WARNING! Your Retirement May Be a Cul-De-Sac

When I made my final corporate relocation and moved to Denver in 1979, I ensconced our family in a house at the top of an 11-house cul-de-sac where we remained for 21 years. It was a tight little community with, at one point, 23 kids under the age of 11.

You can visualize what a summer evening was like on that cul-de-sac.  Active. Noisy. Kids creating on the fly. Jockeying for alpha positions. Forming and dissolving close bonds.

All in one evening.

We liked the cul-de-sac because it was:

  • Safe
  • Secure
  • No through traffic
  • Quiet
  • Comfortable

Kinda reminds you of what retired life is supposed to be like, right? At least, the way the concept has historically been dished out by the financial services community.

I can’t attest to all that personally since I’ve chosen to avoid retirement. But, it appears to be true for most.

Until it isn’t.

Safe, secure, quiet, and comfortable worked several decades ago when retired life lasted five years if you were lucky. With extended lifespans adding 25-40 years to our lives, there are downsides to that combination

There is sort of a trojan-horse-like quality to buying into a “cul-de-sac retirement.”

The following may seem a little strange but remember it’s coming from a scattered brain. So, hang with me for a few paragraphs.

This past week, I had a Seth Godin moment. Seth is one of my favorite personal development authors. He’s a phenomenally successful, esoteric, iconoclastic, irreverent, creative author – all the things I’d like to be when I grow up.

I pulled his copy of “The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (And When to Stick)” off my “A” bookshelf and read it for the third time (two-hour read).

Godin led me to the real definition and a more appropriate application of the cul-de-sac to second-half or third-age living.

First, Godin reminds us that cul-de-sac is a French word with a variety of meanings:

  • “dead end, blind alley, impasse, enclosure, trap, cavity.”
  • “a route or course leading nowhere.”

Secondly, he emphasizes the importance of the “dips” we experience throughout life and introduces the importance of “strategic quitting” as a key to maximizing a journey to success, be it in a career or life.

Retirement and Dip?? Where is this going?

Maybe a Godin quote from the book will help:

“Almost everything in life worth doing is controlled by the Dip. At the beginning, when you first start something, it’s fun. You could be taking up golf or acupuncture or piloting a plane or doing chemistry (or retirement? my note) – doesn’t matter; it’s interesting, and you get plenty of good feedback from the people around you. Over the next few day and weeks (and years? my note), the rapid learning keeps you going. Whatever your new thing is, it’s easy to stay engaged with it.

And then the Dip happens.

The Dip is the long slog between starting and mastery. A long slog that’s actually a shortcut, because it gets you where you want to go faster than any other path.”

From his book, Godin portrays it like this:

Then Godin injects the concept of cul-de-sac using the French definition “dead end,” applying it mostly to a work situation as – –

“– where you work and you work and you work and nothing much changes. It doesn’t get a lot better, it doesn’t get a lot worse. It just is.”

That’s when it hit me. He’s describing what can happen to us as we enter into the “obligatory, entitled” phase of life called retirement. It’s a comfortable, safe, quiet “dip” that is easy to extend for a long time – too long, in my opinion. I side with Godin’s position on the Dip:

“There’s not a lot to say about the Cul-de-Sac except to realize that it exists and to embrace the fact that when you find one, you need to get off it. That’s because a dead end is keeping you from doing something else. The opportunity cost of investing your life in something that’s not going to get better is just too high.”

The euphoria, new freedom, independence, comfort, the quietness of retirement is a very alluring “Dip.” One that is easy to extend through those early retirement years where physical and cognitive skills are still very much alive and keen.

What’s not to like, right?

That’s the “trojan horse” part.  Staying in the Dip of safe, comfortable, quiet retirement fails to acknowledge its fundamental violation of our very anatomy and biology. We are offered only two choices by our biology, regardless of age or stage:

Grow or decay.

Stay in the Dip of self-indulgent, leisure-based retirement for too long and guess what side of the biological ledger we end up on.

Decay. Physical and cognitive decay.

Maybe the fact that the average American still only makes it to 80 but with over 10 years of that in ill-health adds some credibility to my argument, which is:

Get out of the cul-de-sac within 2-3 years of your retirement start date!

Over the last few years, I’ve engaged a lot of healthcare executives who are at or close to that retirement phase and wrestling with the big question “What’s next?”  These folks are accustomed to a work-life that operates at 110 mph.  They are fearful of the prospect of going from that pace to zero.

It turns out that Seth and I seem to be on the same page with my advice for these high achievers. I suggest they take a year or two and indulge themselves in this new freedom and independence (the DIP) while encouraging them to not get too used to it. Rather, use it also as a time to reflect and explore. Godin would call it “leaning into the dip” and using it to figure out what they want the rest of their life to look like.

With a potential post-career runway of 25-40 years, getting stuck in the dip is a great waste and a loss to our society.

It’s called “strategic quitting”  – quitting the comfortable, dangerous “dip” with an eye toward a legacy, or leaving a footprint, and not joining the masses who are “living too short and dying too long” with no sense of purpose and limited meaning in their lives.

I’ll wrap by borrowing the words of Monsignor Charles Fahey, Founding Director of Fordham’s Third Age Center:

“People in the third age should be the glue of a society, not its ashes.”

Thanks for hanging in to the end.  Please leave a comment – your insights are very valuable. Also, if you haven’t joined our email list to receive this weekly diatribe, trip on over to www.makeagingwork.com and join us – and tell your friends.

Have a safe and happy holiday!!

 

Escaping Your Cultural Captors – Your Portal May Be Pooping On Your Potential!

Have you ever thought of yourself as being in a “cultural fishbowl?”

News alert! You’re in one!

If you’re 16, you are in a cultural fishbowl with the world watching to see how well you manage your rebelliousness and bone-headedness.

