Retirement worse than smoking?  Maybe.

 

 

This should make you stop and cogitate a bit:  the health risk of prolonged isolation is equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.

That’s according to the AARP Foundation.  I didn’t know AARP was doing that kind of deep biological, bio-scientific research.  But who’s going to doubt the mighty AARP?  Warren Buffett proved it long ago – selling insurance can support lots of things.

The article caught my eye because I’m a bit of a hermit, by nature and vocation, and a former smoker.

But the connection doesn’t resonate with me.

Smoking was stupid

And quitting was tough.  But it was the best thing I ever did when I quit on 6/6/79.  It was a launching pad for a whole new level of self-esteem and self-respect.

Isolation is built into what I do as a home-based recruiter, coach, and writer and it fits me as an introvert.  I empower myself through my reading, writing, and thinking and through occasional deep, stimulating conversations with a selective tribe of friends.

I don’t do crowds well – and small talk drives me crazy and reminds me, every time, of my shrinking calendar.  I’m inspired by what I do and draw a great deal of energy from my activities despite doing them largely in physical isolation.

I’m just not psychologically isolated.  I believe that’s where the difference lies.

Loneliness sucks!

I do understand what they are saying because I’ve seen the ill effects of psychological isolation.

If you click on over to the AARP article, you’ll find a list of “Risk Factors for Isolation” and – Voila! – there’s retirement smack in the middle, in the same sentence with becoming a caregiver and losing a spouse.

Robert Waldinger, Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the world’s longest studies of adult life, said in this popular TED Talk, “The people in our 75-year study who were the happiest in retirement were the people who had actively worked to replace workmates with new playmates.”

Now, wait a minute.  You mean the golden ring, the coveted prize at the end of our labors, that late-life nirvana, that sole reason we’ve been busting our butts for 40 years doing something we marginally enjoyed or felt good about – it’s all really just a hoax?  You mean it’s gonna make me age faster and die sooner?

Mostly.  But it’s a big “it depends.”

We’re learning that pre-retirees are best served when they devote as much attention and energy to the non-financial components of retirement as they do to the financial components.   Research indicates that upwards of 70% of retirees enter into their retirement with little or no attention to the psychological, emotional and physical dark side of retirement.

Increased isolation is but one of those potential pitfalls but perhaps the most destructive.

There is a hidden epidemic that takes place in the shadow of retirement.   Some of the emerging statistics are alarming, all of which can be attributed, in part, to increased isolation;

  • The National Institutes of Health reports that of the 35 million Americans 65 or older, nearly 2 million suffer from full-blown depression. Another 5 million suffer from less severe forms of the illness.
  • Conditions such as heart attack, stroke, hip fracture, or macular degeneration, as well as procedures such as bypass surgery, are known to be associated with the development of depression.
  • Men older than age 65 take their own life at more than double the overall rate and are four times more likely to kill themselves than women in the same age group. Perhaps surprisingly, men age 75 and older have the highest annual suicide rate of any group – about 39 deaths per 100,000. In contrast, the rate for women peaks between ages 45 and 64 at nearly 10 deaths per 100,000. The suicide rate among men 45-64 increased by nearly 50%, between the years 1999 and 2014.

The numbers of older people affected by loneliness and isolation are striking.

According to the new AARP Foundation website Connect2Affect:

  • 17 percent of American adults 65 and older are isolated
  • Research shows a 26 percent increased risk of death due to the subjective feelings of loneliness
  • 6 million adults 65 and older have a disability that prevents them from leaving their homes without help
  • 51 percent of people 75 and older live alone

 

All this is part of the reason that I have decided to devote more of my life and coaching practice to retirement coaching.

The reach for traditional, off-the-cliff, labor-to-leisure concept of retirement still seems to prevail. That despite the fact we are at a place we’ve never been before with extended longevity facing unprecedented changes in the economic, financial and self-care landscape.  Retirement that isn’t carefully planned carries with it significant life-shortening health risks.

And with this mindset, many retirees continue to step into a minefield of unexpected challenges, not the least of which is isolation. It goes hand-in-hand with loss of identity, loss of sense of purpose, declining social engagement and creeping health issues emanating from a sedentary lifestyle and historically poor diet.

 

A new retirement emerging?

The wiser of “retirees” are beginning to redefine retirement to prevent the above.  For many, that means continuing to make some level of that previously disdained four-letter word -WORK – part of their lives.  With it comes a solution to the problems of isolation, purpose, inactive lifestyle.

I wrote about the importance of work in my 12/18/17 blog “Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!”

Work with a purpose is a new catchphrase amongst retirees.  Or collecting a “playcheck”, a term coined by Mitch Anthony in his book “The New Retirementality”, – being paid for something you really truly are meant to do, that is fun and fulfills a deep inner purpose.

Work and play can intersect.  And there is no better time for that to happen than in a “re-defined retirement”, bringing forward acquired skills and experience and applying them to something fulfilling, fun and profitable.

Who do you know that has achieved that work-play intersection?  Or maybe it’s you.  Scroll down and leave a comment.  While you are there, sign up for our free e-book “Achieving Your Full-Life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Have You Started Your Second-half Reinvention Yet?

 

The January-February 2018 issue of the AARP Bulletin included a nine-page article entitled “Great Second Careers”  Sub-title:  “Good news:  You CAN Find Success, Security and Happiness After 50 With a New Job.”

Not totally boring.  Kind of a band-wagon article.  An eclectic collection of stories of people who made late-life pivots to jobs or businesses earning themselves from $0 to $250K per year.

I love how AARP has changed its tune.  It’s like the tiger has changed its stripes.

You remember them, don’t you?  Used to be the American Association of Retired Persons, the highly-profitable, “non-profit” insurance seller disguised as a crusader/advocate for the retired and the “elderly-in-training.”

Now it’s just AARP.  An acronym with no words behind it.

You have to hand it to them.  They were smart enough to get off a slowing train and get on a faster moving one, wisely repackaging/rebranding/retreating to a more appropriate moniker. Got that word retirement out of the name – and changed their tune. They don’t talk retirement so much anymore.  In fact, not one article in the aforementioned 56-page bulletin about retirement.

Could there be a much stronger statement to the evolving nature of traditional retirement?   As in, going away.

