How would you describe your last 80 years in this world? Some advice for 40+ year olds (and maybe some other 80-year olds).

I penned this article 20 months ago on Quora.com before number 80 happened.  There’s been about 90,000 “Mikeys” that have liked it so far and since today is, in fact, my 80th birthday, I felt it appropriate to tune it up and share it with this tribe.

I think 80 years earns the right to provide some insight. So here goes.

For starters, my first 80 years are exactly like yours in one respect. It has been an ongoing series of choices and continues to be. I am where and what I am as the result of the accumulated choices I have made over the course of my life. And it will end up based on the choices I make going forward.

I’ve been fortunate to have started life without any “blueprint errors” so I wasn’t encumbered with any physical or mental limitations. Nor did I have a “silver spoon” growing up.

I guess you could say my life has been a low-drama adventure – probably like most lives. Lots of twists and turns mixing tranquility with chaos and considerable unpredictability with more than my share of attempts to control the uncontrollable.

I’m an escapee from rural Wyoming and a town of 800 with a high-school graduating class of 12. I’ve spent more time steering a Farmall tractor in circles, snuck into more drive-in theaters, raided more gardens, killed more rabbits for spending money, and driven more cars that didn’t have turn-signals and seat belts than most.

Pine Bluffs, Wyoming – in all its glory!!

My college experience was stretched over nine years and three different majors, all paid for on my own by working 2–3 jobs. My wife of 51 years liked the way I served her food as a hasher at her sorority house and that I was an entertainer/guitar player on the weekends, that I wore sport coats to class, and didn’t buy the phony frat boy bit.

Oh, and the ’65 Chevy Malibu SuperSport, 300hp, four-on-the-floor helped a little.

So I fooled her into a marriage fully aware that I was marrying way over my head.

Our early married life experienced a hiccup – our first son was born severely brain-damaged from an undetermined pre-natal event and succumbed 16 months later, 11 days before our daughter was born.

It was a major factor in helping us both build resilience that sustains us today.

I forged ahead doing the “getta” thing: getta degree, getta job, getta wife, getta mortgage, getta fenced- yard, getta family, 2.5 kids and golden retriever, getta mini-van, getta title, getta 401K.

I was a poster boy for chasing the “linear life plan” i.e. the 20–40–20  life-cycle model that most still succumb to – 20 years of education, 40 years of work building someone else’s dream followed by 20 years (hopefully) of “nirvana” called retirement.

Some refer to it as the “learn-earn-retire-die” model. 

I had begun to question the concept of retirement in my 40s as I immersed myself more in the self-development world where I discovered that retirement was never a consideration for most high-achievers. It appeared to me that most of the longest-living humans remained in the creative process rather than retire – a word derived from the French verb “retirer” which means “withdraw.”

So, I’ve chosen not to retire but to remain in the “creative process” as long as I can. I’ve set the goal of living to 112 1/2 knowing that my chances of getting there are pretty slim because of early marginal health habits. But I know that by setting the goal I have a much better chance of getting there than if I just settle for living out the average lifespan of the American male which is somewhere around 78 and declining.

See – I’ve beaten it already!

I left the 20–40–20 track at age 60 and started my own business as an executive recruiter after 32 years of wandering through the desert of corporate employment. I learned, by starting a business that I knew nothing about and was under-prepared to start, that I’m not the entrepreneur I thought I would be and that it’s not the glamorous world people think it is.

The last 20 years have been the most challenging, enlightening, and gratifying part of the 80-year journey and the part of the journey from which I can draw advice worthy of consideration for a 40-year old.

Here are the cliff notes from the last 20 years:

  • I moved from near millionaire status on paper to an embarrassing fraction of that following three market crashes and draw-down to support my business.
  • Son and daughter launched, rewarded with three wonderful grandkids.
  • Late-life discovery of my core strengths and realization that my 32 years invested in corporate life was a mismatch with my true talents.
  • Acknowledged a talent and drive to help people struggling with major life decisions, especially those at or beyond mid-life.
  • Became a dedicated student of understanding how our minds and bodies work; read over 900 books on self-development, health and wellness, brain development, positive psychology.
  • Resurrected a latent talent as a writer and chose to finish out by putting that skill to work along with my ability to help guide others to better mid-life decisions.

So life today is a mash-up of recovery from mistakes, acknowledgment of innate ability, some victories, and a modicum of acquired wisdom from all of the above. I can honestly say that I experience “eudaimonic happiness” (see this article) and am at the happiest and healthiest point in my life having been able to apply some of the voluminous knowledge and experiences that I have accumulated through my life.

How would I advise a 40-year old?

Let’s think in big buckets – the buckets that are foundational to success, health, longevity, and purpose in life.

Bucket #1: Get serious about and take control of your health. Nothing counts for anything if you don’t feel good. As Americans, we do a pretty shitty job of protecting our health. Candidly, we are surprisingly illiterate when it comes to understanding how our minds and bodies work.

If we did understand, would

  • we take 35% of our meals through the side window of our cars?
  • we weigh 20 lbs more on average today than in 1980 without being any taller?
  • 50% of our population today be pre-diabetic with 70% of those not knowing it (CDC report)?
  • would our longevity curve be receding instead of continuing to progress?

We know there is no biological reason that we shouldn’t live to 100 or beyond. Our “whole-life benchmark” has already been set at 122 years, 164 days because Jeanne Calment of Paris made it that far. So we know the body can last that long. Yet, on average, in America, we achieve only 66% of that potential.

Why the gap? In a word: lifestyle. The five major killers in our culture – heart disease, cancer, stroke, diabetes, and dementia – have not changed in decades. They are lifestyle diseases and all are preventable.

Our poor diets, sedentary living, and increasing isolation are killing us early – we continue to “live too short and die too long” with late life for many composed of extended morbidity and early frailty.

Become a student of your mind and body and start now to understand how your body works at the cellular level. With that awareness, you will be able to put in place a lifestyle of good health-inducing habits that will bode well for a mid-life and beyond that is energetic, long, and meaningful.

It’s also important to remember that we, in America, are encumbered with a healthcare system that is broken and not exactly an ally in this quest. It operates on the principle of “cure” and not “prevention.” It’s a disease-care system that is trained to “drug it or cut it out” and “mop up the water without turning off the spigot.” It is reactive, not proactive. It’s up to you to be proactive and take charge of your health and partner with your physician and not let him/her be the arbiter of your health.

One of the best pieces of advice I can pass on is to encourage you to read what many consider one of the most transformational books ever written when it comes to achieving good health. It’s called “Younger Next Year”, co-authored by Chris Crowley and Dr. Henry Lodge. It’s a book that has impacted many lives. In fact, Bill Gates, who has read a book a week forever, considers it one of the most impactful books he’s ever read.

Applying what this book can teach you, your life curve can look more like this:

Bucket #2:

Discover your strengths and be the author of your life. Chances are high that you came through your formal education without fully understanding what your deepest strengths and talents are. You were plopped into a classroom with 30 other “victims” and forced to learn what an outdated educational system continues to say is best for you – so that you can fit into and conform to the aforementioned 20–40–20 learn-earn-retire model that still prevails. It’s likely you have gotten this far having not chosen the base materials of who you really are.