If you are 60, your cultural fishbowl is being watched by a crowd with a bias that favors the young and cloaks you in all sorts of portal-based expectations.

You know the type of expectations I mean. They’ve been pounded into you by the powerful “P’s” in your life: parents, peers, professors, physicians, politicians, pundits.

Expectations like:

  • Act your age
  • Don’t go beyond the pale, stay in the pale
  • Getting old will be difficult
  • Your DNA is your destiny; you’re a slave of your genetics
  • Longevity is fixed, not learned
  • Expect decline
  • Wind down, not up
  • Take it easy, don’t push yourself
  • Don’t start a business
  • Senescence is automatic and guaranteed
  • Don’t over-exert yourself
  • Don’t fall in love again
  • Be silent, be hidden

Portal? What’s a portal?

I first wrote about cultural portals a couple of years ago (go here) referencing the work that neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez has done on the power of cultural beliefs in his two excellent books “The Mindbody Self: How Longevity is Culturally Learned and the Causes of Health Are Inherited” and “The Mindbody Code: How to Change the Beliefs that Limit Your Health, Longevity, and Success.” (pd links).

According to Dr. Martinez, a cultural portal is a “– culturally defined segment of expected beliefs and conduct.” He offers up a list of cultural portal with the following categories: newborn, infancy, childhood, adolescence, young adult, middle age, and old age. With the help of social scientists and clever, exploitation-minded marketers, we’ve moved to seven from the two (child-adult) we had 120 years ago.

Every portal has it’s own degree of acceptance and it’s own set of constraining rules. In the middle-age and old-age portal, the acceptance and the rules can take on a nefarious tone, especially when it comes to self-acceptance.

In Dr. Martinez’s words, the old age portal “— defines what you can longer do in the present and future that was allowed in the past portals. For example, strenuous physical activity, falling in love again, good health, physical strength, good memory, and expectations for a bright future are redefined based on the premise that aging is a process of diminishing returns.”

Dr. Martinez makes the point that we can step out of a portal but first have to recognize that there is life beyond the cultural fishbowl. He evens suggests that a touch of rebellion needs to be applied to overcome what we are expected to do.

Alas, in the sixth and seventh portals, we are not so much into being rebels, more into acceptance and have, perhaps, used up our ready reserve of rebellion.

And that’s where we may just poop on our potential.

We ain’t done yet!!

Here’s a 10-point plan for exiting your “old-age”  cultural fishbowl – and continuing to realize your potential.

With loads of help from Dr. Martinez  – – – – –

1. Be an outlier and defy cultural restraints and move on to self-discovery. Get serious about letting your true self out.

2. Be patient and don’t give in to the admonitions from family and friends that say “it’s for your own good” or “relax and enjoy your retirement” or “you’re not as young as you think.” Remember, they are co-authors of the cultural belief and are, Dr. Martinez reminds us, “responding from their own fishbowl and are unable to see beyond their culturally imposed limitations.”

3. Find co-authors and other rebels or outliers your age and watch how they thrive outside their fishbowl.

4. Refuse senior discounts and other entitlements for being “old.”

5. Bypass family illnesses and don’t let family talk you into believing they are inevitable. After age 65, genetics plays virtually no role in what may afflict us.

6. Move from entitlement consciousness to resource consciousness. Be a font of wisdom and share it with others.

7. Maintain a sense of humor. Don’t take yourself or life too seriously – you’re not getting out alive. Laugh along the way. Make what you have left a game.

8. Look surprisingly younger. It starts with attitude and how we carry ourselves and convey energy. And a consistent dose of aerobic and strength-training exercise coupled with current dress won’t hurt either.

9.Rethink your retirement. Entering the culturally defined retirement portal means embracing the limitations therein i.e. the retirement consciousness, the trap that says not to plan beyond the actuarial tables. We can turn this portal into a purpose-driven, meaningful time that leverages dreams, talents, skills, and experiences into something that impacts the world around us.

10. Explore going beyond the pale. We can seek paths that can lead to our individuation.

Dr. Martinez wisely reminds us:

“Since our biology is influenced by our cultural beliefs, our mindbody conforms to what we are expected to be in each portal”  and that “- we need to be mindful that cultural portals influence our identity and we unwittingly co-author the process.”

Our cultures mold helplessness or empowerment.

Which fishbowl do you want to be in?

Leave a comment below and tells us how you’ve avoided the cultural portal trap. Thanks for being part of the growing “tribe”. Tell your friends about these free weekly articles and refer them over to www.makeagingwork.com where they can receive a free 25-page ebook entitled “Achieve Your Full Life Potential”  for signing up.

 

 

Whew! Good News About Being 60!

My mom didn’t make it to 60. She gave it up to lymphoma at age 57. Dad had a heart attack two years later at 59 and made it to 80, enduring 21 years of extended chronic illness. My grandparents all checked out in their 60s and 70s.

I remember a Parade magazine article a couple of decades ago that claimed that averaging the ages of my parents and grandparents at their deaths would be a good predictor of my longevity. Seemed reasonable at the time.

Based on Parade’s highly scientific naivete, I’ve been dead for about 9 years.

Yeah, times have changed a bit.

But, to think that 60 could be something like a “launching pad” or a “new beginning” is still a stretch for many. As a populous, I sense we’re still encumbered with a 20th-century mindset that says 60 is a time to be thinking “landing” not “take-off” – or “off-ramp” not “on-ramp.”

I’m anything but prescient, or highly imaginative (I’m working on it!!). But at 60, I made the totally illogical decision to leave corporate cubicle nation and start over. Sort of a dimly lit off-ramp to “Oh, s***, what have I done?”

Would I do it again? Yeah!

Would I do it differently? Double  Triple yeah!