DISCLAIMER

Please know that I don’t have an AARP membership nor do I subscribe to the Bulletin – nor will I ever.  It was sent to me by a friend who knows of my passion for “pivoting” people’s view of retirement.

In fact, I’ve never liked AARP since they started invading my mailbox, a quarter-century ago, with promo materials six hours before my 50th birthday, hinting strongly that I was now over the hill,  fast approaching senior status and deserving of discounts on restaurants and travel destinations where other elders-in-training hung out.

Didn’t sound like fun at the time – still doesn’t.

But, despite my disdain for the organization, I applaud the nature of the article because it draws attention to the growing awareness that work promotes vitality, that creative energy doesn’t die with age, and that over-50 is far from over-the-hill.

Oh, and without saying it, that traditional retirement kinda sucks.

It’s a collection of tales of personal reinvention.

Have you started your reinvention yet?

Reinvention is a hot word these days, especially in business circles.  It seems if a company isn’t reinventing, it will soon be toast, like a Blockbuster or a Borders or Kodak or a Blackberry.  Who’s next?  Macy’s?  GE?  Healthcare giants?  It’s likely to be a bloody trail of business bodies over the next ten years.

But what about us mere mortals?  Do we run the same risk?  What happens if reinvention isn’t part of our short- or long-term perspective?  Is there a chance that we can be similarly Netflixed, Amazoned or I-phoned?

From my perspective, it’s a pretty easy yes to that question.  The recruiting business immerses one in lots of transition stories.  I meet people who are aware of, accepting of, and acting on the fact that the pace of change has never been faster or more profound than what we are experiencing today.  They are sensing the need to reinvent, augment, pivot or re-career to stay ahead of, or up with, the change curve.

Unfortunately, I meet far more who are late to the party.  As in having the rug pulled out from under them and not seeing it coming.  Or pro-actively leaving a dead-end job only to find that they are ill-equipped to re-enter at another point.

What worked five years ago doesn’t work today.

What is reinvention anyway?

I’ll borrow a few thoughts and mix in a few of my own as to what “reinvention” means for someone moving into the second half of life.

If you follow James Altucher (NOTE: proceed with caution if you start following him – he is a wonderfully strange, esoteric, transparent dude!), you know that he has a best-seller entitled “Reinvent Yourself”.  This is a guy who tries to reinvent himself every day.

That would be a  stretch for those of us who are new to the idea but here’s his view of reinvention, from a guy who has reinvented himself in major ways 15-20 times in his 50 years.  To Altucher, reinvention is:

  • Finding new sources of income. Money is important – it buys freedom.  He reminds us that multi-millionaires have, on average, seven distinct sources of income.
  • Finding well-being – from within. It’s three things: freedom, relationships, and competence.
    • Defining freedom in different ways e.g. reducing expectations, increasing sources of income so no one source controls you.
    • Improving relationships. Find mentors to teach you and friends who challenge and build you up.
    • You are the average of the five habits you do; for example, what you eat, ideas you have, the content you consume.

It’s an old story now that long-standing, traditional white- and blue-collar jobs are succumbing in droves to globalization and the impact of digitization.  With that comes sob story after sob story from those caught in this transformation.

I don’t see any signs of this pace and magnitude of change abating.  In fact, with advancing technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, genomic testing, 3-D printing, nano-technology to name just a few, all signs point to this transformation continuing at an accelerating pace.

Finding your essence

If you are an AARP fan and have read the article, you will have detected a common theme running through nearly all the stories – the pursuit of a dream or a passion.  All of these “second-careerers” reinvented themselves by regathering their skills and experiences and stirring them into that passion to achieve a dream.  And they plugged that dream into a need in the marketplace.

I liken it to a rediscovery of the “essential self”, more or less a resurrecting of that 6-year old in each of them that had been tamped down with 30 years or so of cultural social expectations.

A favorite quote that I repeat every morning speaks to transformation by identifying your essential self.  It comes from Martha Beck’s fantastic book “Finding Your Own Northstar, Claiming the Life You Were Meant to Live.”

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

Each of our lives can be a work of art.  My sense is that most of the folks in the AARP article are heeding the call of their essential self, scaping off the social barnacles, stepping out, taking some risks and striving to make their lives their own work of art.

We all have access to all the riches of the universe to do the same.  None of that changes because we hit a certain number.

Please don’t stop learning

I had a conversation recently with a C-level healthcare executive who had just worked his way out of a consulting job after successfully transforming the operations of a large mid-western healthcare system.  In his late-50’s, he has a fearless excitement about what his next challenge will be as he puts himself out there for another position.

It was obvious from our conversation that this successful exec “gets it” when it comes to staying ahead of the curve of developments in his area of focus. I asked him what advice he would have for anyone making a mid-life or later career transition.  He answered without hesitation:

  • Be active in the virtual space
  • Be active in the face-to-face space
  • Read, read, read!
  • Learn the skills to navigate change while knowing that you can’t or won’t learn everything and knowing that things will be different in six months.
  • Consider a coach

Sage advice from a guy who knows what he wants to do and where he wants to go and has learned how to maximize his chances of getting there through continuous learning and reinvention.  After hearing him talk, I have little doubt he will have lots of attractive options presented to him.

That’s what it takes today.  To not reinvent is perilous.

I’d love to hear your reinvention story. Scroll down and tell me what you’ve done, why you did it and how you did it.   Or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.  Share your story and so we can share it with our readers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The “$400 Trillion Time Bomb” and “An Unnatural Act”

 

 

 

 

Quartz, the digital global business news publication, recently published an article entitled “The world is sitting on a $400 trillion financial time bomb.”

Solid fear-inducing stuff, this reporting.  Globally, we are going to be short on retirement savings by a mere $400 trillion (with a “t”) by 2050.  $137 trillion in the U.S. alone –   once again we lead in a dubiously distinctive category.

And it’s all because of an unnatural act.

The unnatural act is the “R” word that pervades our psyche like no other – retirement.

From the moment we start our first job – and often even before – retirement becomes a subtle, silent partner in our thinking and many of the decisions we make.  As we move through our 40’s, 50’s, 60’s it takes a progressively larger share of our mental bandwidth and decisions, with anxiety over a false premise at the core –  a concept based on an arbitrary, unnatural, artificial, politically-inspired finish line.

Were we really meant to do this?

I’m sorry, but I just have difficulty getting my head around the idea of a creator/universe that would equip us with all the chops and opportunities to wind ourselves up and then not be miffed when we decide to wind it all down and throw it all away based on an irrelevant number.