We all have within us an “essence”, or what German psychiatrist Carlo Strenger calls our “thus and no other”, a something born in each of us that is “recalcitrant to change.” It’s that inner dream that gets tamped down and barnacled over by the educational system, the advice of the influential “P’s” in your life (parents, peers, professors, politicians, and pundits), much of corporate employment, and the pressure to conform.

I know of what I speak. Although successful by cultural standards of title, status, and income while in the corporate world, it wasn’t until I was in my sixties that I finally acknowledged that I was operating outside of my “base materials” or “core strengths and talents.” I ignored or refused to accept the feedback that I got from several personality- and strengths-assessment tests that I took – because they didn’t align with my belief of what the culture expected. The tests said, in every case, that I should be in a learning-teaching environment where my natural, but undeveloped, ability to write and speak could flourish.

I began to move in that direction in my mid-sixties and the journey continues.

So, if you haven’t, start now to identify and acknowledge your strengths, how you are wired up, what your “thus and no other” is, and move toward it. It’s not too late to be the true author of your life. As NPR journalist and author of “Life Reimagined: Ths Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife” Barbara Bradley Hagerty states:

“- change within the boundaries of your natural talents, proclivities, personality traits, and skills.”

Invest in, and take seriously, assessments such as Strengthsfinder, Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, DISC. Work with a career coach or life coach.

Ask yourself a couple of questions: (1) Would I continue doing what I am doing for no pay? (2) If time and money were not a factor, what would I be doing?

At forty, you are a mid-career professional or close to it. You’ve lived enough years and have enough of a biography of successes and failures that you should know enough about what you excel at, what you don’t do well, what energizes you, and what you dread. All this can guide you to this next stage.

Bucket #3:

Dispose of the retirement mindset. My position on this is, admittedly, controversial. Over the last 5–6 decades, the concept of a “labor-to-leisure”, “vocation-to-vacation” retirement has become so entrenched in the psyche of the western world that to assault it is heresy. But assault it I will – with several things that a 40-year old should consider as they move into the second half of life.

Here are a few simple facts about retirement as we’ve come to know it:

  • Retirement is an unnatural act that doesn’t exist in nature and didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago. Have you ever seen a retired coyote or maple tree? This unnatural act started in Europe in the late 1800s by Otto Von Bismark for purely political reasons and was picked up by FDR in the U.S. a half-century later, again for political reasons. The arbitrary selection of 65 as a retirement age (at a time when the average lifespan was 62) established an artificial line that was irrelevant then and even more irrelevant now.
  • The statistics behind traditional retirement are not encouraging. IBM determined a couple of generations ago that the average number of pension checks issued was 24. Our Social Security system, in 1995, determined that the average number of social security checks issued was 29. Shell Oil studied thousands of its employees and found that retiring at 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching 65 compared to those who worked beyond age 65. Depression, suicide, and divorce rates are higher amongst retirees than non-retirees.
  • With our frontal cortex capability, we have dreamed up a concept that goes against our biology. We have one of two biological choices – grow or decay. It’s in our cellular structure. Traditional retirement draws us to sedentary living, withdrawal from work, increased social isolation, and reduced learning – all things that go against the way we are wired up biologically i.e. our body’s “grow or decay” mechanism. That’s all we need to know to explain why we still “live too short and die too long” in our society when, in fact, we should “live long and die short” or “die young, as late as possible” as stated earlier.

Bucket #4:

Own your career and never stop learning. Continue to refine and deepen your skills within and outside of your career path.

Repeatedly, I have worked with folks in the late 40s or 50s who have struggled to re-enter the job market after being blindsided by a layoff or other type of termination. Often it’s due to the fact that they have made no attempt to continue to enhance or learn new skills throughout their career.

Many of these hapless victims clung to the 20th-century illusion that their company has their interests at heart and will nurture them along. This is a dangerous thought pattern.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your employer has your interests at heart. They don’t. They are always guarding their own self-interests.

Master Certified Career Coach, Janine Moon, in her book “Career Ownership” emphasizes the importance of career ownership in the face of both the magnitude and the accelerating pace of change occurring in our global economy.

Here are a few “wise” questions that she suggests a 40-year old should be asking themselves:

  • When did you last do serious research to educate yourself about the future of your industry and the skills needed to succeed in this changing marketplace?
  • When did you last assess your skills, abilities, and goals to determine how you could get the most satisfaction out of the workspace in which you spend many of your waking hours.?
  • When did you last write out your 3-year career plan (on your own) along with your 12-month learning plan?
  • When did you last devote personal time and funds to upgrade your own skills?
  • When did you last consider requesting a job rotation that would help you build a relationship and impact your marketability inside or outside of your organization?
  • When did you last review and align yourself with your organization’s top two strategic growth areas?
  • When did you last identify a weak area in your skills or performance and take personal responsibility to address the problem?

As Americans, we don’t have a good track record as continuous learners. For instance:

  • Approximately 39% of high school never read another book after graduation.
  • Approximately 42% of college graduates never read another book after graduation.
  • 95% of books read in the U.S. are read by 5% of the population.

Read, read, read. It’s key to avoiding irrelevancy and becoming a dinosaur. Stay in the learning process all your life. You’ll find that it isn’t crowded in that space. But it will bode well for both your career and your mental health.

It’s been an interesting ride – and continues to be interesting. I hope it stays interesting until the universe decides to take the parts back (and that it decides to make that REAL quick – no loitering in extended morbidity for me!).

Any of you “been there, done this?” I’d love to hear your stories. Share ’em with a comment below.

Why Work Half of Our Life Expectancy? Maybe We Should Work All of It.

Recently, a Quora member posed the question: ” Why work half of our life expectancy?”

I wasn’t sure if he was suggesting that this is too short or too long of a time to work.

I suspect since work today is generally considered a “have to do” and not “a want to do” that he was coming down on it being too long a period to be involved in something many consider inconvenient, distasteful, uninspiring.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise that I answered coming down on the opposite side asking: “Why do we strive to only work half of our life expectancy? Why not nearly all of it?”

Over the last 50+ years, in most developed countries, we’ve injected this mindset that work is something to eventually avoid or reject in favor of the unnatural concept of “retirement.”

As such, we, of 20th-century origin, have operated with a model built around busting our humps for 40+ years (approximately half our current life expectancy) to be able to achieve that work avoidance – a period which may or may not get us to the average life expectancy.

Often that last 20-year journey is beset with physical and mental issues as a result of the stress and lifestyle habits from the previous 40.

The legacy retirement model that has become so entrenched in the psyche of western cultures fails to acknowledge that work is, and always has been, what we are designed to do.

We’ve strayed from that biological reality and ignored the role that meaningful work can have in health and length of life.

Consider the wise words of Wendell Berry, American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer as he reflects on the prevailing attitude toward work.

“We can say without exaggeration that the present national ambition of the United States is unemployment. People live for quitting time, for weekends, for vacations, and for retirement; moreover, this ambition seems to be classless, as true in the executive suites as on the assembly lines. One works not because the work is necessary, valuable, useful to a desirable end, or because one loves to do it, but only to be able to quit – a condition that a saner time would regard as infernal, a condemnation.”

Work has long been recognized as a critical component of longevity. A study of 83,000 Americans 65 and older found that being retired or unemployed was associated with a greater risk of poor health.

Our chances of remaining healthy increase if we continue working.

Here’s the rub.

Many of us commit to work that is outside of our true talents and essence and choose the paycheck over being aligned with what we are best designed to do and what truly inspires and energizes us.