I’d do it with better preparation and a clearer definition of what I REALLY wanted to do as opposed to just getting the hell out of the confines and control of corporate life which was never right for me although I succumbed to 30+ years of it because it was what we were taught we should do. Plus I married a woman and had kids that liked to sleep inside and eat warm food!

Well, that pivot-at-60 turned out pretty good, although it has been an 18-year slog. I stumbled, bumbled, and toe-stubbed my way to discovering, in my 70s, what I should have been doing decades ago.  I’m now excited to get up every morning and continue stumbling, bumbling, and toe-stubbing but with a purpose and occasional positive impact.

Science says I’m a bit slow.

Turns out that my purpose discovery in my mid-70s says I was a bit slow at the switch. Scientists at U. of California, San Diego interviewed 1,042 people age 21 to 100 to determine the age at which purpose and meaning peak for we sapiens, on average.

Turns out (drum roll) – it’s age 60!

According to the study, published in Clinical Psychiatry and viewable at this link, “people tend to feel like their lives have meaning at around age 60.”

The study’s first author, Awais Aftab, a fellow at UC, San Diego states this about the study:

“Existing research points to a vital role played by factors such as a coherent sense of one’s identity, authentic relationships with friends and family members, engagement in long-term goals which provide a sense of accomplishment and contribute to the society, and acting with genuine altruism for the betterment of the world.”

There you have it – a scientifically confirmed formula for meaning.

But – there’s always a but—

It appears that we crescendo through our 40s and 50s into this feeling of purpose and meaning, hit a peak, and then the pursuit decreases for a while. After 60, people begin to search for meaning in life all over again.

That’s when retirement, bereavement, and health issues appear, the meaning at 60 may fade and a new search for a different type of meaning may start for some, hinting that the search for meaning in life changes along with you.

Three things, however, remain constant for staying physically and mentally fit through the lifespan: cultural engagement, hobbies, and exercise.

The study is a good reminder that “finding meaning in life has high payoff for physical and mental health.”

Sounds a bit like the drumbeat from this drummer for the last three years.

No, 60 is not the new 40. It’s the new 60. With the prospect of 30-40 years of runway left, hitting 60 isn’t a good time to be thinking landing.

Time for a new takeoff.

 

 

What Type of Retiree Are You – or Do You Want to Be?

 

A few months ago, as a favor for a friend, I did a webinar entitled “What’s Next? Redefining Retirement and Creating Power and Purpose in Your Post-career Life” for one of the local Christian Living Communities’ senior-living facilities.

Not exactly my “target market” since my focus is more on folks who are approaching, or are early into, their retirement years.

Let’s just say that, although well-attended, the post-webinar response was thin, at best. I wasn’t surprised – or disappointed. I knew going in that “What’s Next” for most of these community residents had been locked down some time ago and their interest in the “new retirementality” and the changing views on retirement would be less than overwhelming.

However, my research for the project came up with some rather cool insights into the evolving retirement landscape. I decided to share some of the fruits of the research.

So, in keeping with my bent toward abject plagiarism (properly attributed) and lack of originality, I share two insights. One from a financial planning firm, Advanced Capital Management (ACM), and another extracted from Ken Dychtwalds book that I introduced last week: “What Retirees Want: A Holistic View of Life’s Third Age.”

ACM produced this clever graphic for one of their blogs. You can see the full blog here.  I’m just doing cliff notes below.

Source: Advanced Capital Management, Financial Living Blog

Retired? Which one (or more) describes you?

Considering retirement? Which one (or more) do you want to be?

This may help you decide – or at least plan better.

1. The Tireless Mover

 “This person is always on the go, with a bucket list that is seemingly as long as a CVS receipt – trying to sky dive for the first time or seeing the Rolling Stones for the 100th time.”

2. The Lost

“– research has found some people experience ‘anxiety, depression and debilitating feelings of loss’ after retiring.  Too often people can put too much focus on money when planning for retirement. It’s important to also plan for the social and psychological shifts, such as coping with the loss of your career identity, forming new relationships, and finding things to do to pass the time.”

3. The Workhorse

“A working retirement? Isn’t that an oxymoron? For many retirees, it’s not. And, they’re not working just for financial reasons. A FlexJobs’ survey of over 2,000 professionals at or near retirement found that 70% need to work to pay for basic necessities, but almost 60% said they work because they enjoy it. Work can provide meaning and a sense of purpose in retirement.”

4. The Lonely

” According to the National Poll on Healthy Aging, researchers at the University of Michigan found that one in three seniors are lonely. Studies indicate that loneliness can harmfully impact older adults’ physical and mental health and shorten life expectancy.”

5. The Globetrotter

“Your interactions with this person may be primarily in the form of either postcards sent from abroad or envious selfies in front of famous landmarks. Survey after survey ranks travel as one of the top retirement activities.”

6. The Reluctant Spender

“In a 2018 study published in the Journal of Personal Finance, half of retired survey respondents said they were afraid to use their savings.” Primary reasons? Healthcare costs and rise and fall of the stock market.  “It’s perfectly okay to have concerns about spending, but it should not inhibit your ability to enjoy everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

7. The Superhero

” Not all superheroes wear capes. In fact, most wear T-shirts emblazoned with the word “volunteer.” And, many of those real-world superheroes are retirees.  Two-thirds of retirees say they’ve found retirement to be the best time in life to give back.”

8. The Overly Generous

“Some parents and grandparents can’t help themselves. It becomes a problem though when children start to become a financial burden on their retirement goals, which is increasingly common.”

9. The Never Retired

“With only 16% of Americans having saved $200,000 for retirement, according to a 2019 Northwestern Mutual study, it’s a good bet you’ll meet people the same age as you who may never retire.  
This helps explain why a growing number of Americans expect to work longer. AARP’s Life Reimagined survey found more than half of respondents plan to work past the traditional retirement age of 65. Eleven percent say they expect to keep working into their 80s or beyond.”
I relate to most of these –  except The Globetrotter. Machu Picchu and Buddhist ruins don’t float my boat.