Do we really have a reasonable rationale for its existence in the form to which it has evolved – that is, vocation-to-vacation, off-the-cliff from work to leisure.  And at an age, determined by politicians,  that has no relevance today because we are living longer and had even less relevance when established.

The average life expectancy was around 58 when the magic number of 65 was set.  As some have pointed out, it set the stage for the greatest Ponzi scheme ever.

Can we agree that retirement, as we’ve come to define it over the last 100 years, is an unnatural act?  Where do we see it in nature? We don’t see it in the animal world.  We didn’t see it in the human world either until the concept of “social security system” emerged in the late 1800’s when Chancellor Otto von Bismarck injected a version of it into the German economy, primarily to stave off a threat from Marxism.

Not to be outdone, we Americans took the idea, over the course of the 20th century, to the sublime and entrenched the idea of leisurely final chapters so deeply in our psyche that it drives many of our major life decisions  – many of which end up being harmful.

Disagree with me?  Check the collective cortisol level in this country when the stock market slides 5 or 10%.

Yet, in the face of damning statistics of shortened lifespans, we push forward with fury, fervor, and fantasy in the pursuit of that nirvanic leap into leisurely bliss.  Then, once achieved, we discover too late that our biology doesn’t hold up well when unchallenged physically and mentally.  And anxiety levels increase as we fret over outliving our money.

I often wonder what our world today would be like if Michelangelo, Socrates, Newton, Einstein (pick your own intellectual, pioneering hero) would have had a 401K/403B to distract them.

Five stages of retirement – proceed with caution.

Ken Dychtwald, the founder of AgeWave, is the foremost thought leader on issues related to aging.  His organization has done extensive research on retirement, using a database of over 50,000 retirees.  They concluded that retirement has five stages:

 

  1. Imagination – 5-15 years before retirement
  2. Anticipation – 5 years before retirement
  3. Liberation – retirement day, anticipation realized. Average duration: one year
  4. Re-orientation – 1-15 years after retirement. Critical life questions surface; post-partem depression is common; growing concerns about health and finances; boredom; unstimulated
  5. Reconciliation – late 70-80s; trying to come to terms with who they really are; friends and family dying; money concerns intensify; concerns about legacy

Click this link to see Ken’s talk at the American Society on Aging Conference in 2013 for a more detailed presentation of the research starting at minute 26:00 of the video.

I’ll bet you know someone in stage 4 or even stage 5.  Hopefully, you see this in time to avoid either.

Don’t be in a rush to give your parts back

I love the quote from one of my favorite virtual mentors, Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach.  In my 12/18/17 blog, I referred to comments he made on retirement in one of his “Exponential Wisdom” podcasts with Peter Diamandis.  In addition to referring to retirement as the “ultimate casualty”, he also emphasized that “stopping and retirement means you are ready to retire your bits back to the universe.”

I’m in no hurry – are you?

Suggestion:  Don’t participate. Don’t retire

To quote the article:

“Financial disaster is looming, and not because of the stock market or subprime loans. The coming crisis is more insidious, structural, and almost certain to blow up eventually.” (my underline)

So now we’ve got a $400 trillion dollar impending apocalypse to layer onto our worries about N. Korea, climate change, ISIS, nuclear threat, Trump, #metoo, etc., etc.

It’s becoming quite a “chicken little” world.  CNN is salivating.

But, participation is optional.

There’s much “gnashing of teeth and ripping of robes” about how we avoid this latest disaster.  But no one, interestingly, suggests not retiring.  Imagine that!  Rather it’s all about extending retirement ages/finish lines, increases in taxes or cuts in benefits.

The retirement mindset really does seem to own us.

Call me idealistic; call me arrogant; call me pollyannish; call me what you like (and I know some will) but I’m not going to participate in this prediction of our eventual demise.  I could lie and base my non-participation by claiming to have all the retirement savings I need to avoid being blown up. Truth is, I don’t – it’s not a number I think about because I jettisoned the idea of retirement a decade-and-a-half ago.  I’m going to work until I can’t and am confident the money will be there to support my lifestyle business.  I sense more and more others are opting out as well.

Have you looked up the word?

Do you agree that creative marketing and opportunistic financial services and leisure industry, uncontested by a greedy political system, have created the illusion of turning something that means “retreat” or “withdraw”  or “to disappear” into a positive, dreamy even?  Marketing so effective that we now believe that going backward is a positive movement.

Isn’t there something fundamentally wrong – and unnatural -about that?

Perhaps I’m a voice in the wilderness, but I don’t think so.  What are your thoughts?  Scroll down and leave a comment (or salvo, as the case may be!)

 

On How To Become an “Audacious Ager”

I have a new favorite term for what I’m striving to be – an “audacious ager”.

Aging is a pretty hot topic because so many of us are experiencing the unstoppable nature of it.  It seems we’re on a constant search for things to describe our denial of the eventuality.  Things like “purposeful aging”, “successful aging”, “graceful aging”. Creativity abounds amongst us later-lifers in our attempt to put monikers on what we are experiencing.

Margaret Manning at Sixtyandme.com polled 43,000 women and asked them to give her one adverb that described how they were aging. You can see 40 of them in this article.

No grace in aging

Pretty creative and surprising list.  Note that no one chose “graceful.” No surprise.  There’s not much that’s graceful about it.

Number 40 – “outrageously” – came closest to my new favorite.

My new favorite came from a rather unusual source – the National Business Group on Health’s (NBGH) Business Health Agenda (BHA) conference.  NBGHBHA for short – really?  This conference apparently focused on employer-sponsored health care plans and the challenges and changes companies are facing in terms of plan design, health data, demographics and much more.

One of the topics presented had to do with the boomer’s role in the future.  It emphasized that employers are facing a major paradigm shift for which they are unprepared. An employer poll revealed that, of five predictions for the future, “audacious aging” was the paradigm shift that employers were least prepared to deal with.

Here’s a graph showing the results.

 

It’s a revealing reflection of the fact that retirement, as we’ve known it, is going away.

It takes guts to age naturally

There are two reasons that “audacious aging” resonated with me.  First, I’m a contrarian by nature and being audacious in a number of areas of my life is becoming more common and more comfortable as I’ve outgrown my need to compare and seek the approval of others. It just takes too much frigging mental energy to do either. NOTE:  You’ll get there if you aren’t already.

