“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:
- I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.
- I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.
- I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.
- I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.
- 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.
How to Avoid Becoming a “Bored Boomer” – Part Two
Last week, the first article of this three-part series on avoiding boomer boredom focused on (1) finding your essential self, (2) reintegrating yourself and (3) starting a lifestyle business. This week, we’ll take a look at three more boomer boredom fighters.
Why all the concern about boredom?
Boredom can lead to the development of non-healthy habits and erosion of the good habits that contributed to previous life and career successes. Stagnation and even narcissism are by-products of boredom as is the threat of a slide into depression.
The evidence is overwhelming that depression and other dark-side elements are becoming significant factors in the lives of retired boomers. For instance, these sobering facts are emerging:
Here are three more anti-boredom suggestions for you to consider:
#4: Adopt generativity as a goal.
Deep down, don’t we all want to check out having left a footprint of some sort? Generativity is one path for accomplishing that.
Erik Erikson, Pulitzer Prize-winning developmental psychologist best known for coining the term “identity crisis”, put forth a life model with an adult stage that includes the task of “generativity.” Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines generativity as “a concern for people besides self and family that usually develops during middle age; a need to nurture and guide younger people and contribute to the next generation.”
Erikson considered generativity equivalent to paying-it-forward, saying “I am what survives me.”
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot is a Harvard professor and preeminent expert on the importance of relationships in the development of young people. As an advocate of generativity, she underscores the importance of boredom avoidance by stating that those who fail to be generative in this late adulthood period “ – are prone to stagnation and narcissism. They often begin to indulge themselves as if they were their one and only child.”
We’ve all seen friends, family members, acquaintances or former workmates slip into roleless, goalless lifestyles in retirement. Invariably, the results are an accelerated physical and/or mental decline. Conversely, we’ve all likely known those who have sustained a vibrant vitality and perhaps an extended longevity through their commitment to volunteerism or other methods of generativity.
The opportunities for generativity are endless and varied. Maybe it’s being a tutor for underprivileged, inner-city kids; or providing resume writing and interview skills training for new tech school graduates; or participation in a Big Brother program.
Whatever form it may take, it is guaranteed to kill boredom when it’s aligned with a passion and a skill set. Personally, I never achieved the level of motivation and daily enthusiasm in the corporate world that I do now in my own version of generativity. I’m striving each day to craft an effective message and process to help the one or two generations behind me to overcome ageism and the negative voices around them about aging and to unleash the power and impact they can bring forward in their second half of life.
Hand-in-glove with #4, becoming a mentor is a concentrated form of generativity. Bringing forward skills and experiences gained in the first 40-50 years of life and career can provide advice and connections that can help a mentee, or group of mentees, reach heights otherwise not possible alone.
But there is also a serendipitous, anti-boredom component to mentoring. Mentorship benefits are shared by both mentees and mentors. In a successful mentoring relationship, the mentor gains new perspectives and experiences growth along with satisfaction by providing guidance to the mentee.
Being a mentor helps one to become a more understanding human being and helps keep skills fresh and minds young. To not mentor may mean losing touch with our own excellence.
Author, speaker, and coach John Maxwell reminds us in his book “Intentional Living: Choosing a Life That Matters” that “- significance and selfishness don’t go together. You cannot be a selfish, self-centered person and live a life that matters.” He also reminds us that most people who don’t add value to others do it, not out of hate or self-centeredness, but out of indifference. Indifference and a life of significance cannot coexist.
I wonder. Could indifference be a first cousin to boredom?
#6: Craft a new 25-year life plan
One of my favorite “virtual mentors” is Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, the most successful entrepreneur coaching program on the planet. Sullivan has coached over 18,000 successful entrepreneurs in his 40+ years as a coach.
He has a number of fundamental rules that have guided his success and that he teaches his coaching students. He has a book entitled “The Laws of Lifetime Growth” in which the first law is “Always make sure your future is bigger than your past in terms of what you are interested in and what your goals are.”
How’s that for a boredom antidote?
Accompanying this rule, Sullivan has, for years, kept a rolling 25-year plan out in front of him with progressively bigger and more aggressive goals built on what each succeeding year has brought him in terms of new learning and technology developments. His life and impact get bigger every year.
Dan is not a bored – or a boring – guy.