A Healthy Perspective

Ken Dychtwald’s research for the aforementioned book looked at Boomer’s perspective on health, revealing that some Boomers are health conscious but many are not.

His surveys found “-four basic health styles among Boomers, based on their condition and approaches to health itself, getting health care, and preparing for health expenses in healthcare.”

Here are more cliff notes:

Healthy on Purpose

These Boomers consistently do what’s good for their health, physically and financially. They take pride in their health, eat right, exercise, and don’t let things interfere with their disciplined approach to protecting their health.

Coarse Correctors

A wake-up call has these Boomers paying more attention, causing them to take better care of their health. While most are diligent in their health behaviors, the majority also say they still let things get in the way of attending to their health.

Health Challenged

Conditions, often chronic, keep this group from doing many things they enjoy. While most are concerned about their health and how to pay for it, only 2 of 5 are actively attending to their health, saying that other responsibilities and worries interfere.

Lax but Lucky

This group likely has their genes to thank and not their behaviors because they do not take care of themselves but manage to remain somewhat healthy. Only about a third try to engage in healthy behaviors or seek information on improving their health.

Dychtwald says that roughly 30% fall into each of the first three categories and 10% in the Lax but Lucky.

Nice work, guys (NOT!)

No surprise here (albeit disappointing): women are in the majority in the first three categories and men in the majority of the Lax but Lucky.

Can you spell “EGO”! “MACHO”!

Scoreboard:

‘nough said. We’ve all got work to do. At the risk of being abrasively repetitive, I’m compelled to remind those who will bother that we, on average, only achieve about 66% of our biological potential. We know that the body will last 122 years and 164 days because Jeanne Calment of Arles, France set that benchmark for us when she checked out in 1997.

I think it’s worth mentioning that rather than filling that 42-year gap, we are currently opening it, with our average lifespan receding.

It’s no longer fate or genes. It’s now about choice.

It’s about “Healthy on Purpose.” And planning ahead to avoid #2 and #4 in the retiree type graphic.

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome and helpful. Scroll down and leave a comment or email your thoughts to gary@makeagingwork.com

Should Your Retirement Include Continuing to Work? Only If Health and Longevity Are Important.

Working during retirement. Hmm. Isn’t that an anachronism?

Retire, by definition, means to  “retreat” or “seek a place of security and seclusion” or, as my Merriam-Webster dictionary defines it, “withdraw from use or service.”

Who wants to be useless?

Fewer and fewer are buying it.

It turns out working during retirement has been trending up steadily for some time.

Why does it make sense to continue to work, at some level, during retirement? Because we now know the importance of work and purpose in maintaining good mental and physical health as we age.

Work and longevity appear to be intrinsically linked.

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

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

For decades now, we’ve been drinking the financial services industry Koolaid that sold us the idea that we’ve earned the opportunity to finish out in rest and relaxation. But the lights have come on and exposed this vocation-to-vacation, labor-to-leisure plan as a bit of a Trojan horse that leads people into a lifestyle that is not conducive to living a full, meaningful, healthy life.

A 2017 Rand Corp study confirmed that “return to work” by retirees is a definite trend:

  • 39 percent of Americans 65 and older who are currently employed had previously retired.
  • More than half of those 50 and older who are not working and not searching for work said they would work if the right opportunity came along

Chris Farrell, author and senior economics contributor for public radio, has been researching and writing about this topic for a few years. He authored a book entitled “Unretirement: How Baby Boomers Are Changing the Way We Think About Work, Community, and the Good Life” (paid link)

Farrell determined that what retirees miss most about their pre-retirement life is colleagues. In his book, he states:

“What’s constantly underestimated is that work is really a community. It turns out it’s much healthier and more satisfying to work for a bad boss than to sit on the couch and watch TV.”

This return-to-work is not always about needing the money, although it is a factor for many. The unfortunate reality is that most Americans are not financially prepared to enter a full-stop retirement and not generate some level of income. But even those who may not need the money find personal satisfaction in earning a paycheck doing something of value to others and society in general. And they appreciate the serendipity effect of knowing that continuing to earn an income stretches their retirement savings and reduces the stress of worrying about outliving their money.

I remain convinced that building work into one’s life plans for the “retirement years” is essential to living longer and healthier. Be it volunteer, for-pay, part-time, or full-time, work brings socialization, structure, meaning, purpose, a reason to get up in the morning.

And it obeys the basic rule of our biology – we either grow or we decay.

Work=useful=growth.

A full-stop, leisure-based retirement draws us away from those important life components.

Aware boomers, pre-boomers, and early GenXers are not excited about heading for the park bench or the lifestyle of retirees from previous generations.

Unretirement is here to stay and growing. As a career transition and retirement coach, I hear the stories of retirees who are unsettled and unhappy in their much-anticipated retired life. And I feel the angst of those approaching retirement age who express concerns about boredom, about leaving a legacy, about wanting to have meaning for the final chapters.

It’s a promising trend as we begin to realize that the talents, skills, and experiences of the 10,000 mid-lifers who are reaching 65 every day are terrible things to allow to go to waste pursuing a concept that has long outlived its usefulness.

What are your thoughts about “work in retirement.? We’d love to have your feedback. Drop down and leave a comment or email gary@makeagingwork.com. If you haven’t joined our reader list, visit www.makeagingwork.com, share your email address, and receive a new article every Monday. It’s all free, including the e-book we send when you join the list: “Achieve Your Full-life Potential: Five Easy Steps to Living Longer, Healthier, and With More Purpose.”

Five Critical Steps to Thriving Within Your Longevity Bonus

You’ve heard it a thousand times.

We’re living longer. Yay!