Secondly, I’m learning that to age normally and naturally, we have to be audaciously aggressive against a lot of forces that are pulling us up short of our full life potential.

So maybe you’d like to join me and the growing ranks of audacious agers.  If interested, here are some fundamental steps to becoming one:

  1. You shun traditional retirement. You give the finger to a culture that insinuates that you have a “use by” stamp on the back of your neck.  You tell anybody who will listen that you “ain’t done yet” and to “stop asking me when I’m going to retire.”  Remind them that you know the universe will take your parts back someday but that, right now, they are still working just fine, thank you, especially your ability to think and create and contribute.
  2. You adopt an attitude with gratitude and altitude. You’ve sworn to not become a geezer/hag, that grumpy, immobile, smelly old fart/bag that you swore you would never become. You refuse to relinquish your still-supple mental bandwidth to the things that aren’t right in the world and in our lives.  You turn off Constant Negative News network (CNN), cancel the local paper and forget the local news.  You journal five things every day that you are grateful for.  You acknowledge that “better has no finish line” and you get better at something every day.  You block your brain’s innate tendency to time travel to your past (regrets) and to the future (fear) and commit to making your future bigger than your past.  You deeply reflect, rediscover, resurrect, and redeploy your essential self in a way that moves humanity forward positively. You put together a 25-year plan regardless of your age.  And you find the time – now – to write your 100th-birthday speech.
  3. Be one of the 3% in your age group that is at 24-hour Fitness (or equivalent) 6 days a week. And, no, none of this one-mph on a treadmill with zero incline for 15 minutes. Nope, you throw around some free weights at least three days a week with the tattooed, tank-topped and tiny-testicled 30-somethings as they tune up their mirror muscles (sorry ladies, couldn’t resist that statement).  And you add 45 minutes of serious interval cardio work six days a week. You accept that those 30-something mirror muscles (male or female) aren’t in your future and that isn’t what it’s all about.  It’s about being able to walk, talk, think, and be a hero and a source of cognitive and meaningful wisdom for your great-grandkids.
  4. Help eradicate fast-food.  OK, that’s not going to happen but you can do your part to help slow the damage it does.  Do the math on this: (1) 2015 was the first year that Americans spent more eating-out than they did cooking at home.(2) CDC has estimated that 40% of the U.S. population is overweight.  Hmmmm!  Any correlation?  Calorie-levels of restaurant food is 20-30% higher than food prepared at home – and portions are ridiculous.  Bring it home and be a “flexitarian” – plant-and fruit-heavy diet with occasional “meat as a treat.”
  5. Piss off your Primary Care Physician. Well, not really.  You need him/her along the way.  But you realize she/he is encumbered by a mindset focused on cure, not prevention, and under a corporate or government-driven mandate to spend less time with you than ever. You go into your annual or semi-annual visit (hopefully, no more than that) with the knowledge that 95% of physicians have had zero training in geriatrics and that they are anything but nutritionists. You reach an agreement on the front-end that you will rescind your co-pay if he/she once says “what do you expect at your age?”  You go into your meeting equipped with questions that will put them on notice that this is not your average bear when it comes to understanding how the body works.   Questions like: “why didn’t my blood test include a BUN (blood urea nitrogen), creatinine and homocysteine test?”  (See P.12 of my free e-book for more on knowing your biomarkers).  Trust me there’s a good chance that your doc is not going to be fully accepting of you taking full charge of your health and won’t appreciate being challenged (check out this article).  But it’s not too late for them to adapt. Look, healthcare is going the wrong direction for us audacious agers and the docs know it.  Self-efficacy/self-care is one of our new mantras and we are committed to enlisting our docs as partners in that mantra rather than abdicating our health to them.
  6. Change your circle and hang with the youngers. Jim Rohn, renowned American entrepreneur, author, and motivational speaker is often credited with saying that we rise to the level of the five people we spend the most time with.   When you take a look at the roles that mentors have played in the lives of highly successful people, it’s a hard point to argue.  As an audacious ager, you make sure the five closest to you are moving on and taking it to their lives rather than life taking it to them.  No downers, doubters, or whiners. You’re on the lookout for someone who will push you, challenge you, encourage you and accept that you are committed to coloring outside the lines.  You work to develop a “tribe” that includes people 20, 30, 40 years younger than you and draw on their energy and creativity and listen to their ideas and reciprocate by helping them with your wisdom.

Be prepared for the ridicule

Let’s face it, the reality is that most people won’t buy into this concept and you are setting yourself up for some not-so-subtle jabs, especially from your inner circle (ref #5 above). They are likely locked into belief systems that say that sedentary retirement is an entitled gift, senescence is automatic, and that aging is more about fate and genetics than choices. But as an audacious ager, you know it’s bull****.  You become the model of what is possible and, as Gandhi taught, “be the change you want to see in other people.”  Some will want what you’ve got.  That’s the biggest payoff of being an audacious ager – effecting change through example.

Maybe you are already an audacious ager.  I’d love to hear your story.  Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com and set up a time to talk.  I’m on the lookout for audacious agers with big stories to feature on my podcast platform which I will be introducing in early 2018.

While you are at it, click on this link, scroll down and take advantage of my new free ebook, “Achieve Your Full-Life Potential:  Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose”.

Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!

 

George Burns was guilty of some really fabulous quotes, most of them quite funny, some deadly serious.  Many had to do with his advancing age (he died in 1996 at age 100).  Here are a few:

  • Retire? I’m going to stay in show business until I’m the only one left.
  • People are always asking me when I’m going to retire. Why should I?  I’ve got it two ways – I’m still making movies, and I’m a senior citizen, so I can see myself at half price.
  • How can I die? I’m booked.
  • As long as you’re working, you stay young.

Michelangelo died at 89 – at a time when the average lifespan was less than half that – still working as the architect for the replacement of a 4th-century Constantinian basilica that became St. Peter’s Basilica, called by some as the “greatest creation of the Renaissance.”  He also worked on a sculpture (the Rondani Peita) up until six days before his death.

Steve Jobs was widely reported to have died yelling about something not being exactly perfectly correct – and is reported to have been working until the last day.

 

Einstein never stopped.