As such, work, which can provide us with structure, meaning, connection, and inspiration, often becomes drudgery and a “necessary evil.”

So, we squeeze it into 40 years to reach the opportunity to exist another 20 years in non-work heaven.

It’s an 80-year mindset when, in fact, we have biology that should easily get us to 100 or beyond.

In fact, worldwide research on the lives of centenarians reveals that most continued to work very late in life.

I spoke to this in a previous article:

Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!

Semi-retirement for a lifetime.

There’s an interesting trend forming that we should be paying attention to that speaks to the realization that busting the hump for forty years to reach an unpredictable retirement doesn’t make sense.

And it’s coming from the millennials and GenXers.

More and more are committing, in their 30s, to aligning their work with their core talents, what they do best, and what inspires them and to doing that as long as they are able.

Rather than sell out to building someone else’s dream, they are pursuing their own with no designs on a retired life.

It’s a lifestyle built around the concept of semi-retirement for a lifetime.

Rocco Pendola is writing about this on Medium. Here’s a link to a couple of his articles that speak to this concept.

There’s a Movement Forming to a Different Way of Living Life

https://themakingofamillionaire.com/exactly-what-it-means-to-be-semi-retired-e8502292d3e9

What are your thoughts on this topic? Tell us how you feel – leave a comment below. Thanks for reading!

Why Did Isocrates Live to 98 and We Can’t Make It Past 80? A Longevity Lesson from the Ancient Greeks.

Much has been said about the meteoric increase in average lifespan over the last century. I’ve made a pretty big deal of it all in past articles. Considering that we moved that needle from 47 years to about 80 between 1910 and 2010, I guess it’s worth a mention. Especially since we hockey-sticked it more in 100 years than in the last 100-200,000 years.

 

The emperor has clothes but they have worn pretty thin.

It makes for a great story, this hockey stick stat. That is until we pull back the curtain and find the glitter has left the gold.

Kudos are due to the medical establishment, government, and technology for teaming up to reverse the elements that resulted in a 47-year average life span. Together they:

  • Reversed infant mortality
  • Eliminated or radically reduced infectious diseases
  • Improved workplace safety
  • Improved our drinking water
  • Improved quality and availability of food
  • Improved education

A lot of “fixing.” A lot of “curing.” A lot of “downstream repair.”

All low-hanging fruit. 

Then we hit a wall around 2010 and started going backward.

Now we’re stuck – with institutions that can’t, or won’t, think like the Greeks!

The ancient Greeks probably would have cautioned us to think deeper during that 1910-2010 sprint.

Hygeia vs Panacea

The Greeks, 2,500 years ago, had it right in many areas, but particularly when it came to good health. They identified that medicine had two components – Hygeia and Panacea.

Hygeia equals health preservation and Panacea equals repair. Hygeia equals prevention. Panacea equals cure.

For the Greeks, Hygeia held precedence.

Our 100 years of fixing and repair never got us to that model. We’ve moved far from it with limited interest in moving in that direction.

And the consequences are glaring.

We are getting sicker as a population each day – and have been for the better part of 50 years. 

Hygeia and Eugeria

In his outstanding book “Boundless Potential: Transform Your Brain, Unleash Your Talents, Reinvent Your Work in Midlife and Beyond,” author Mark S. Walton reveals a number of things that we (and our medical establishment) can learn from the Greeks when it comes to our health and longevity.

Many of Greek fame lived longer than most. At a time when the normal lifespan was around 35, many of the notable, quotable Greeks lived longer and aged happily.

Walton points out that a study by the Royal Society of Medicine in London explored this in 1994 and 2007, studying the “men of intellectual excellence and achievement” during that period.  They found that the “men of fame” had a mean and median life span of 71.3 and 70 years, respectively. Twice the average!

It turns out that the Greeks had another arrow in their quiver of equal importance to hygeia – a term for attaining genuine happiness called eugeria.

According to Walton, eugeria required:

“-a lifelong pursuit of worthy goals through the three components of our humanity: body, mind, and soul.”

Walton examines the Greek eugeria formula and its components:

  1. They played hard. They were “the first people in the world to play and they played on a grand scale.” Games, athletic contests of every description. Not as an end in itself but as preparation “for the work yet to come.”
  2. They worked hard. As the world’s first knowledge workers, they never stopped exerting their minds and were the original reinventing people. Knowledge work was the ultimate fun.
  3. They paid it forward. For them, “-it was clear that the soulful pursuit of paying it forward, of working for the benefit of each other and future generations, provided the greatest payback of all.”

He reminds us that the word philanthropy was derived from two Greek roots: philo (love) and anthropos (mankind) and that:

“The lifelong pursuit of excellence (arete), with the goal of contributing our accomplishments to others – this, to the Greeks, was the ultimate formula, the blueprint, for eugeria, a long and happy life.”

Plato lived to 80; Isocrates to 98; Sophocles to 90; Aristarchus, Democritus, and Gorgias all lived past 100.

Today, you will be front-page media fodder for living 20% past the average life span i.e. to 100. In ancient Greece, living 2x the average or more wasn’t all that unusual.

Walton provides a nice summary:

“While the Athenian paradigm has faded into history, the thinking behind it has endured through the ages – most especially its soulful tenet: that paying it forward, working for the sake of others, pays us back in unexpected ways.”

Our lifestyles, built around bad diet, sedentary living, seeking comfort and convenience, and an increasing lack of generativity would have been unsettling to the Greeks but it’s how we choose to live and thus pull up short of our full life potential.

We won’t get help from a healthcare system that grew up “fixing” and can’t/won’t move off a business model based on cure and a “downstream” mindset that avoids addressing the cause in favor of fixing the symptoms.

The Greeks believed in prevention. Our systems are geared to cure. The Greeks planned “upstream”; we react “downstream.”

The Greeks never stopped learning. We warehouse our brains at a certain age.

And-

-the Greeks had no inkling of the concept of retirement.

I suspect they would have found the concept foolish, maybe even offensive.

We’ve got a lot to learn. The Greeks can still teach us.

The question is: Are we willing to be taught?

What do you think about this? Leave us your thoughts with a comment below. We appreciate your feedback.

Are you “youthful” or “useful”? (The mirrors at 24 Hour Fitness answer part of that question for me!)

Part of me says it’s unfair to have so many mirrors in an athletic club. They are everywhere – and they don’t lie.

But then if you are part of the tank top, tattoo, tiny testicle, mirror muscle group hanging out with your lululemon-clad girlfriend, mirrors are essential.

For someone approaching geezerdom it’s, well, painful.

Undeterred, I endure the pain ’cause I’ve still got this illusory section in my brain that says that my biceps will grow, the droop over the beltline is temporary, and that the furniture disease wherein my chest has fallen into my drawers is just a myth. (sorry, bad joke!!)

My end-of-day athletic club workouts go 2 hours most of the time. Strength training followed by aerobic. And I usually work in a walk of at least 1-2 miles during the day to make sure I haul my arse out of the chair that keeps me at the keyboard and at 90 degrees too much of the day.

My flesh redistribution plan doesn’t seem to be working too well. No, you can’t fool Mother Nature. Gravity works.

Wrinkles versus wisdom.

Thus, I was challenged recently by a blog post from Chip Conley, entrepreneur, author, and founder of the Modern Elder Academy. I like Chip’s stuff and read most of his daily blogs. In a recent one, he told of reminding a late-middle-aged friend who was lamenting his inability to look younger that “our wisdom is more intangible than our wrinkles” and challenged him with the questions:

“How could you be more useful in the world?”

