Consider a “Quest”, Not a “Rest” in Your Retirement

“The good things in life are not things.”

So said a bumper-sticker on a Subaru I was behind as I was leaving Home Depot for the umpteenth time this week (it’s springtime spruce-up and planting time as I write).

I think the sticker is a mantra that’s resonating for a growing number of us boomers and pre-boomers.

At a time when my wife and I are “purging” in preparation for an eventual home downsize, this sticker hits home.

I sense there is a lot of major purging going on in boomer households these days. Purging comes up in a lot of conversations with fellow boomers and pre-boomers.  Not as much as colonoscopies and knee, shoulder, and hip surgeries, but still at a pretty good clip.

We got another clue this week when we tried to drop off a pickup load of unneeded furniture at one of the local Goodwill facilities and they turned us away.  They already have too much of that stuff, they said.

Egad!  Nobody wants our stuff!

Doesn’t bode well for landfills, I’m afraid.

Not two hours after my Home Depot run, an article published by MarketWatch hit my news feed about a Google poll that revealed that the #1 question asked about retirement is “How Much Do I Need to Retire?”

Not surprising.  But, money is “things” isn’t it?

In our Western culture, we’re pretty wrapped around the axle about having enough money to enter into the mystical, uncharted territory called retirement.  Because we’re living 20, 30 years longer than our grandparents/parents, we don’t much know what this territory is supposed to look like.

Up to this point, our lives had lots of societal/cultural checkpoints defining what to expect and what our lives should look like at each point.  Then we hit this end-of-career wall and suddenly the guardrails and checkpoints disappear.

A metaphor by Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, co-author of “From AGE-ING to SAGE-ING”, A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older” says it beautifully:

“From childhood to late adulthood, we’re like railroad trains that follow highly regular stretches of track to predictable destinations.  Then, as elderhood approaches, we reach the end of the line, only to discover that management hasn’t had the foresight to lay any more track.  We must get off the train and walk – but to where?  What is our next destination?”

It seems because we haven’t been here before, we generally don’t plan for it except for guessing at having enough money to enter into it comfortably.  And, logically, we don’t get much help in facing this new life void from the financial planner(s) who took us down the “paint-by-numbers” path to financial security.  Their work is done and they can pridefully say “you did it – congratulations – now go forth and – do ???????”

The “do what” is the rub.

Financial planners usually stop there.  Mental, physical, social, spiritual post-career elements are not “paint-by-numbers” issues and financial planners aren’t equipped to go there – or interested, thankfully. These soft-side components of planning your future apparently don’t pay very well – or at all.

There is one “what” we all know we don’t want.  We don’t want our grandparents or perhaps even our parent’s retirement – isolated; park bench; bingo, bridge, and bocce ball; extended morbidity; urine-scented nursing home; walkers, wheelchairs and oxygen bottles.

But rather than plan on how to avoid that type of end-stage (Free hint: exercise, diet, social engagement, continuous learning, continuing to work, giving back/paying forward), we focus on a paint-by-the-numbers, magic figure designed to buy our way out of all that.

Then, a few years in, we find it ain’t quite like advertised.  We begin to realize:

“Things” don’t buy legacies.  “Things” buy disposal problems.

 “Things” have never bought happiness.  “Things” diffuse our energy.

“Things” don’t extend evolution.  “Things” deplete our planet.

“Things” don’t build friendships.  “Things” create comparisons and jealousies.

 “Things” cause us to buy things we don’t really need, with money we don’t want to spend to impress people we don’t even like.

What’s real here?

Continuing through the entire MarketWatch article gets a little freaky and may cause mild-to-severe depression or the application of a corkscrew to a second bottle of wine.

For instance, the author states further in response to the #1 question: “ – most people won’t be able to retire the way they want with just $1 million.”

Just a million? Oh, really?  Tell me it isn’t so!!

Finance guru Suze Orman says the magic retirement number is $5 million!

According to a recent survey from Charles Schwab, which looked at 1,000 401(k) plan participants nationwide, Americans believe they need $1.7 million to retire.

Enough already – can we bring this back down to earthly reality?

If my readership were representative of the general population, 60% of us would have zero, zilch, zip retirement assets.  And only 11% of us would have $500,000 in retirement savings.

The median account balance for those with retirement savings accounts is estimated at $40,000.

Isn’t this latter figure close to “beans and weanies” and “under-a-bridge domicile” territory?

I know, as one of my readers, you do better than that – or aren’t hung up about it.

But just for grins: if you’ve got the $1.7 million in the bank, raise your hand.

OK – thanks and congratulations to all three of you!

Are we asking the right question?

If we were to flip the poll and ask “What is the least asked question about retirement?” what would you guess it would be.

I’m putting my money on: “Why do I have to retire?”

So maybe rather than succumb to the cultural pressure to enter into this unnatural act with its politically-inspired, artificial-finish-line, we should be asking: “Where does it say I have to do this retirement thing?”

I know.  It’s a real ego bruise and not easy to tolerate the fact that you may be tagged as a loser because you’ve chosen not to retire – early or late.  We’ve got a ways to go before un-retirement or semi-retirement will become the new prestige, replacing the current prestige tagged to early retirement.

But I sense we are getting there at a pretty good pace.  I’m trying to accelerate that pace. That’s a big part of my quest.

How about a “quest” instead of “rest”?

Speaking of a quest, do you happen to have one for this period between middle age and true old age?

When we succumb to the intrigue and hype of a traditional vocation-to-vacation retirement, we set ourselves up to slide insidiously to an early demise at a time when we can be kicking some serious tail with our accumulated skills, talents, wisdom and maturity.