 

Revisiting vocāre

Today we treat folks who choose to “work themselves until death” as some sort of wunderkinds or anomalies when a mere 150 years ago that was the norm.  That was before the Industrial Revolution changed the landscape of work and injected the concept of the artificial finish line called retirement.

In the process, it seems we’ve redefined, convoluted and distorted an important word.  That word is vocation.

Vocation is rooted in the Latin vocāre, meaning to call, which suggests listening for something that calls out to you, a voice telling me what I am.

Today, we relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school versus a “profession” calling for a bachelor degree or higher.  Not likely a pursuit of a “higher calling” but more a decision based on need and what may be trending in the “job” market.

Grammarist.com defines a vocation as “a calling, an occupation, or a large undertaking for which one is especially suited. It can be roughly synonymous with career or profession, though vocation connotes a seriousness or a commitment that these words don’t always bear.” 

Today, we tend to mix vocation in with two other words – career and job – when their distinctions are quite different.

Career

A quick look at the definition of “career” shows a big difference. Career has its origin in the Latin word “carrus” or “wheeled vehicle” denoting a “cart” and then later from the French word “carrier” denoting a road or racecourse. The dictionary defines career, as a verb, to mean “move swiftly and in an uncontrolled way in a specified direction.”

Careers for many are just that – a mad rush for a long time that ends up going nowhere and with that realization coming late in life.  Or maybe it’s going somewhere in terms of provision and accumulation, but not in a way that fits the definition of a “calling”.

The checkered flag at the end of this racecourse is that coveted pot of gold toward the end of life’s rainbow called retirement, a finish line that may have blocked moving toward a true calling.

Job

A job is the most immediate and relatable term as it’s what we do every day to produce income, the fuel that keeps us on the aforementioned racecourse. The dictionary defines job as “a lump, chore or duty.”  For some, that lump is “coal”.  Consider that the average job is around 3.2 years and that during the average lifespan, most of us will have had a dozen or more “jobs”.

 

Does sound like a racetrack doesn’t it?  Perhaps that old word denoting a calling is what is missing.  As we zip past mid-life into our second half, it would be a good time to re-evaluate, resurrect and reapply vocation in its true, traditional meaning.

 

But I’m passing 50 –  too late to find my “calling”?

It’s a pretty common question amongst mid-lifer’s.  There’s that uneasy stirring going on deep in the gut. More days behind than ahead; lost enthusiasm for the chosen “racetrack”; a growing sense of aimlessness and emptiness; accumulation no longer important; the “who am I and why am I here”, “is it too late to make a difference?” questions that won’t go away.

It’s a critical fork-in-the-road time of life.  One road gives in to the “social self” that has indoctrinated us into an artificial age-related culture and encourages us to remain a part of the crowd and stay-the-course to a landing called retirement.

The other road acknowledges a long-suppressed “essential self” that is insensitive to age and puts us on a trail that can enable a new takeoff rather than a landing.  Only this time the takeoff is launched through a re-discovery and resurrection of our deepest dreams and desires but applied using our deepest talents and acquired skills.

Warning!

The second fork may mean you will, willingly, work yourself to (until) death.

Second warning!

You may:

Evidence has been in for a long time.  Work is necessary for longer, healthier living.

Polls of centenarians have revealed that an astonishingly high percentage of them continue to work and that they rank working alongside being able to walk as one of the keys to their longevity.

The universe doesn’t want your parts back yet

I’m a huge fan and follower of Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach, the most successful entrepreneurial coaching program on the planet.  In a recent podcast from a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Peter Diamandis, Dan stated that he feels he has “disenfranchised” most of the 18,000 entrepreneurs he has trained from the idea of retirement.  He and Diamandis have tagged retirement as the “ultimate casualty.”

Together, they emphatically emphasize that “stopping and retirement means you are ready to retire your bits back to the universe.”

Not sure about you, I’m in no hurry.

Is Your Nose Pressed Against Reality?

 

At the request of a dear friend whose wife has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, I read a book entitled “Jan’s Story”.  It’s a very poignant book by Barry Peterson, acclaimed CBS reporter and foreign correspondent, about a man’s journey with his wife, Jan, a victim of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Barry coined a phrase in the book that really grabbed and stuck with me.  He learned that he had to daily “press his nose against the reality” of the finality of his wife’s condition and its impact on his life and health.

The phrase resonated with me because it’s not something I do well in my own life, even dealing with issues of far less magnitude.  It was a not-so-subtle reminder that I, like most, wear masks, live in denial, and avoid confronting realities in my life to escape the pressure created by facing reality. For instance, that “gap” between where I am and where I really want to be.

Unaddressed realities seem to come clearer in later life as we are forced to “press our nose” against them and make major decisions while facing a shorter horizon.

 

I see this frequently as I engage potential candidates regarding executive or middle-management opportunities in my recruiting business.  Because most of the positions call for deep experience and expertise in a given area, I’m often reaching out to professionals who have entered the “second half” or “third stage” of their lives – likely facing fewer days ahead than behind.

It doesn’t take long or too many questions to determine if a candidate is in denial about some of the realities of what lies ahead for them in this second half.  Some have been granted “early, unintentional, temporary retirement” and, in some cases, are getting desperate for a job.  Imminent unemployment is a reality for some as their corporate home morphs around them.  Others are just restless and feeling that “stirring” called “is this all there is?”

On occasion, some of these candidates become coaching clients as the result of our dialog.

If I’m effective in my coaching relationship with them, I am able to help them “press their nose” against some unacknowledged realities.

Here are a few of the realities I see that people over 50 aren’t facing as they enter this late-life transition:

  1. Corporate employment is now the riskiest place to be. With a few exceptions, a company’s claim of loyalty to their employees is lip service.  Given the choice between the one-time expense of a robot or piece of software and an ongoing outlay to an employee to do that work, it becomes an easy bottom-line decision.  Stir in the specter of mergers or acquisitions and the inevitable “RIF’s” and the risk of not “pressing the nose” against this reality can be a tough pill to swallow for a dedicated corporate employee.

 In my “reinvention” coaching, I am direct in my message that the last place to look for security today is in the corporate fold.  If you are over 50 and have been downsized but intend to return to the corporate ranks, be prepared for two shocks.  Unless your skills are current, exceptionally deep, and unique, you can count on: (1) an extended search, especially if self-directed (think one month for every $10k of salary); (2) your chances of duplicating your previous salary being pretty slim.