“Who could use a bit of your wisdom?”

It’s easy to get so caught up in trying to look and feel youthful that we forget that feeling “useful” may be more important than wrinkles in living a well-lived life.

Wrinkles are a given. There’s no stopping them.

Wisdom isn’t a given. It can atrophy and fade away. If couch potato replaces career, wisdom is wasted. It’s one of the traps that full-stop retirement can suck you into.

Dr. Ken Dychtwald of the AgeWave organization reminds us in his book “What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age” that the average American watches 47+ hours of television a week and that less than 25% do any volunteer work. 

How can we serve?

Chip reminds us that:

“Ultimately, one of the most important questions we can ask ourselves is, “How can I serve?” It’s a question that takes on even greater meaning in midlife and beyond. It is a question that immediately creates a sense of generativity, defined as “the propensity and willingness to engage in acts that promote the wellbeing of younger generations as a way of ensuring the long-term survival of the species.”

That bolded sentence struck home this weekend when I took my 10-year-old grandson to lunch. We hadn’t done the one-on-one thing in a while because of COVID and I was reminded of how quickly time is flying, that we don’t know each other as well as we should, and that my window to help promote his well-being as his “papa” is fleeting. So, too, for his cousins, my two other similarly-aged grandkids.

It was a convicting experience.

Never too late.

As “third-agers”, we all have unlimited opportunities to serve and share our wisdom.

We’re wired to do so.

So instead of riding off into the sunset by retiring, we can ride into the sunrise with a vision and journey to serve.

This sick world needs your wisdom – wrinkles just help authenticate it.

 

Is Early Retirement As Good As They Say, Or Is It Like The Grass Is Always Greener On The Other Side? The Jury May Still Be Out.

I can’t speak to early retirement – or to retirement in general – as I am a non-retiree and staunch opponent of the concept of traditional vocation-to-vacation retirement.

I will say, however, I feel that the idea of early retirement is further validation of the tremendous grip this unnatural concept has on our psyche.

I find it curious and revealing that, in the U.S. where I live, you are considered deficient, unfortunate, or weird if you don’t retire and disengage from work on or around an arbitrary number established 86 years ago – age 65.

Conversely, you are considered heroic and put on a pedestal for being able to retire and disengage ahead of that number.

In some ways, it’s a sad commentary on what work has become for so many – a non-fulfilling, uninspiring slog through long commutes, bad bosses, unpredictability, and lack of control.

Do we need any more validation of that than the current “Great Resignation” phenomenon?

Early retirement may have a dark side.

  • Shell Oil studied thousands of its employees and found that retiring at 55 doubled the risk for death before reaching 65 compared to those who worked beyond age 65, challenging the notion that retiring early boosts longevity and, in fact, demonstrating the opposite – mortality rates improve with later retirement.
  • A study in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health suggests that retiring early may actually increase your risk of dying early. Findings showed that healthy people who postponed retirement and chose to retire a year later than those in the comparison group had an 11% lower risk of dying early.
  • A study from Cornell U. and the University of Melbourne shows a striking correlation between social security claims for early takers and a jump in mortality. Men in particular see an increase in mortality risk of about 20%.
  • According to the International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, retiring later appears to delay the onset of Alzheimer’s.

Flunk retirement? No way!

In my experience as a career transition and retirement coach, it is rare that any retiree – early or not, and particularly, men –  will admit that their retirement isn’t going well. And many retirements don’t go well because the advance planning only had to do with the money.

Over one-half of retirees enter their retirement with no semblance of a non-financial plan that would include discussion and a plan for the psychological, mental, physical, and spiritual sides of retirement.

Early retirees are guilty as well. One thing they may fail to factor in is the role of relationships in retirement and not consider that their circle of relationships will shrink and be difficult to restore because few people their age are retired.

One risk for any retiree is the threat of boredom. Far too many retirees retire from something and not to something. Self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement quickly wears thin for most, and without a purpose or a sustainable, inspiring reason to get up in the morning, boredom is in the wings. Boredom often leads to depression.

In summary –

– retirement fails to acknowledge the important role that work plays in longevity. We are built to work, to create, to produce. Retirement goes against that, and other, critical components of our biology which offers us only two options. We either grow or we stagnate.

The traditional self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement model just simply isn’t healthy in the long term as evidenced by the fact that, in the U.S., our elderly spend more of their years in chronic illness than any other developed nation.

We tend to “live too short and die too long.”

We can’t push all of that off on retirement, but we need to be honest and acknowledge that it does play a role.

I see no reason to start that deterioration process early – or ever.

How about you?

What Should You Expect When You Turn 60 Years Old?

Photo by Tim Cooper on Unsplash

I recently answered this question for an obvious younger whippersnapper on Quora.com.

What Should You Expect When You Turn 60 Years Old?

With the 20th anniversary of that age within view for me, I had a few thoughts I’ve accumulated over those two decades.

I hope you won’t expect much more than a cake with a lot of candles on that day, along with a whole bunch of unfunny ageist birthday cards, and a nauseating rash of “over the hill” comments from so-called friends. For example:

Birthday card from my daughter

What is so significant about 60?

Most people get there. How is it more significant than say 50 or 65?

Or any age, for that matter.

As they say, it’s just a number.

Things didn’t start falling off 20 years ago when I turned 60. I was still playing pickup basketball and lifting weights 5x a week. I had to give up the BB at 63 because of a knee issue but still lift weights aggressively 3x per week.

I did notice a slight reversal at or around that time – nose running and feet smelling (sorry – old bad joke!).

Age 60 was a pivotal time for me.

I went against the grain and decided to leave corporate life and start my own business. The idea of retirement didn’t appeal to me then and still doesn’t.

I had grown accustomed to being told that I looked and acted much younger than my 60 years. My response was then – and still is today – that it’s not an accident or genetics. I work at it, physically and mentally. Then and today.

If I tie how I feel or expect to look to a number, I have the wrong mindset. Based on my number and the current average life span of the American male (78.6), well – I missed my funeral.

I am so mystified and miffed at the strange hold that the number 60 and 65 have on us in the U.S. It’s an artificial finish line, an arbitrary number with no particular significance other than the tag the government tied to it 86 years ago and the number the financial service industry keys off of as they help you plan for your demise.

The crest of the hill? The start of the downward slide?

Really? Let’s give it a break and not assign any particular significance to a number, least of all this one.

Willam Shatner didn’t. Do you see what he’s doing at age 90? Or Warren Buffet? Or Clint “The Mole” Eastwood? Betty White will become a centenarian in a few months. It’s a long list of folks who blew past 60, then 65, and didn’t tag any significance to it. Maybe that’s why they’ve been so successful.

What would I do differently at age 60?

Just one big thing.

I’d have a better handle on my essence.

Eeew!! That sounds so esoteric, new agey.

But it’s true. I cut the cord and stepped into the entrepreneurial world totally unequipped and for the wrong reasons. Three decades of corporate life had done nothing to equip me to start my own business. I had never encountered the type of mental challenges that come with putting it on the line with your own business.