We don’t have to look too far or too deep to see evidence that underscores the downsides of removing ourselves from the mainstream of life through retirement:

  1. We still “live too short and die too long” in this culture. Extended morbidity rates and early-on-set frailty are still too prevalent, costing us multiple-billions in late-life health care costs.  The sedentary lifestyle of traditional retirement, the accompanying withdrawal from social engagement and learning, and lack of purpose combine to rob us of our full-life potential.
  2. Depression, divorce and suicide rates among the retired have reached alarming rates.
  3. Research done by the Blue Zones organization has shown that retirement doesn’t exist in the societies with the longest-living citizens where most citizens typically “live long and die short.”

We can turn to some notables for practical (and perhaps uncomfortable) perspectives on the concept of retirement:

  1. Strategic Coach founder, Dan Sullivan,74, refers to retirement as the “ultimate casualty” and advocates for “making your future bigger than your past” regardless of age.
  2. Walter Bortz, 89, semi-retired Stanford geriatric physician and author of seven books dealing with healthy aging refers to retirement in his book “Dare to Be 100” as “statutory senility.”
  3. Warren Buffett, still going strong at 87, says to avoid retirement. His rationale for avoiding retirement is straightforward and simple:
    • You’re healthy
    • You won’t have a fixed income
    • You stay engaged and productive
    • You’ll continue to mentor
    • You can leverage your knowledge
  1. William Shatner , 88, refuses to retire and continues to work like his hair is on fire.
  2. Ken Langone (co-founder of Home Depot), 82, says: “ I’m not going to stop.  I still go to work every day.  If I didn’t have to sleep, I’d work 24 hours a day!
  3. Boone Pickens, 90, still keeps an office that he goes to every day saying, “Retirement isn’t an option for me. When you retire you have time to do what you love, and I love to work.“
  4. Fred Bartlit, 87, is a West Point grad, former Army Ranger, new author, strength-training fitness expert, back-bowl skier and a golfer who shoots his age. He still is a practicing attorney in the hugely successful law firm he founded.

These are all folks who seem to have a “quest” of some sort in their lives – and aren’t so much into “rest” as a lifestyle.

Somewhere along the road over the last 80 years or so, we’ve developed this attitude that we’re supposed to “rest” when we get older.  For decades now, we’ve tagged 65 as the magic date at which this “rest period” should begin.

There is a multitude of problems with that.

Let’s start with the fact that our bodies and minds are not designed to “rest”.  There’s nothing about aging that says we are supposed to stop challenging our bodies and minds. When we make “rest” our lifestyle, the insidiously destructive nature of inactivity begins to take over.

If we don’t use it, we lose it – body power or brain power.

Just look at the extended morbidity that still pervades our culture.  We start “resting” and the decline gradually sets in.

We’ve been sold on the idea that we need to “slow down, enjoy life, take it easy, kick back, smell the roses, etc., etc.”  Then, before you know it, we are in such decrepit shape that we can’t stoop over to smell the rose.  Or our brain is gone and we wouldn’t know a rose scent from a bad case of flatulence.

No friends. No money. No purpose.

Those are the reasons that people die early, according to Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.  All three seem to reflect “rest” instead of “quest”.

A “quest” is a sense of purpose with action behind it.  It will almost automatically mean an increase in social engagement and more friends because any quest is going to involve touching lives in some way.

A quest can serve and still generate income.  Author Mitch Anthony refers to it as a “playcheck” i.e. doing what you really want to do, are good at, that serves others and generates an income.

Start a quest

In mythology and fiction, a quest is a difficult journey toward a goal. It often involves a changed character of the hero.

You are the hero of your life.  A quest in the third age brings to bear the components that help ensure a longer life with greater vitality by engaging mind and body, avoiding the deteriorating nature of the comfort zone, and deepening the social engagement so vital to good mental and physical health.

Evidence in support of the physical and mental advantages of a late-life sense of purpose/quest is overwhelming as is the evidence of the downside of not having one.

Let us know what your thoughts are on this, especially if you have a quest in your life.  We’d love to know what your quest is and how you came to find it.  Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Also, if you haven’t, subscribe to our weekly newsletter at www.makeagingwork.com and receive a copy of my free ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

 

Is Your Geezer Showing?

 

Photo by Roland Kay-Smith on Unsplash

Call me crazy!  Call me unkind? Call me unsympathetic! Call me insulting!  Call me self-centered!

Just don’t call me illogical!

You can call me paranoid – because you would be right.  Because I admit to a slight case of paranoia developed over the last decade-and-a-half or so.

I’m terrified that I might become a “geezer”!

You know what I’m referring to – that grumpy, immobile, smelly old fart that you swore you would never become.

Yes, that redundant, useless “elderly” that has been shuttled to the sidelines, park bench or nursing home by a youth-oriented culture that prefers we are out-of-sight – a society that largely resents us taking up space and using up valuable oxygen.

My paranoia is so real that four years ago I began penning a 45,000-word book by the same title:  “Is Your Geezer Showing? Ten Steps To Not Becoming That Grumpy, Immobile, Smelly Old Fart That You Said You Would Never Become.”

The book is stuck in terminal edit mode. Some say I should pull the trigger and put it out there.  Others say it’s too close to the bone and “unfriendly.”

Add those to a long, creative list of reasons for keeping it on my voluminous procrastination stack.

Maybe if you read the introduction, you could advise me as to whether or not you feel it should stay on the stack.  Here it is:

I dread the thought of being called a “geezer”. 

I’m grateful that, so far, it’s happened rarely in my life, usually in jest in a playful conversation with a group of similarly-aged friends, geezer candidates all. 

But now, deep into my eighth decade, I have an increasing dread of hearing that moniker aimed at me, whether playfully or earnestly.

To be a geezer is not a destination that I want in my life.

Perhaps I’m overly self-conscious, paying too much attention to the external – the eye-bags, jowls, wrinkles, hair in the wrong places, turkey-neck, age-spots, persistent belt-overhang, ad infinitum.

Perhaps it’s resentment.  I don’t need anyone’s help to remind me that the calendar is getting shorter.

Perhaps it’s because it’s an ageist term and I’m on a crusade against ageism.