At 74 (in 2018) and with a goal of living to 156, I have a hunch he will be around longer than most and will continue to rack up successes in transforming lives much longer than others in the coaching professions.
Antithetical to the core!
Yup, it’s all antithetical and totally contrarian. It flies in the face of what we’ve been led to believe that this final phase of life is destined to be: a time to land, not launch; a time to wind down, not wind up; a time to kick back not kick-off; a time to ebb not flow; a time to decline, not develop; a time to retire, not rewire.
Social expectations will tell us a 25-year plan at 55 or 65 or 75 is nuts. Certainly, I’ve grown accustomed to the raised eyebrows
when I reveal that, at 76, I’m refining my 25-year plan. And it is a work-in-progress. But I’ve come to realize that a goal to live past 100 or develop a lifestyle business that will outlive me will never happen if I don’t articulate it and plan for it in my mind.
A goal unarticulated is never achieved.
What would you like your life to look like 25 years from now? Can you visualize it as vibrant, active and highly mobile, devoid of dementia, drool and Depends? What would you like said of you at your funeral? You might even try writing your own eulogy to kickstart your 25-year plan development. Or write a 100th birthday speech.
Don’t be ordinary!
Next week, we’ll wrap up the series with three more boomer boredom antidotes. Let me know what you think about 1-6. Scroll down and leave a comment or a criticism. We welcome your feedback and suggestions.
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How to Avoid Becoming a “Bored Boomer” – Part One
A Certified Financial Planner friend of mine shared a story over breakfast recently. One of his long-standing clients – let’s call him Jack – who had fully retired six months earlier called out of the blue with a plea for help. Having entered his retirement in great financial shape, his call went something like this: “John, you’ve got to help me. I’ve got to go back to work doing something. I’m going crazy not having something important to do.”
A “Bored Boomer Retiree”
Jack appears to be another captive of an irrelevant retirement model – a casualty of an off-the-cliff leap from labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation. An emerging rebel against the archaic, politically-inspired artificial finish line called traditional retirement.
Seventy-eight million strong and hitting this artificial finish line of 65 at the rate of 10,000 per day, Boomers everywhere are beginning to discover that retirement, as we’ve known it for decades, needs redefining.
A 2016 Federal Reserve Study revealed that a full 1/3 of retirees eventually reconsider retirement and return to work on either a full or part-time basis.
Another study published in 2019 by the Rand Corporation revealed that 39% of workers 65 or older who were currently employed had retired for a period but decided to return to the workplace for more of their “golden years.
A share of this trend can be attributed to the fact that 2 of 3 retirees enter retirement having given little or no thought to the non-financial components of retirement life only to discover that those “soft side” elements play a much larger role in retirement than the “hard-side” financial elements where the major planning effort is focused leading up to retirement.
Unfortunately, this discovery often comes later than it should. Much of early, prime-time retirement is wasted as a result of this lack of non-financial planning. New retirees typically experience a 1-5 year ”retirement honeymoon” period, during which the mental, social, physical, and spiritual challenges emerge that were never discussed or planned for in the offices of their financial planner.
Issues such as:
NOTE: My 5/14/18 blog provides additional insight into the dark side elements of retirement.
How do you avoid becoming a “bored boomer?” A three-part series.
This article is the first of a three-article series on this topic, each with three suggestions for avoiding this plight. You don’t have to be retired to consider these. In fact, considering them at the pre-retirement stage will bring even more benefits.
Suggestion #1: Unmuzzle your “essential self”.
What was your 6-, 8-, or 10-year-old-self good at, passionate about, naturally drawn to, and undeterred in pursuing before parents, peers, professors, politicians, and pundits tamped it all down and out? There are clues to your essential self in all of that.
In her seminal book “Finding Your Own North Star, Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live”, Martha Beck reminds us that most are “- – responsible citizens who have muzzled their essential selves in order to do what they believe is the ‘right thing’”.
For most of us that “right thing” has been 30-40 years of “cubicle nation” building someone else’s dream believing that a fuzzily-defined, nirvanic, rewarding escape waiting at the end will be worth it.
For some, the “right thing” is in step with the “essential self” – for most, not so much. Why else would we covet getting away from it and “give up” or “withdraw”? Which, by the way, is the definition of “retire.”
When the “right thing” goes away or morphs into that “rewarding escape”, we can find ourselves face-to-face with that uncomfortable question: “Who am I and why am I here?”