I bailed from corporate to have more freedom, to get away from the lack of control of my time and my schedule, and, from self-centered, ladder-climbing bosses. And I bought the Koolaid that said starting your own business in the new world of the internet (yes, it was a baby back then) was going to be easier and more profitable than ever. The work-from-home, control-my-time, t-shirts-and-shorts-wardrobe dream was very alluring.

What I didn’t do was to fully understand what I was really good at and what I wasn’t so good at.

It took me over a decade, a big bunch of stumbles, and an embarrassing slice of a healthy “retirement savings” to come face to face with the fact that I was – and had been for nearly 40 years – operating outside of how my maker had really wired me up and equipped me.

Let’s be real – many of us do the same!

We buy into the 20th-century linear life model of learn-earn-retire and end up with a life spending 40 years busting the hump for what?

FTM – For The Money

-and that nirvanic pot of gold at the end (around 60) called retirement, that unnatural concept that doesn’t exist in nature, didn’t exist anywhere on the planet 150 years ago, was conceived for political purposes, and takes us away from how our biology serves us.

60 is the edge of a golden age!

At 60 or thereabouts, a fork in the road appears. Start the downward slide or relaunch. Is the rest of your life going to be another and different type of takeoff – or a landing?

Your mind and body are not ready for a landing – they don’t want a landing. They are built to last 122 years and 164 days because a lady in Paris set that benchmark for us in 1997. Reaching 60 isn’t even halfway to that biological benchmark. Yet we cash out at an average age of 80 – only 65% of our full-life potential.

Perhaps much of that is due to the mindset and the decisions that we make at or around age 60.

What are you going to do with your “longevity bonus?”

If you’ve checked, you know that we are living longer than previous generations – maybe by as much as 20, 30, 40 years. Turning 60 and facing another 30 years changes the narrative that we’ve lived with for the last 50 years that says you’re done being anything other than a consumer at 60 or 65.

Be a producer, not a consumer. Forget the self-indulgence.

We’re led to believe that we’re “entitled” to a life of leisure in our later years, that we’ve paid the price to “the man” and earned the right to be a self-indulgent and selfish consumer.

There’s a risk in all that because it doesn’t serve our biology well.

Pre- and early-retirees list these as their greatest fears:

  1. Boredom.
  2. Loss of identity.
  3. Becoming irrelevant.
  4. Deteriorating health.

So, at 60, expect your surrounding culture to put certain expectations on you, all based on outdated, irrelevant narratives.

Your choice then becomes buying in or going against the grain. At 60, chances are high that you’ve got lots of gas left in the tank. Resist the pressure and temptation to start the withdrawal and your biology will reward you accordingly.

Consider the possibilities of leveraging decades of acquired skills, experiences, and wisdom to do something the world needs and that is aligned with your innate talents.

I love – and have adopted – a credo followed by Dr. Ken Dychtwald, gerontologist and the world’s foremost authority on aging, that he unveils in his autobiographical book, “Radical Curiosity.”

Breathe – Learn – Teach – Repeat

At 60 and beyond, you are ideally equipped to do just that.

60 yet?  We’d love to hear what it was like for you and what followed. Leave a comment or shoot an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

How Can I Stay Relevant in Retirement? Some Practical Tips to Consider.

Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

Who doesn’t want to be relevant, germane, material, applicable, apropos?

It’s an important question if one is choosing to play the retirement game.

My first suggestion in answer to the question is to be sure you approach retirement with a plan that goes beyond the money. Most individuals and couples step into retirement without a non-financial plan for what they would like their retirement years to look like. They mistakenly believe that retirement will take care of itself when, in fact, there are always hidden surprises.

Much like the Titanic discovered when negotiating icebergs.

The question of relevance is important because it is one of the top four fears that pre-and early-retirees have about retirement beyond money.

  1. Boredom.
  2. Loss of identity.
  3. Becoming irrelevant.
  4. Deteriorating health

All of these concerns are addressable. Yet, most people drift into their retirement without a plan designed to deal with them. Items #1–#3 are intertwined and together they have a significant impact on #4.

Matter at Hand.

The question of relevance is a very individual thing. Ultimately, we define our own relevance by the way we view things and the way we are wired up. One new retiree may find his or her relevance in the dedication to and interaction with grandchildren. The next may only feel relevant only if he or she is continuing to drive big decisions or be building something.

A quick look at the definition of relevance tells us it is “bearing on the matter at hand, practical, and especially social applicability.” This brings to bear the importance of retiring into something, not just from something. In other words, what will be your “matter at hand” upon retiring?

In my experience as a career transition and retirement coach dealing mostly with healthcare professionals, I have found a surprising number of these talented professionals looking forward to retirement but unable to articulate what they expect, or want, to do upon retirement. They do express concern about going from 110 miles an hour, 50 hours a week down to near zero.

But, for most, the “what’s next” is fuzzy.

Start Early, Communicate

My suggestion to those who are struggling in this area is to start planning for retirement at least 3–5 years in advance of the anticipated retirement date and start putting things on paper.

And, if you are a couple, communicate, communicate, communicate! 

Early – and often!

Remember, fellas, she married you for better or worse but not for lunch every day. Kitchen drawer arrangements are off-limits and she is not your “retirement plaything.” In fact, that may be the farthest thing from her mind. With “grey divorce” i.e. divorces amongst couples over 50 skyrocketing, maybe we should be paying attention to communication early and often.

Practice

Practice may not always make perfect but some retirement practice can go a long way.

Successful retirees often include some “practice retirement” by experimenting with some activities that they think they may have an interest in post-career. That may come in the form of a sabbatical from work, or using accumulated vacation and PTO time to immerse into something on the curiosity list. Maybe a short-term apprenticeship in a business or volunteer opportunity to test it out.

Practice can be particularly important when it comes to location decisions. That practice can include living for a period in an area that is being considered for relocation, or for a second home. I’ve heard more than one story of regret of making a move only to discover the “personality” of the area was a bad match.

No cliff diving

There certainly is some excitement in being a risk-taker and jumping into something without a plan and let the chips fall where they may.

I suggest retirement isn’t one of those things. This is a potential 20-, 30-, 40-year experience with serious long-term implications. Front end planning can have a significant impact on health, longevity, and family stability.

I’ve heard of new retirees taking a transition year to travel, experiment, unwind, and develop a plan to follow for the balance of their retirement year. If finances permit, it’s a great transition plan.

Service and Relevance

My sense is that relevance will be found in living a life of service. We do know, from extensive research, that some form of work is vital to maintaining vitality and a sense of purpose through our retirement years, not to mention contributing to greater longevity. That flies in the face of the traditional leisure-based, consumer-only type retirement that we’ve been pedaled for the last 5–6 decades.

Happier, healthier retirees have something that motivates them to get up in the morning and that provides them a sense of relevance. The nice thing about retirement is that you now have the time and resources (hopefully) to be able to find that relevance, knowing that it may change through your retirement.

Be flexible and don’t let your relevance be dictated by the opinions of others. Be your own person and honor your inner self. It will ultimately let you know what is relevant for your life.

I had to wait until my seventies to make that discovery. I wish for you an earlier and easier discovery. Hence, start early.

Two quick stories:

Know your drivers.

I had the good fortune to share some of this pre-retirement planning insight in a workshop recently with a group of six successful Canadian entrepreneurs who have been meeting together as a sort of “mastermind” group for 15 years. Ranging in age from 57 to 64, they were at various stages of transition, with their businesses and their lives.

Their interest was in this very question: What’s next and how do we best plan for it?