Perhaps I’m feeling some guilt about having used the term, under my breath, on those occasions where an “elderly” is causing me some level of inconvenience – slow driver, holding up a line, etc.

Perhaps it’s because it strikes too close to home, forcing a face-off with the reality that I’m at a point, at the three-quarter century mark, where I could easily become one.

But most of all, I dread the term being directed at me because it means I may have demonstrated something that invited it.  And that bothers me because it is something I have considerable control over.

This rather silly pre-occupation roused my curiosity about the origin of the word and how it came to carry such a derogatory meaning.

 What is a geezer?  What really defines a geezer?  When does “geezerdom” start?  What would it look like?  What is it about me that would elicit this lovely term from someone?

How does one avoid becoming one? 

That’s where I intend(ed) to go with the book. 

A geezer definition

Merriam Webster defines a geezer as: “a queer, odd or eccentric person – especially of elderly men.” 

Wikipedia says: “the term typically refers to a cranky old man.” 

There, you see – just what I don’t want!

I did a very informal, unscientific poll of friends, family, and acquaintances to see how consistent other people’s descriptions of geezer are.  Here’s a sample of their responses to the question “What do you think of when I say the word “geezer?”

“An old man that’s going nowhere.  Not so much age-specific but attitude specific.  My dad is 85 and not a geezer – very active, still working developing a mobile sawmill, hunts, and fishes, traps, involved in the community.  Conversely, my aunt, his sister, ‘hunkered down’ early and has health problems as a result.”  Fellow Toastmaster Club Member

“A guy, older, some hair, funny whiskers on his chin.  Something you wouldn’t want to be.  Not age specific –more of an attitude.”  My wife (Note:  I’m relieved she didn’t just say “You!”)

“Old guy bent over on a cane. Hook nose, warts, snarling.” Member of extended family

“A cross old man who sits on the porch and every other word is f*#@, drinking a cheap geezer beer in a sleeveless undershirt.” Name and relationship withheld for obvious reasons – I really don’t know this person!

I suspect you may have your own description – most likely not very uplifting either.

Age-ing to Sage-ing

I have Rabbi Zalman Schacter-Shalomi and Ronald S. Miller, co-authors of “From AGE-ING to SAGE-ING; A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older” to thank for re-stimulating the latent geezer paranoia in me.

If you share even a modicum of my paranoia, you might consider plowing through this challenging but seminal book on becoming an “elder” instead of just “elderly”.

Here’s a taste: by way of encouraging continued and deeper learning, the authors remind us that we seriously underutilize our brain capacity and that we can counteract the ravages of brain cell disintegration associated with ageing by increasing neural connections through meditation (pick your own form) and lifelong learning.

Specifically, they say:  “- – elders need to upgrade the number and range of programs that their brains are able to process.  Without doing this, elders will continue to be devalued by society as a useless and redundant population.”

Ouch!  See, there is more justification for my paranoia.

Pouring more fuel on the fire, the authors quote the head of a Sufi order in the West and a respected meditation person who says:

“If you don’t know that you can be a new person, you will continue dragging your old self-image into the brave new world.  You will be outrun and pronounced redundant, unable to make a contribution to the inexorable advance of evolution on our planet.”

And then the paragraph that motivated this post:

“Who needs “old geezers” around if all they do is deplete the Social Security system and give back little to society?  But if we honored elders for their moral and spiritual leadership, we would value this form of ‘invisible productivity’ as necessary for our survival.”

I guess I hadn’t really thought of my quest of encouraging “elderhood” instead of “elderly” as one of “invisible productivity” but I’m motivated by the term.

It’s a concept worthy of deeper understanding.  Further into the book, the authors relate it to “holding the field” whereby we contribute to our “personal and collective well-being by growing beyond our current level of understanding”, recognize our inherent potential and accumulated wisdom and thus empower ourselves to pay forward and “hold the field” for those behind us.

That’s all kind of “anti-geezer”, don’t you think?

Maybe I should finish the book.  I’m going back to see how much, if any, of it will help anybody “hold the field.”  Perhaps I’ve been “invisibly productive” and not known it.

Your thoughts on the matter will be taken seriously.  Leave them below.

I’ll let you know what I decide.

 

And the Oscar for a Fulfilling Third Age Goes to – – – –

Image by analogicus from Pixabay

I’ve had some pretty deep conversations over the last six months with some successful, deeply-skilled execs who are looking at, or are early into, the retirement phase of their lives.  Each conversation is an adventure, each with uniqueness and depth that challenges my listening skills and my ability to inject something original or stimulating into the conversation.

Occasionally, I don’t add much to the conversation and I come away richer with the coaching role having been somewhat reversed.  When I remember to turn my humility meter up and move Mr. Ego aside, I end up growing.

Most of these conversations happen because these folks were referred to me or they found me because  I have hung out my “retirement coach” shingle.  I really don’t like the moniker so much because I’m not a fan of retirement as it has been defined and drilled into us for the last half-century.  But I stick with the distasteful (and confusing, for most) title because the entrenchment of the word retirement is so deep that I can’t expect it to be easily dislodged.

I toyed with different titles/brands that would be more appropriate for my quest and world-view on this topic.  Like “plan now for your post-career life before it kicks your ass coach” but it was too tough to come up with a logo – and try getting that on a business card.

If I could pinpoint some common themes that come from these stimulating conversations, three come to mind:

  1. Most have their financial s**t together, having been advised by their all-knowing, all-prescient financial advisors (tongue inserted in cheek as I write) that they can now “retire” and not have to be concerned about their income going forward.
  2. They are fearful, despite their advisor’s advice, of seeing that sumptuous portfolio go backward by even one nickel. In other words, they, like most, are more fearful of loss than motivated by gain.
  3. The road map into this phase of their lives is shrouded in fog. Or, as one recently-retired hospital CEO told me, “it’s fuzzy out there.”