We extended our average lifespan more in 110 years than we did in the previous 100,000 years. That’s quite a hockey-stick performance.

Makes you wonder why we waited so long. What was so magic about the 20th century? I guess you could say that a few folks woke up and started picking low-hanging fruit that was killing us early, and let it accelerate from there.

Like:

  • Washing hands before surgery. DUH!
  • Better sanitation.
  • Finding cures for most of the infectious diseases that dominated the early part of the century.
  • Improving education – availability, methods, and content.
  • Better food – quality and distribution.
  • Cleaner water.
  • Safer work environments and implements.

Medicine and technology teamed up and hockey-sticked it for us.

Then we hit a wall. It turns out that the progress stopped – and that longer doesn’t always mean better. The average lifespan in the U.S. has turned down each year since 2016.

It’s self-inflicted!

There’s only so much that medical science can do to maintain the acceleration. The fruit is now high in the tree and hard to get to.

We know that longer isn’t always better because Americans spend an average of ten years in ill-health, more than any other developed country. That’s a long time to feel bad – and it’s incredibly expensive.

It appears that it can only get worse as our population continues to shift to a higher concentration of over-65:

Source: AgeWave

As I wrote about last week, many of us get to the back-nine of life having double- or triple-bogeyed the front-nine with our marginal lifestyle habits and facing an accelerating downward slope that results in “living too short and dying too long.”

What’s the lifespan downturn telling us?

Could it be that we don’t give a darn about this gift of potential healthy longevity brought on by research, science, medicine?

Do we still buy the 20th-century myths, models, and messages about automatic senescence, fate versus choice, genetics versus habits?

Maybe. Probably.

But the scoreboard doesn’t lie. We still seem to choose not to flatten the back-nine slope and live longer in health and shorter in chronicity. Rather, we seem to be given to waiting and hoping for government, science, big pharma to find more miracle life-extenders when the best life-extenders have been around forever and are free.

But inconvenient. And sometimes uncomfortable.

Here are five things to consider while you wait for the next scientific/pharma miracle.

You’ll feel and look better while you wait. Oh, and BTW, you might save yourself and our society a lot of money.

  • Adopt WFPB instead of CRAP. Yes, my needle is stuck on the record – and you’re tired of hearing it. The Standard American Diet (SAD) is killing us slowly – and now, more and more of the world. It’s simple in concept, tough in practice. But we know moving to a Whole-Food-Plant-Based diet and away from Calorie-Rich-and-Processed will slow the slope.
  • Cancel Netflix. Or Hulu. Or Prime. Or whatever may have you, along with the average “down-sloper/retiree”, watching 49 hours of TV a week. Divert 15% of the 49 hours to getting your heart rate up and your muscles stronger. That’s only an hour a day of slope-flattening activity.

  • Get connected – and care. Don’t be a hermit.

Here’s an untold secret of longevity. Mary Zaraska spells it out in her powerful new book “Growing Young: How Friendship, Optimism, and Kindness Can Help You Live to 100.” (paid link). It’s called having a strong network of family and friends as we age.

Zaraska states that what she learned through research and personal experience is:

” – building a strong support network of family and friends lowers mortality risk by about 45 percent. Exercise, on the other hand, can lower that risk by 23 to 33 percent. Eating six servings of fruit and veg per day can cut the danger of dying early by 26 percent while following the Mediterranean diet by 21 percent. For volunteering, it’s 22 to 44 percent.”

We already know that social isolation is a significant killer, equivalent to smoking 15 cigarettes a day, according to AARP.

  • Renew your library card.

Did you know that 40% of college grads never open another book after graduation? It seems still too many of us have decided that those first 20 years of learning were enough, failing to acknowledge that our brains are like a muscle that we’ll lose if we don’t use.

Research is making a direct connection between continued learning and dementia. Curiosity is important for mental health. We’re fully capable of high levels of creativity during the “retirement” years. Never stop learning. Stretch your brain.

  • Unretire. It’s happening a lot. Many who bought the “full-stop retirement” Koolaid are experiencing the downsides and altering their retirement lives back to something more than relaxation and rest. Leisure-based, self-indulgent retirement has exposed itself as detrimental to long-term physical and mental health – a definite “slope accelerator.”

Simple, but not easy. The jury has returned with a verdict that our lifestyles are guilty for the deep slope and the big pile at the bottom of the hill. For us “back-niners” it’s a choice between a fence at the top of the slope or an ambulance at the bottom of the hill. We can wait for government, science, or big pharma to build a fence or we can be knowledgeable about our biology, team with our doc, and take charge.

And then that curve just might start turning back up.

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You’re Over 50 and On The Back-Nine. How Are You Going to Play It?

For the last few summers, I’ve been playing golf in a senior men’s league at a local muni. It’s a mid-week event, so this group is mostly retirees mixed with a few business owners who can step away from their businesses for a day.

This is truly a geriatric bunch – the average age is probably mid-70’s.

I help raise the average.

I truly believe, on any given Wednesday morning, it is the biggest concentration of 50″ waistlines and artificial knees and hips in the Denver metro area. Oh, and perhaps, the highest overall golf handicap average on any given golf course in the area at that time of the week.

A few of us walk the course.  Most of the fellas ride, turning a non-aerobic experience into a deep non-aerobic experience.

It definitely is a collection of guys well into the back-nine of life.

Since the groups change each week, there isn’t an opportunity to get to know individuals on a deep level. Plus, COVID prevents us from the 19th hole experience where a personal connection can develop. So, I’ve gotten only a few snippets of front-nine stories from weekly playing partners.

Can I please have my front-nine back?

This week I found myself thinking about life as two nines. I was helped along with the idea after a one-on-one Zoom conversation with exercise physiologist and author Dan Zeman and while reading his book “You Are Too Old to Die Young: A Wake-up Call for the Male Baby Boomer on How to Age with Dignity.” (paid link).