One of the members expressed his fear of FOMO – fear of missing out on what this next phase could be. They all had a similar uneasiness about how to plan for this next phase which contained big decisions such as succession planning with family members and sell-or-stay decisions.

None of the six had financial concerns -their business prowess had taken care of that. Yet, even with day-to-day big decision ability, this question loomed large.

We covered a lot of ground over a two-day, four-hour Zoom workshop with six different topics. One of those topics was a “driver identification” exercise drawing from the content provided in the book “Don’t Retire, REWIRE! “ They were asked to identify their five strongest drivers from a list of 30 provided in the book. Drivers are described as what makes you tick as a human being because they go deep inside you, to your brain, heart, and ego. I asked them to reflect on how they have applied those drivers in their business, and then, more importantly, how they can carry those drivers forward into the retirement phase of their lives. The exercise essentially identified their “core”  – a core that doesn’t go away with retirement.

That proved to be the strongest take-away from our time together with them coming away considering how they can continue to apply those drivers but during this next life phase.

No quick answers there, but it moved the needle in setting the table for deeper reflection, more and deeper communication across the family spectrum, and, hopefully, a clearer definition of how those drivers can continue to be deployed in a different type of service.

I strongly recommend the book if you are at this critical juncture.

Follow your heart

The other story came from a Quora writer, Forrest Held, who answered the same question. Here’s his answer:

Get over it.

You miss the ego-boosting feedback.

You miss the pressure of producing on a schedule.

No one is seeking your input for weighty decisions.

That doesn’t mean you are irrelevant. You will find you are relevant to others and in other ways. New people need you. At retirement age, family and friends will need your help.

My first two years of retirement were spent taking care of my father in the latter stages of dementia. He didn’t know who I was, and he was in a facility. I spent my time making sure he was safe and well cared for each day. I took care of the estate and liquidated assets to pay for his care.

In his last year, I was known as the guy who would take him out to get ice cream. Like his father, it was his favorite treat. He had no real idea who I was.

I am glad I was there in the last years of his life taking care of him like he took care of me when I was young.

After my father passed, I volunteered for hospice with the company that had helped him. I learned a lot about life and death in that year. Suddenly those meetings and schedules seemed less critical. People who know they are dying have a way of sifting through all the crap.

You need to adjust to your new life.

Don’t relive the past.

Live for the future.

Take on new challenges.

Do things outside your comfort zone.

Enjoy time with your loved ones.

Reconnect with people you liked but have been missing from your life over the past three decades.

Say thank you more often. Be grateful that you have lived this long. Make the world a better place through your wisdom.

If you open your eyes and arms to the opportunities, you will find you are more relevant. Your relevance will be in areas that are more important than those you had during your career.

I don’t know where Forrest has ended up in his retired life, but I would guess that it doesn’t fit the off-the-cliff,  labor-to-leisure, vocation-to-vacation model. And the world is better for his view of relevance.

If you’re retired, how are you finding relevance? We’d love to hear your story. Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

Is There a Vertical Pasture in Your Future?

Photo by James Day on Unsplash

I drive by a vertical pasture every Wednesday on my return home from my weekly senior men’s golf league encounter (I call my golf an encounter because after 40 years I still don’t have “game”).

You’ve seen them. You probably have one close to you. If not, chances are fairly high that one will eventually be under construction in your vicinity.

Vertical pastures have increased over the last couple of decades into a multi-billion dollar industry with significant growth forecasts because of shifting age demographics.

You won’t see them labeled or advertised as vertical pastures – that’s my (perverted?) description. The industry calls them Continuing Care Retirement Communities (CCRC) or the newer label, Life Plan Communities (LPN).

I’m guessing the LPN tag has emerged to accommodate the declining appeal of the concept of retirement amongst the CCRC/LPN target market – baby boomers. Much like AARP presciently changing its name to just AARP, no longer the American Association of Retired Persons.

Perversion explained

OK, why vertical pasture?

In our youth-obsessed culture, it’s common to hear the “youngsters” suggest that older people, like you and me, should be put out to pasture, disappear from the mainstream, get out of the way, and stop using up valuable space and oxygen.

Unfortunately, many of us of advancing age seem to be quite accommodating of the idea.

My wife and I have had conversations with friends of retirement age who are planning to accommodate this banishment by finishing out their years in one of the rapidly expanding CCRCs in our area offered up by one of the for-profit companies that have become very successful at exploiting this mindset.

It’s a pretty straightforward concept. You sell your home of 20,30,40 years and use the equity to “buy” an apartment in one of their large buildings and enjoy “free” dining, exercise facilities, a heavy selection of social activities. access to 24×7 healthcare, and a glide path to the cemetery (I don’t think the headstone is included).

That promise of a smooth transition through to your terminal frailty and demise accommodates a business plan built on turning over your apartment to the next person(s) attracted to the same glide path.

Not cheap, as you may imagine, but attractive nonetheless. According to commercial real estate service firm CBRE, the average initial payment is $329,000, but it can top $1 million in some communities. Once a resident and depending on the model, monthly maintenance or service fees in some CCRC models may run from $2,000 to $4,000.

I will admit, when you check out websites and other promotional material, it sounds like a pretty comfortable way to finish out. What’s not to like about not having to cook or do yard work and house repair, to have access to mind and body stimulating activities, to be steps away from healthcare professionals, to be able to hang with lots of other “olders?”

Oops!

That’s where the appeal diminishes, for me at least. To be clustered and sequestered in a compact area devoid of anyone that’s not inclined to want to talk about anything other than colonoscopies, hip/knee/shoulder replacements, arthritis, (I call them “organ recitals”) or bore me with their pictures of their grandkids and myriad travels to exotica.

Sorry, it just doesn’t resonate with me.

But, I’m reminded by my roommate of 50 years that snootiness becomes me.

It’s a vertical pasture

I’ve been witnessing the growth of one of these facilities in our community. What started out 20 years ago as a couple of two-story facilities, has grown now to 15 massive buildings, most of them six or seven stories high. They have one more seven-story facility planned before they complete their master plan.

It’s a community of 2,800, soon to go well beyond 3,000.

How is this not a vertical pasture?

  • Layer-upon-layer of warehoused folks of advancing age all turned out to pasture and seeking sequestered sameness.
  • Choosing to limit the opportunity for extended engagement with anyone under 40.
  • Isolating from GenX or GenY energy, technology savvy, cultural awareness, and perspectives.
  • Accommodating the cultural indoctrination that says 65- or 70-plus requires a wind-down.
  • Abiding the ageist attitude suggesting a move to the sidelines.

A land-locked cruise ship

I once engaged a resident of one of these vertical pastures and asked what it was like living there. His response: “It’s like being on a cruise without the motion.”

I’ve heard them referred to as “Disneyland for Adults.” I suspect there is no limit to the monikers that creative marketers can tag to these facilities.

That idea will appeal to a lot of people.

Count me out.

You won’t catch me on a cruise. Squeezed into a 10’x10′ room on a floating virus petri-dish with 5 times more people than the town I grew up in? Well, I’ll continue to pass, thank you. Growing up with mega-elbow room in rural Wyoming still dogs me.

For this resident, however, it seems the only difference between the cruise and the vertical pasture is trading in a two-week 10’x10′ for long-term 1500 sq. ft. and no Dramamine.

Why so harsh?

I know – I’m guilty of criticizing an experience I’ve never had.