Despite their successful track records, their performance under fire in high-stress environments, their ability to direct and inspire large groups of people and their ability to plan and achieve against those plans, nearly all these folks carry a significant level of uncertainty about “what’s next” for them, post-career.

To the person, they don’t need me to tell them that 30 years of golf, pickle-ball, bingo, bunko, or boche-ball will get old and lead to an early demise.

An Oscar for O-S-C-R

Just this morning, I had a very uplifting conversation with a freshly-retired hospital CEO referred to me because he was prime, according to the referrer, to have a “retirement conversation”, whatever that meant.

Following 30+ years of running hospitals, this exec decided, at 63, to voluntarily hang up his cleats, primarily because he was burned out and concerned about the impact of his job on his health and his marriage.

He too had been advised by his financial planner that he is “OK”.   I did sense this achiever was not totally comfortable with that prediction but proceeded nonetheless.

What I found different with this exec from most I talk with is that he was able to articulate a plan involving four different projects he wanted to undertake in this next phase, all built around the skills and experience from his 30 years of leadership and problem-solving.   They included hospital CEO mentoring, public speaking, a member on 2-3 boards, strategy consulting to 3-5 mid-sized hospitals.

In addition to this, he is taking his health more seriously (pre-diabetic, he has lost 30 pounds since retiring) and he and his wife are doing more things together, including periodic trips to Kansas City and Indianapolis to visit/babysit new grandkids.  They are also resurrecting some other travel plans that have been long-delayed.

As I listened and applauded this ex-exec for his forward thinking, I was reminded of something written by Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality” where he said (I’m paraphrasing slightly):

“Millions are in a mad rush to get to – –  the sidelines. Many of us, however, have already seen enough of our parents’ and forerunners’ retirement scenarios to know that this is not the life for us.  We have figured out that our lives will be full of challenge, relevance, stimulation, and occupational adventure.”

I like those four nouns at the end.  That’s what this exec is doing.  I moved the nouns around and came up with an acronym for which I can start awarding an Oscar for post-career/third age planning – Occupational adventure; Stimulation; Challenge; Relevance – O-S-C-R.

So I have my first Oscar recipient.  He doesn’t know he’s received the award – or that it even exists (it didn’t until I had the conversation this morning).  He signed up for my blog and maybe he will recognize he is the recipient if he reads today’s blog.  If not, maybe I’ll find time to get creative and craft up an Oscar-type graphic and surprise him with it.

I’ll keep it in reserve for the few others that I encounter that have ventured into the fog confident that something will happen – something more than a park bench on the sidelines with an occasional pickle-ball match or 49 hours of G-o-T and other assorted TV gems.

I’m looking for Oscar nominees.  Let me know if you know of any.  Or volunteer yourself if you think you fit.

The Importance of Work in Retirement – A Video

Reid Stone is a friend and fellow retirement coach.  He extended me the honor of inviting me to be the first guest on his newly launched podcast at his home base website www.mylifesencore.com.

Click here to go to the page on his site to view the 23-minute video interview. 

We chose to talk about the importance of work in retirement.

In addition to the video, Reid has also provided a transcript of our conversation.

Hope you enjoy and benefit.  Leave me your comments below

Does Your Life-planning Go Beyond the Actuarial Tables?  It should.

In my multiple roles as recruiter, retirement coach, and career transition specialist, I have the good fortune to talk with some amazing, talented and successful people who have entered into their “third age” of life.  That’s the new extended and unchartered territory between the end of mid-career jobs and parenting duties and the beginning of dependent old age.

I often ask the question: “How long do you expect to live?”

Typical answers are – –

  1. I haven’t thought about it.
  2. I don’t want to think about it
  3. Oh, probably the average life span.
  4. I guess my genetics will determine that.

A few – very few – will volunteer an actual number.

One exception surfaced recently when I spoke with a 53-year-old business exec who is unwavering in predicting her ultimate demise (as in, dead) at or around 75 because of a collection of infirmities that have beset her immediate family, past and present – cancer, dementia to name the most common.  She has set a firm “full retirement” age of 65 so she can prepare for the 10-year downward slide that she feels is inevitable.

As usual, being the hammer that I am and with her innocently becoming an unsuspecting nail, I opposed her position by burying her in stats, facts, positive self-help clichés and – well, were you to hear a recording of the one-way exchange, you would appreciate why it’s unlikely she and I will have a further conversation.  She was gracious enough to sign off the conversation with a pleasant “so nice to meet you, Gary.  Hope you have a good weekend.”

This was on a Tuesday.

It’s a stylistic blind-spot that I’ve been unable to shake, to which my grown children will gladly attest.  In their 40’s, they still can sense when another “dad lecture” is about to emerge and they remain skilled in evasion tactics. 

They’ve turned out pretty darn good without having to experience the pile of pontifications poised for presentation in that crowded section of my mental hard-drive.

But, I remain undeterred in my belief that the self-fulfilling prophecy still has substance.  We can think our way into almost anything, including an early demise.

Or not.

The field of biocognition,  i.e. the mind and body communicating with each other, is teaching us that when we believe something our biology will comply.

So I guess if I choose to buy into the myth that my DNA is my destiny or if I accept that 80 is about the average age that I should expect to live to, well I subconsciously and subtly start paving the road to that end.

My daily life could get pretty miserable if I bought into only living to the average male life-span in the U.S. which is – yikes –  going backward and now is 78.69 years.

Since I just hit double-seven last month, I’m in fret-and-worry, end-of-life-planning territory if I let the averages guide my thinking.   I should be buying a cemetery plot since that’s sort of expected of my demographic.  But I’m not buying because several grand for a box and the culturally-infused ritual and “celebration” that I can’t attend just doesn’t compute for me.