  1. Pace and magnitude of change. There is one guaranteed constant in life and that is change.   The pace of change has never been faster and more profound than it is today, fueled by digital technology. As boomers and pre-boomers, we are particularly vulnerable to the eventuality of technology disrupting what we do.
  2. You are (most likely) already obsolete. I recall coming across a startling statistic a couple of years ago that revealed that over 40% of college graduates never open another book after graduation.  If you are over 50, you were indoctrinated with the linear-life plan I call the 20-40-20 plan that looks like this.  Learning after school didn’t go much beyond what the job required and the pace of change, until digitization arrived, was mostly modest and manageable without much skills upgrade.  Today, new technologies are rapidly outstripping and obsoleting many skills and may be dropping your value in the marketplace.  Gaps will be revealed quickly in the job search process.  It’s imperative in today’s job market to stay current and continuously upgrade your skill set to be in step with technology developments.
  3. Your goals for a traditional retirement are  – and should be – caput.  Average retirements savings for Americans reaching the traditional retirement age of 65 is $95,776 according to the Economic Policy Institute.  Healthcare cost for a couple retiring in 2016 at age 65 living to average lifespan, over and above Medicare coverage: $250-400,000 according to Nationwide Insurance. Do the math.  Still, we cling to this 20th-century artifact called retirement and strive to hit a politically-driven artificial finish line to achieve something that is unnatural – pulling back, withdrawing.  Then we discover that it keeps us from realizing our full life potential and robs our culture of a gold mine of talent, creativity, and wisdom. Fortunately, more and more boomers are “pressing their nose” against the reality of this failed 100-year old model and abandoning the “vocation to vacation” retirement model for one of continued contribution.

Are you at, or approaching, late mid-life and haven’t cracked a book or taken a course in the last 5-10 years that would bring your skills more in line with emerging technologies in your field?  Have you “pressed your nose against the reality” of that necessity?

I’ll simply pass on the warning, as a recruiter and career coach having dealt with a number of 50+ professionals in that rut, the re-entry into employment under those conditions is a b****!

Example:  An over-50 coaching client of mine was forced to “press his nose against reality” recently when he received a hard message from a recruiter he had contacted about a job that he really wanted.  It was, on paper, a logical match, in the field he had been “riffed” from 10 months earlier.

The veteran recruiter laid it out succinctly and diplomatically for him:  his clients won’t give him a look for two primary reasons: (1) extended unemployment with no part-time or lesser employment or volunteer work to show initiative and to maintain skills; (2) very limited skills- upgrade training in last five years of employment and no effort during his unemployment.

Fortunately, this gentleman has learned a hard lesson and landed on his feet.  He has taken a somewhat risky straight commission sales position in a related field while he continues his search for his ideal position.    It took moving some ego aside, but he will put himself in a role that will help him stay current, polish his skills and better position himself with employers and recruiters as his search continues.

Disruption is as given

Peter Diamandis, is an M.D. entrepreneur with degrees in molecular genetics and aerospace engineering who has started 15 different companies.  In podcast #1  of a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach (available free on I-tunes), he stated:

“Every company, every product, every service will become disrupted, obsoleted. You will either disrupt yourself or someone else will.”

Where does that leave you relative to reality as you look forward?

How susceptible is your company or industry to disruption by digital technology?  And in what ways?  Disruption doesn’t necessarily mean dissolution.  Often it is a case of some new types of jobs being created as some are destroyed.  Have you positioned yourself, educationally and politically, to move into those new roles?

How susceptible are your skills to digital disruption? Are you willing to re-don the learning hat and protect yourself against personal obsolescence?

Do some research on what professions are “safe”, if there is such a thing. Hint: my hair stylist and plumber don’t seem at all concerned.

Here’s an article posted on LinkedIn that weighs in on the subject.

What reality do you need to press your nose against? How willing are you to take the steps necessary to deal with that reality?  Let me know your thoughts on this broad topic.  What have you been doing to stay ahead of the disruption curve?

Are You “Flunking” Retirement- or About To?

 

Flunking retirement?  Now there’s a strange concept.  How does one “flunk” out of one of life’s most coveted and cherished prizes?

I first came across the concept five years ago when I read a book entitled “Don’t Retire, REWIRE!” by Jeri Sedlar and Rick Miners, former executive recruiters and a husband and wife team with 25+ years of experience working in the area of personal and professional transition.

Following hundreds of interactions with people in late life transitions and actual interviews with hundreds of pre-retirees and retirees, they discovered that the old adage “if you fail to plan, then plan to fail” comes into play in moving into and through retirement.  It turns out, a significant number of people do, in fact, flunk retirement.

Outlooks and attitudes toward retirement differed amongst pre-retirees they interviewed and fell into one of four categories.  Perhaps you’ll see yourself in one of these:

  1. Those who were excited and knew what they were getting into.
  2. Those who were excited but had no idea what they were getting into.
  3. Those who were panicked and had no idea how to get in control.
  4. Those who were angry and not physically or mentally ready but being forced into it.

My general observation would say that #2 dominates.  There is research out there that indicates 70% of retirees go into retirement with no semblance of a non-financial plan.

Doing it right

Some of this was borne out this week when I had coffee with some good friends, a couple I hadn’t connected with for over a decade.  I’ll call them Carol and Ron.  Carol had retired four years ago from her sales jobs with the same telecom company after 32 years (that is not a misprint), the last 4 or 5 of which was pure agony.  Yes, she did it for the money – you probably would too if you were a consistent and award-winning six-figure earner.

She is 63.  Ron is 64 and a successful sales rep in a different industry. Ron is not yet retired and is negotiating an exit plan with his company.  He, unlike most his age, is in the driver’s seat.  His company really needs him and doesn’t want him to retire.

I wanted to talk with them because I knew them to be disciplined and diligent in everything they do, especially when it came to the financial side of their life.  I remembered they had worked with a financial planner for many years.

Carol and Ron are poster children for how to do it right.   Plan.  Save.  Get good advice.  Diversify.  Pay off the house. Don’t overspend. No debt.  Honestly, it was pretty humbling to see what they have done and hear how they’ve done it since I fall seriously short of it all.

Sitting there in a million dollar home, beautifully and comfortably upgraded, it was apparent that they are happy with what they had achieved on the financial side of their life.

Is that all there is?