Dan was on the front edge of the exercise physiology profession, an early pioneer in the world of health, fitness, and sports medicine.  He has worked with notable athletes and sports organizations, including Tour de France winner Greg LeMond, the Minnesota Vikings and Timberwolves, and with professional athletes in the National Hockey League.

Dan aims his book at MBBs – male baby boomers. He’s on a life quest to raise the awareness amongst male boomers of the health and wellness impact of decisions made in the back-nine or second half of life, reminding us that we don’t get to play our front nine over.

His “front nine” reminder was poignant for me. I’ve shared in previous writings about my “wake up call” in 2015 at age 73 when I had my first-ever heart scan that revealed I was in the high-risk category for cardiovascular disease (CVD) despite having been a gym-rat and avid aerobic and strength-training exerciser for 3 1/2 decades.

I’m very lucky. Following normal nuclear- and echo-stress tests, we concluded that the calcium build-up in my arteries is spread around so I don’t have any significant blockage and can continue my aggressive exercise regimen.

That changed my back-nine choices.

My doc made it clear that the CVD was likely the result of front-nine choices. He didn’t use those terms but that was the message. My front-nine was pretty deplorable from a health and wellness perspective. As a child of the 40’s and 50’s, I grew up in a world void of health and wellness knowledge and interest.

Doctors, athletes, and celebrities advocated and advertised smoking. I started smoking seriously the minute high school sports were done (truth be known, I smoked the same day I competed in the half-mile run at the state championship track meet – I came in 16th out of 16). DUH!

Diet back then was pretty much what you killed and grew so it was meat and potato fare. Exercise stopped once high school was over.

My smoking habit continued for 18 years until age 37 and then gave way to the gym rat. But the diet didn’t evolve except to take full advantage of the more ubiquitous, tasty, junk-style C-R-A-P (calorie-rich-and-processed) food. The diet didn’t shift to plant-based until the heart scan wake-up call.

Call me “Dan’s Poster Child”!

I’m the poster child for Dan’s message.

The back-nine begins the down-slope as age accelerates its processes. The decisions during the front-nine highly impact the type and intensity of the decisions that need to be made during the back nine. We can’t stop the slope, but we can do a lot to slow it and reduce the severity.

Dan reminds us:

“It is never too late to change an unhealthy habit because the human body is capable of recovering from self-imposed trauma.”

My equivalent to “self-imposed trauma” showed up on that heart scan report.

My decisions to change to a more plant-based diet and to further intensify my exercise with increased emphasis on strength-training, along with continuing to stretch myself intellectually through my work, is my slope-flattening strategy.

Is it fun? Not so much. It’s about awareness of the importance of the upside of action and dread of the downsides of inaction.

Dan raises a global concern that we all should take seriously. Our devotion to seeking conveniences that make our lives easier and more comfortable and sedentary come with a price.  Have I mentioned Netflix, voice-activated remotes, and the fact that retirees now watch 49 hours of TV per week? Combine that sedentary, convenience-seeking lifestyle with poor diet, the #1 cause of early death, and we have a country headed for a financial calamity.

Over 60 million boomers are on the back nine, many carrying forward a really bad front-nine wellness score. Graphically, it looks like the “live short, die long” graphic I’ve included in articles before.

Suppose you are 45,50,60. An important question to ask yourself is: “How steep do I want that slope and how long do I want to stay at the bottom of the hill?” With chronic-illness treatment costs skyrocketing and assisted living/nursing home care already at $120,000 per year on average, it’s a question that merits early back-nine consideration.

Recent research by the AgeWave organization on post-retirement healthcare costs revealed this sobering news:

The evidence is already upon us. That same AgeWave research report revealed that the World Health Organization has flagged the U.S. with the longest average years in poor health of any developed country, despite spending more per capita than any other country.

That all validate’s Dan’s message and his encouragement to consider that our decisions at mid-life can flatten that slope and minimize – or eliminate – that time piled up at the bottom of the hill in the care of $13/hour orderlies.

Team this book with “Younger Next Year.”

As I’ve shared repeatedly, I have been heavily influenced by the book “Younger Next Year: Live Strong, Fit, and Sexy – Until You’re 80 and Beyond” (paid link). I believe Dan’s book is a great extension and supplement to the YNY book. Dan provides a solid 12-step “dirty dozen” plan for avoiding an extended and expensive time at the bottom of the hill. It’s no-fluff, deeply-experience-based advice that every MBB should be taking seriously. Check it out at www.iamdanzeman.com.

Consider adding both books to your library. It could lead to this:

To my many female readers: thanks for listening and tolerating this male-oriented message. If you have one of those MBBs in your life, I sympathize with your having to deal with a fragile ego.

Buy him both books and be patient with his slow understanding of the consequences of his front-nine lifestyle decisions – and his unwillingness to admit to them. Please understand that it’s hard for us to admit that you get it and we don’t and that until we do, you will always live at least 5 years longer than we do.

We welcome your comments – leave us one below or drop us a note to gary@makeagingwork.com. Oh, BTW, you’ll see “paid link” with each book mentioned. I have an Amazon Affiliate account and earn a paltry sum if you buy the book – or anything – after clicking on that link. It doesn’t change the price to you, it just earns me about 5% of the cost of a cup of Starbuck’s awful coffee.

 

Work Yourself to Death? Not a Bad Idea!

I happened across an old article recently about “the oldest working CEO in the United States.” It was about Jack A. Weill, founder and CEO of Rockmount Ranchwear, a Denver-based manufacturer of western wear. Jack died in 2008 at 109. He was working as the CEO of Rockmount at 106, showing up daily for four hours and then retiring home to watch Andy Griffith reruns. He was admired and respected for his philanthropy and service to his community and became a Denver institution with a street named after him.