My progeny have done well enough to pay to convert me to an urn of ashes.  And I’m sure they’ll agree to spread the results, without fanfare, in the Colorado River in the riffled-run 50 feet below the bridge over the at Ouray Ranch in Grand County, CO. That stretch has gifted me with a number of 20” rainbow trout over the years.

So, unlike the aforementioned exec, I choose to be an outlier.  I stay camped on my goal to make 112.5 as the number for the end of my dependent old age.  And, my dependent-old-age period – the morbidity stage – is to be two weeks or less.  Or, ideally, non-existent as in face-down in the previously referenced stretch of the Colorado River having fooled another of those 20” rainbows.

Oh, I get it – there may be a truck out there on the interstate with my number on it that could make this my last blog.   Or some critical organ cells could decide to go rogue.  But what good is there in that visualization?

I believe my biology is following my beliefs.

If I don’t look my age, which I don’t, it’s not my genetics.  If I don’t act my age, which I don’t, it’s about my beliefs.  If I don’t feel 77 – well I can’t say what that’s about because I’ve never been 77 before.   I just know I’m more energized, motivated and purposeful than at any other point in my life and I’m convinced my biology is listening and tagging along.

So, with total deference to all the actuaries in the world (aren’t you glad somebody likes and wants that job?), I’m ignoring their rear-view mirror research and going the outlier route.   I’m out to bend that average life span back up but I need companions to make that happen.  See my earlier appeal here.

Maybe you are up for it – maybe not.  Maybe it’s easier to accept actuarial fate and have your mind help your body check out earlier than necessary.  But maybe you accept the validity of a biocognitive relationship that is the on-ramp to becoming a longevity outlier and feeling good enough to enjoy it.

It’s a choice.  There are very few things in life that we have full control over.  Our thinking is one of those. Any of us can be rebels with a worthy cause that question and challenge the culturally-imposed portals that determine the way to transition through life.

We have the option to step out of that collective reality and make the actuaries look silly.  I suspect they wouldn’t mind.

 

Aging Doesn’t Need to Be a B****

I hear it a couple of times every week:

“Getting old is a bitch!”

Or the overworked, less profane version:

“Getting old isn’t for sissies!”

Occasionally, someone will resort to an attempt at the comedic approach and borrow the classic:

“If I had known I was going to live this long, I would have taken better care of myself.”

I’m not saying it’s pandemic, but it’s bumping up against it with my demographic peer group.  I’m a septuagenarian (for you Pittsburgh Steelers fans, that means I’m in my seventies).

I know, if I don’t like it then stop talking to the complainers. I get it. But that’s not an option for me.  I’m out to change attitudes in this demographic, so continued engagement is part of my quest.

I’ll admit, however, there are a few in that ever-widening group that merit reconsideration for future conversations.  You know the type – the ones that are so negative about their age-related problems that you come away having a big chunk of the remaining oxygen sucked out of your own dwindling supply of positive about aging.

And then there are conversations about surgeries.

Holy crap, am I the only one that can’t avoid a conversation with a fellow second-halfer that doesn’t evolve into a long litany of completed and/or impending surgeries?

I recently had coffee with a good friend who I hadn’t seen for about 18 months.  My hopes for an invigorating conversation of substantive topics – which we have had in the past – quickly slid into a recap of his knee replacement, impending hip surgery, and his wife’s shoulder replacement and a few other physical infirmity issues I don’t recall because I tuned them out.

To top it off, we ran into a mutual friend and that conversation centered totally on his multiple surgeries since we had last seen him.

I came away with nothing more than coffee breath, two lost hours and 15 more miles on my similarly aged Explorer odometer.

Since my last surgery was fifteen years ago and it was just a thumb ligament repair, I find myself on a bit of an island in a lot of conversations when sexagenarians and above get together – or chat it up by phone.

Should I expect different attitudes?  Perhaps not.  It’s a product of three things, it would seem.

One, our venture beyond middle-age today is putting us into unfamiliar territory.  We haven’t been here before – living this much longer.  One hundred years ago, we checked out around 50, mostly succumbing to what retired Stanford geriatric physician Dr. Walter Bortz refers to as “lightning events” i.e. infectious diseases, injuries/accidents, malignancies, poisonings, wars.

Not so much today.

Second, that same medical establishment that stamped out many of those lightning events now has gotten really good at propping us up when we slump and extending us on into what is, for many, an extended period of agony and reduced mobility.

Third, much of our boomer and pre-boomer demographic have mental hard-drives crowded with outdated and inaccurate perceptions of the aging process.

To appreciate and realize full-life potential calls for a serious defrag.

Here are three myths, models, and messages that we boomers and pre-boomers seem to cling to that hold us back from making the second-half/third act the most productive and fulfilling time of our lives, including my two-cents worth on each:

  • Myth #1:  Aging equals infirmity

I’ve written before about the reaction people have when I tell them of my intent to live to 100 (recently revised up to 112 1/2 because my quest is growing and I need more time).  Repulsion is the prevalent reaction.  The mind’s eye immediately envisions urine-scented nursing homes, degraded function, frailty and loss of independence – at worst, dementia, drool and Depends.

Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised.  A Pew Research Group survey revealed that only 8 percent of us show interest in living to 100.  Sad.

Pew research, however, also tells us that, despite the disinterest, the centenarian population will grow eightfold by 2050.

Neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez, in the research for his book The Mindbody Code, did extensive analysis of healthy centenarians across varied cultures.  His research tells us that we can “ – modify ‘aging consciousness’ in a society that does not support growing older for what it is; an opportunity to increase your value and competence.”

One of the central themes he found among healthy centenarians everywhere was their defiance of disempowering cultural portals (beliefs) and “- a conviction to question what does not personally make sense to them” and to “- choose healthy defiance of the tribe where others opt for unhealthy compliance with it.”

In other words, not going with the crowd while sticking their finger in the eye of automatic senescence.