As we discussed what full retirement for the two of them is going to look like, I detected a bit of a chink in the armor.  The conversation didn’t go much beyond looking forward to more travel.  Oh, and more painting on her part, a hobby she took up upon her retirement. And probably more golf for Ron.

They, for the most part, do the right things health-wise (except for Ron’s admitted attachment to beef) so they acknowledge the possibility of them both realizing a “longevity bonus”.  Their financial planner has wisely helped them plan out their finances to age 90.  I think they’ll get there.  But I’m not sure they had really factored that into the vision for their retirement.

What I didn’t hear was much beyond pure leisure in that impending retired life.

And I get that.  It’s normal and makes perfect sense. That diligence, that discipline, those years of hard work deserves a return.  And what better payback than to see the world, go where few are able to go. And to kick back and pursue deferred personal passions.

Until it all turns into “is this all there is?”

The world will benefit

I think I know this couple and what is going to happen.  They are going to flunk traditional retirement.  And that’s a good thing.  Because when they do, they, and we, will benefit.

This isn’t a La-z-boy couple. And I don’t think they are going to be a “world-traveler-look-at-my-photo-album” couple forever either.  They are too diligent, too intelligent, too disciplined and too forward thinking to withdraw into the margins of life and society.

Be it three years, five years, I predict that failing at traditional retirement will happen for them.   And we will all benefit because they will show up in meaningful service to their fellow man, in some way, some form,  resurrecting the talents, skills, and experiences they have acquired and turning them back to work on behalf of society.

The form that this takes will be unique to them and is part of the adventure of what I’ll call “second half discovery and reinvention.”

An Attitude Instrument

I see the possibility that Ron and Carol will emerge as part of the growing ranks of the “forever young, forever passionate, and forever engaged”.  This is an attitude that Mitch Anthony saw more prevalent as he did the research for his seminal book “The New Retirementality”.  In these energetic second-halfers, he isolated five internal focuses and patterns steering their lives safely “through the existential seas of fulfilled and pleasurable living day by day.”

He calls these the Vitamin C’s of Successful Aging:

  • Vitamin C1 – Connectivity: the most powerful predictor of life satisfaction right after retirement was not health or wealth but the breadth of a person’s social network.
  • Vitamin C2 – Challenge: the brain is a muscle that atrophies. Beyond 50, we can put a finger in the dike of Alzheimer’s and dementia by having “riddles to ponder, problems to solve, and things to fix.”
  • Vitamin C3- Curiosity: curiosity guarantees “a pulse in the brain and a reason to keep our bodies healthy.” He who no longer wants to learn should order the tombstone.
  • Vitamin C4 – Creativity: we can be creative and keep the powers of observation alive until the end.  There is no end point to creativity.  We just have to be “curious, intrigued, expressive and intentional.”
  • Vitamin C5 – Charity: studies have confirmed the ameliorative effects of charitable living on quality and longevity of life.

No one should feel bad about flunking a retirement built on a 125-year old false premise.  Ron and Carol certainly won’t. Let’s hope more and more people will fail.  Let’s fight the comparison-driven desire for comfort and inactivity, rise up against our youth-oriented culture and help prop this country back up by resurrecting the energy, vitality, creativity, and wisdom underneath the grey and wrinkles.

I suspect the theme here is upsetting to some – or perhaps many –  because traditional retirement is so coveted and entrenched in our thinking.  I’d love to hear from those opposed as well as those who agree.  Scroll down and leave a comment and/or trip over to our Make Aging Work Facebook page and help us with a Like.

What will you do with your “longevity bonus”?

So, I’m at my 9 year-old desktop computer staring into dual monitors doing my bus dev search thing on Linked In looking for key points-of-contact in companies in my targeted recruiting niche.  Recruiting remains a part of my “portfolio work life” because of a couple of things: (1) I married a woman who likes to sleep inside and eat warm food and (2) the outsize mortgage that comes with fulfilling that marital commitment.

My keyword search turned up a Director of Human Resources for a company I am targeting because she had “Director, Human Resources” in her Linked In headline.  But it was what she had below her headline that really caught my eye.  It said:

Traveling and Living Life

My curiosity was naturally piqued because (1) HR Directors are normally pretty office bound, often chained to their chairs, spread thin, understaffed and overworked and (2) “living life” is not the demeanor that I usually associate with how HR Managers view their work life.  It’s a grinder job.

A further peek into the profile reveals that this particular HR Director had retired after 33 years in her field and is now “traveling and living life.”  Apparently this new life didn’t leave time for her to update her Linked In profile.  I probably wouldn’t bother either if I were that excited about finally “living life.”

From her profile, I could estimate her age between 55 and 60, so she’s one of that diminishing number of folks who are choosing to retire early.

But here’s what struck me as odd.  If she started “living life” on January 2017, which is apparently her retirement/matriculation date, what was she doing with her life for the previous 33+ years?  Dying?

Well, technically, yes.  Because we all start dying the minute we are born. But isn’t there an interesting perspective and message in that innocent phrase?  It would seem to say very loudly that my “years-to-date” have been less than thrilling and gratifying and that I needed to get out to finally live life.

My kudos to her for fooling her employer for those three decades.

The linear-life-cycle model

I guess none of us should be surprised by that. At her age, like most “boomers”, she was born into a culture built around a three-stage, age-graded model – the linear life model.  I call it the 20-40-20 plan: 20 years for education, 40 years of work (typically for “the man” and building “the man’s” dream) to be followed by the coveted 20 years of retirement bliss, doing what you really wanted to do all along during those first 60 or so years.

What they failed to tell us, back in the day, was that, if you followed this traditional retirement model, that third part – the 20 at the end – usually didn’t end up being the full 20.  IBM did a study a generation ago and found that their average retiree didn’t make it past their 24th pension check.  Shell Oil did a study of early retirees and found that embarking on the retirement path at age 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching 65.

I haven’t checked.  Can frequent flyer miles be used to pay funeral expenses?

What’s our protagonist going to do – just travel until she dies?  I know travel is a big deal for retirees.  And there are certainly some awesome places to visit and see on this mudball.  But at some point does living a life tied to travel start to become a bit of a wobbly stool? After all, how many pictures can you store and have time to reminisce over?  Plus, last I heard reminiscence is not a great profit producer or life extender.

