” as a society.

Surely, you’d think over two-and-a-half centuries would be long enough to mature into adulthood.

But then, maybe we need a few more adolescent tantrums to get there, to fully expose how we’ve lost our way culturally.

As much as anything our uncertainty reminds us that we have less control over life than we think we do, especially as we navigate through pervasive risk which may be the new normal as we get more globally interdependent, get sicker environmentally, and less healthy as individuals.

We’ve been swimming naked.

Warren Buffet famously said:

“It’s only when the tide goes out that you discover who’s been swimming naked.”

I know – he was talking about the scamming that goes on in the financial services industry. But, something in my gut tells me COVID is a receding tide and much of what we’ve become culturally is standing naked.

As in, what work has become for many.

As in our pre-occupation with retirement.

Are we finally beginning to drive a stake through the heart of meaningless employment and traditional retirement?

Let me extract some stats from this Forbes article that would say maybe we have at least bought the stake and the hammer when it comes to employment:

  • A recent study by CareerBuilder.com shows that a whopping 58 percent of managers said they didn’t receive any management training.
  • Fifty-eight percent of people say they trust strangers more than their own boss.
  • Seventy-nine percent of people who quit their jobs cite ‘lack of appreciation’ as their reason for leaving.
  • American workers forfeited nearly 50 percent of their paid vacation in 2017. The fear of falling behind is the number one reason people aren’t using their vacation time.
  • The Conference Board reports that 53 percent of Americans are currently unhappy at work.

Do we really want to continue to mix the above with one-hour commutes, drab-towers of cubicles, stupidly-high parking fees to pay for ecologically destructive lots, bad fast food at our desks, stress?

Better questions = better lives.

It’s a good time to remember that the quality of our lives is determined by the quality of the questions we ask of ourselves.

I was reminded of that this week trudging through a re-read of “Zen and the Art of Making a Living” in which author Laurence C. Boldt states:

“All imaginative journeys are prompted by questions. The mind runs on questions. Questions form a kind of skeletal structure upon which your life is built. New questions, deeply asked, will shape a new life.”

If nothing else, COVID is at least shaking trees and raising quality, transformational questions at a time when the quality of our health, relationships, and ecology are declining.  The quality of the questions starts getting really good and deep at mid-life and beyond for many.

I’m confident that COVID and the cousins that follow will move us down a path of more wholesome, purposeful, less-materialistic, planet-replenishing ways of life. We’re finding out quickly how we can do without what we thought we couldn’t do without that we busted our humps to avoid being without.

Aren’t we getting a big gulp of the shallowness of accumulation? Are we realizing that all this “getting” has an endpoint that we are approaching rapidly?  What if, instead of a $75,000 Beemer, I bought a $35,000 Honda Accord and two used Hondas for two families in need?

Are we finally going to acknowledge that retirement and the fast-track, at age 62, to a 1,000 unit high-rise retirement community – advertised as “cruises without the motion” but in actuality, cleverly-disguised virus petri-dishes  – might not be the wisest decision?

What is the story of your life?  Is there a “Quest?”

Your life – my life – is a story. And they are changing, this time in pretty big chunks.

Chances are if you are at or beyond midlife, you are asking these types of questions (Sourced from “Zen and the Art of Making a Living”)

  • Is there a story to my life?
  • What am I doing here?
  • Do I have a basic philosophy of life that is my own?
  • What is my part in this grand play of life?
  • How can I make a difference?
  • What do I want to do?  What must I do?
  • What can I realistically achieve in the span of my life?

Big, important questions, all accelerated by something we can’t even see.

Let me wrap with more from Laurence C. Boldt as he writes about crafting the story of your life:

“If I could look at it objectively, would I want to read the story of my life? Does it grab and hold my attention? Does it have the elements of a good story: challenges to overcome, growth, direction, confidence, a larger-than-self purpose? If the answer is no, then perhaps the main character needs development; the plot needs to be clarified, expanded, sharpened: or excitement needs to get generated by increasing the tension between what could be and what is. If you can honestly answer yes, then – where is your next chapter going?”

Be safe. Stay with the “guidance” despite the whiplash,

Crank up the intensity of the questions!

I, for one, have determined the main character in my story needs serious development. That’s why I write. You, as a reader, are a player in that development. I appreciate you and thank you for joining the list. And especially for your comments.  If this resonates – or not – let me know what you think with a comment below.

If you are not on the list, scoot over to www.makeagingwork.com and hop on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your Bucket List Just Got Blown Up – Now What?

 

2020 COVID-19 bucket-list revision:

Daughter’s country club wedding

  • Backyard, limit to 20 guests, buy masks, cancel caterer, saved $45K.

Bahama/Mediterranean cruise

  • Vision of floating petri-dish won’t go away – cancel, try to recover deposit.

Early retirement

  • Hmmm – maybe these non- or semi-retirement heretics are on to something. Buy some books. Find therapist to help with the adjustment.

Upscale condo at upscale retirement community

  • Get off the waiting list, kiss off the deposit. Sounds very much like cruise petri-dish but without the motion.

Trips to Machu Picchu and Buddhist ruins, Sri Lanka

  • Masks in that heat – yuck! Neighbor’s 2-hour presentation of pictures of same – incredibly boring!! Replace with discovering our own state, driving.

BMW X-7

  • Timing belt and new tires for 2016 MDX wins this one.

Use current bucket list to start charcoal grill

  • Start over – refocus on what’s important.
  • Don’t expect a return to “normal” – what is normal anyway?

I’m not much of a bucket-list guy. It goes with my stoic personality and increasingly hermit-like and insufferable nature. Get me my $5,000 Martin acoustic guitar and I’m pretty well complete. Oh, and a set of custom-fitted Taylormades/Pings/Callaways while you’re filling the bucket. I won’t bother you again after that.

I get a strange satisfaction nudging my decades-old Ford Exploder (that’s not a typo because it could, any moment) past 180,000 miles.

I’ve never understood buying one vehicle for what you could buy three Honda Accords.

So, I’m not having to adjust much but I know most are – and I’m sympathetic. Bucket lists have a goal-setting tone to them, positive visualization, hope and encouragement.

Until they don’t. And I suspect they are now just the opposite. And in need of the revisit.

I suggest it’s time for the revisit and a capitulation to the fact that this “new normal”, whatever it ends up being, is not going to support heavy consumerist bucket lists. Something’s gotta give. Something’s gonna change.

An outside perspective

I’m lateraling the ball this week to one of my favorite bloggers, Susan Williams at Boomingencore.com. Her latest post (see it here) was full of gems, including a 12-minute podcast interview with Dr. Sean Hayes, a clinical psychologist who shares some important perspectives on where we are, including dealing with bucket lists.

Here’s a link to the entire interview. I think you’ll find it enlightening and helpful.

Do you have a bucket list? If so, are you revisiting it? How has your perspective changed regarding a bucket list? Tell us where you are – we’d love to get your feedback.