Our culturally-imbued vision of old age is wrong-headed.  Too often, it puts the concept of self-fulfilling prophecy into play and ignores – even denies – the fact that much of how we age is subject to intervention and under our control.

It’s never too late to put life-extending habits in place; it’s always too early to keep the bad ones alive.

Our bodies will respond to proper treatment at any age.

  • Myth #2: My DNA is my destiny

My wife and I did a simple exercise about 35 years ago that appeared in the Parade magazine insert in our Sunday newspaper (remember those?).  It suggested that we could predict our lifespan by averaging the ages of our parents and grandparents.  Based on the results, she’s been dead for seven years and I’ve been dead for eleven.

Currently, neither of us appear close to dead.

That little exercise spoke to the level of scientific understanding of the role of genetics that existed at the time. The belief that genetics drive our health and longevity continues as a common belief.

I’m surprised at how much it still influences our thinking in the face of overwhelming evidence that our fate is not sealed by our DNA – evidence spawned by the information being yielded through, amongst many bio-scientific discoveries, the sequencing of the genome.  The idea that we can influence how our genes express themselves continues to be a subject that many of those in my demographic aren’t aware of or are unwilling to accept if they are aware.

An important emerging field in genetics is called “epigenetics” which is the “biological mechanisms that switch genes on and off.”

Dr. Joseph Mercola, an osteopathic physician, offers some insight on genetics and epigenetics from his website MercolaTake Control of Your Health :

Epigenetics is probably the most important biological discovery since DNA. And it is turning the biological sciences upside down.

Now that we realize our fate is not sealed at the twining of our double helix, we avail ourselves to a whole new world of possibilities. There are things we can do to change our genetics, and therefore our health.

But beware — these changes can be good or bad. It works both ways.

You can improve your genetics or you can damage it.

In fact, you ARE changing your genetics daily and perhaps even hourly from the foods you eat, the air you breathe, and even by the thoughts you think.

You are the “caretaker” of your genetic roadmap.

Fundamentally, we’ve been called out if we are trying to hide behind genetics as an excuse for bad lifestyle habits.

  • Myth #3: Retirement is a good thing

I’ll be careful – and brief here.  Retirement is so entrenched in our culture and psyche I would be foolish to totally condemn it.  I have enough trouble sustaining relationships with my hermit qualities as it is.

What I will rail against is off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation retirement – the traditional model that emanated from a political decision in 1935, and that grew and became deeply embedded with the help of the financial services industry over the past 40-50 years.

The statistics showing accelerated physical deterioration, depression, suicides, substance abuse, and divorce that accompany this traditional retirement model are too compelling to ignore and to say that it’s the smartest, healthiest thing to do.

I advocate for unretirement or semi-retirement where the talents, skills, experience of 30-40 years of life are carried forward and shared with future generations in a way that pays forward while rewarding the “semi-retiree” a balanced lifestyle of leisure with contribution, service, and production rather than a sedentary, greedy, selfish lifestyle of consumption only.

‘Nough said.  Off the soapbox.  Thanks for tuning in.

Let me know your thoughts on all this.  Leave a comment below – and don’t be shy if I’ve offended you.  I grow from your feedback.

An Older?  Or An Elder?  A Question Every Boomer Retiree Needs to Confront.

Photo by Bruce Mars, Pexels

“Those who continue to grow as they grow older can develop long-term vision, whereas most become blinded by near-term needs and common neediness. Growing older happens to everyone. But growing wiser happens to those who awaken to a greater sense of meaning and purpose in life.

Without this added dimension, society produces ‘olders,’ who blindly hold onto life at any cost, rather than seasoned ‘elders,’ who help others find meaningful ways to live.”

That deeply convicting statement was made by the 74-year old author, storyteller, and mythologist Michael Meade in an interview conducted and published in a February Medium.com post by Dr. Connie Zweig, psychotherapist and best-selling author  Read it here.

Further in her article, Dr. Zweig suggests that those with visions of becoming an Elder do so because “—a ‘vision’ was calling them, rather than a ‘should’ pushing them.”

Leave it to me to stir up the pot and inject retirement into this esoteric, thought-provoking conversation. 

I can’t help it.

In the first sentence of Meade’s statement, he sums up what seems to happen in a typical traditional labor-to-leisure retirement (blinded by near-term needs and common neediness) and what doesn’t happen (growth, long-term vision).

The word retirement is derived from the French verb “retirer” which means to withdraw.   Growth is high on the list of things that many retirees withdraw from upon retirement. Well-meaning financial advisors operate more from pushing “shoulds.” They generally advocate for a no-growth, leisure environment and withdrawal from challenges rather than helping underwrite a “calling or vision.”

This reinforces a deeply entrenched retiree mindset that says: “Been there, done that – I’m tired of growing, learning, solving.  Time for time off.”   The backbone for continued healthy growth gets stripped out.

Without a growth component, a long-term vision – if it even existed – succumbs to no-growth habit patterns and eventually morphs into survival i.e. near-term needs and common neediness.

And becoming an “older.”

We’ll find the “live short, die long” track crowded with “olders” where physical and mental deterioration starts early after retirement, is unnecessarily accelerated through inactivity, and then protracted in its misery by the wonders of modern medical technology.  It’s where any kind of a vision or dream will give way to fighting a daily battle against lethargy, lack of purpose, and creeping frailty.

It’s the mindset and path behind the growing depression, suicide and divorce rates amongst retirees, and a contributor to our century-long longevity growth rate now starting to recede.

It’s a one-letter difference

The difference is a one letter change.

 

We likely will find Elders to be:

  • Enthusiastic, not lethargic
  • Energized, not bored
  • Emerging, not abandoning
  • Expanding, not diminishing
  • Expectant, not skeptical or cynical
  • Experimenting, not abstaining
  • Exploring, not ignoring
  • Enjoying, not tolerating
  • Engaged, not isolated
  • Educating, not withholding

But perhaps the biggest “E” of all:

Extending

Extending themselves into their communities, into the lives of others, especially the generations to come.  Extending their talents and accumulated wisdom and skills in a “pay-back” and “pay-it-forward” manner.