It reminded me that there may be something to this research telling us that work is a major factor in longevity – and that not all careers give in to a culturally-dictated endpoint.

I wrote about this idea almost three years ago when my subscriber list was mostly friends and family – with only 1/3 of them paying attention. I still think it’s a pretty good article so I’m reprinting it this week, with a few tweaks.

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 worked up to the last day, yelling about something not being exactly perfectly correct.

 

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 you what you are.

Today, we relate vocation to specialized training into a “career track” or a “job” via a vocational or trade school. Not likely the 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 with that disappointment 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 called retirement, a finish line the desire for which may have impeded pursuit of 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 a “lump of 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 – isn’t it too late to find my “calling?”

It’s a pretty common question amongst mid-lifers. 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 could 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 fan and follower of Dan Sullivan, founder of Strategic Coach,  considered to be the most successful entrepreneurial coach on the planet. In a  podcast from a series entitled “Exponential Wisdom” that he does with Peter Diamandis, Dan stated that he feels he has successfully “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.

“R” Words Are Important – Here’s Five That We Need For Our “Second-half”

In June 2018, I posted a blog that became one of my more popular posts. It’s entitled “Your Second Half Should Be Filled With These Four-letter Words” – click on it and become enlightened (How’s that for a dose of arrogance?)

It even became one of the more popular blogs on Next Avenue for several weeks.

Ah, the power of words. Words have meaning. They count. We often treat them too lightly and fail to acknowledge the damage they can do if the wrong ones become a part of our continuous self-talk.

Lately, I’m conscious of a lot of “R” words in my world of reading, study, webinars, Zoom sessions, etc.

The most common, as you’d expect,  is RETIREMENT. One, because that’s a world I’ve immersed myself in – as in, don’t, or at least rethink or redefine it (see, there are those “R” words again). Second, because retirement remains one of the most prevalent words embedded in the middle brain of members of our western culture. As illogical and irrational as it is, it stays firmly entrenched in our psyche.

It occurred to this scattered brain that it might be helpful if we took a look at some of the “R” words I see a lot and position them relative to their merit or lack thereof.

So, here goes. One man’s opinion of five “R” words we should incorporate as we move through the second half of life.

Five “R” Words We Need In Our Life

Resilience – “the ability to recover quickly from setbacks”

  • A trait of healthy centenarians is their ability to not only overcome trauma and travails but actually thrive and find gratitude in the midst of adversity and expect a better future following it. In the words of neuropsychologist Dr. Mario Martinez who has done extensive global research on centenarians: “Despite the initial physical and emotional pain of trauma, they maintain a sense of humor and hope for recovery.  More important, their positive expectations enable them to learn from the negative experience.” I take from all this that being a “cultural outlier” with a “centenarian consciousness” can position us to compress our morbidity, delay our terminal frailty and thus live a longer, healthier and happier life while saving our society billions in late-life healthcare costs. The tough part is to shake off the cultural expectations and be an outlier.  It takes some thick skin and a strong self-image.

Reintegrate – “recombining parts that work together well”

  • I was tempted to suggest reinvent instead of reintegrate because reinvent is so omnipresent these days, especially in the self-help world and particularly when it comes to those of us in the second half of life. I’m rolling with reintegrate after considering the position taken on this by Marc Freedman, CEO and President of Encore.org and one of the nation’s leading experts on the longevity revolution. In a Harvard Business Review article “The Dangerous Myth of Reinvention”   Freedman makes the point that reinvention is too daunting and not practical because it infers discarding accumulated life experience and starting over from scratch. He writes:

“Isn’t there something to be said for racking up decades of know-how and lessons, from failures as well as triumphs? Shouldn’t we aspire to build on that wisdom and understanding?

After years studying social innovators in the second half of life — individuals who have done their greatest work after 50 —I’m convinced the most powerful pattern that emerges from their stories can be described as reintegration, not reinvention. These successful late-blooming entrepreneurs weave together accumulated knowledge with creativity, while balancing continuity with change, in crafting a new idea that’s almost always deeply rooted in earlier chapters and activities.”

Routine – “something unvarying and repetitive”

  • Lots of research on this. Certain repetitive actions benefit our physical health (such as regular exercise, meditation, nightly flossing), but they can also improve our mental health by reducing our stress levels. In the work world, there was an element of routine ( get up, shower, dress, eat, commute, work, etc., etc.). One of the downsides of retirement is that structure and routine can be too flexible and mundane.

Relevance – ” having some sensible or logical connection with something else”

  • It’s my scary guess that a large number of us get up in the morning and go to bed at night without being necessary or relevant at all. If so, why live? One of my favorite wisdom sources on the aging process is Dr. Walter Bortz, retired Stanford geriatric physician who, in his book “Dare To Be 100” advises us to “be necessary.” He points out it doesn’t have to be an elite role. Being older and having the gifts of experience to offer makes it easier to be necessary or relevant to someone or something. His tough but sage advice is clear:

“When we stop mattering in this world, our continued consumption of resources becomes senseless.”

Renewal/Rejuvenation – “to restore something to make it more vigorous, dynamic, and effective”

  • Writer and coach Steve Chandler, in his book “17 Lies That Are Holding You Back & The Truth That Will Set You Free” offers this insight on renewal as we age:

“It’s not your age that determines what you can learn, it’s your energy. Your energy does not depend on your age, it depends on your sense of purpose. It comes from a self-generated sense of necessity. What needs to be done?”

It occurred to me that maybe we should consider some “R” words that we can do without. Here’s a list that immediately came to mind.

Retirement – as in the traditional, self-indulgent, leisure-based, beaches, bungalows, bridge, bingo, and bocce-ball type. It’s dying – none too soon.

Resistance  – to change. To not change is to die.

Regrets – letting our past remain bigger than our future.

Rigidity –“that’s the way it’s always been; it’s the way I’ve always done it.”