I’ve witnessed and fully appreciate the damaging effect of loneliness and isolation. This environment can rightfully claim a solution for that as its deepest benefit.

Perhaps the strongest marketing appeal is their core slogan: “We create instant community.”

My issue with this whole concept is that it seems to exploit the one remaining unacknowledged “ism” -ageism. The “-ism” that says “You’re done.” “You’re stale.” “You’re slow.” “You’re in the way.” “Go away.”

Part of me resents that we stack millions of hours of this wisdom, talent, and experience on top of each other and reduce the outlet for its potential to advance an ailing culture.

I resent that we choose to profit from sequestering accumulated talent, experience, and wisdom and disconnect it from youngers that can grow and benefit from that accumulation.

Maybe there is more that goes on in one of these facilities than I know.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Guess what? There is! And I am!

It occurred to me that before I start dumping any more vitriol on this concept that I better do some research.

So, I arranged a visit at the vertical pasture that I drive by every Wednesday. This past week, I had a two-hour tour and conversation with a very professional, veteran sales associate at this upscale facility. I was impressed – and somewhat blown away.

This is one impressive facility!

Gorgeous grounds. Incredible amenities. Pools, spas, exercise facilities, restaurants/cafes at every turn, meeting rooms, amphitheaters, all of top-notch quality and atmosphere.

Resort quality.

$500/sq.ft.

The amenities need to be good because, at this facility, you’ll pony up from $300-$500/sq.ft. to get a place to sleep. $900,000 for a 1700 sq.ft., two-bedroom plus den. They claim that all but 10% of that will come back to you in the end. They provide the services and make a profit on the 10% they keep, as I understand it. I’ve probably got that wrong, but, any way you slice it, that ends up being a pasture for pretty well-heeled participants.

Plenty of youthful interaction?

I had to broach the issue of interaction with the younger generation at this facility.

My tour guide assured me that, with 800 staff, many of which are high school age, that there was plenty of interaction with the younger set.

I can imagine the extent of that: “Did you want the broccoli with your sole? Or do you prefer the mixed green salad?”

I’m skeptical that there is an effort to promote extended, non-transactional interplay between residents and younger generations.

But maybe someone who has been a resident in a similar facility can set me straight.

It’s right for many.

I ‘spect I’m on the outside on this. These vertical pastures seem to me to be the epitome of comfort, convenience. and the unfortunate conformity that takes tons of talent, experience, and wisdom to the “north 40” and out of circulation.

A sexagenarian/septuagenarian/octogenarian is a terrible thing to waste.

How far off base am I? Let me know your thoughts – or experiences –  with a comment below or an email to gary@makeagingwork.com.

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OK, You Hit 60 – Are You Now “Elderly?” Or “Middle-aged?” Does it Matter?

Image by Stefano Ferrario from Pixabay

I remember 60 well.

It’s when I proactively stumbled out of corporate life after 35 years and into my own business, wrongly assuming that I was equipped with even a modicum of what it takes to succeed in the entrepreneurial world.

I certainly didn’t consider myself “elderly” at that point. Still don’t today, 6 months short of entering my ninth decade.

We seem to struggle with where to put ourselves these days since many of us have been granted a “longevity bonus” of 20, 30, 40 years.

I’ll opt for “modern elder”

I’ve written before about the “modern elder” moniker conceived by entrepreneur Chip Conley, author of “Wisdom at Work : The Making of a Modern Elder”. It fits well and I can carry it to my ridiculous goal of reaching 112 1/2.

It’s really just about the mindset and ignoring the pejorative monikers our youth culture and government prefer to slap on us.

Yeah, my cohort thinks I’m nuts and in denial. It seems, if one is beholden to stats and data, I’m both.

I can roll with it.

On the age scale determined by the average life span in America, my last rites were performed several months ago (no, this isn’t being ghost-written) since the average life span of the American male is around 78.5 years – and going backward, by the way. (Put down that Carl’s Junior cheeseburger and fries and walk away, PLEASE!)

On the other hand, based on how long we know the human body can last (122 years, 164 days, the record set by Mme. Jeanne Calment of Paris when she gave it up in 1997) I’m closer to middle-age.

I can roll with that, too.

You’ve been “portaled.”

We’ve had a need to put ourselves in categories, especially relative to age, for, like, forever. We can thank the American Psychological Association (APA) and corporate marketers for much of that. For instance, until G. Stanley Hall, President of the APA, came up with the concept of adolescence in 1904, we fundamentally just had two age categories – child and adult.

Look where we’ve come today with this drive to drop people into age groupings (each category feeding a market for psychologists and marketers).

Dr. Mario Martinez, neuropsychologist, identified seven age-based “portals: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age.

Peter Laslett, the eminent British demographic historian, came up with a much simpler and appropriate four-portal alignment:

  1. First age – childhood/age of dependence.
  2. Second age – adulthood and mid-career jobs.
  3. Third age – the new territory between the end of mid-career jobs and parenting duties and the beginning of dependent old age.
  4. Fourth age – age of dependency and ill health, the doorstep of demise.

I like Laslett’s formula.

I’m in the third age. My projected date for the beginning of my fourth age is 112 and change with my ill health and dependency period being two weeks or less. Actually, my plan is to wrap it all up in much less than two weeks by going face down in a Colorado trout stream still trying to prove that I am smarter than an animal with a brain the size of a pea.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me whether someone considers me old or elderly. The only measurement that matters is my own. I’ve grown immune to the rampant ageist comments that persist realizing they come from a chronological perspective and one that is naive to the demographic and attitudinal changes that are taking place.

I know, and you know, sixty-year-olds that are truly old – physically, mentally, attitudinally – well past any semblance of a mid-point on all fronts. Conversely, you can easily find 80-year-olds that will hold their own with 50-year olds in the same categories.

I have grown accustomed to the reactions that come from people when I reveal my true age. It nearly always has a touch of amazement that I look and act the way I do.

I don’t say that with any arrogance because I quickly remind people that what they are observing is no accident. I work at it – and have for decades. I learned long ago that my biology will pay me back with more youthful looks and higher energy if I simply listen to it, understand what it needs at the cellular level, and practice the quite-simple things that it takes to honor my good health birthright and let it reward me in kind.

I say all that knowing that it all starts with attitude and that if I choose to begin to adopt a shitty attitude and drop the disciplines that support my biology, I can easily earn a pejorative age-based tag.

Tags are in!

If I have to have an age-based moniker, then call me a modern elder in my third age. They fit nicely together and don’t have to have a number on them.

I picked a crazy endpoint at 112 1/2 because at age 75 I decided I wanted to have a third of my life left to get some things done that I didn’t get done in the first two-thirds. It’s really a desire to roll all my screw-ups, zig-zags, life traumas, successes, victories into this thing called “wisdom” and spread it around a bit.

Look, I know I’m falling short – but I’m working on it!

The mission.

It has become my “third-age mission”, to change people’s attitudes toward aging, to be a longevity guide, to raise awareness that getting old is inevitable but how we get old isn’t. And, above all, to do as Gandhi said: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

Haven’t we all learned that people will listen more to what you are than to what you say?

So I feel and think of myself as sort of middle-age, in this now extended period we are calling the “third age” that so many others are also in. I, along with millions of other “boomers”, “pre-boomers” and “early GenXers” can decide to turn this period of post-career period of a 20–40-year longevity bonus into the most impactful, purposeful, productive period of life and make an unimaginable difference.