An Elder will be selfless, giving, producing; an Older will be selfish, greedy, consuming.

An Elder will live in the present unencumbered by fear and regrets.  An Older will time travel into the regrets of the past and the fear of the future.

I wonder how much better this country – this globe – would be if we convinced more people to make that one-letter change.

What are your thoughts?  Leave us a comment below.

Retirement Planning Done Well.

Dola Handley and Cary Smith in Munich, Germany

Imagine with me that you are working 60 hour weeks, making life-and-death decisions virtually every day, herding cats that are your staff, fighting with superiors for adequate resources, putting up with arrogant personalities, being on call-standby many weekends and operating on less than adequate sleep.

Now imagine that you’ve been doing most or all of the above for 20+ years.

Imagine further that you finally decided you’ve had enough and jumped off the cliff into retirement.

If I then asked you the questions: “How do you come down from that type of intense existence?” “How does it feel?” – what do you think your response might be?

I posed those very questions to a recently retired nurse executive that I had connected with on LinkedIn.

Her name is Dola Handley.

I pushed for a phone conversation with her because I was curious, as part of my overall research into the retirement mindset, why she retired, what the experience has been like for her and what she sees ahead for her and her husband.

In my 17 years as a healthcare recruiter, a high percentage of the hundreds of conversations I’ve had with candidates have been with middle- and executive-level nurses like Dola.  Bachelor- or master-degreed RN’s, some even with doctorates.

Dola fits the mold of this very special breed of professionals.  Selfless; humbling in the depth of their commitments to care; overworked, underpaid and (colossally) under-appreciated in their work environment.

Dola has “completed” her 22- year nursing career which included 20 years of active military duty with over half of that in a tactical signal officer role then as a nurse and a number of Director-level management positions in large hospitals overseeing women’s services/mother-baby/OB units.

I found her answers to those questions to be insightful:

  • “How do you come down from that type of intense existence?” Answer: I’m experiencing “active stillness”.
  • “How does it feel?” Answer: I’m “wonderfully bored”.

I probed both responses.

“Active stillness” for Dola is a throwback to her Appalachian farm upbringing where there was a lot of downtime and one learned to “relax into non-stressful activity but staying active”  For her, that currently includes satisfying her love of the outdoors by doing volunteer outdoor work with the state parks department here in Colorado.  She also walks 3-4 miles a day with a friend. She likes to mentor and finds that people she worked with are calling her for advice which she unselfishly provides.  She also meets monthly with a group of five nurses on a social basis where, not surprisingly, she has become the de-facto leader.

Also, in typical nurse fashion, she couldn’t turn aside a request to do some voluntary consulting work for a local hospital that was setting up a new mother/baby unit.  She got that out of her system – it was a good reminder of why she had retired.

Being “wonderfully bored” means she no longer needs to dread the ringing phone, the pressure of someone in a health crisis, the weekend on-call inconvenience and, most of all, the 12-hour days.

Her work “filled her up” for years and she is proud that she impacted a lot of people.

She doesn’t miss it.

She is a doer, a server who is now freer and hasn’t lost anything. She revels in being able to now set her own schedule.   She knows what is right for her and that includes peace every day, comfortable in being financially secure and not worrying about where she is mentally, emotionally, physically.

Dola is less than a year into her retirement so the bloom is still on the rose, so to speak.  How will she feel, how will all of this play out say 1,2,3 years from now?  That’s part of the adventure.

Something tells me that Dola will somehow just go deeper and wider in her active stillness and stay wonderfully bored but busier in her service to others.  I’m suggesting that because, if I may paraphrase, you can take the nurse out of nursing but you can’t take the nurse out of a nurse.

Oh, did you catch the financially secure part?

I wonder how many couples start serious retirement planning discussions ten years before their targeted retirement date.

I believe one would need to sort through a trainload of couples to find one or two.

Dola and her husband, Cary Smith, are married with a blended family of four grown daughters and would be one of those rare finds.

This couple doesn’t fit the mold in this area.  They have their proverbial you-know-what together in this department.

Dola shared with me that she and Cary began retirement discussion together over 10 years ago.  They are both planners.  Cary, also a military retiree (they met in the military) is a skilled program manager still gainfully employed, by choice.

They both have military pensions and the accompanying health care coverage.  She didn’t reveal what they have stashed away beyond that but what I did find unusual, impressive and prescient is what they have done with real estate as they have gone through a number of job changes and relocations.

Within the last decade, they have lived in four homes.  Three of those (two in N. Carolina, one in Colorado) they have kept and are renting out, thus adding a nice equity component to the portfolio.  The fourth is their current residence in Colorado Springs.

Cary is keying his retirement date to the day they write the last mortgage payment check for the house they are in – which is two years out.

The retirement discussions that began 10 years ago focused on:

  1. What they want to do.
  2. Where they want to do it.
  3. What they want this third stage to look like.

Listening to Dola, you’ll get the impression that the what, where and how are pretty well set.  And the when is on the radar.

The initial “what” sounds exciting. They both have spent extended periods of time working abroad. They are doing a “pre-retirement” trip to Scotland next year and have agreed that, upon retirement, they will pick and move to a location (TBD), most likely in Europe, and go, “not as tourists”, for an extended stay.

And then determine the next step.

Dola and Cary present a stark contrast to the route most couples take to retirement, particularly on the non-financial side.   Research has shown that 2 of 3 couples go into retirement without a semblance of a non-financial plan.  As a Retirement Coach, I’m discovering that a surprising number of couples wait until the retirement of one or the other of the partnership to get on the same page, adjusting to the changed environment and sorting out what they want retirement life to look like.

It results in the loss of precious retirement years where resources and physical vitality are higher

It may help explain why the divorce rate of couples over 50 has been skyrocketing while overall divorce rates have leveled off.