There it is – the perfect mental launching pad for resurrecting what really lit you up before social expectations locked you down.
I’m slower than most.
I chased the “right thing” across four different industries for over three decades and traveled deep into my sixties before finally unmuzzling my essential self and honoring my bent toward writing and teaching/coaching.
A couple of retired friends of mine are integrating their essential selves, passions, and their natural and acquired skills and leveraging them back into the marketplace where they will continue to do good.
For a recently retired hospital CEO in Missouri, it is choosing to broaden and deepen his passion for civic and community involvement through board-level positions to pay forward his executive administrative experience as well as satisfy a passion to serve. To satisfy another passion, he builds and refurbishes black-powder, muzzle-loader rifles.
For a retired nurse executive friend, it’s taking her doctorate in nursing and decades of top-level nurse management experience back into the marketplace to help nurses cope with the pressures of today’s broken healthcare system and be more caring patient advocates. She’s doing it through a childhood passion for writing and teaching, using the internet, social media, and book publishing.
Suggestion #2: Reintegrate yourself
I was tempted to suggest “reinvent” instead of “reintegrate.” The idea of reinvention is omnipresent these days, especially in the self-help world and particularly when it comes to those of us in the second half of life. Retirement itself has become a deserving target of reinvention.
I was persuaded to reject reinvention in favor of reintegration after considering the position taken on this by Marc Freedman, CEO and President of Encore.org and one of the nation’s leading experts on the longevity revolution. In a Harvard Business Review article “The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention” Freedman makes the point that reinvention is too daunting and not practical because it infers discarding accumulated life experience and starting over from scratch.
Freedman makes a very valid point in the article:
“Isn’t there something to be said for racking up decades of know-how and lessons, from failures as well as triumphs? Shouldn’t we aspire to build on that wisdom and understanding?
After years studying social innovators in the second half of life — individuals who have done their greatest work after 50 —I’m convinced the most powerful pattern that emerges from their stories can be described as reintegration, not reinvention. These successful late-blooming entrepreneurs weave together accumulated knowledge with creativity, while balancing continuity with change, in crafting a new idea that’s almost always deeply rooted in earlier chapters and activities.”
Reintegration dovetails nicely with point #1 above. Combining accumulated skills and life experiences with a forgotten or long-suppressed passion won’t give boredom a foothold. And it lifts away the intimidating idea of a reinvention.
More and more Boomers are finding this to be a path to an energizing, inspirational second career in which income, new meaning and contribution and service intersect.
Suggestion #3: Start a lifestyle business
Can you imagine a greater boredom antidote than taking #1 and #2 above and putting them together into a lifestyle business?
What is a lifestyle business? Three components:
But wait, I’ve busted my hump for 40 years to get away from business. Plus starting a business at any age is too risky.
Well, let me take some air out of this instinctive negative reaction.
In 2016, new entrepreneurs 55-64 swelled to over 25% of new businesses started according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurship. Check out these two Kaufmann graphs and note how over 50% of business startups happened by Boomers
Those figures didn’t change much in 2020:
Source: https://indicators.kauffman.org/indicator/rate-of-new-entrepreneurs
And according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report, Self-Employment in the U.S., the self-employment rate among workers 65 and older (who don’t incorporate) is the highest of any age group in America: 15.5 percent. In sharp contrast, it’s 4.1 percent for ages 25 to 34.
Consider this: Boomers with experience have an entrepreneurial edge in today’s knowledge-based economy. And start-up costs and risk levels have been mitigated like never before by digital technology.
Still skeptical? Here’s a Youtube video by Miles Beckler, internet marketing and entrepreneurship guru (an apparent Gen X’er) with ten ideas for lifestyle businesses just to prime your thinking pump.
I’ll list them here in case you aren’t into Youtube or just want the cliff notes. Go to his video for details.
This list barely scratches the surface of the types of businesses being started by enterprising – and formerly bored – boomers.
Stay tuned. Next week, we’ll jump into three more tactics to save ourselves from Boomer Boredom.
How have you avoided Boomer Boredom? Would love to hear about what’s kept you out of that abyss. Scroll down and leave a comment or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.
Don’t forget the free e-book “Launching Your Full-life Potential” available when you subscribe to this weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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?
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:
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.
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.
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:
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.
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:
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:
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:
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.
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.”