Longevity bonus

Here’s the other possible glitch in all this.  There’s an increasing chance today that said HR Director may live 15, 20, 30 years longer than she thinks she will.  That’s more time than most frequent flyer accumulations will last or, for that matter, more time than needed to see all the places in the world worthy of photographing.

Our “lucky” former HR Manager may be faced with what a huge swath of boomers are, or will be, facing:   extended life spans that outlast their resources.

So, I guess reality sets in at some point for Ms “traveling and living life”.   And that reality may mean finding a way to replenish the coffers spent seeing the world. Egads!  Not back to work!  Back to not-living-life?

Work extends lives

It might have to happen.  It’s happening for a growing number of us – working longer.  But we’re also learning that extending our work lives actually increases our vitality and energy and, ironically, adds to our longevity. Work, in fact, has been determined to be the number one contributor to healthy extended living.

It doesn’t necessarily have to be for money.  Maybe you are one of the fortunate few today who planned well enough to be well-heeled through your second half.  It can be volunteer, or a “play-check” as suggested by Mitch Anthony, author of the fabulous book “The New Retirementality.”

It a mixed bag of ironies.  We work hard to be able to get away from work only to find out that what we strove to get away from is what ultimately enables us to live healthier, longer.

I know this message flies right by the 33% of retirees who have no intention of ever going back to work.  But for those of us in the 67%, it can be an exciting time of second growth.  A time when we can continue to work doing more of what we REALLY want to do and thus make aging work for us instead of against us.

That’s why I really love working with 50+’ers to help them get creative about how they can finish out having left a footprint. It’s exciting to see creativity and enthusiasm resurrected.

 

I’d love to hear your comments on all this.  What are your views on work in this second half?  How are you going to plan for the possibilities of an extended life?  What’s been working for you as you begin to move into this “second growth” period?

Time to Decide – Take-off? Or landing?

“Life is a fatal disease. Once contracted, there is no known cure”

Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician, made that statement in his 1984 book “Dare To Be 100”. It forms a backdrop for his message about our potential to live longer, healthier and more meaningful lives.

Dr. Bortz knows a thing or two about growing old. What better source than someone who has 50+ years of observing life, death, and survival?

Well into his 80’s, he continues to set a very active pace taking a longevity message to audiences globally.

I discovered Dr. Bortz and “Dare to Be 100” in 2013. Dr. Bortz was saying three decades ago what we now realize is the truth about what it takes to age successfully.

His books (I believe there are seven of them) were a catalyst for me, providing a sensible “roadmap” to late-life health with facts and advice unencumbered by political or corporate influence.

I find that most of us are repulsed by his claim that there is no reason we shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond. I get it – I carry the same images of extreme, prolonged frailty that we associate with growing old. We don’t want to be like those images in our head.

It’s a deeply ingrained attitude – but it’s naïve. I’ll stake that claim on the fact that we choose not to understand our biology. And because we don’t understand it, we do things that result in us “living too short and dying too long” and robbing ourselves of our full life potential – really the core of Dr. Bortz message.

OMG! Another blog?

I would be delusional to think that you’ve been eagerly awaiting a blog on aging, what with only 100 million other blogs out there and the rather “uncomfortable” nature of the subject.

So why blog?

I’ve discovered a “passion” – a desire to help people who have passed the 50-year milestone to pivot their attitudes regarding aging and “Make Aging Work” by thinking and living bigger while slowing the aging process.

Oliver Wendell Holmes once said “Many people die with their music still in them. Too often it is because they are always getting ready to live. Before they know it time runs out.“

With boosts from the likes of Dr. Bortz and others that I’ve studied and followed, my hope is to help others live their whole life, sing all their song and to live longer, live better and finish out with vitality and a strong sense of purpose.

Been there – – – –

I passed the over-50 threshold some time ago – I’m a “pre-boomer” by four years, born in 1942. My life experiences and professional experiences as an executive recruiter and career and “reinvention” coach, coupled with two decades of intense reading and study on human development and the aging process, has led me to two conclusions about how we age in this country.

  1. We don’t live long enough to truly die of old age because we choose not to understand how our bodies and minds function and thus subject them to repeated, long-term abuse and disuse.
  2.  We allow myths, misconceptions, outdated models, dangerous cultural traditions, deceptive advertising, deplorable government policies, and just plain complacency guide us to a premature demise.

Gap analysis

A prominent Yale physician, Dr. David Katz, founder of the school’s Prevention Research Center, got my attention a few years ago when I heard him say:

“We know all that we need to know to reduce, by 80%, the five major killing diseases in our culture – heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. We don’t need more new fancy drugs or expensive new equipment and technology or more Nobel prizes. We already know what we need to know.”

I believe Dr. Katz’ position extends logically to aging: we know all we need to know to live healthier, longer and more productively.

We have a 42-year gap between our 80-year average life span and the length of time our bodies appear to be designed to last at this point – 122 years, 164 days. Ms. Jeanne Calment of Paris set that bar as the oldest human, fully documented and verified.

Why the gap between our potential and our average, between what we already know and what we do to stay healthy and live longer? Take #2 above and stir in ignorance (as in ignoring best practices), instant gratification, comparison, stress, lack of purpose. Feel free to add your own thoughts to this toxic brew.

Quixotic as it may seem, I’m choosing to join the voices of those who are working to dilute this brew and close this gap.

Make Aging Work

This journey may be a bit idealistic but I’m venturing forth nonetheless with my crusade-like mission, sharing what I hope will be valuable, meaningful information and resources.

I’m calling the home-base for this venture “Make Aging Work – Live Big, Age Little”. I believe we know what we need to know to do that.

Despite what our society would have us to believe, we can truly make our second-half of life work for us in a big way rather than against us.

Life to 100 and beyond with energy, enthusiasm, and purpose is now one of the fastest-growing realities of our age. Centenarians are growing at 8X the rate of any other population demographic in our country. We are learning what it takes to “live longer, die shorter” and finish out with purpose having left a footprint.

This site is intended to be a place to learn more about living a longer, healthier, more vigorous “second half” – and a place in which you build the value through your feedback and input. You are the key to helping our demographic make aging work for us instead of against us.

I invite you to join the conversation and the crusade. Please share your thoughts, insights, experiences – and pin my ears back if you disagree or if you feel I’ve slipped over into hyperbole.

I look forward to your feedback. Please leave a comment below.