The takeaway from Dora’s and Cary’s retirement story is clear:  start early, agree on what you want it to look like, put a plan together but be flexible and willing to compromise and respect the interests and desire of the other.

Theirs may seem like a retirement heavily tilted to a “life of leisure”.  I ‘spect not.  I doubt this nurse and these two military veterans will ever give up an opportunity to continue to serve in some way.

Retired? You May Be About to Waste the Most Productive, Fulfilling Time of Your Life?

Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash

Your financial planner just called you to a special meeting in his office to deliver some news.  It’s all good. You’ve hit your investment goals and are financially prepared to retire!

You started  a diligent, leveraged savings plan at 28 and now, 35 years later and with his help along the way, you’ve ridden out a half-dozen market corrections, survived a couple of job changes and plenty of “normal” life challenges but never wavered from your savings plan and have become one of the estimated 11 million millionaires in the U.S.

Congratulations!!  Retirement day.  Retirement nirvana at last!!

You are about to step into one the most potentially dangerous times of your life.

Your financial planner’s good news is called the “Liberation Stage”, number three of the five stages of retirement defined by Dr. Ken Dychtwald of AgeWave.  The coveted retirement day!

His organization defined these five stages after interviewing 55,000 baby-boomers who were in retirement.

You can revisit these five stages in my January 6, 2018 article.

AgeWave identified the two stages preceding retirement as the “Imagination Stage” (5-15 years before expected retirement) and the “Anticipation Stage” (5 years before retirement).

Their research showed that 85-90% of pre-retirees in both these preliminary stages expected to be happy and 75-80% expected to achieve their dreams in retirement.

The average duration of Stage Three –  the “Liberation Stage”?   One year!

On average, it appears that it takes about a year for the reality of retirement to take hold.

Stage four and five – “Reorientation Stage” and “Reconciliation Stage” – revealed a different story than that expected in pre-retirement with only 40% of retirees achieving their happiness and retirement dreams.

A “gap analysis” needed.

A test score of 40% reminds me of what I achieved on most of my civil engineering courses in my first year of college before I was politely and appropriately asked to exit the institution for a while and come back for another probationary try at something else, like, well anything but engineering.

If retirement doesn’t seem to get even a fist pump for over half of those stepping into it, what’s missing?  After all, it is that “nirvana” phase that consumed 35-40 years of our lives to get to and that promised us – at least in the financial services ads – a life of freedom, comfort, and fun.

Why are we coming up a bit short on that promise for the majority of retirees?

It’s a fertile area for pontification, philosophical waxing, and slicing-and-dicing.  I’ll abandon my tendency to excel in all three of those boring, alienating methods and submit a single theory behind the gap.

It’s a simple triumvirate:

No plan

No people

No purpose

No plan

We know that 2 of 3 retirees enter retirement with little or no non-financial plan.  They expect their retirement to “evolve” and take care of itself.    They expect the transition to freedom and leisure to be fulfilling.  They enter retirement unaware that retirement is like an iceberg – 80% of the realities of retirement are hidden from view and not discussed or planned for.

No people

Those work cohorts who promised to “stay in touch” as they wolfed down a slice of your retirement cake aren’t calling – or returning your calls to schedule a “lunch to reminisce”.  It seems they have their own set of challenges and you aren’t coming to mind a whole lot – not since about 30 seconds after you left the building.

So your “friends list” begins to narrow significantly unless you proactively rebuild it.  Certainly deeper and broader engagement with family is vital and an opportunity to make up for lost time.  But that’s not likely an arena in which to find new and different levels of mental stimulation and social engagement.

That sitcom and lazyboy are tempting substitutes for proactively building a new social network.

We now have research that tells us that a lack of social engagement is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.  It’s the newest entrant into the list of things that kill us early.

No purpose

Egad, not this purpose thing again!!

Yep.  Face it – you had a purpose before retirement, even if it was no more than showing up and building someone else’s dream for the money to get you to retirement nirvana.  Now even that shallow purpose is gone and the potential for serious drifting sets in after you’ve completed the third cleaning and rearranging of the garage and basement storage space.

Five rounds of golf a week isn’t changing your handicap much but the obligatory 19th hole with fellow drifters is adding inches to the waistline.

If you are fortunate, at some point early in your post-career life, your soul delivers a groin kick and says that it’s tired of being only a consumer and not a producer and that if this continues, the reward may be serious health, wellness, and sanity issues.

It’s just suggesting that the soul exists to serve, not take.  It’s kind of a divine thing that’s built into us that gets barnacled over in our pursuit of comfort and convenience and adherence to convention, conformity, and comparison.

Give it some space.

Take a year – do the fun stuff.  Visit Machu Pichu and the Buddhist ruins and float the Rhine.  Bore your family and declining circle of friends with your endless photos of places they have no interest in visiting – or have already visited.  Do the country club thing for a year and get it out of your system.

But while you are at it, do some serious reflecting on this simple string of questions:

Why am I here”

Am I meant to be “leisurely” for the next 20,30,40 years?

Isn’t there somebody/some entity I can help with the 55+ years of accumulated experience and the innate talents that I have?

If I stumbled into my funeral just in time to hear my eulogy, what would I want the eulogist to be saying?

The dangers of an unplanned post-career life are physical, mental and emotional deterioration and an accelerated dash to a shortened finish line.

You don’t deserve that; you weren’t designed for that.

Our post-career choices are to be selfish (consumer) or selfless (producer).

Our society sure could use us for the latter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Retirement and the “No-Work” Danger Zone

Photo by Raúl Nájera on Unsplash

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

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

I just wanted to get your attention.

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

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

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

Unharvested crops rot

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why do we miss the possibilities?

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

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

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

Creativity is work.  Work is creativity.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tough – but essential – questions.

Your thoughts and comments are welcomed and appreciated.