Remorse – continued growth has no room for self-condemnation.

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Post COVID, Can We “Be Better Than Before?” Yes! Here’s How.

Last week was an interesting and somewhat grueling week for me, attending back-to-back, multi-day virtual conferences for two separate organizations I’m affiliated with. These were high-level conferences that one would normally fly to and pay dearly for hotel, meals, et. al.

Both were amazingly effective – the technology, with a few minor hiccups, worked amazingly well considering there were around 200 attending one and over 80 attending the other.

This is not news that a resort hotel wants to hear. Or the airlines. Or the liquor industry. Or the – well, you get the point.

Perhaps my biggest take away was that I experienced a better learning experience as a result of this being virtual than if it were across the country in a (typically) frigid hotel ballroom. The individual sessions were recorded and made available for further review. The participants provided .pdf’s of their presentations. In all, an opportunity to take the learning deeper than being live.

The obvious downside is the diminished ability to develop relationships with other attendees, although we did the best we could with “breakout rooms” the conferencing technologies provide.

The conference attendees were resume writers, LinkedIn strategists, coaches of all sorts, writers, wellness practitioners – a mix of folks dedicated to providing some level of service to others, all with the same thing on their minds:

Where is COVID taking us?

In the end, I believe everyone came away, at worst, neutral about what the COVID impact will be. Many, including myself, came away still enthused, encouraged, and unchanged in our commitment to get better at our craft, whatever that may be.

COVID doesn’t mean we can’t be “better than before.”

I want to share one little snippet of content from one of the conferences that I hope will be helpful and encouraging for you. It came from a young lady, half my age, who is a Master Certified Coach with a Master of Positive Psychology degree. She runs a very successful coaching business at The Flourishing Center.

Her name is Emiliya Zhivotovskaya, henceforth just Emiliya for obvious reasons.

Dealing with VUCA.

Trained in the powerful principles of Positive Psychology, Emiliya provided a “container” or a “framework” into which we can put what we are experiencing along with the suggestion that having this framework can help us move forward.

The container is V-U-C-A:

Volatility – Uncertainty – Complexity – Ambiguity

This is the first exposure I had to VUCA and it made a great deal of sense, not just for COVID, but for the changing world we are trying to negotiate.

The concept of VUCA goes back to 1987 with military origins as a strategy for operating in the cold war environment. It was later adopted by business and continues as a framework today.

Emiliya used VUCA to illustrate the need for resilience, for the ability to overcome the challenges we face as the pace of change accelerates and our world becomes increasingly unpredictable.

We weren’t born with it.

Resilience isn’t natural – it’s a mindset, a learned skill. Generally, most of us do pretty well with our resilience, but these are times calling for even more.

The field of Positive Psychology – and Emiliya – teaches that there are three internal skills that can help us get to resilience and beyond:

Purpose – Presence – Positivity

There is much talk these days about “finding your purpose.” What Emiliya revealed is that purpose without meaning is equivalent to “wheel spinning.”

The two are strongly correlated and important but very different.

In simple terms, meaning is the “why” of life. It is in her words:

“the subjective experience of feeling that life fits into a larger context and has significance; it connotes a sense of comprehension and that life, as a whole, makes sense. 

On the other hand, purpose is the “what’s next” of life:

“an overall sense of goals and direction in life and has to do with directionality.”

This may sound a little “woo-woo” and new age, but it isn’t – it’s backed by substantial research.

I don’t want to take this into the weeds, so let me summarize just as Emiliya did. I think there is substantial fodder for some serious deep thinking surrounding this for all of us as we continue to look VUCA in the eye.

  • Meaning is what makes us resilient.
  • Purpose, once we are at baseline (i.e. with meaning), is that thing that makes us grow and flourish.
  • Meaning is about comprehension e.g. “I can get my head around my life.”
  • Purpose is about action e.g. “I know what I am about and how I can make an impact in the world.”

Before we can get to purpose, we need to get to resilience through meaning, answering the questions “why is this happening?”; “where am I?”; “where do I want to be?” That’s the baseline – then we can move to purpose and set goals.

Learning presence.

With a sense of meaning and purpose, the next important skill is being present, being “in the moment.” We’ve all heard how important it is – and if we’ve tried it, we’ve discovered how it seems nearly impossible. Emiliya reminded us why.

We are equipped with a “meaning-making brain” which, left to its devices, will be ruminating about the past or the future. It goes into the past to comprehend the future. When COVID or other disruptions hit, that “meaning-making brain” goes into overdrive reaching forward and backward trying to figure it all out. Being in the present moment can be a very frustrating experiment.

Mindfulness, or surrendering to the present moment, however, is an important internal skill that VUCA forces us into. It’s a superpower that narrows the gap between stimulus and response.

It’s an important component worthy of attention – be it through meditation or prayer or whatever device works best for you to get there. Without some way to be in the present, we face struggles brought on by being caught up in future-thinking and past-thinking and will likely experience knee-jerk responses to things going on around us.

Adopt positivity

Emotions impact us differently but this much we know from positive psychology research:

  1. When we are in a positive emotional state, we tend to be more “broadened” in the way we think about things, how we come up with ideas, how we notice more good things around us. Positive emotions create upward spirals.
  2. When we are in a negative emotional space, we tend to be more narrowed and more focused. Fear and pain narrow and focus us. Negative emotions create downward spirals.

As we face COVID and future VUCA, we should strive to broaden and build and get into a more positive state where we can be more creative.

I was reminded this week in my reading that order exists in all chaos. Order will return. What it looks like is hard to say, but resilience is how we prepare.

 

Thanks to Emiliya for this awakening. Please take the time to check out her website at https://theflourishingcenter.com/. She has great resources. We’d love to hear your thoughts about this as well.  Leave us a comment below or email me at gary@makeagingwork.com.

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