But we first have to dump the age categories and the self-inflicted ageism that comes with it, adopt an attitude that says “I ain’t done yet” and, no, I don’t have a “use-by stamp” anywhere on me, and move forward intending to continue to kick-ass in a culture in dire need of the collective wisdom we third-ager modern elders represent.

Let’s recalibrate!

We have to continue to redefine or eliminate some old, bad ideas, the most obvious one being traditional self-indulgent leisure-based retirement. Retirement, as we’ve defined it and have had it drilled into us for 5–6 decades, is a trojan horse that moves us away from the way our biology functions optimally and away from one of the key components of longevity – meaningful work.

Every study of centenarians has shown that work and purpose remained a key part of their lifestyles very late into their lives.

Other old, bad ideas are the belief that senescence is automatic and unalterable, that our brains will shrink and move inexorably toward slowness and/or dementia. Or that our longevity is driven by our genetics. Or that a period of extended frailty is a given late in life.

None are true unless we allow them to happen. We have the knowledge to know that our lifestyle choices determine much more of this than we knew just 20 years ago.

We have an obligation to honor what Dr. Mario Martinez termed our “birthright of good health.” We are born with it and have become very good at dishonoring it with our lifestyles and clinging to old, archaic myths and messages.

So, I’m borrowing Chip Conley’s “modern elder” tag for myself since I know I will need to continue to address the naive and ageist questions that will be thrown at me as I continue my iconoclastic journey.

It’s a tall order being a “modern elder” as defined by Conley:

  1. Good judgment
  2. Unvarnished insight
  3. Emotional intelligence
  4. Holistic thinking
  5. Stewardship

I’ve got a LONG way to go to earn that moniker. But it’s a great target that has a healthier, longer, more meaningful life written all over it.

I’m working on it!

Does it matter?

Nope – it’s a number. You aren’t defined by it, regardless of how our youth-obsessed culture and government view it.

You are your attitude.

Do attitudes age?

Yep – if allowed.

Once past 60, I suggest a daily attitude check. Remind yourself that you’re not done yet but, in fact, just starting the most gratifying period of your life.

Think about adopting the modern elder tag and criteria.

You’ve got it. We need it.

Remind yourself that you have kick-ass potential rooted in natural talents, acquired skills and experiences, and decades of accumulated wisdom that would be a terrible thing to waste at the beach, on the golf course, in the La-Z-boy.

Let’s be the change we want to see – need to see!

Does Your Retirement Have an Endurance Quotient? Pay Attention to the Millennials.

Endurance quotient? Hmmm. Whassat?

Merriam Webster: endure = last, persist.

Remember back in your 40s, 50s (maybe even 60s for you slow-to-awaken, like yours truly) when those “legacy” thoughts made their uncomfortable, uninvited entrance into your thought stream, sometimes intensified as engagement with the grape deepened.

Like:

  • Why am I here?
  • Is this all there is?
  • Oh s**t! I’ve got fewer days ahead than behind.
  • Why haven’t I gotten to where I thought I’d be at this point or where culture says I should be (this is called “shoulding on yourself” – common at this mid-point).

All thoughts that bring us face-to-face with the question of how we are going to endure in our second half/third-age/post-career life.

We should deal with these purposefully and not just default to the prevailing path of no resistance: done at 65, wind down, kick back, hop on the accelerating downslope of declining health and lack of purpose, and forget about anything resembling a legacy – thinking it’s too complicated and takes too much thought and energy.

 

Don’t go there. It’s too important.

Maybe we can learn from the millennials!

Once we stop throwing rocks at the millennials and early GenXers, we may notice something worthy of our attention when it comes to a new, different, and healthier lifestyle and perspective on retirement.

I recently came across a GenX writer on Medium.com who I feel is saying some things about retirement that we Boomers and pre-boomers need to pay attention to.

Rocco Pendola is a Californian whose byline on Medium.com says:  “I write about doing life and personal finance, focusing on the psychology of our relationships with other people and money. I’m anti-guru, pro-empowerment.”

An iconoclast – my kinda guy!

One of his recent posts entitled “Retiring at Age 61 Might Be This Year’s Most Depressing Thought. There’s a better way than what the investing establishment sells.”

It’s a worthy read. In it, Rocco excoriates the financial services industry and the media for not reporting what is really going on in the GenX and Millennial world.  And he introduces a taste of the emerging mindset that this group is beginning to demonstrate.

Here’s an extract from the article for you to ponder:

They don’t tell you about the  of young people reconsidering the entire concept of traditional retirement (credit the media for starting to finally cover this!). They don’t talk about young people living , which means different things to different people, but almost always includes some form of work for the duration.

, the millennial generation does things differently than those who came before them, particularly the upper end of Generation X and certainly many baby boomers.

They:

  • Focus on… physical health.
  • Focus on securing consistent work that . That you can do if you find yourself physically unhealthy.
  • Focus on… mental health.
  • Focus on… the mindset to do work that endures for eternity.
  • Focus on finding a partner who lives simply but likes nice things. Who you can just be with. Every outing isn’t a trip to Rome. But, if you’re lucky, you can make something like that happen one or more times per year.
  • Focus on .
  • Focus on allocating that cash flow amid  as to have cash surpluses every month.

These things comprise the cornerstones of the move away from conventional retirement and toward the much more realistic, hopeful, vibrant, and life-affirming concept of semi-retirement.

If you’ve done the math and don’t think you can “retire” until you’re 61, please reconsider.

There might not be a more depressing thought, assuming you buy into what the word “retire” has always meant. That you work a job you don’t necessarily like all that much, live a little along the way, and set yourself up to really live when you’re really, really old and probably won’t be able to live all that well anyway.

The road to traditional retirement can beat you down.

Living the semi-retired life means you don’t stress yourself out over having to meet some out-sized number by the time you’re sixty-something.

It also means you set yourself up for healthier old age by making your physical and mental health a priority — not the 9-to-5 grind — when you’re young.

OUCH!

Tough words for all of us 20th-century “retirement relics!”

Semi-retire at 35? Heresy!

Work until you die – at something you’ve learned to be good at and that you like and helps fix this messy world? I don’t think that line will fall from the lips of a financial planner.

Think cash flow? And an insanely low cost of living?  How’s that gonna go down in a “consumption is king” culture?

Consistent work that endures? Work that you can do if you find yourself physically unhealthy? That four-letter word is supposed to end on or about 65, isn’t it?

They’re reading different manuals!

Maybe we need to subscribe.

For sure, we need to pay attention. This is going to be the model.

I relate because I’ve considered myself semi-retired for some time as I’ve sought that purpose sweet spot:

The concept of an endurance component really resonates with me as I intend to do what I am doing to the end – because I can. And because those four circles are intersecting for me.

We know traditional retirement is dying a fast death and that 50+ years of the same financial services industry vocation-to-vacation drumbeat is fading.

Who would have thought those lazy, over-protected, self-entitled Millennials may drive the final stake in both.

Forums like Medium.com may not be your thing (there’s some pretty edgy stuff over there), but I encourage you to check out what Rocco is saying. It won’t harm any of us “Modern Elders” to be more generative and crawl inside the mind of a forward-thinking GenXer.

Does your third age have an endurance component? Let us know what you think of this idea? We’d love to have your feedback. Leave a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.